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Ælfric and the purpose of Christian marriage: a reconsideration of the Life of Æthelthryth, lines 120–30

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Peter Jackson
Peter Jackson
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Oxford
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Extract

The career and cult of St Æthelthryth, the seventh-century Northumbrian queen who retained her virginity throughout two marriages in order to follow her vocation as a nun, has always been known to any reader of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica, but has become an especially popular subject for a remarkable range of research and interpretation in the past ten or fifteen years, among editors, historians of sainthood, historians of marriage, feminist literary critics and even novelists.

Type
Research Article
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Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 29 , January 2000 , pp. 235 - 260
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2000

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References

1 Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Colgrave, B. and Mynors, R. A. B. (Oxford, 1969), p. 397 (IV.19).Google Scholar I should say at once that I am concerned here only with one writer's response to an earlier story of unconsummated marriage, not with the medieval phenomenon of continent marriage (sometimes termed ‘spiritual marriage’) in general: there are discussions of this by Elliott, D., Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock (Princeton, NJ, 1993)Google Scholar; McNamara, J. A., ‘Chaste Marriage and Clerical Celibacy’, Sexual Practices and the Medieval Church, ed. Bullough, V. L. and Brundage, J. (Buffalo, NY, 1982), pp. 22–33 and 231–5Google Scholar; and McGlynn, M. and Moll, R. J., ‘Chaste Marriage in the Middle Ages: “It were to hire a greet merite”’, Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, ed. Bullough, V. L. and Brundage, J. A. (New York, 1996), pp. 103–22.Google Scholar

2 Fell, C. E., ‘Saint Æðelþryð: a Historical-Hagiographical Dichotomy Revisited’, Nottingham Med. Stud. 38 (1994), 18–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ridyard, S. J., The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England: a Study of West Saxon and East Anglian Cults, Cambridge Stud. in Med. Life and Thought, 4th ser. 9 (Cambridge, 1988), 176–210Google Scholar; Thompson, P. A., ‘St Æthelthryth: the Making of History from Hagiography’, Studies in English Language and Literature. ‘Doubt Wisely’: Papers in Honour of E. G. Stanley, ed. Toswell, M. J. and Tyler, E. M. (London, 1996), pp. 475–92Google Scholar; Thompson, P. A. and Stevens, E., ‘Gregory of Ely's Verse Life and Miracles of St. Æthelthryth’, AB 106 (1988), 333–90Google Scholar; Hollis, S., Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church: Sharing a Common Fate (Woodbridge, 1992), 46–74Google Scholar; Otter, M., ‘The Temptation of St. Æthelthryth’, Exemplaria 9 (1997), 139–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rosser, S., ‘Æthelthryth: a Conventional Saint?’, Bull. of the John Rylands Univ. Lib. of Manchester 79.3 (1997), 15–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pulsiano, P., ‘Blessed Bodies: the Vitae of Anglo-Saxon Female Saints’, Parergon ns 16.2 (1999), 1–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Waterhouse, R., ‘Discourse and Hypersignification in Two of Ælfric's Saints' Lives’, Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints' Lives and their Contexts, ed. Szarmach, P. E. (Albany, NY, 1996), pp. 333–52Google Scholar; Blanton-Whetsell, V., ‘St. Æthelthryth's Cult: Literary, Historical, and Pictorial Constructions of Gendered Sanctity’ (unpubl. PhD dissertation, State Univ. of New York at Binghamton, 1998).Google Scholar I am most grateful to Dr Blanton-Whetsell for sending me a copy of her dissertation. The novels are Caldecott, M., Etheldreda (London, 1987)Google Scholar, and Bragg, M., Credo (London, 1996).Google Scholar

3 Ælfric's Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, W. W., 4 vols. in 2, EETS os 76, 82, 94 and 114 (London, 1881–1900, repr. 1966) I, 432–40 (no. 20).Google Scholar A Russian translation of Ælfric's Life has been published by Mark, Omelnitski(Old English Saints II (Moscow, 1998), 35–42). I am grateful to Mr Omelnitski for discussing an earlier draft of this paper with me, though we have reached different conclusions about the purpose of the exemplum at the end of the Life.Google Scholar

4 Griffiths, G., ‘Reading Ælfric's Saint Æthelthryth as a Woman’, Parergon ns 10.2 (1992), 35–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Ælfric's Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, I, 432 (lines 20, 24) and 440 (lines 118–19).Google Scholar

6 Maddicott, J R., ‘Plague in Seventh-Century England’, Past and Present 156 (1997), 7–54, at 13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 ‘In like manner have [laypersons] also, as books tell us,/ preserved often their chastity in the marriage-state, for the love of Christ,/ as we might relate if [you] cared to hear it./ However, we will tell you of a certain [thegn], / who lived thirty years with his wife in continence; / he begat three sons, and thenceforward they both lived / for thirty years without [sexual intercourse], / giving much alms, until the husband / entered the monastic life, and God's angels / came just at his death, and carried his soul / with song to heaven, as the books tell us’: Ælfric's Lives of Saints, ed. I, Skeat, 440 (text), 441 (translation)Google Scholar. Throughout this paper, I have generally followed Skeat's translations of the Lives of Saints, and Thorpe's of the Catholic Homilies, though with occasional minor modifications indicated by square brackets.

8 Ott, J. H., Über die Quellen der Heiligenleben in Ælfrics Lives of Saints I(Halle, 1892), p. 47.Google Scholar

9 McCrea, C. McC., ‘Ælfric: His Sources and Style in the Lives of Æthelthryth, Oswald and Edmund’ (unpubl. PhD dissertation, Fordham Univ., 1976), p. 62, n. 54.Google Scholar

10 On the Vitas Patrum, see Berschin, W, Greek Letters and the Latin Middle Ages: from Jerome to Nicholas of Cusa, trans. Frakes, J. C. (Washington, DC, 1988), pp. 57–9Google Scholar; Solignac, A., ‘“Vitae Patrum”’, Dictionnaire de spiritualité, ed. Vilier, M. et al. , 7 vols. (Paris, 1937–1935) XVI, cols. 1029–35.Google Scholar There is still no extended account of the complex history of this enormous body of material; the helpful introductory comments of Schulz-Flügel, E., ‘Zur Entstehung der Corpora Vitae Patrum’, Stadia Patristica, 20 (1989), 289–300Google Scholar, carry the story no further than the eleventh century. It is clear, however, that the term was bestowed both on various collections of texts pertaining to the Egyptian or Near Eastern ‘desert fathers’, and on some of the individual texts within these collections, and that the range of works so denominated grew steadily throughout the Middle Ages. Heribert Rosweyde's monumental edition (Antwerp, 1615) merely carried this process of conglomeration to its extreme, but in doing so it of course to some extent imposed a false unity on works that had their own distinct transmissional histories. With a term as slippery as this, it is often difficult to establish what it meant to a particular medieval writer or his audience; but I was certainly wrong to imply, as I did in 1990, that for Ælfric it referred only to one work - the Verba seniorum by Pelagius and John - and that in Anglo-Saxon England generally it was used only to denote the Verba seniorum and one other text, the Historia monachorum in Aegypto by Rufinus of Aquileia: Jackson, P., ‘Vitae Patrum’, Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture: a Trial Version, ed. Biggs, F. M., Hill, T. D. and Szarmach, P. E., Med. and Renaissance Texts and Stud. 74 (Binghamton, NY, 1990), 162–5, at 163; for the texts in question, see below, nn. 14 and 52. At the end of his Homily on the Book of Judith, Ælfric clearly refers to Jerome's Vita Malchi captiui monachi as ‘Vita patrum’ (see below, n. 75), and I have a short article in preparation in which I try to demonstrate that when he characterizes the work elsewhere he blends reminiscences of several books, including one not directly concerned with the desert fathers at all.Google Scholar

