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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 September 2008
Many curious traditions are gathered by medieval man to magnify the birth of Christ. Homilies and tracts transmitted the stories of the anonymous apocrypha but this present investigation uncovers well-known names and a different tradition. For the theme in Vercelli homilies v and vi Rudolph Willard blazed the trail when he drew attention to De Divinis Officiis Liber (wrongly attributed to Alcuin) and also to a sequence in Rome, Vatican Library, Reg. Cat. 49, which is now named Catéchèses Celtiques. The historical information in both these Latin texts, however, clearly derives from Orosius‘s Historiarum adversum Paganos Libri VII.
page 209 note 1 In a review, (Speculum 9 (1934), 229–30Google Scholar) of Die Vercelli-Homilien, ed. M. Förster, Bibliothek der angelsächischen Prosa 12 (1932)Google Scholar. All references to the Vercelli homilies are to Förster's edition (rptd Darmstadt, 1964).
page 209 note 2 As Willard notes. This text (Migne, Patrologia Latina 101, cols. 1174–5) may now be left out of the discussion since it has nothing distinctive in common with Vercelli v which is not in Orosius or in Cat. Celt., and Vercelli v has material which is not found in the pseudo-Alcuin text.
page 209 note 3 So named, discussed and edited by André Wilmart, in Studi e Testi 59 (Vatican City, 1933), 29–112Google Scholar (henceforth cited as Cat. Celt.). The manuscript is dated as tenth-century with ‘a preference for the first half’; at the earliest it was copied at the end of the preceding century (p. 29). It has ‘insular’ features (p. 29) but is very tentatively placed in Brittany (p. 31). Our text is printed on pp. 98–105.
page 209 note 4 Pauli Orosii Historiarum adversum Paganos Libri VII, ed. C. Zangemeister, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 5 (1882)Google Scholar, my references being to book, chapter and paragraph.
page 210 note 1 There is strong literary evidence that MS soðfœstnesse sunu is an error for soðfœstnesse suna, where suna may be a simplified or abbreviated form of sunna, ‘sun’, to correspond with a scriptural phrase, sol iustitiae (Malachi rv.2), which was used as a name for Christ and is a necessarily appropriate name in this general context. For detailed argument see Cross, J. E., ‘The Literate Anglo-Saxon - On Sources and Disseminations’, Proc. of the Brit. Acad. 58 (1972), 6–7.Google Scholar
page 210 note 2 MS up.
page 210 note 3 King Alfred's Orosius, ed. H. Sweet, Early English Text Society o.s. 79 (London, 1883), 248.Google Scholar
page 210 note 4 Bately, Janet M., ‘King Alfred and the Latin Manuscripts of Orosius's History’, Classica et Mediaevalia 22 (1961), 69–105.Google Scholar
page 210 note 5 Miss Bately has generously informed me that the ‘golden ring’ is not in extant manuscripts which are most closely related to the Old English version. Following Professor Whitelock's hint, she now suggests that a circulus aureus could have been derived from a misreading of a circulus aereus which is a feature of Octavian's entry in pseudo-Jerome's commentary on Luke (PL 30, col. 587); see now England Before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources Presented to Dorothy Wbitelock, ed. Peter Clemoes and Kathleen Hughes (Cambridge, 1971), p. 249Google Scholar and n. 5. This may well be the relevant stage for the Old English Orosius, but it may now be possible to trace the origin of the aereus and to offer a speculation for the Vercelli homily's ‘golden ring’. A certain Julius Obsequens culled a Prodigiorum Liber (see below, p. 216) from Livy (a source for the Latin Orosius on this portent) and spoke oisol … caeliorbe modico inclusus (§68), ‘the sun … enclosed in a small circle of sky’. This statement (from Livy ?, but not in the extant books of Livy) appears to have been abbreviated by pseudo-Jerome to circulus aereus, ‘aerial circle’. Pseudo-Jerome (now dated seventh- to eighth-century, with possible origin in Ireland, by Bischoff, B., SacrisErudiri 6, (1954), 236–7)Google Scholar, or at least its form of words, is a source for Cat. Celt., since the signification of the portent (as presented in this paper) is exactly as in pseudo-Jerome. For this portent and its signification Cat. Celt, echoes the Orosian words in part and pseudo-Jerome in part and adapts circulus aereus to circulus aurei coloris. These words found in Cat. Celt., perhaps from an earlier exemplar, could be the source for Vercelli v.
