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What has Ingeld to do with Lindisfarne?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Donald A. Bullough
Donald A. Bullough
Affiliation:
St Andrews, Scotland
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Extract

In the course of a long letter written in 797 to Speratus, bishop of an unnamed English see, Alcuin declares:

Verba Dei legantur in sacerdotali convivio: ibi decet lectorem audiri, non citharistam, sermones patrum, non carmina gentilium. Quid Hinieldus cum Christo?

Nowhere else in the substantial corpus of his letters does Alcuin name a known figure in early Germanic legend and literature – the Ingeld of Beowulf and Widsith – or refer specifically to the vernacular literature of his home country. Unsurprisingly, since the publication of the first complete and correct text of the letter in 1873, this passage has been quoted in toto (in varying translations) or alluded to in virtually every history of Old English literature and every commentary on Beowulf. Jaffé, however, in the notes he left with his transcript when he died prematurely in 1870, had proposed an identification of the addressee, Speratus, with Bishop Hygbald of Lindisfarne, recorded from 780 to 803. Dümmler adopted Jaffé's view in his editions of the letter: and he has been followed without demur by every subsequent scholar who has quoted or referred to it. Furthermore, for most of the century it has been tacitly assumed that the letter was directed not merely to the bishop in person but also to the community of which he was head – a monastic one, even after the disasters of 793; and that Alcuin's exhortations, whether or not they were a response to the actual practice of Lindisfarne and other Northumbrian houses, are evidence of the acceptability (and indeed, cultural importance) of secular vernacular verse in eighth-century English monasteries.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 22 , December 1993 , pp. 93 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 Epistolae Karolini Aevi II, ed. Dümmler, E., MGH, Epist. 4 (Berlin, 1895), 183 (no. 124).Google Scholar An English version of the letter is offered in an Appendix (below, pp. 122–5); for the translation of the passage quoted here, see esp. pp. 104 and 109.

2 Monumenta Alcuiniana, ed. Jaffé, P., Wattenbach, W. and Dümmler, E., Bibliotheca rerum Germanicarum 6 (Berlin, 1873), 353–8 (no. 81).Google Scholar

3 Characteristic (and influential) examples are: Chadwick, H. M., The Heroic Age (Cambridge, 1926), pp. 43–4Google Scholar (and cf. pp. 465–6, where it is added that ‘From this passage it would seem that Ingeld's fame was as great in England in the eighth century as it ever became in Denmark’); Chambers, R. W., Beowulf: an Introduction to the Study of the Poem, 3rd ed. with a supplement by Wrenn, C. L. (Cambridge, 1959), pp. 22 and 123Google Scholar; Garmonsway, G. N. and Simpson, J., ‘Beowulf’ and its Analogues (London and New York, 1968), p. 242Google Scholar; Whitelock, D., The Audience of ‘Beowulf’ (Oxford, 1951), pp. 20, 37 and 50Google Scholar; and Greenfield, S. B., The Interpretation of Old English Poems (London and Boston, 1972), p. 10.Google Scholar

4 Wallace-Hadrill, J. M., Early Germanic Kingship in England and on the Continent (Oxford, 1971), p. 121Google Scholar; cf. the same author's ‘Bede and Plummer’, in his Early Medieval History (Oxford, 1975), pp. 76–95 (esp. p. 82)Google Scholar and Bede's ‘Ecclesiastical History’: a Historical Commentary (Oxford, 1988), p. xxiii.Google Scholar

5 Bolton, W. F., Alcuin and ‘Beowulf’: an Eighth-Century View (New Brunswick, NJ, 1978; London, 1979), pp. 102–3.Google Scholar For (Latin) poetry read aloud to an audience including non-scholars at the court of Charlemagne, see Schaller, D. ‘Vortrags- und Zirkulardichtung am Hof Karls des Grossen’, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 6 (1970), 14–36Google Scholar; Godman, P., Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance (London, 1985), pp. 10–13.Google Scholar

6 Bolton, , Alcuin and ‘Beowulf’, p. 102Google Scholar, taking his cue from, but misrepresenting, Jänicke, O., ‘Zeugnisse u. Excurse zur deutschen Heldensage’, ZDA 15 (1872), 310–32, at 313–14.Google Scholar Alcuin's late-eighteenth-century editor Frobenius (reprinted by Migne in PL 100 and 101) depended for this letter as for many others on A. Duchesne's editio princeps of 1617, where the passage is indeed missing. It is, however, beyond doubt that Duchesne's source was the mid-ninth-century Rheims (Saint-Rémi) manuscript which is now (via Paul and Alexandra Petau) Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg. lat. 272, in which the Hinield passage occurs as printed in Dümmler's edition – the reported reading Himeldus in his apparatus being incorrect.