Finally, even the term itself is a matter of dispute. The commonest form in the early Middle Ages was ‘Vitas Patrum’; this was gradually ‘normalized’ as ‘Vitae’ - a form finally given canonical stamp in the title of Rosweyde's edition. See Batlle, C. M., Die “Adhortationes Sanctorum Patrum” (“Verba Seniorum”) in lateinischen Mittelalter, Beiträge zur Geschichte des alten Mönchtums und des Benediktinerordens 31 (Münster, 1972), 7–9.Google Scholar But Ælfric invariably uses the singular ‘Vita’ (as quoted above): for a discussion of this preference, see Homilies of Ælfric: a Supplementary Collection, ed. Pope, J. C., 2 vols., EETS os 259–60 (London, 1967–1968) II, 635, and cf. below, nn. 55 and 75.Google Scholar

11 McCrea, , ‘Ælfric: His Sources and Style’, p. 62Google Scholar; Hurt, J. R., ‘Ælfric and the English Saints’ (unpubl. PhD dissertation, Indiana Univ., 1965), p. 82Google Scholar; Hollis, , Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church, p. 74Google Scholar; Garrison, C. W., ‘The Lives of St. Ætheldreda: Representations of Female Sanctity from 700 to 1300’ (unpubl. PhD dissertation, Univ. of Rochester, 1990), p. 103.Google Scholar

12 Waterhouse, R., personal communication, 30 09 1996Google Scholar; Pulsiano, , ‘Blessed Bodies’, pp. 38–9Google Scholar; Blanton-Whetsell, , ‘St. Æthelthryth's Cult’, pp. 155–8.Google Scholar

13 The source was identified independently by Gordon Whatley and myself: Jackson, P., ‘The Vitae [sid] Patrum in Anglo-Saxon England’, unpubl. paper delivered at an Open Meeting of Fontes Anglo-Saxonia, King's College London, 21 03 1989Google Scholar; Whatley, E. G., ‘Late Old English Hagiography, ca. 950–1150’, Hagiographies: Histoire Internationale de la littérature latine et vernaculaire en Occident desengines à 1550, ed. Philippart, G. (Turnhout, 1994–) II, 467, n. 176.Google Scholar

14 For McCrea, , see above, p. 237.Google Scholar On the (Latin) Historia Monachorum, see Murphy, F. X., Rufinus of Aquileia (345–411): His Life and Works, Stud. in Med. Hist., ns 6 (Washington, DC, 1945), 175–9Google Scholar; Festugière, A. J., ‘Le Problème littéraire de l'historia Monachorum’, Hermes 83 (1955), 257–84.Google Scholar The standard edition is now Historia Monachorum, ed. Schulz-Flügel, E., Patristische Texte und Studien 34 (Berlin, 1990)Google Scholar; see also the detailed review article by Bammel, C. P., ‘Problems of the Historia Monachorum’, JTS ns 47 (1996), 92–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar There is a useful translation of the Greek text (and of Rufinus's most significant additions) by Russell, N., The Lives of the Desert Fathers (London, 1981)Google Scholar; and extracts from the Latin are translated by Waddell, H., The Desert Fathers (London, 1936), pp. 65–80.Google Scholar There is an Italian translation of the complete Latin text by Trettel, G.: Storia di monaci, Collana di testi patristici 91 (Rome, 1991); I am grateful to Andrew Riddoch for letting me have a copy of this book.Google Scholar

15 Historia Monachorum, ed. Schulz-Flügel, , p. 340 (XVI.i.2)Google Scholar, trans. Waddell, , The Desert Fathers, p. 67.Google Scholar

16 ‘Indeed, I know of no good in aught that is in me: but because God's word has been said to thee, I can conceal naught from Him to whom nothing is hidden. So then, I shall speak of those things that I am wont to do, set as I am in the midst of many men. It is now thirty years since a bond of continence was agreed between me and my wife and no man knows of it. I have had by her three sons: for them only have I known my wife, nor have I known any other but her, nor herself now at all. I have never ceased to entertain strangers and in such fashion that I let no one go to meet the coming guest before myself. I have never sent a guest from my house without provision for his journey: I have despised no man that was poor, but have supplied him with what things he needed. If I sat in judgment, I have not respected the person of my own son, in detriment of justice. The fruit of another man's toil has never come into my house. If I saw a quarrel, I have never passed by till I brought them that were at odds to peace. No one ever caught my servants in a fault: never have my herds injured another man's crops: never did I forbid any man to sow in my fields, nor did I choose the richer fallow for myself, and leave the more barren to another. As much as in me lay, I never suffered the stronger to oppress the weak. Ever in my life I sought that no one should be sad because of me. If I were judge in a suit, I condemned no one, but sought to bring the dissidents to peace. And this, as God gave it, has been my way of living until now’: Historia Monachorum, ed. Schulz-Flügel, , pp. 342–3Google Scholar (XVI.ii.4–8), trans. Waddeli, , The Desert Fathers, pp. 69–70.Google Scholar

17 ‘saw his soul taken up into heaven amid a host of angels that were saying, “Blessedis the man whom Thou choosest and causest to approach unto Thee: he shall abide in Thy tabernacle”’: Historia Monachorum, ed. Schulz-Flügel, , p. 345 (XVI.ii.14)Google Scholar, trans. Waddell, , The Desert Fathers, p. 71.Google Scholar The biblical quotation is from Ps. LXIV.5 (for the wording, cf. Le Psautier Remain et les autres anciens psautiers latins, ed. Weber, R., Collectanea Biblica Latina 10 (Rome, 1953), p. 142).Google Scholar

18 Over thirty instances of Ælfric's use of the formula are listed in A Microfiche Concordance to Old English, ed. Venezky, R. L. and di Paolo Healey, A. (Toronto, 1980).Google Scholar

19 Whatley used the term in a draft entry, ‘Vitae Patrum’, completed in April 1989 for Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture, ed. Szarmach, P. E. et al. (Kalamazoo, MI, forthcoming). Thanks to Professor Whatley's generosity, the entry will now be contributed by the present writer.Google Scholar

20 Macarius, : Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, I, 470–2Google Scholar (no. 21: Life of Swithun, lines 471–94), Homilies of Ælfric a Supplementary Collection, ed. Pope, II, 790–2Google Scholar (De Auguriis); Apollonius: Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, II, 122–4Google Scholar (no. 25, The Maccabees, lines 833–45). On the passage from The Maccabees, cf. Lee, S., ‘Ælfric's Treatment of Source Material in his Homily on the Books of the Maccabees’, Bull. of the john Rylands Univ. Lib. of Manchester 77.3 (1995), 165–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 ‘in every condition of human life there are souls that please God and have their hidden deeds wherein He takes delight’: Historia Monachorum, ed. Schulz-Flügel, , p. 347 (XVI.iii.T)Google Scholar, trans. Waddell, , The Desert Fathers, p. 73.Google Scholar