page 212 note 1 The pax Augusti is also referred to at 1.i.6.
page 212 note 2 Cat. Celt., pp. 99–100.
page 212 note 3 See Bede, , In Lucae Evangelium Expositio, ed. D. Hurst, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 120 (1960), 45Google Scholar on Luke 11.1; Bede, , ‘Homilia in Nativitate Domini’, Bedae Opera Homiletica, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 122 (1955), 37Google Scholar; and Ælfric, , ‘Sermo de Natale Domini’, The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church: The First Part Containing the Sermones Catholici or Homilies of Ælfric, ed. Thorpe, B. (London, 1844–1846) 1, 32.Google Scholar
page 212 note 4 Nn. 61, 73, 100, 109 and 123 to Förster's edition of the Vercelli homilies.
page 212 note 5 Quoted by Förster, ibid. 61, from PL 76, where Gregory's Homilia in Evangelia are printed.
page 213 note 1 Omitting MS ne, as Förster suggests in n. 116.
page 213 note 2 Emending MS godes to godum, as Förster suggests in n. 119.
page 213 note 3 This sentence is quoted by Cat. Celt., p. 103, but the Vercelli homilist or his exemplar clearly knew his Gregory, since the next sentence is presented earlier in Gregory's §3.
page 213 note 4 ‘Cirinus heres interpre[tatur], meliusque per Petrum sig[nificatur] qui est haeres Christi … a quo quasi praeside prima professio nominis Christi manifestari incepit cum diceret: Tu est Christus Filius Dei vivi [Matthew xvi. 16]’ (Cat. Celt., p. 100).
page 213 note 5 ‘hoc significat altare de quo pascuntur penitentes et innocentes pabulo corporis et sanguinis Christi’ (Cat. Celt., p. 101).
page 213 note 6 Pseudo-Jerome, PL 30, col. 587.
page 213 note 7 Ed. Hurst, pp. 45–6.
page 214 note 1 Ed. Hurst, p. 37.
page 214 note 2 See Förster's edition of the Vercelli homilies, pp. 134–6.
page 214 note 3 Abstracted from the title of the address (ibid. p. 131).
page 214 note 4 ‘Swylce þæt eac ge-eode, þæt-te siofon nihtum, ær Crist geboren wære, þæt sio sunne æt midre nihte ongan scinan swaswa on sumera, þonne hio hattost ond beorhtost scinð; þæt tacnode, þæt he þas eoroðlican sunnan nihtes scinende him to gisle beforan sende’ (ibid. p. 132, lines 25–9).
page 214 note 5 See above, p. 210 and n. 5.
page 214 note 6 As MS; Förster's cwonom is an error.
page 214 note 7 This was first recorded in Jerome's version of the Chronicle of Eusebius; see Eusebii Pamphili Chronici Canones, Latins vertit, adauxit, ad sua temporaproduxit S. EasebiusHieronymus, ed. J. K. Fotheringham (London, 1923)Google Scholar: ‘E taberna meritoria trans Tiberim oleum terra erupit fluxitque toto die sine intermissione, significans Christi gratiam ex gentibus’ (p. 240).
page 214 note 8 See above, p. 212, n. 3.
page 214 note 9 Cat. Celt., p. 100.
page 215 note 1 The passage for the birth of Christ is within a section of the Martyrology extant only in the margins of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 41, pp. 122–32, ‘printed inaccurately’ by Herzfeld, G. (An Old English Martyrology, EETS o.s. 116 (London, 1900))Google Scholar, according to Ker, N. R., Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957), p. 44Google Scholar. Often Herzfeld's inaccuracy is merely in the spelling of words, which is unimportant in a discussion of ideas, but a comparison of his text with that of Cockayne, T. O. (The Sbrine (London, 1864–1870), p. 30Google Scholar) shows that two phrases containing important ideas are omitted from Herzfeld's text: at mete in vi and sptsc on Rome in ix. It has therefore seemed simpler to translate Cockayne's text and, below, to quote from it.