7 For the issues, see especially Wormald, P., ‘The Uses of Literacy in Anglo-Saxon England and its Neighbours’, TRHS 5th ser. 27 (1977), 95–114Google Scholar, and Wormald, P., ‘Bede, Beowulf and the Conversion of the Anglo-Saxon Aristocracy’, Bede and Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Farrell, R. T., BAR Brit. ser. 46 (Oxford, 1978), 32–95.Google Scholar

8 The manuscript tradition of the letters is comprehensively re-examined in the much-revised version of my 1980 Ford Lectures, Alcuin: Achievement and Reputation (forthcoming), ch. 1. The Saint-Amand collection is in Vienna, Nationalbibl., lat. 795 (Dümmler's manuscript S), the Salzburg collection in Vienna, Nationalbibl., lat. 808 (Dümmler's manuscript S1).

9 Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, nos. 24, 20, 21; for no. 22 and its recipient see below. For the revision of the editorial dates for letters of the mid-790s, see generally Alcuin: Achievement and Reputation, ch. 3; for Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, no. 24, see below, pp. 97–8.

10 A semi-diplomatic edition of the text in Vesp. is provided by Chase, C., Two Alcuin Letter-Books (Toronto, 1975), pp. 50–2Google Scholar, but here as elsewhere Chase is far from consistent in distinguishing between Wulfstan's ‘corrections’ and his amanuensis's primary transcription of the letter-texts (not, in fact, exclusively Alcuin: Two Wulfstan Letter-Books would be a more accurate description); and more than once he silently emends the manuscript reading. For William's use of Alcuin, see the fine study by Thomson, R. M., ‘William and the Letters of Alcuin’, William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge, 1987), pp. 158–73, arguing that his quotations show the use not only of Tib, but of its lost exemplar: I am not entirely persuaded.Google Scholar

11 For the significance of the allocation of distinctive letter-groups to the principal identifiable source, see Alcuin: Achievement and Reputation, ch. 1. The omission of the penultimate clauses ‘Cum domnus noster rex Karolus hostibus … subditis … diligenter ad affectum perducere curabimus’ may be either ‘editorial’ (in the Salzburg scriptorium) or because they were already lacking in the exemplar provided by St Martin's at Tours, on which see Alcuin, ch. 1. Possibly ‘editorial’ also is the rephrasing of S1 of the clauses after ‘si sanctus Cudberctus’ (for the significance of this orthography, see next note).

12 S1: Cudbercti; A1, A2: Cuðberhti. The latter is the form of the name adopted by modern editors of the letters; it is, however, the (later) West Saxon orthography. In ninth-century Northumbria the spirant -χ- was normally represented by -c–, occasionally by -ch-. The fullest body of evidence is the ‘Lindisfarne’ (al. Durham) Liber Vitae, last edited by Gerchow, J., Die Gedenküberlieferung der Angelsachsen, Arbeiten zur Frühmittelalterforschung, Münster 20 (Berlin, 1988), 303–20Google Scholar: see the editor's ‘Lemmatisiertes Personennamenregister’ b38–64, k63 (kunth/berht), etc., at pp. 382–3 and 398. In spelling the name -berct-, therefore, the Salzburg scribe seems more accurately to have preserved the original orthography (Alcuin's, or that of an amanuensis).Google Scholar

13 Hugibaldo in S1. Hugi- is the West-Germanic form and OHG spelling of the name-element. In the ‘Lindisfarne’ Liber Vitae, it is spelt Hyg- without exception in over ninety occurrences: see Gerchow, , Gedenküberlieferung der Angelsachsen, pp. 394–5 (h106–16). Note that, for whatever reason, this element is almost entirely lacking in later Old English onomastics.Google Scholar

14 Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, nos. 16–19.