22 ‘Ælfric's treatment of these matters should no doubt be viewed in the wider context of attitudes to sex and sexuality in Anglo-Saxon England generally, but this is far too large a topic to broach here. There are overviews of the subject by Davies, A., ‘Sexual Behaviour in Later Anglo-Saxon England’, This Noble Craft …: Proceedings of the Xth Research Symposium of the Dutch and Belgian University Teachers of Old and Middle English and Historical Linguistics, Utrecht,19–20 January, 1989, ed. Kooper, E., Costerus ns 80 (Amsterdam, 1991), 83–105Google Scholar, and by Magennis, H., ‘“No Sex Please, We're Anglo-Saxons”? Attitudes to Sexuality in Old English Prose and Poetry’, Leeds Stud. in English ns 26 (1995), 1–27.Google Scholar Both writers note the distinctive conservatism and sensitivity of Æfric's discussions of sexual matters, a point reinforced by Magennis in a later article, ‘Godes peow and Related Expressions in Old English: Contexts and Uses of a Traditional Literary Figure’, Anglia 116 (1998), 139–70, at 167–8.Google Scholar There are more narrowly focused discussions of particular topics by Godden, M., ‘The Trouble with Sodom: Literary Responses to Biblical Sexuality’, Bull. of the John Rylands Univ. Lib. of Manchester 77.3 (1995), 97–119CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and by Frantzen, A., ‘Between the Lines: Queer Theory, the History of Homosexuality, and Anglo-Saxon Penitentiais’, Jnl of Med. and Early Mod. Stud. 26 (1996), 255–96Google Scholar (see also his Before the Closet Same-Sex Love from ‘Beowulf’ to‘Angels in America’ (Chicago, IL, 1998)).Google Scholar

23 Æfric's Catholic Homilies. The Second Series. Text, ed. Godden, M., EETS ss 5 (Oxford, 1979), 52–9, esp. pp. 56–8 (lines 115–66)Google Scholar, trans. Thorpe, B., The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church. The First Part, containing the Sermones Catholici or Homilies of Ælfric, 2 vols. (London, 1844–1846) II, 93–7.Google Scholar The source is indicated simply by the words ‘Agustinus magnus sic docet.’ Ælfric most probably had in mind Augustine's De sancta uirginitate, ed. Zycha, J., CSEL 41 (Vienna, 1900), 290–1 (ch. 45 (46))Google Scholar, but see also De bono coniugali, ibid. p. 224 (ch. 23 (28)), De ciuitate Dei, ed. Dombart, B. and Kalb, A., 2 vols., CCSL 47–8 (Turnhout, 1955) II, 494 (XV.26)Google Scholar, and Quaestiones euangeliorum, ed. Mutzenbecher, A., CCSL 44B (Turnhout, 1980), 13 (qu. I.9)Google Scholar; and cf. Förster, M., ‘Über die Quellen von Ælfrics exegetischen Homiliae Catholicae’, Anglia 16 (1894), 1–61, at 38. The biblical passage is of course Matt. XIII.8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Joyce Hill has recently reopened the question of the source of this passage in the course of an important article in which she reassesses the extent of Ælfric's debt to Smaragdus: This passage (Godden, lines 115–35), introduced by the reference to Matthew's account of how the seed yielded various quantities of fruit, was inspired by Smaragdus [Expositio Libri comitis, PL 102] col. 112A–B, but it was considerably elaborated on by Ælfric in a way which led into a passage on chastity (Godden, lines 136–66)…’ (Hill, J., Ælfric and Smaragdus’, ASE 21 (1992), 203–37, at 228).Google Scholar Unfortunately, Hill ignores here Ælfric's explicit statement that he is drawing on Augustine. It is true that only one manuscript of the Catholic Homilies includes the attribution, but that manuscript is Cambridge, University Library, Gg.3.28, which is ‘either a product of Ælfric's own scriptorium or a remarkably faithful copy of such a manuscript’, and which Godden used as the basis of his edition: Ælfric's Catholic Homilies. The Second Series. Text, ed. Godden, , p. 56 (app. crit.) and p. xliii.Google Scholar In his forthcoming commentary on both series of Catholic Homilies, which he has kindly let me see in draft, Godden speculates that the note ‘perhaps originat[ed] as a marginal comment, perhaps prompted by either a query from a reader or an awareness that the argument needed buttressing’. But even if Ælfric had not established his indebtedness to Augustine in this way, a comparison of his exposition with that of Smaragdus would have shown that the English writer cannot have depended on Smaragdus at this point (which is not to say that he had not read him). Smaragdus draws an elaborate analogy between the thirtyfold, sixtyfold and hundredfold fruit and the fingers of the hand, lifted verbatim from Bede, who in turn had taken it directly from Jerome's Aduersus Iouinianurrr. Bede, , Commentarius in Lacam, ed. Hurst, D., CCSL 120 (Turnhout, 1960), 177 (ad VIII.15); Jerome, Aduersus Iouinianum I.3 (ed. PL 23, cols. 213–14). No trace of this is found in Ælfric, whose treatment of the passage, direct, straightforward and urgent with pastoral admonition, is the opposite of an ‘elaboration’. In fact, if Smaragdus's exposition ‘inspired’ Ælfric to do anything, it was to turn to the less strained and more authoritative treatment of the subject by Augustine.Google Scholar

24 ‘keep their marriage according to the written institutes, that is, that they [have intercourse] for the procreation of children at permitted times, and abstain from a pregnant and [menstruating] woman’: Ælfric's Catholic Homilies. The Second Series. Text, ed. Godden, , p. 56 (lines 119–22)Google Scholar, trans. Thorpe, , Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church II, 95.Google Scholar

25 ‘chast[e]ly, for love of God, continue in widowhood’: ibid, (lines 127–8), trans. Thorpe, , Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church II, 95.Google Scholar

26 ‘God's servants, male and female, those who from childhood ever chast[e]ly live in the service of God’, who ‘continue in pure virginity, for the joy of everlasting life’: ibid. pp. 56–7 (lines 133–5), trans. Thorpe, , Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church II, 95.Google Scholar

27 Angelsächsische Homilien und Heiligenleben, ed. Assmann, B., repr. with a supplementary introduction by P. Clemoes (Darmstadt, 1964), pp. 13–23, at 22–3 (lines 200–20).Google ScholarThe quotation about the purpose of marriage - ‘sexual intercourse is ordained for nothing other than the procreation of children, as holy books tell us’ - is found at p. 20 (lines 160–1).Google Scholar

28 Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics in altenglischer und lateinischer Fassung, ed. Fehr, B., repr. with a supplement to the introduction by P. Clemoes (Darmstadt, 1966), p. 4.Google Scholar

29 ‘Those who rightly hold their marriage vow, and at permitted times, and for procreation of children, have carnal intercourse, shall have a thirtyfold meed for their discretion’: Ælfric's Catholic Homilies. The First Series. Text, ed. Clemoes, P., EETS ss 17 (Oxford, 1997), 255 (lines 210–13)Google Scholar, trans. Thorpe, , Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church I, 149.Google Scholar

