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King Alfred's æstel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Bruce Harbert
Bruce Harbert
Affiliation:
Merton College, Oxford
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Extract

King Alfred's preface to the Old English Pastoral Care, explaining how and why he made this translation from the original of Gregory the Great, ends thus:

Siððan ic hie geliornod hæfde, swæ swæ ic hie forstod, ond swæ ic hie andgitfullicost areccean meahte, ic hie on Englisc awende; ond to ælcum biscepstole on minum rice wille ane onsendan; ond on ælcre bið an æstel, se bið on fiftegum mancessa.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 3 , December 1974 , pp. 103 - 110
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

page 103 note 1 Text from Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 20. The publication of the Pastoral Care is authoritatively discussed by Kenneth, Sisam, Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford, 1953), pp. 140–7.Google Scholar

page 103 note 2 Ælfrics Grammatik und Glossar, ed. Zupitza, J. (Berlin, 1880), p. 314.Google Scholar

page 103 note 3 E.g. Förster, M., ‘Zur Geschichte des Reliquienkultus in Altengland’, Sitzungsherichte der Bayer. Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil. hist. Abt. (1943), Heft 8, p. 11Google Scholar. A convenient list of earlier interpretations is given in Wyatt, A. J., An Anglo-Saxon Reader (Cambridge, 1919), p. 214.Google Scholar

page 104 note 1 E.g. see s.v. festuca in Du Cange, C., Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, ed. Favre, L. (Paris, 1883–1987)Google Scholar, and Niermeyer, J. F., Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus (Leiden, 1954–).Google Scholar

page 104 note 2 See Middle English Dictionary, ed. Kurath, H., Kuhn, S. M. et al. (Ann Arbor, 1952–), s.v.Google Scholar

page 104 note 3 See above, p. 103, n. 3.

page 104 note 4 Clarke, J. R. and Hinton, D. A., The Alfred and Minster Lovell Jewels (Oxford, 1971), pp. 8–9.Google ScholarKendrick's, T. D. suggestion (Anglo-Saxon Art to A.D. 900 (London, 1938), p. 216Google Scholar) that an æstel was a page-weight and that the Alfred Jewel is an example, is not reconcilable with the glosses or the etymological evidence.

page 104 note 5 See Pollard, G., ‘The Construction of English Twelfth-Century Bindings’, The Library 5th ser., 17 (1962). 16–17.Google Scholar

page 105 note 1 E.g. Holthausen, F., Altenglischcs etymologisches Wörterbuch (Heidelberg, 1934), s.v.Google Scholar

page 105 note 2 Epistula 32, ch. 11, ed. de Hartel, G., Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 29 and 30. Cf. Epistula 31, ch. 1 and Carmen 28, 137.Google Scholar

page 105 note 3 Gloria Confessorum 93, ed. Krusch, B., Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Script. Rer. Merov. 1.2, 808.Google Scholar

page 105 note 4 Bale's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Colgrave, B. and Mynors, R. B. (Oxford, 1969) 111.2Google Scholar. The Old English Beds (ed. Miller, T., Early Eng. Text Soc. o.s. 95, 96, 110 and 111 (London, 1890–1898))Google Scholar translates hastulas here by sponas 7 scefþan. The translator may have avoided æstel because he knew it in the sense of ‘relic of the cross’ and not in the more general sense ‘splinter, chip’. Cf. HE 111.13, where the Old English has scæfþan for hastulam.

page 105 note 5 De Locis Sanctis, ed. Meehan, D., Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 3 (Dublin, 1958), 11, 11, 5.Google Scholar

page 105 note 6 Probable derivatives of Latin (b)astella retain the meaning ‘piece of wood’: OF astelle, ‘splinter, chip’; Modern Welsh astell, ‘board, plank’; and Cornwall dialect astel, ‘board, plank’ (for which see Wright, J., English Dialect Dictionary (London, 1898–1905))Google Scholar. Similarly OIr astal ≤ Latin (b)astula means ‘splinter, chip’.

page 106 note 1 Ed. Pfeiffer, F., Dichtungen des deutschen Mittelalters III (Leipzig, 1843), col. 74.Google Scholar

page 106 note 2 Horae Belgicae, ed. Fallersleben, H. v., pt 10 (Hanover, 1854), p. 204, no. 103, stanza 2.Google Scholar

page 106 note 3 For -el as a diminutive suffix in Old English, see Eckhardt, E., ‘Die angelsächsische Deminutiv-bildungen’, EStn 32 (1903), 334–8.Google Scholar

page 106 note 4 See above, p. 104, n. 2.