15 Poetae Latini Carolini Aevi I, ed. Dümmler, E., MGH, PLAC 1 (Berlin, 1881), 229–35Google Scholar; also, with some improved readings (esp. line 143), an English translation and excellent notes, in Godman, , Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance, pp. 126–38.Google Scholar For its (very restricted) manuscript transmission, see Mary Garrison's forthcoming Cambridge PhD thesis. The concluding ten lines (only) are included in the collection of Alcuin's carmina in Vienna, lat. 808, 225v–234r, at 233r. At several points closely similar language in used in the two opera, notably Poetae, ed. Dümmler, , p. 235Google Scholar, lines 227–8 (‘Si quid displicuit Christo iam cuncta videnti/Moribus in vestris corrigite hoc citius’), and Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, , p. 57Google Scholar, lines 18–19 (‘Si quid corrigendum sit in moribus mansuetudinis vestre, citius corrigite’). But the poem's exempla of once-glorious kingdoms and cities that have been overthrown or sacked (lines 31 seq.) recur more selectively in the letter and with greater stress on recovery by Divine grace. For the addressees, see e.g. Poetae, ed. Dümmler, , p. 232Google Scholar, line 137 (‘Ad vos, o fratres, vertam, mea cura, camenas’) and p. 234, line 187 (‘At tu, sanctorum praesul successor avorum’).Google Scholar

16 ‘Posteriora vestra meliora sint prioribus’ in the letter, ‘Posteriora vobis meliora prioribus esse’ in the poem (line 183): which are clever inversions of II Peter II. 20, ‘facta sunt eis posteriora deteriora prioribus’.

17 The suggested redating obviously has considerable implications for the chronology and locus of the Lindisfarne-educated Candidus's early continental career: cf. Marenbon, J., From the Circle of Alcuin to the School of Auxerre (Cambridge, 1981), ch. 2, esp. p. 38, n. 36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, no. 19. This has an exceptionally broad manuscript tradition – nine medieval copies of the entire letter and two different excerpted texts, the earlier of these not reported by Dümmler, i.e. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 4650 (SE Germany/ Austria [?Salzburg area], s. ix¾), 45v–46r and 48v. There are, moreover, unusually interesting and significant variants in the several branches of the tradition which are only incompletely and sometimes inaccurately reported by Dummler: in particular, the earliest Salzburg copy adapts (for pedagogic reasons?) Alcuin's phraseology about the barbarian attacks to local, Bavarian, conditions! For the details, see Alcuin: Achievement and Reputation, chs. 1 and 6.

19 Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, , no. 67Google Scholar (Alcuin Letter-Books, ed. Chase, , pp. 22–4Google Scholar), to Abbot Æthelbald not long after his election and almost certainly to be dated to 790 or shortly afterwards (if so, it is the earliest of Alcuin's epistolae ammonitoriae to be preserved); Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, no. 282, to sanctissimus pater Friduinus, following his election as abbot (where also the reference to the ‘fundafores monasterii’); ibid. no. 284, to the ‘sanctissimis in sancti Petri ecclesia [sc. Wearmouth] fratribus’, referring both to ‘primi fundatores vestrae congregationis’ and to relegionem (Alcuin's normal orthography) votorum vestrorum, and with an apparently unique reference to Bede as patronus ‘protector saint’ (for the first reference to Bede's relics, see S. Bonifatii et Lulli Epistolae, ed. Tangl, M.. MGH, Epist. select. 1 (Berlin, 1916) no. 116); Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, no. 286, to the ‘sanctissimis fratribus Gyroensis ecclesiae’, where Alcuin also speaks of ‘servis Dei qui monachicae vitae voto se constrincxerunt’.Google Scholar

20 Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, no. 54, where an extraordinary middle section suggests that trouble has arisen in the community over both the acquisition of resources and their distribution (the abbot's name Arnoldus points to a continental rather than an English location); ibid. no. 74; ibid. nos. 219, 271 (for which the ‘title’ in the manuscripts is ad fratres Corbeienses, but sub protections Leodegarii episcopi points to Murbach) and 287; ibid. no. 272 (p. 431, lines 6–7), ‘servite Deo in confessione regularis vitae’ – an untypical use of confessio, not noticed in Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources II (Oxford, 1981), 431–2Google Scholar; Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, , no. 184 (p. 309, lines 32–4)Google Scholar, ‘congregationem quandam feci … monachicae vitae et regularis relegionem: primo ex fratribus de Gothia ubi Benedictus abbas regularem constituit vitam’.