30 Ælfric's Catholic Homilies. The Second Series. Text, ed. Godden, , p. 39 (lines 297–305; the words quoted are from line 297)Google Scholar, trans. Thorpe, , Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church II, 71.Google Scholar The question of the source of the homily at this point is a difficult one. Förster, , ‘Über die Quellen’, pp. 22–3Google Scholar, identified the source for the entire homily as Bede's homily for the same day (Second Sunday after Epiphany), now edited by Hurst, D., Bedae Venerabilis Opera. Pars III. Opera Homiletica. Pars IV. Opera Rbythmica, CCSL 122 (Turnhout, 1955), 95–104Google Scholar, and Cyril Smetana noted that this Latin homily is also found in the Homiliary of Paul the Deacon (cf. PL 95, col. 1189), implying that it was this version that Ælfric used (Smetana, C. L., ‘Aelfric and the Early Medieval Homiliary’, Traditio 15 (1959), 163–204, at 196).CrossRefGoogle Scholar To add a further layer of complication, Smetana later argued that Ælfric had also used another homily for the same day, by Haymo of Auxerre: Smetana, C. L., ‘Aelfric and the Homiliary of Haymo of Halberstadt’, Traditio 17 (1961), 457–69, at 463–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar (for the identification of Haymo as Haymo of Auxerre, not Haymo of Halberstadt, see Barré, H., Les Homéliaires carolingiens de l'école d'auxerre, Studi e Testi 225 (Vatican City, 1962), 33–42; the homily is ptd PL 118, cols. 126–37 (see esp. col. 136).Google Scholar

More recendy, Joyce Hill, building on an earlier hint by Förster, has argued that Ælfric's source was once more (cf. above, n. 23) an exegesis of the gospel-text by Smaragdus in his Expositio Libri comitis (PL 102, cols. 84–9, at 89). On the passage in question, Hill comments: ‘What follows next… is a brief statement on the spiritual hierarchy of marriage, widowhood and virginity, which is not in Bede but which is in Smaragdus … It is also in Haymo … but it is less con-spicuous there, being embedded in a longer exegesis partly dependent on Bede, which Ælfric did not exploit. It is therefore much more likely that Ælfric took it from Smaragdus’ (Hill, , ‘Ælfric and Smaragdus’, p. 223).Google ScholarHowever, at least two tenth- and eleventh-century manuscripts of Bede's homily include at this point an interpolation discussing the threefold hierarchy: Bedae Venerabilis Opera. Pars III, ed. Hurst, , p. 103 (apparatus criticus)Google Scholar; they are Hurst's MSS C (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, nouv. acq., lat. 1450 (Cluny, s. xi)) and P (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 2369 (s. x)). Moreover, two central details in Ælfric's text are shared only with the passage in Haymo. First, only Haymo lists the three stages in the hierarchy as marriage, chaste widowhood and virginity: in Smaragdus and in the interpolation to Bede they are given as the married, the chaste and the learned (‘coniugatorum, continentium et doctorum’). Second, only in Haymo are the three stages compared with the three floors of the wedding-house, whereas in Smaragdus and in the interpolation in Bede they are compared with the three-sided arrangement of couches in a triclinium or dining-room. The matter deserves further investigation, but it seems clear that Smaragdus can hardly have been Ælfric's source at this point.

31 Ælfric's Catholic Homilies. The Second Series. Text, ed. Godden, , p. 39 (lines 299–301)Google Scholar, trans. Thorpe, , Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church II, 71.Google Scholar

32 Ælfric's Catholic Homilies. The Second Series. Text, ed. Godden, , p. 185 (lines 166–9)Google Scholar, trans. Thorpe, , Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church II, 325. I owe this and the following reference to Malcolm Godden.Google Scholar

33 Ælfric's Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, II, 422 (lines 385–9)Google Scholar: ‘The wife should therefore leave her husband, / because he was a heathen and a hateful persecutor; / but the canons nevertheless say and command that no woman / shall leave her husband on the plea of religion / unless it please them both.’ Cf. Ælfric's source, Panto Sancti Thomae Apostoli: Die alten lateinischen Thomasakten, ed. Zelzer, K., Texte und Untersuchungen 122 (Berlin, 1977), 36 (c. 53).Google Scholar As often, it is difficult to be certain which ‘canons’ Ælfric had in mind in this passage. The eighth-century Penitential of Theodore permits a couple to separate by mutual consent if one partner wishes to enter a monastery; but the late-tenth- or early–eleventh-century Excerptiones pseudo-Ecgberhti adds a rider that they must obtain episcopal permission to do so: Finsterwalder, P. W, Die Canones Theodori Cantuariensis und ihre Überlieferungsformen, Untersuchungen zu den Buβbüchern des 7., 8. und 9. Jahrhunderts 1 (Weimar, 1929), 248, 327Google Scholar; Thorpe, B., Ancient Law and Institutes of England, 2 vols. (London, 1840) II, 114Google Scholar; Aronstam, R. A., ‘The Latin Canonical Tradition in Late Anglo-Saxon England: the Excerptiones Egberti’ (unpubl. PhD dissertation, Columbia Univ., 1974), p. 92.Google Scholar The relation of Ælfric's work to the Excerptiones pseudo-Ecgberhti is a matter of debate at present. The traditional view is that Ælfric used the Excerptiones as a source for his pastoral letters for Wulfstan, but it has recendy been argued that it was the compiler(s) of the Excerptiones who drew on Ælfric rather than the other way round, while Malcolm Godden has suggested that Ælfric himself may have written part of the collection, or even had a hand in the compilation of the whole. On these matters, see Cross, J E. and Hamer, A., ‘Ælfric's Letters and the Excerptiones Ecgberhti’, Alfred the Wise: Studies in Honour of Janet Bately on the Occasion of her Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Roberts, J. and Nelson, J. L. with Godden, M. (Cambridge, 1997), 5–13Google Scholar, revised in Wulftan's Canon Law Collection, ed. Cross, J. E. and Hamer, A., AS Texts 1 (Cambridge, 1999), 17–22Google Scholar; Godden, M., ‘Anglo-Saxons on the Mind’, Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies presented to Peter Clemoes on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Lapidge, M. and Gneuss, H. (Cambridge, 1985), 271–98, at 283Google Scholar; and for the older view, see Aronstam, , ‘The Latin Canonical Tradition’, pp. 32, 150–3Google Scholar, and Frantzen, A. J., The literature of Penance in Anglo-Saxon England(New Brunswick, NJ, 1983), pp. 142–4.Google Scholar

34 Homilies of Ælfric: a Supplementary Collection, ed. Pope, II, 622–35, at 625–8 (lines 66–118).Google Scholar The passage derived from De bono coniugali is at pp. 627–8 (lines 106–8); the source is edited by Zycha, J., CSEL 41 (Vienna, 1900), 187–231, at 196–7 (ch. 7(7)).Google Scholar Æfric's own comment - ‘marriage [or “sexual intercourse”: hæmed] is established for no other reason than for the procreation of children’ - is found at lines 111–12.

