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Social idealism in Ælfric's Colloquy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Earl R. Anderson
Earl R. Anderson
Affiliation:
The Cleveland State University
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Extract

Ælfric's Colloquy is, of course, first and foremost, a dialogue between a master and his pupils to give practice in the use of Latin at a conversational level. The pedagogic intention of the work is evident from the interlocutors' habit of lingering over commonly used words in various grammatical forms: for example, in a few opening lines (2–11) the deponent loqui appears as loqui, loquimur, loquamur and loqueris, together with the noun locutio, and within a little more than fifty lines (66–119) we find seven forms of the verb capere, two of them occurring four times each and one twice. Yet, equally certainly, this colloquy has more to it than just schoolboy exercises in declensions and conjugations. It has escaped the oblivion that has been the lot of its more humdrum fellows who – to use Garmonsway's personification – were assigned the rôle of literary Cinderellas, labouring ‘in obscurity in monastic classrooms to help boys learn their lessons’. It has long been acclaimed for its realism and for its ‘sociological picture of the occupational strata’ of Anglo-Saxon society; and, in our own day, Stanley B. Greenfield has called attention to its literary merits, ‘its fine organization and structure, dramatic in effect, with its pairing and contrasting, for example, of the king's bold hunter and the independent, timid fisherman…and with its lively disputation toward the end about which occupation is most essential’. In the present study I hope to demonstrate that it also draws on a background of ideas and that its longevity is partly due to this ingredient.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 3 , December 1974 , pp. 153 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

page 153 note 1 Ed. Garmonsway, G. N., 2nd ed. (London, 1947); all references are to this edition.Google Scholar

page 153 note 2 Garmonsway, , ‘The Development of the Colloquy’, The Anglo-Saxons: Studies in some Aspects of their History and Culture presented to Bruce Dickins, ed. Peter Clemoes (London, 1959), p. 249.Google ScholarOn the humble origins of the colloquy as a genre, probably descending from the fourth-century Ars Grammatica Dosithei MagistriGoogle Scholar see ibid. p. 252.

page 153 note 3 Greenfield, Stanley B., A Critical History of Old English Literature (New York, 1965), p. 52.Google Scholar See, e.g., Cunningham, W., Growth of English Industry and Commerce (Cambridge, 1890–1892) 1, 131;Google ScholarLeach, A. F., Educational Charters and Documents (Cambridge, 1911), p. xvi;Google ScholarLeach, , Schools of Medieval England (Cambridge, 1915), p. 91;Google ScholarCoulton, G. G., Social Life in Britain (Cambridge, 1919), p. 54;Google Scholar and Cruse, A., The Shaping of English Literature (New York, 1927), p. 70Google Scholar. For a discussion of the earlier views of the sociological significance of the Colloquy, see ed. Garmonsway, pp. 14–15.

page 153 note 4 Greenfield, History, p. 52.

page 154 note 1 Kenneth, Sisam, Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford, 1953), p. 301.Google Scholar

page 154 note 2 Clemoes, P. A. M., ‘The Chronology of Ælfric's Works’, The Anglo-Saxons, ed. Clemoes, pp. 245–6.Google Scholar

page 154 note 3 Eric, Colledge, ‘An Allusion to Augustine in Ælfric's Colloquy’, RES n.s. 12 (1961), 180–1.Google Scholar The importance of Augustine's Enarratio in Psalmum LXX in medieval thought has been observed by J. W. Baldwin, in The Mediaeval Theories of the Just Price, Trans, of Amer. Philosophical Soc. n.s. 49 (1959), pt 4, esp. 12–16, and in Masters, Princes and Merchants: the Social Views of Peter the Chanter and his Circle (Princeton, 1970) 1, 262–4 and 11, 185–6, nn. 17, 18, 19 and 20.

page 154 note 4 All these were curriculum authors in Europe in the early Middle Ages; see Curtius, E. R., European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Trask, W. R. (London, 1953), p. 49.Google Scholar There is positive evidence that Horace was read at Winchester in Ælfric's time (see M. Lapidge, ‘Three Latin Poems from Æthelwold's School at Winchester’, ASE1 (1972), 109); but there is no certain evidence for the study of Juvenal and Persius in late-tenth-century England.

page 154 note 5 Horace, carm. 1. 1. 13–17 and 3. 1.25–6; serm. 1.4.25–32; and epist. 1.1.42–58; epist. 1. 6. 31–8; Juvenal, sat. 14. 256–302; Persius, sat. 5. 132–60; sat. 6.75–80. For the Roman satirists' views on merchants, see Brewster, Ethel Hampson, Roman Craftsmen and Tradesmen of the Early Empire (Menasha, Wisconsin, 1917), pp.30–9Google Scholar. The position of the Roman satirists was adopted by St Ambrose, and much later by Peter the Chanter, who was fond of quoting Horace on this subject; see Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants 1, 263 and 11, 185, n. 12.