21 Alcuin's one letter to ‘Aedilbercto episcopo et omni congregationi in ecclesia sancti Andreae’, ibid. no. 31, which the heading in the English manuscript Tib. confirms is that of Hexham (although in the anomalous form ad Hegstalding) and therefore to be dated before October 797, does not use regularis vita or any other specifically monastic language; and it must remain uncertain whether in Alcuin's eyes the Hexham community was or was not at that date a monastic one.

22 Literally poetic: cf. Æthelwulf ‘De Abbatibus’, ed. Campbell, A. (Oxford, 1967), line 399 (p. 33)Google Scholar, ‘Turn fraterna cohors venerandi membra parentis/ … posuere’, the only reported example, although ‘fratrum cohors’ is used (of the Whitby community) by Bede, HE IV.24 (Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Colgrave, B. and Mynors, R. A. B. (Oxford, 1969), p. 418Google Scholar). Note that seemingly nowhere in his letters does Alcuin use (vita) coenobialis, which occurs in the traditionally suspect but not impossibly authentic Malmesbury charter S 1245, and in the form coenobialem conversationem in the Clofesho decrees of 747 (Haddan, A. W. and Stubbs, W., Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1869–1871) III, 370 (ch. 24)Google Scholar, and also in the Vita S. Wilfridi, ch. 14 (The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus, ed. Colgrave, B. (Cambridge, 1927), p. 30Google Scholar) in the anomalous ad sedem coenobialem abbotis. In ‘the York poem’ (Godman, P., Alcuin: the Bishops, Kings and Saints of York (Oxford, 1982))Google Scholar Alcuin once uses coenobium, at line 381, italicized by Godman (ibid. p. 34) as derived from Bede, although the latter's text has monasterium — impossible, of course, as the first foot of an hexameter. For coenobium, coenobialis, etc., see further below, n. 28.

23 Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, no. 22; Gerchow, , Gedenküberlieferung der Angelsachsen, p. 305, Cuthred pbr. Balthere is thirteenth in that list, Echa seventeenth.Google Scholar

24 Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, no. 209, to Calvinus presbyter, who is said to reside in cella sancti Stephani and to have been involved in the choice of Eanbald (II) as archbishop of York (cf. further ibid. no. 233). Alcuin would have found ‘testimonia discretionis matris virtutum’ in Regula S. Benedicti, ch. 64 (Benedicti Regula, ed. Hanslik, R., 2nd ed., CSEL 75 (Vienna, 1977), 166Google Scholar), and ‘gratia discretionis, quae virtutum mater est’ in Bede, HE III.5; in the first text, however, it is a necessary quality of an abbot, while Bede is reporting the qualities of Aidan of Lindisfarne. Alcuin may well be the first writer to extend the notion to the monastic community at large, whether or not he had been influenced by a reading of Cassian's Conlationes (cf. Wallace-Hadrill, , Historical Commentary, p. 96). For York cathedral in the eighth century as a ‘complex of churches’ and the possible inclusion in it of the cella sancti Stephani, see my forthcoming study provisionally entitled ‘The Eighth-Century “Schools of York” and the Calendar in Berlin Phillips 1869’, and Alcuin: Achievement and Reputation, ch. 2.Google Scholar

25 Salzburg: Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, , no. 184 (p. 310, lines 1–4)Google Scholar, a passage which is only preserved by the manuscript S1, being omitted from the later Salzburg or Salzburg-related manuscripts, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 14743 and Clm. 13581. Verneuil: Capitularia Regum Francorum I, ed. Boretius, A., MGH, Legum 2, Capitularia 1 (Hanover, 1883), 35. Substantial fragments of an Arno-period copy of the decrees, not yet used by editors, are in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 29555/4.Google Scholar