35 Homilies of Ælfric a Supplementary Collection, ed. Pope, II, p. 625 (lines 61–5). The source (Pelagius and John, Verba seniorum, XV.88) is ptd PL 73, cols. 968–9.Google Scholar

36 Elliott, , Spiritual Marriage, pp. 98–104, 113–31Google Scholar; McNamara, , ‘Chaste Marriage and Clerical Celibacy’, pp. 22–3, 33.Google Scholar

37 Angelsächsische Homilien und Heiligenleben, ed. Assmann, , pp. 16–17 (lines 76–84).Google Scholar

38 The Old English Version of the Heptateuch, Ælfric's Treatise on the Old and New Testament and his Preface to Genesis, ed. Crawford, S. J., EETS os 160 (Oxford, 1922), 77 (lines 29–37).Google Scholar

39 ‘ceased from fleshly lusts and deeds after they had chosen the apostolic state’: Ælfric's Catholic Homilies. The Second Series. Text, ed. Godden, , pp. 57–8Google Scholar (lines 159–61); trans. Thorpe, , Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church II, 97.Google Scholar

40 ‘The chastity of a layman is, that he hold to his marriage, and lawfully, for the increase of people, beget children. The chastity of a man in orders, of those who serve God, is, that they wholly abstain from fleshly lusts, and it is befitting them that they beget to God the children which laymen have begotten to this world’: Ælfric's Catholic Homilies. The Second Series. Text, ed. Godden, , p. 57 (lines 137–42)Google Scholar, trans. Thorpe, , Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church II, 95.Google Scholar

41 Wulfstan's Canons of Edgar, ed. Fowler, R., EETS os 266 (London, 1972), 17 (ch. 68a).Google Scholar I owe this reference to the discussion by Powell, T. E., ‘The “Three Orders” of Society in Anglo-Saxon England’, ASE 23 (1994), 103–32, at 122–3.Google Scholar For Wulfstan's attitude to the marriage of deacons, see his revision of Ælfric's First Old English Pastoral Letter, where he omits ‘diacon oÞÞe mynsterpreost’ from Ælfric's list of those in orders who are forbidden to have a woman in their household unless she is a close relation: Councils and Synods, with Other Documents relating to the English Church, I: A.D.871–1204, ed. Whitelock, D., Brett, M. and Brooke, C. N. L., 2 vols. (Oxford, 1981) I, 278Google Scholar. Whitelock notes that in the version of Wulfstan's Institutes of Polity II.57 in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 201, ‘the words “or deacon” are omitted from the statement that a bishop or mass-priest or deacon is to lose his orders if he takes a wife’: ibid. p. 278, n. 2.

42 Grundy, L., Books and Grace: Ælfric's Theology, King's College London Med. Stud. 6 (London, 1991), passim.Google ScholarThe quotation from Ælfric is from Nativitas Domini, in Homilies of Ælfric: a Supplementary Collection, ed. Pope, I, 196–216, at 199 (line 55).Google Scholar

43 Grundy, , Books and Grace, p. 8Google Scholar; Homilies of fclfric: a Supplementary Collection, ed. Pope, I, 195.Google Scholar

44 Grundy, , Books and Grace, p. 7Google Scholar. It must be said, however, that Grundy tends to elide two important distinctions: first, between those works of Augustine known to Ælfric at first hand and those which he knew only in the form of extracts or quotations made by others; and secondly, between Augustine's own works and those of his ideas which had passed, often unattributed, into common theological currency. The mechanics of the transmission of Augustine's writings - and of Augustinian theology - to Ælfric and his contemporaries have yet to be fully worked out.

45 For a comprehensive, sympathetic account of Augustine's views on marriage, see Schmitt, E., Le Manage chrétien dans l'æuvre de Saint Augustin: une théologie baptismale de la vie conjugate (Paris, 1983)Google Scholar; also Reynolds, P. L., Marriage in the Western Church: the Christianization of Marriage during the Patristic and Early Medieval Periods, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 24 (Leiden, 1994), esp. 259–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar (I owe this reference to David Ganz). Augustine's teaching on sex is brilliantly expounded by Brown, P., The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (London, 1989), 387–427Google Scholar, and in his Augustine and Sexuality, Center for Hermeneutical Stud. in Hellenistic and Modern Culture: Protocol Ser. of the Colloquies 46 (Berkeley, CA, 1983), 1–13 (with responses, ibid. 14–41). A collection of primary texts has been translated by Clark, E. A., St Augustine on Marriage and Sexuality, Selections from the Fathers of the Church 1 (Washington, DC, 1996).Google Scholar

46 E.g., Augustine, De sancta uirginitate and De bono coniugali, ed. Zycha; De nuptiis et concupiscentia, ed. Urba, K. F. and Zycha, J., CSEL 42 (Vienna, 1902)Google Scholar; sermo LI (ptd PL 38, cols. 332–54, at 345–6 (chs. 22–3); see also the edition by Verbraken, P.-P., ‘Le Sermon LI de Saint Augustan sur les généalogies du Christ selonMatthieu et selon Luc’, RB 91 (1981), 19–45, at 36–8).Google Scholar

47 ‘[t]hey are better in proportion as they begin the earlier to refrain by mutual consent from sexual intercourse, not that it would afterwards happen of necessity that they would not be able to do what they wished, but that it would be a matter of praise that they had refused beforehand what they were able to do’: Augustine, , De bono coniugali, ed. Zycha, , pp. 190–1 (ch. 3(3)).Google Scholar I have used the translation by Wilcox, C. T., ‘The Good of Marriage’, Saint Augustine: Treatises on Marriage and other Subjects, The Fathers of the Church 27 (New York, 1955), 12.Google Scholar

48 Elliott, , Spiritual Marriage, p. 41; cf. pp. 48, 83.Google Scholar

49 ‘even if perpetual continence is pleasing to one of them, he [or she] may not follow this urge except with the consent of the other’: Augustine, , De bono coniugali, ed. Zycha, , p. 195 (ch. 6(6))Google Scholar, trans. Wilcox, , ‘The Good of Marriage’, p. 17.Google Scholar

50 ‘such vows are not to be made by married people without a mutual will and agreement … God does not exact of us what is vowed at another's expense; rather, He forbids us to trespass on another's rights’: S. Aureli Augustini Hipponiensis episcopi epistulae, ed. Goldbacher, A., 5 vols. in 4, CSEL 34,44, 57 and 58 (Vienna, 1895–1923) III, 29 (ep. 127, c. 9).Google Scholar I have used the translation by Sr Parsons, W., Saint Augustine: Letters, 5 vols., The Fathers of the Church 12, 18, 20, 30 and 32 (New York, 1951–1956) II, 363–4.Google Scholar

51 ‘I say nothing of the fact that I know you undertook this state of continence, contrary to sound doctrine, before he gave consent. He should not have been defrauded of the debt you owed him of your body before his will joined yours in seeking that good which surpasses conjugal chastity … For, if you had never obtained his consent, no lapse of years would have excused you, but, if you had consulted me however long afterwards, I should have made you no other answer than what the Apostle said: “The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband”’: S. Aureli Augustini epistulae, ed. Goldbacher, IV, 622–4 (ep. 262, cc. 2–3)Google Scholar, trans. Parsons, , Saint Augustine: Letters V, 262–3. The biblical quotation is from I Cor. VII.4.Google Scholar

52 The Verba seniorum is ptd PL 73, cols. 855–1022. There is no English translation, but a translation into French has been prepared by Dion, J. and Oury, G.: Les Sentences des pères des désert (Solesmes, 1966).Google Scholar The well-known translations by Benedicta, Ward, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, rev. ed., Cistercian Stud. Ser. 59 (Kalamazoo, MI, 1984; first publ. 1975)Google Scholar and The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers, Fairacres Publ. 48 (Oxford, 1975)Google Scholar are based on a different recension of the underlying Greek, in which the material is arranged alphabetically in order of the name of the holy man or woman concerned. See also Wilmart, A., ‘Le Recueil latin des Apophtegmes’, RB 34 (1922), 185–98.Google Scholar