In the event of a shipwreck, a merchant could lose everything he had, for it was customary in the early Middle Ages for the prince to seize whatever cargo remained, although earlier Roman law had protected the surviving owners or their heirs see ibid. 1, 247–8.

page 155 note 1 Raby, F. J. E. (A History of Secular Latin Poetry in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1957) 1, 45)Google Scholar associates the poem with the third century. The only evidence for dating the poem, however, is the fact that it appears in the Codex Salmasianus, a collection of Latin poetry of the sixth century and earlier. Vespa's poem must have been written therefore by the sixth century, but no more certain date is possible. For the text see Anthologia Latina, ed. Riese, A. (Leipzig, 1869–1870) 1. 1, 140–3.Google Scholar

page 155 note 2 Secular Latin Poetry 1, 45.

page 155 note 3 Vespae Iudicium coci et pistoris iudice Vulcano' in ed. Riese.

page 155 note 4 Vespa's name does not appear in Ogilvy, J. D. A., Books Known to tie English, 597–1066 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967).Google Scholar

page 156 note 1 Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Poetae Latini Aevi Carolini 4. 1, 244–6.

page 157 note 1 Cross, J. E., ‘The Old English Poetic Theme of The Gifts of Men’, Neophilologus 46 (1962), 66–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 157 note 2 Caesarius of Arles, Homilia XVI, De Decimis, Migne, Patrologia Latina 67, col. 1079.

page 157 note 3 Homilies of Ælfric, a Supplementary Collection, ed. Pope, John C., Early Eng. Text Soc. 259–60 (London, 1967–1968), 11, 808, lines 99–102.Google Scholar

page 157 note 4 Ælfric's Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, Walter W., EETS o.s. 76, 82, 94 and 114 (London, 1881–1900), 11, 1120–4, lines 812–62.Google Scholar

page 157 note 5 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 o.s. 160, repr. (London, 1969), 71–2Google Scholar, ‘On the Old and New Testament’, lines 1204–20.

page 157 note 6 I owe this observation to Peter Clemoes.

page 157 note 7 Ed. Skeat, lines 815 and 819.

page 157 note 8 Ed. Crawford, lines 1208–9.

page 158 note 1 Benedicti Regula, ed. Rudolph, Hanslik, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 75 (Vienna, 1960)Google Scholar; all references are to this edition.

page 158 note 2 White, Caroline Louisa, Ælfric, a New Study of his Life and Writings (Boston, 1898), pp. 40–3Google Scholar; cf. Regula ix–xix. For the Benedictine ideal of order see Knowles, Dom David, The Monastic Order in England, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 448–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Butler, Dom Cuthbert, Benedictine Monachism, 2nd ed. (London, 1924), pp. 275–90Google Scholar; Lindsay, T. F., Saint Benedict: his Life and Work (London, 1949), pp. 114–32Google Scholar; and Dickinson, J. C., Monastic Life in Medieval England (London, 1961), pp. 103–9.Google Scholar

page 159 note 1 Leach, Educational Charters and Documents, p. xvi.

page 159 note 2 Wrenn, C. L., A Study of Old English Literature (London, 1967), pp. 70–1 and 228Google Scholar; Anderson, George K., The Literature of the Anglo-Saxons, 2nd ed. (Princeton, 1966), pp. 316 and 353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 159 note 3 Ed., p. 14.

page 159 note 4 ‘Development of the Colloquy’, pp. 255ff. The various activities of the monastic household are well documented: see McCann, Dom Justin, The Rule of Saint Benedict, 3rd ed. (Latrobe, Penn., 1950), pp. 304–16 and 361–6Google Scholar; Snape, R. H., English Monastic Finances in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1926), p. 13Google Scholar; Evans, J., Monastic Life at Cluny (Cambridge, 1927), pp. 67 and 84Google Scholar; Schneider, Edouard, The Benedictines (London, 1926), pp. 86–101Google Scholar and Knowles, Monastic Order, pp. 466–7.

page 159 note 5 Ibid. pp. 682–5.

page 160 note 1 Ed. Hanslik, p. 157, note to lxvi. 6.

page 160 note 2 For serfdom on monastic lands see John, Chapman, St Benedict and the Sixth Century (London, 1929). pp. 147–75.Google Scholar

page 160 note 3 Cranage, D. H. S., The Home of the Monk (Cambridge, 1934), p. 62.Google Scholar

page 160 note 4 Gustav, Schnürer, Church and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Undreiner, George J. (Paterson, N.J., 1956) 1, 159ff.Google Scholar

page 162 note 1 I am indebted to Stanley B. Greenfield for his encouragement, and to Peter Clemoes for his guidance, in the composition of this paper.