26 Dopsch, H., Geschichte Salzburgs: Stadt und Land, vol. I in 3 pts (Salzburg, 1981–4)Google Scholar, here pt 2, 1002–4, and pt 3, 1521–3 (with references to older literature); Hermann, F., ‘Die früheste Geschichte der Abtei St Peter’, Salzburg Diskussionen, 4: Frühes Mönchtum in Salzburg (Salzburg, 1983), pp. 159–71Google Scholar; J. Semmler, ‘Benediktinisches Monchtum in Bayern im spaten 8. und frühen 9. Jahrhundert’, ibid. pp. 199–218, esp. 204–5. For the interpretation of entries in the Confraternity Book (Salzburg, Stiftsarchiv, St Peter A. 1) in the sense given in the text, see most recently K. Schmid, ‘Probleme der Erschliessung des Salzburger Verbrüderungs-buches’, ibid. pp. 175–96, esp. 180–1 and 188. Alcuin's reference to ‘third grade’ is in Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, no. 258 (of 802).

27 ibid. nos. 42 (p. 86, line 30), 43 (p. 88, lines 9–10), which I would now date to late summer/autumn 794, i.e. before Alcuin settled down with the Court at Aachen; Vita Alcuini, chs. 2, 4, 9 (ed. Arndt, W. MGH, SS 15 (Hanover, 1887), 185–6, 186–7 and 189Google Scholar) and the other texts discussed in Alcuin: Achievement and Reputation, ch. 2. For Alcuin's personal, non-monastic, status, compare also the Vita's account, ch. 27 (ed. Arndt, , p. 196), of the vision of Alcuin's reception into Heaven indutus dalmatica (i.e. the proper vestment of a deacon), not in a monastic habit.Google Scholar

28 Sarah, Foot, ‘Anglo-Saxon Minsters: a Review of Terminology’, Pastoral Care before the Parish, ed. Blair, J. and Sharpe, R., Stud. in the Early Hist. of Britain (Leicester, 1992), pp. 212–25, at 224Google Scholar; and compare also Alcuin's, ‘castigatio … quae facta est in monasterio vestro’ in his second letter to episcopal Lindisfarne (above, pp. 96–7).Google ScholarHowever, the assertion (by Foot, p. 215)Google Scholar that ‘although the adjective coenobitic tends to be used of the desert fathers (!) it carries no implications for any particular communal religious lifestyle’ seems to be a misunderstanding of both early Christian (Latin) and modern (English) usage. For the former see, e.g. Regula Benedicti, ch. 1 ‘Primum [genus] coenobitarum: hoc est monasteriale, militans sub regula vel abbate’; and compare further Bede, De orthographia, ed. Jones, C. W., CCSL 123A (Turnhout, 1975), 14: ‘coenon enim graece commune est unde coenobium a communi vita nomen accepit’, with no text source, and the examples of coenobialis quoted above, n. 22. In his later historical writings, however, Bede generally avoids the use of both substantive and adjective.Google Scholar

29 Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, nos. 124 and 285. Dümmler's date ‘793–803’ for the second of these depends on the assumption that the addressee was the bishop of Lindisfarne; note, however, the reference to previous personal contact.

30 The Paris manuscript was made known to scholarship and its contents briefly presented by Ramackers, J., ‘Eine unbekannte Handschrift der Alchuin-briefe’, Neues Archiv 50 (1935), 425–8Google Scholar; for the Saint-Denis origin of the twin manuscripts, see Ferrari, M., ‘“In Papia conveniant ad Dungalum”’, Italia medioevale e umanistica 15 (1972), 1–52, at 3–4 (from B. Bischoff, pers. comm.). The notion that the letter-collection in these manuscripts was originally in some sense Alcuin's own, by contrast with the ‘secretarial’ or ‘disciples’ collection in other manuscripts, is explored in Alcuin: Achievement and Reputation, ch. 1.Google Scholar

31 The alternation, apparently arbitrary, between tua and vestra is a feature of Pope Gregory I's correspondence. Note that Gregory does not himself use ‘sanctitas’ as a title or address.