53 PL 73, cols. 864–73 and 873–88.

54 See above, nn. 27 and 28.

55 ‘And therefore I hold my peace as to the book called [Vita] Patrum, wherein are contained many subtle points which ought not to be laid open to the laity, nor indeed are we ourselves quite able to fathom them’: Ælfric's Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, I, 2–3Google Scholar (Preface, lines 12–14). The editor has ‘normalized’ Ælfric's ‘uita’. Cf. Ælfric's Prefaces, ed. Wilcox, J., Durham Med. Texts 9 (Durham, 1994), 119–20 and 156.Google Scholar

56 Clayton, M., ‘Hermits and the Contemplative Life in Anglo-Saxon England’, Holy Men and Holy Women, ed. Szarmach, , pp. 147–75, at 164.Google Scholar See also Ælfric's Prefaces, ed. Wilcox, , pp. 156 and 162.Google Scholar

57 On which see, for example, Goffart, W., The Narrators of Barbarian History: Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon (Princeton, NJ, 1988), pp. 307–24, at 322–3.Google Scholar

58 I refer to the abecedarian poem in epanaleptic couplets which Bede appended to his account of Æthelthryth (The Ecclesiastical History, ed. Colgrave, and Mynors, , pp. 396–400 (IV.20)).Google Scholar Unfortunately, this poem is mentioned only in passing in Michael Lapidge's Jarrow lecture, Bede the Poet (Jarrow, 1994)Google Scholar, repr. in his Anglo-Latin Literature, 600–899 (London, 1996), pp. 313–38, 508, at 327, n. 65. The saints in question are Agatha, a girl who successfully resisted attempted seduction; the twelve-year-old Eulalia, who was burnt to death for refusing to sacrifice to the gods; the eighteen-year-old Thecla of Iconium, who was cast into the arena and exposed to wild beasts; Euphemia, who as a young woman was martyred in Chalcedon for refusing to sacrifice to Mars; Agnes, martyred at the age of thirteen after refusing to marry; and Cecilia, a young woman who, having pledged her virginity to God, refused to consummate her marriage to a pagan (her husband subsequendy converted and the couple were martyred).Google Scholar

59 The brief notices in Bede's Martyrology and De temporum ratione add nothing to the account in the Historia Ecclesiastics. Dubois, J and Renaud, G., Édition pratique des Martyrologes de Bède, de l'anonyme lyonnais et de Florus (Paris, 1976), p. 113Google Scholar; De temporum ratione, ed. Jones, C. W, CCSL 123B (Turnhout, 1977), 528–9 (LXVI.562).Google ScholarThe late-ninth-century Old English version of Bede's History follows the original faithfully but omits the hymn: The Old English Version of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Miller, T., 4 vols., EETS os 95, 96, 110 and 111 (London, 1890–1898) II, 316–25 (IV.21).Google Scholar

60 How pure was her faith, how wondrous his patience! / He was won over by her prayers, and she by love of God! / Afire, both of them, with inward flames of the holy Faith, / in chastity they remained together as husband and wife': Alcuin, , The Bishops, Kings, and Saints of York, ed. Godman, P. (Oxford, 1982), pp. 64–5 (lines 760–3).Google Scholar

61 ‘She was twelve years with King Ecgferð, and by no means could he make her change her mind’: Das altenglische Martyrologium, ed. Kotzor, G., 2 vols., Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-historische Klasse: Abhandlungen, Neue Folge 88.1–2 (Munich, 1981) II, 128–9, at 128 (lines 5–7)Google Scholar (see also the commentary, ibid. pp. 322–3); the translation is from An Old English Martyrology, ed. Herzfeld, G., EETS os 116 (London, 1900), 103.Google Scholar About the middle of the tenth century, a cleric of the church of Ely named Ælfhelm wrote an account of Æthelthryth's miracles which is lost apart from excerpts cited in the twelfth-century Liber Eliensis; but the surviving fragments make no reference to the saint's marriages: Liber Eliensis, ed. Blake, E. O., Camden 3rd ser. 92 (London, 1962), xxxii, 57–61 (I.43–9).Google Scholar

62 Æthelthryth's early cult still awaits its historian. Susan Ridyard comments that ‘[b]etween the seventh and the tenth century there may have been very few years in which St Æthelthryth's isle lacked its church and her relics their guardians: but in terms both spiritual and institutional the history of Ely abbey began with the advent of St Æthelwold’: The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England, p. 185. Christine Fell's helpful (but all too brief) discussion of the evidence from extant litanies and liturgical calendars confirms these observations: ‘Saint ÆSelðelþryð, p. 33 and n. 31Google Scholar; for the litanies, see Anglo-Saxon Litanies of the Saints, ed. Lapidge, M., HBS 106 (London, 1991)Google Scholar, and for the calendars, see English Kalendars before A.D. 1100, ed. Wormald, F., HBS 62 (London, 1934)Google Scholar; the evidence from the latter is conveniently tabulated in Das altenglische Martyrologium, ed. Kotzor, I, 307*.Google Scholar It should be noted, however, that the great majority of extant litanies and calendars date from the late tenth and eleventh centuries, when the popularity of Æthelthryth's cult is not in dispute. Evidence from the earlier period is scanty, but such as it is supports Ridyard's argument for comparative neglect, and also – like Alcuin's lines quoted above – indicates that Ecgfrith was no less venerated than his wife. Thus both Ecgfrith and Æthelthryth are included in a fragmentary eighth-century calendar from York (ed. Bauerreiss, R., ‘Ein angelsächsisches Kalendarfragment des bayrischen Hauptstaatsarchiv in München’, Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktiner-Ordens und seiner Zweige, 51 (1933) 177–82, at 178–9Google Scholar), while the early-eighth-century calendar of St Willibrord, ed. Wilson, H. A., HBS 55 (London, 1918)Google Scholar commemorates Ecgfrith but not Æthelthryth. There is no evidence for Pauline Stafford's bald assertion that Ecgfrith ‘divorced Æthelthryth because she was sterile’: Stafford, P., Queens, Concubines and Dowagers: the King's Wife in the Early Middle Ages (London, 1983), p. 81.Google Scholar

63 For accounts of Æthelwold's refoundation of Ely, see Wulfstan of Winchester, ed. Lapidge, and Winterbottom, , pp. 38–40 (ch. 23)Google Scholar; Liber Eliensis, ed. Blake, , pp. 72–6 (11.1–4)Google Scholar; and Libellus Æthelwoldi, ed. Gale, T., Historiae Britannicae, Saxonicae, Anglo-Danicae, Striptores XV (Oxford, 1691), pp. 463–88, at 463–5 (chs. 1–4).Google Scholar A new edition of the Libellus Æthelwoldi is in preparation by Simon Keynes and Alan Kennedy in the volume Anglo-Saxon Ely: Records of Ely Abbey and its Benefactors in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (Woodbridge, forthcoming). Virginia Blanton- Whetsell has recently suggested that the supposed retranslation did not take place: ‘St. Æthelthryth's Cult’, pp. 161–2.Google Scholar

64 Ridyard, , The Rcyal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England, p. 194.Google Scholar See also Yorke, B., ‘Introduction’ to Bishop Æthelwold: His Career and Influence, ed. Yorke, B. (Woodbridge, 1988), pp. 1–12, at 5–6.Google Scholar

65 London, British Library, Add. 44598, 2r (choir of virgins), 90v (Æthelthryth alone): Deshman, R., The Benedictional of Æthelwold, Stud, in Manuscript Illumination 9 (Princeton, NJ, 1995), pls. 3 and 28.Google Scholar See also the blessing for Æthelthryth's feast-day at 91r–92r of the same manuscript, ptd (e.g.) by Warner, G. F. and Wilson, H. A., The Benedictional of Saint Æthelwold, Bishop of Winchester 963–984 (London, 1910), p. 37.Google Scholar