page 215 note 2 In view of the general sources presented below I prefer to regard mœgð as provincia as illustrated in Bosworth, J. and Toller, T. N., An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (Oxford, 1898)Google Scholar, s.v. mægoð IVc.
page 215 note 3 Regarding ‘at meat’ as the fossilized modern English phrase meaning ‘at a meal, at meals’.
page 216 note 1 Obsequen's book is ed. and trans. Schlesinger, A. C., Livy (Loeb Classical Library (London, 1919–1959)) xiv, 237–319.Google Scholar
page 216 note 2 The Writings of Bishop Patrick 1074–1084, ed. A. Gwynn, Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 1 (Dublin, 1955), 56 ff.Google Scholar; on Patrick's contact with Worcester, see p. 6. Our section of the text is on p. 56.
page 216 note 3 See Cross, J. E., ‘“De Signis et Prodigiis” in Versus Sancti Patricii Episcopi de Mirabilibus Hibernie’, Proc. of the R. Irish Acad. 71 (1971)Google Scholar, sect. C, 247–54.
page 216 note 4 The possibility must remain for Patrick, although not I think for the dated group in the Martyrology, that the bishop collected his portents from annals. Dr Kathleen Hughes suggested this in a review of Professor Gwynn's edition (MÆ 26 (1957), 122–7). The parallels which she notes are not similar enough in detail to be Patrick's actual intermediary, but the general proposition, if extended to include Latin chronicles, is suggested by the identified sources below, most of which are recorded in the historical tradition which was available for annalists.
page 217 note 1 Herzfeld, (An Old English Martyrology, p. xxxiiiGoogle Scholar and nn.) demonstrates that Adamnán's De Locis Sanctis is a source and Cross, J. E. (‘The Days of Creation in the Old English Martyrology’, Anglia 90 (1972), 132–8Google Scholar) shows that the passages on creation derive from pseudo-Isidore, De Ordine Creaturarum Liber, which in turn draws on De Mirabilibus Sacrae Scripturae written by Augustinus Hibernicus in 655.
page 217 note 2 Ed. Fotheringham, p. 239.
page 217 note 3 This particular portent turns up appropriately in the Chester play on the Nativity (The Chester Plays, ed. H. Deimling, EETS e.s. 62 (London, 1892, rptd 1926), 129):Google Scholar that day was seene verament 3 sonnes in the firmament, and wonderly together went, and turned into one.
page 218 note 1 Ed. Sweet, p. 162.
page 219 note 1 R. E. McNally has already noted the similarity between the examples in the Liber de Numeris and in Patrick's poem in ‘Der Irische Liber de Numeris’ (unpub. thesis, Munich, 1957)Google Scholar; on Quinque animalia, see pp. 97–8.
page 219 note 2 Ed. Fotheringham, p. 239. It is possible that Jerome derived this event from a lost book of Livy, although Obsequens does not record it.
page 219 note 3 Professor Gwynn offers two translations of stimulanti uoce propbete, both, however, taking stimulo in a figurative sense; the source now suggests that this translation is permissible: ‘An ox speaks in Rome in the voice of a prophet to the one goading him (stimulanti)‘.
page 219 note 4 Ed. Fotheringham, p. 192.
page 220 note 1 As Augustine has it in De Civitate Dei, xvm.xli: ‘unde miror quur Anaxagoras reus factus sit, quia solem dixit esse lapidem ardentem’.
page 220 note 2 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, ed. and trans. R. D. Hicks (Loeb Classical Library, London, 1925) 1, 138Google Scholar (bk 11.10).
page 220 note 3 Pliny, , Nat. Hist. 11, 149Google Scholar refers to the event, but, although he also translates the second element of the place-name, he clearly presents Aegospotami as a place: ad (not in, as in Jerome) Ægos flumen, and avoids the splash.