32 The evidence is presented more fully in Alcuin: Achievement and Reputation, ch. 6.

33 Without, however – in striking contrast with the letters of Alcuin's pupil Hrabanus Maurus – any use of prose rhythm or cursus: see Janson, T., Prose Rhythm in Medieval Latin from the 9th to the 13th Century, Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Studia Latina Stockholmiensia 20 (Stockholm, 1975), 50, 52 and 115, where Epistolae, ed. Dummler, nos. 121–6 and 128–31, are the proving sample.Google Scholar

34 Alcuin shows familiarity with Jerome's epistolary style in some of the earliest of his extant letters; but collections of Jerome's letters vary enormously, from the very small to the very large. Épinal, Bibliothèque municipale, 149 (68) (Lowe, E. A., Codices Latini Antiquiores, 11 vols. and supp. (Oxford, 1934–1972)Google Scholar [hereafter CLA] VI, no. 762), copied (rather than compiled) at Tours 744 × 745, and only later at Murbach, is an unusually comprehensive one: unsurprisingly it includes the letter ad Nepotianum (Sancti Hieronymi Epistulae I, ed. Hilberg, J., CSEL 54 (Vienna, 1910)Google Scholar, no. 52), with the added words in the title comodo in clericatu vivere debeat. Alcuin explicitly quotes the letter for its remark on the wisdom of the old when writing to Charles 796ex. × 797in., Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, , no. 121 (p. 178)Google Scholar; and he draws on it, in conjunction with other letters of Jerome (all unacknowledged), to give himself a Vergilian persona in ibid. no. 145, of 798 (Mar./Apr.). On this see the interesting study by Alberi, M., ‘Jerome, Alcuin and Vergil's “Old Entellus”’ JMH 17 (1991), 103–13Google Scholar (although I do not think that there is any textual or other justification for her view, at p. 106Google Scholar, that Flaccus had earlier been used as ‘a code name for Jerome’). The influence of the letter ad Nepotianum on Alcuin's Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, no. 124, is in terms of overall form and content rather than textual citation; but for the latter, see, e.g. habeas … prudentem dispensatorem qui pauperum curam sollicita pietate praevideat. Melius est pauperes edere, corresponding to Jerome's scit episcopus … quem dispensationi pauperum curaeque praeficiat. Melius est non habere (Hilberg, , p. 431Google Scholar), where in fact the Épinal manuscript has the reading dispensatorem pauperum curaeque. For appositives and the appositive style, see Robinson, F. C., ‘Beowulf’ and the Appositive Style (Knoxville, TN, 1985)Google Scholar(for knowledge of which I am indebted to Miss Mary Garrison); at pp. 8–9 Robinson notes the patristic background of and parallels to Alcuin's ‘What has Ingeld.?’, etc.Google Scholar

35 Except perhaps at the bottom of Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, , p. 182, and the top of p. 183.Google Scholar

36 Although Chadwick's translation and the accompanying comments in The Heroic Age, Addenda and Corrigenda, pp. 465–6, on the ‘rex paganus perditus’ should have drawn attention to the letter's artful structure.Google Scholar

37 For the various versions (not including Alcuin's!), see Walther, H., Lateinische Sprichwörter und Sentenzen des Mittelalters in alphabetischer Ordnung, 6 vols. (Göttingen, 1964–1974) II, nos. 11102, 2924, 25773, etc.Google Scholar The ultimate source is presumably the less succinct Vulgate, Prov. XVI. 9, cf. Ps. XXXVI. 23 (Ro.: ‘a Domino gressus hominis dirigentur et viam eius cupiet nimis’).