66 Deshman, , The Benedictional of Æthelwold, pp. 172 and 206–7.Google Scholar On Æthelwold's ex-nurse Æthelthryth, see Wulfttan of Winchester, ed. Lapidge, and Winterbottom, , pp. 4, 8 and 38Google Scholar (chs. 2, 5 and 22) and 4 n., and Meyer, M. A., ‘Patronage of the West Saxon Royal Nunneries in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, RB 91 (1981), 332–58, at 347–8.Google Scholar There is a summary of Queen Ælfthryth's religious activities in another article by Meyer, ‘Women and the Tenth Century English Monastic Reform’, ibid. 87 (1977), 34–61, at 51–61 (though she is referred to throughout as ‘Ethelthryth’); see also Yorke, B., ‘Æthelwold and the Politics of the Tenth Century’, Bishop Æthelwold, ed. Yorke, , pp. 65–88, at 81–4Google Scholar, and Stafford, P., ‘Queens, Nunneries and Reforming Churchmen: Gender, Religious Status and Reform in Tenth- and Eleventh-Century England’, Past and Present 163 (1999), 3–35, at 3–5, 24–32.CrossRefGoogle ScholarÆlfthryth is said to have visited Ely during the reign of Edward the Martyr (975–8) in the company of her son, the future Æthelred II: Liber Eliensis, ed. Blake, , p. 146 (II.78).Google Scholar

67 Cf. John, E., ‘The World of Abbot Aelfric’, Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: Studiespresented to J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, ed. Wormald, P. with Bullough, D. and Collins, R. (Oxford, 1983), pp. 300–16, at 306: ‘There are very few English saints celebrated in his pages: two of these, Aethelthryth and Swithun, are obviously both included because of Aethelwold's appropriation of their cults for Ely and Winchester respectively.’Google Scholar

68 Keynes, S., The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘the Unready’, 978–1016: a Study in their Use as Historical Evidence, Cambridge Stud. in Med. Life and Thought, 3rd ser. 13 (Cambridge, 1980), 176;CrossRefGoogle Scholar for the date of Ælfthryth's death (probably 17 November 1000 or 1001), ibid. p. 210, n. 203.

69 Clemoes, P., ‘The Chronology of Ælfric's Works’, The Anglo-Saxons: Studies in Some Aspects of their History and Culture presented to Bruce Dickins, ed. Clemoes, P. (London, 1959), pp. 212–47, at 221–2 and 244.Google Scholar

70 See Pope, J., ‘Ælfric and the Old English Version of the Ely Privilege’, England before the Conquest Studies in Primary Sources presented to Dorothy Whitelock, ed. Clemoes, P. and Hughes, K. (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 85–113, at 89 (lines 31–41).Google Scholar Pope dates the text c. 1006, about the same rime as the abbreviation of the Life of Æthelwold: ibid. p. 111. See also McIntosh, A., ‘Wulfstan's Prose’, PBA 35 (1949), 109–42, at 113 and 128–9, n. 8Google Scholar; Thacker, A., ‘Æthelwold and Abingdon’, Bishop Æthelwold, ed. Yorke, , pp. 43–64, at 54.Google Scholar

71 Ælfric's Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, II, 332–3 (no. 32, lines 259–63).Google Scholar The quotation is from line 259: ‘[t]he English nation is not deprived of the Lord's saints’. This passage is Ælfric's own addition; it is not found in his source for the rest of the Life, Abbo of Fleury's Passio S. Eadmundi (ed. Winterbottom, M., Three Lives of English Saints (Toronto, 1972), pp. 65–87).Google Scholar It is worth noting that Ælfric greatly abbreviates a passage in Abbo in praise of Edmund's unstained chastity, and moves it to appear immediately after an earlier passage describing the saint's physical incorruption: further evidence, perhaps, that he was uneasy with references to lifelong virginity in a near-contemporary lay saint (see above, pp. 246–7 and n. 40). Cf. Winterbottom, , Three Lives of English Saints, pp. 86–7 (ch. 17)Google Scholar with Ælfric's Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, II, 328–9 (lines 186–8)Google Scholar, and see Clark, C., ‘Ælfric and Abbo’, ES 49 (1968), 30–6, at 35, n. 38.Google Scholar

72 ‘There is moreover a place in the region called Ely, greatly ennobled by the relics and miracles of St Æthelthryth the virgin, and her sisters’: Wulfstan of Winchester, ed. Lapidge, and Winterbottom, , p. 76 (ch. 17)Google Scholar, trans. English Historical Documents c. 500–1042, ed. Whitelock, D., Eng. Hist. Documents 1, 2nd ed. (London, 1979), no. 235, p. 908.Google Scholar

73 Magennis, H., ‘St Mary of Egypt and Ælfric: Unlikely Bedfellows in Cotton Julius E.vii?’, The Legend of Maty of Egypt in Medieval Insular Hagiography, ed. Poppe, E. and Ross, B. (Dublin, 1996), pp. 99–112, at 107–8.Google Scholar

74 Eugenia for a time disguised herself as a boy, and was eventually martyred for refusing to sacrifice to Diana; Lucy was martyred for resisting the demands of her suitor Paschasius; for the legends of Agnes and Agatha, see above, n. 58. The three married women, Cecilia, Basilissa and Daria, were all martyred like their husbands. Only Constantia died a natural death, having preserved her virginity throughout her life. See Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, I, 24–50 (no. 2)Google Scholar; I, 210–18 (no. 9); I, 170–86 (no. 7); I, 194–208 (no. 8); II, 356–76 (no. 34); I, 90–114 (no. 4); II, 378–98 (no. 35); and I, 186–94 (no. 7, ‘Alia sententia’).

75 Ælfric also refers elsewhere to a male saint who was a married virgin. In the incomplete exhortation to his female readers at the end of the Homily on the Book of Judith, he cites as an example of chastity Malchus, the ‘captive monk’ who by mutual consent lived in continence with his wife: ‘ic wylle eac secgan, min swustor, / þæt mægðhad and clænnys mycele mihte habbað, / swa swa we gehwær rædað on martira þrowungum / and on Vita[s] Patrum, swa swa Malchus …’ (‘I would also say to you, my sisters, that virginity and chastity have great power, as we read everywhere in the passions of the martyrs, and in the Vita[s] Patrum, as in the case of Malchus …’). (There is a lacuna in the text at this point: Angelsächsische Homilien and Heiligenleben, ed. Assmann, , p. 115 (lines 442–5)Google Scholar; Assmann, like Skeat - cf. above, n. 55 - normalizes ‘Vitas’ as ‘Vita’.) For Jerome's Vita Malchi captiui monachi, see the edition by Mierow, C. C., Classical Essays presented to James A. Kleist, S.J., ed. Arnold, Richard E. (St Louis, MO, 1946), pp. 31–60, at 48–9 (ch. 6)).Google Scholar See also Bugge, J., Virginitas: an Essay in the History of a Medieval Ideal, Archives Internationales d'histoire des Idées: series minor 17 (The Hague, 1975), 53, n. 92.Google Scholar