page 106 note 5 Grierson, P., ‘Carolingian Europe and the Arabs: the Myth of the Mancus’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d'Histoire 32 (1954), 1066.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 107 note 1 The Crawford Collection of Early Charters and Documents, ed. Napier, A. S. and Stevenson, W. H. (Oxford, 1895), p. 23, line 22.Google Scholar

page 107 note 2 E.g. ibid. p. 23, passim; Select English Documents of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries, ed. Harmer, F. E. (Cambridge, 1914), p. 4Google Scholar, lines 7–8, p. 20, line 24 and p. 35, passim; Anglo-Saxon Wills, ed. Whitelock, D. (Cambridge, 1930), p. 10Google Scholar, line 4, p. 12, lines 20–1, p. 20, lines 11–12, p. 22, lines 17, 19 and 23–4, p. 24, lines 16–17, 20 and 25, p. 26, lines 2, 7, 17, 21 and 24, p. 28, lines 1, 4 and 23, p. 30, lines 5, 6, 12 and 18, p. 32, line 17, p. 34, line 15, p. 42, line 8, p. 46, lines 9–10 and 12, p. 52, line 17, p. 56, lines 5, 17 and 19–20, p. 60, line 6, p. 62, lines 18–19, and p. 64, lines 7–8 and 21; and Anglo–Saxon Charters, ed. Robertson, A. J., 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1956), p. 80Google Scholar, lines 7 and 23, p. 84, line 6, p. 92, line 14, p. 94, lines 9 and 11, p. 104, lines 2–3, p. 106, lines 16–17, p. 112, line 12, p. 122, line 19, p. 148, line 22, and p. 254, lines 7, 8, 11 and 19.

Harmer, Documents, p. 26, lines 35–6. Cf. ibid. p. 6x, lines 2–3, and p. 18, passim and Whitelock, Wills, p. 14, line 13. King Eadred's will (Harmer, Documents, p. 35) has ‘þanne nime man twentig hund mancusa goldes and gemynetige to mancusan’, where the first use of mancus must refer to gold by weight and the second to coins.

page 107 note 4 Whitelock, Wills, p. 26, line 25. Cf. ibid. p. 14, line iz, p. 20, lines 18 and 21–3, p. 28, line 2, and p. 30, line 8 and Harmer, Documents, p. 33, lines 16–17.

page 107 note 5 William of Malmesbury's summary of Alfred's preface in De Gestis Regum Anglorum 11, 123 (ed. Stubbs, W., Rolls Series (1887))Google Scholar, says that Alfred ordered the copies of the Pastoral Care to be sent to his bishops ‘cum pugillari aureo in quo esset manca auri’. He has misread mancus as manca, ‘handle’, or may have known a currupt text of the preface. His interpretation of æstel as ‘pugillaris aureus’ is probably a guess.

page 107 note 6 Itinerarium Egeriae 1, p. 37, ed. Franceschini, A. and Weber, R. in Itinera et alia Geographica, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 175.Google Scholar

page 108 note 1 Frolow, A., La Rélique de la Vraie Croix, Archives de l'Orient Chrétien 7 (Paris, 1961), nos. 31, 33. 34, 63 and 91.Google Scholar

page 108 note 2 D'Ardenne, S. R. T. O., ‘The Old English Inscription on the Brussels Cross’, ESts 21 (1939), 145–64Google Scholar, and Mitchell, H. P., ‘English or German: a Pre-Conquest Gold Cross’, Burlington Mag. 47(1925). 324–30.Google Scholar

page 108 note 3 Frolow, A., Les Réliquaires de la Vraie Croix, Archives de l'Orient Chrétien 8 (Paris, 1965), nos. 71–2Google Scholar, and Braun, J., Die Reliquicre des Cbristlichen Kultes und ibre Entwicklung(Freiburg im Breisgau, 1940), p. 47.Google Scholar

page 108 note 4 Illustrated in Goldschmidt, A., Die Elfbeinskulpturen (Berlin, 1914–1926) 1Google Scholar, pl. 52, no. 119, Molinier, E., ‘L'Evangeliaire de l'Abbaye de Morienval’, Monuments et Mémoires, ed. Perrot, G. and de Lasteyrie, R. (Paris, 1895) XII, 215–26, and pis. 26 and 27.Google Scholar

page 108 note 5 Annales Monasterii S. Albani, ed. Riley, H. T., Rolls Series 28 (1871), 11, 322.Google Scholar

page 108 note 6 The Fabric Rolls of York Minster, ed. Raine, J., Surtees Soc. 35 (1859), 224Google Scholar, and Wordsworth, C., ‘Inventories of Plate, Vestments, etc., Belonging to the Cathedral … of Lincoln’, Arcbaeologia 53 (1892), 11.Google Scholar

page 108 note 7 Asser's Life of King Alfred, ed. Stevenson, W. H. (Oxford, 1904), ch. 71.Google Scholar

page 109 note 1 Frolow, La Rélique, nos. 41 and 48.

page 109 note 2 ibid. no. 75.

page 109 note 3 William of Malmesbury, De Gestis 1, 35.

page 109 note 4 Frolow, La Rélique, nos. 157 and 220.

page 109 note 5 William of Malmesbury, De Gestis II, 155.

page 109 note 6 See Wallace-Hadrill, J. M., Early Germanic Kingship (Oxford, 1971), p. 68.Google Scholar

page 109 note 7 Frolow, La Rélique, nos. 72, 38, 53, 104 and 75.

page 109 note 8 Life, ch. 104.

page 110 note 1 Ambrose, , De Obitu Theodosii, ed. Faller, Otto, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 73, 47Google Scholar, and Ademar, of Chabannes, , Chronicon, ed. Chavanon, J. (Paris, 1897), p. 105.Google Scholar

page 110 note 2 De Gestis 11, 122.