38 (Literary) commentators and translators have commonly supposed, or implied, that the verba Dei to be read at meals were the Scriptures. I hesitate to say that the term was never used with that meaning in the Middle Ages (cf. English Reformed usage ‘Hear the Word of God …’); but in the late patristic and early medieval centuries verba al. verbum Dei, when not theological (‘the Word’), is consistently and exclusively used of the exposition of the Scriptures through preaching. Alcuin himself, writing to the newly elected Eanbald II of York only a few months before the Speratus letter, reminds him that ‘Sacerdos vero Dei verbi et voluntatis illius praedicator debet esse in populum’ (Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, , no. 114 (p. 168)Google Scholar); and it is as an extension of this that the Council of Mainz (813), ch. 25, decrees that ‘numquam tamen desit … qui verbum Dei praedicet quod intellegere vulgus possit’, and the Council of Valence (855), ch. 16, lays down that the bishops should make provision for regular preaching ‘in plebibus’, ‘quia ubi verbum Dei fidelibus non ministratur quid aliud quam vita animae subtrahitur?’ (Concilia Aevi Karolini I.1, ed. Werminghoff, A., MGH, Concilia 2 (Berlin, 1906), 268Google Scholar; Concilia Aevi Karolini DCCCXLIII-DCCCLIX, ed. Hartmann, W., MGH, Concilia 3 (Hanover, 1984), 361).Google Scholar The usage is, indeed, at least as old as Caesarius of Arles, who already associated it with the ‘sanctum convivium’ of bishops: Césaire d'Arles, Sermons au peuple I, ed. Delage, M.-J., Sources Chrétiennes 175 (Paris, 1971), 222. Verba Dei and sermones patrum in the Speratus letter are apparently ‘appositive’ (as n. 34); and this may tell us something about the intended use of non-liturgical and so-called ‘devotional’ homiliaries.Google Scholar

39 Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum Libri XX, ed. Lindsay, W. M., 2 vols. (Oxford, 1911)Google Scholar, XX.i.3. Cf. Jerome, In Isaiam I.i.22 (Hieronymi presbyteri commentariorum in Esaiam, ed. Adriaen, M., CCSL 73 (Turnhout, 1963), 22): ‘Unde pro vino Aquila συμπόσιον, id est convivium interpretatus est quod apud Graecos àπό του¯ πότου apud nos a convictu rectius appellatur’. Convescor, convescens are peculiar to ecclesiastical Latin, first recorded in the third century and used occasionally by Jerome, Augustine, Leo I and other writers: see Thesaurus Linguae Latinae s.v.Google Scholar

40 Blaise, A., Dictionnaire latin-français des auteurs chrétiens (Strasbourg, 1954), p. 221, s.v. ‘convivium’ 2. and 3., offers typical instances, although not without errors in the citations. Dictionary of Medieval Latin II, 483, s.v. ‘convivium’ (b), has one Insular example of the figurative usage, not surprisingly from Aldhelm.Google Scholar

41 Defensor de Ligugé, Livre d'étincelles II, ed. Rochais, H.-M., Sources Chretiennes 86 (Paris, 1962), 136–40 (ch. 54).Google Scholar

42 Gregorii Turonensis Libri Historiarum X, III. 15 and IV.7 (12): MGH, SS rer. Merov. I.I, ed. Krusch, B. and Levison, W., 2nd ed. (Hanover, 1951), 114 and 142, respectively.Google Scholar

43 Gregorii Turonensis Liber vitae Patrum, MGH, SS rer.Merov. 1.2, ed. Arndt, W. and Krusch, B. (Hanover, 1885), 703. According to Gregory the archdeacon told Patroclus: ‘aut cum reliquis fratribus cibum sume aut certe discede a nobis; non enim rectum videtur ut dissimules cum his habere victum cum quibus ecclesiasticum implere putaris officium’ (‘either take your food with the rest of the brethren or clear out completely: for it is not right that you eat your meals hidden from those with whom you share the services in church’).Google Scholar

44 HE IV.24 (ed. Colgrave, and Mynors, , pp. 414–18Google Scholar). Wallace-Hadrill's comment (Historical Commentary, p. 166Google Scholar), that Cædmon ‘could recite no secular poetry, as did other lay workers in the [Whitby] community. This is a significant matter …’ (my italics), not only – in my view – misrepresents what Bede actually says but encourages the citation of that passage in support of the traditional interpretation of the allusion to Ingeld in the Speratus letter. (Wrenn, C. L., ‘The Poetry of Cædmon’, PBA 32 (1946), 277–95, at 286Google Scholar, and Opland, J., Anglo-Saxon Oral Poetry: a Study of the Traditions (New Haven, CT, 1980), p. 144–7Google Scholar, have understood the situation better, as indeed did the anonymous Old English translator of the Historia Ecclesiastica: his word for convivia is ‘gebeorscipe’.) Cædmon and those whom he joined for feasting and laetitia were rustici, subject to the authority of a vilicus and taking turns to watch over the livestock, even if (as seems probable) their homes were on one of the estates of Whitby abbey; only after his inspired composition was he persuaded to leave the world for the monastic way of life (monachicum propositum: an unusual but not unique turn of phrase).