76 See Fell, C. E., ‘Hild, Abbess of Streonæshalch’, Hagiography and Medieval Literature: a Symposium, ed. Bekker-Nielsen, H., Foote, P., Jorgensen, J. H. and Nyberg, T. (Odense, 1981), pp. 76–99, at 79–80Google Scholar; Blair, P. Hunter, ‘Whitby as a Centre of Learning in the Seventh Century’, Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Lapidge, and Gneuss, , pp. 3–32, at 6Google Scholar; Magennis, , ‘St Mary of Egypt and Ælfric’.p. 109.Google Scholar

77 It is tempting (but probably mistaken) to assume, as Virginia Blanton-Whetsell does, that Ælfric was also uneasy about Æthelthryth's position of authority over both sexes: ‘In his translation, Ælfric omits her role as founder of a double house, and effectively, erases her leadership over both women and men’ (Blanton-Whetsell, , ‘St. Æthelthryth's Cult’, p. 154).Google Scholar Several passages in the Historia ealesiastica touch on the nature of the foundation at Ely. In the first, Bede could easily (though wrongly) be taken to imply that the community at first consisted only of women: ‘Post annum uero ipsa facta est abbatissa in regione quae uocatur Elge, ubi constructo monasteries uirginum Deo deuotarum perplurium mater uirgo et exemplis uitae caelestis esse coepit et monitis’ (‘A year afterwards she was herself appointed abbess in the district called Ely, where she built a monastery and became, by the example of her heavenly life and teaching, the virgin mother of many virgins dedicated to God’): The Ecclesiastical History, ed. Colgrave, and Mynors, , pp. 392–3.Google Scholar Ælfric's version falls into the understandable error of assuming that all these ‘virgins’ were female: ‘heo syððan wearð gehadod / eft to abudissan on elig mynstre / ofer manega mynecena. and heo hi modorlice heold sol; mid godum gebysnungum to þam gastlican life’ (‘she was then again instituted / as abbess in the monastery of Ely, / and [set] over many nuns, whom she trained as a mother / by her good example in the religious life’): Ælfric's Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, I, 434–5 (lines 37–40).Google Scholar The authors of the Old English Martyrology and the Old English translation of Bede were similarly misled, as Christine Fell has pointed out (Fell, , ‘Saint Æðelþryð’, pp. 29–30).Google Scholar Ælfric's practice elsewhere is less clear-cut. Describing the scene at Æthelthryth's translation in 695, Bede reports that ‘omnis congregatio, hinc fratrum inde sororum, psallens circumstaret’ (‘the whole congregation stood round singing, the brothers on one side and the sisters on the other’): The Ecclesiastical History, ed. Colgrave, and Mynors, , pp. 394–5Google Scholar; Ælfric merely records that [h]i sungon ða ealle sealmas and lie-sang’ (‘then they all sang psalms and hymns for the dead’): Ælfric's Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, I, 438 (line 88).Google Scholar But elsewhere he twice refers to ‘brethren’ (gebroðra) without any attempt at evasion: ibid. 436 (lines 75 and 84).

78 Blanton-Whetsell, , ‘St. Æthelthryth's Cult’, pp. 155–8 (quotations from pp. 157–8).Google Scholar Blanton- Whetsell makes no reference to the source of the exemplum, of which she was presumably unaware. Cf. Pulsiano, , ‘Blessed Bodies’, p. 39: ‘That Ælfric at the close of the life chose to identify the male and not the female as the positive figure emulating the saint's behavior redirects the narrative to a male lay and clerical audience.’Google Scholar

79 Blanton-Whetsell, , ‘St. Æthelthryth's Cult’, p. 157.Google Scholar

80 Bede, , The Ecclesiastical History, ed. Colgrave, and Mynors, , p. 390Google Scholar; cf. Ælfric's version, ‘[s]e ealdorman [Tondberht] gewat þa ða hit wolde god’ (‘[t]he ealdorman died when God wished it’): Ælfric's Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, I, 433 (line 13).Google Scholar

81 See above, pp. 246–7 and n. 40.

82 Clayton, M., ‘Ælfric's Judith: Manipulative or Manipulated?’, ASE 23 (1994), 215–27.Google Scholar See also Magennis, ‘“No Sex Please, We're Anglo-Saxons”?’, pp. 9–10; idem, ‘Contrasting Narrative Emphases in the Old English Poem Judith and Ælfric's Paraphrase of the Book of Judith’, NM 96 (1995), 61–6.Google Scholar Interestingly enough, Æthelthryth is expressly described as ‘a second Judith’ in Gregory of Ely's twelfth-century Vita. ‘Sic uincit ut altera Iudith; / Dum caro calcatur, Olophernes sic iugulatur’: ed. Thompson, and Stevens, , ‘Gregory of Ely's Verse Life’, p. 354Google Scholar (I, lines 61–2); see also Ridyard, , The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England, p. 85.Google Scholar

83 As Ruth Waterhouse pointed out to me in a personal communication (25 July 1999) after reading a slighdy earlier draft of this article.

84 ‘he, whose habit it was to entertain strangers, ran to meet him and brought him into his house and bathed his feet and set a table before him and made a feast’: Historia Monachorum, ed. Schulz-Flügel, , p. 342 (XVI.ii.3)Google Scholar, trans. Waddell, , The Desert Fathers, p. 69.Google Scholar

85 ‘It is now thirty years since a bond of continence was agreed between me and my wife and no man knows of it. I have had by her three sons: for them only have I known my wife, nor have I known any other but her, nor herself now at all.’ See above, n. 16.

86 ‘we will tell you of a certain ‘thegn’, / who lived thirty years with his wife in continence; / he begat three sons, and thenceforward they both lived / for thirty years without [sexual inter-course]’. See above, n. 7.

87 ‘I have never sent a guest from my house without provision for his journey: I have despised no man that was poor, but have supplied him with what things he needed.’ See above, n. 16.

88 See above, n. 7. It is quite true, however, that there was one detail in his source that Ælfric did not modify: only the layman, not his wife, is fetched to heaven by angels.

89 Ælfric's Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, I, 440–1 (lines 132–3).Google Scholar Pulsiano (whose article I saw only when the present paper was substantially complete) does argue that Ælfric does not deliberately exclude women from the ending, but rather ‘broadens his frame to include a male audience’: ‘Blessed Bodies’, p. 40. But he still believes that the purpose of the exemplum is to reaffirm Æthelthryth's sanctity.

90 Hollis, , Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church, p. 74Google Scholar (and see above, pp. 237–8). Hollis earlier recognizes that ‘the exemplary thrust of the life of Æthelthryth is in direct opposition to ecclesiastical ambitions regarding the institution of marriage. Somewhat irregular in relation to the orthodoxy of the time in which it was formulated, the life of Æthelthryth became increasingly awkward as an exemplum’ But she suggests that Ælfric inserted the story from the Historia monachorum, not to offer an alternative view of marriage, but rather to stress ‘the indissoluble character of the [marriage] bond’: ibid. pp. 73–4.

91 Tristram, H., ‘Introduction’ to Legend of Mary of Egypt, ed. Poppe, and Ross, , pp. 1–17, at 13.Google Scholar

92 See above, p. 240.

93 Griffiths, , ‘Reading Ælfric's Saint Æthelthryth’, pp. 35 and 49.Google Scholar

94 This article originated in a paper read at the International Medieval Congress at Leeds on 14 July 1998. I am very grateful to several colleagues and friends for kindly reading and commenting on an earlier draft: Mark Atherton, Fred Biggs, Malcolm Godden, Andrew Wareham and Ruth Waterhouse.