45 HE. III.5 (ed. Colgrave, and Mynors, , p. 226).Google Scholar

46 Sawyer, P. H., Anglo-Saxon Charters: an Annotated List and Bibliography, R. Hist. Soc. Guides and Handbooks 8 (London, 1968)Google Scholar [hereafter S], no. 92 (perhaps in response to Boniface's admonitions): ‘ut munuscula ab aecclesiis in saeculare convivium regis vel principum a subditis minime exigantur, nisi amore et voluntate praebentur’ (or, in spite of the word order, should regis vel principum be taken with a subditis?). Compare S 1257 (of 781), where as part of a bargain between King Offa and the bishop of Worcester the former agreed to forego ‘trium annorum ad se pertinentes pastiones id est VI convivia’ [MS. ‘convinia’]. I believe that the whole phrase should be translated simply as ‘the provision of food in the form of six dinners over three years’ (presumably when the Mercian court visited Worcester) and not, with Dorothy Whitelock, as ‘the food-rents for three years belonging to him, that is, six “entertainments”’, the latter being equated with the ‘units of assessment of the “king's farm”’ (which seems to me something very different); cf. the statement in the admittedly untrustworthy S 118 (ostensibly of 780) that the royal grant had been made at Fladbury ubi episcopus Tilhere mihi meisque optimatibus dignum preparavit convivium. For the rare pastio ‘provision of food, nourishment’, see Concilia Aevi Karolini 1.2, ed. Werminghoff, A. (Berlin, 1908), 448Google Scholar, ch. 14 (Aachen, 816) gemina pastio, denned in ibid. p. 710 (Aachen, 836) as id est cibi et verbi. For other Mercian royal exemptions from the obligation to provide hospitality to the king and his court or his agents (but also for the obligation to provide pastum noctis to ambassadors), see below, pp. 121–2.

47 Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, , no. 114 (p. 169)Google Scholar; ibid. no. 302. For some of the implications of status and precedence at eighth/ninth-century feasts, see Bullough, D., Friends, Neighbours and Fellow-Drinkers: Aspects of Community and Conflict in the Early Medieval West, Chadwick, H. M. Memorial Lecture 1 (Cambridge, 1991), 11–14; for Ardbertus/Eardberht, cf. below, n. 81.Google Scholar

48 Capitularia regum Francorum, ed. Boretius, , p. 98 (ch. 35)Google Scholar; cf. Bullough, , Friends, Neighbours and Fellow-Drinkers, pp. 13 and 14–15.Google Scholar

49 Capitularia Episcoporum I, ed. Brommer, P., MGH, Capit. Episc. 1 (Hanover, 1984), 112 (ch. 13)Google Scholar; Concilia Aevi Karolini 1.1, ed. Werminghoff, , pp. 206 and 210.Google Scholar

50 ‘An evil custom which lay people engage in when they come to dine’: Pokorny, R., ‘Ein unbekannter Synodalsermo Arns v. Salzburg’, DAEM 39 (1983), 379–94 (from a Regens-burg addition to the Augsburg (partial) Dionysio-Hadriana manuscript, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 14422), at 394.Google Scholar

51 Rufinus's version of the Rule of St Basil (Basili Regula a Rufino latine versa, ed. Zelzer, K., CSEL 86 (Vienna, 1986), at 50 (ch. 10), which circulated widely in the early and high Middle Ages, is only an apparent exception: for the context and the implicit references to Luke XIV. 7 show that the writer had in mind participation at banquets ‘in the world’ — si ad convivium eamus discumbendi locum novissimum requiramus et non occupemus locum priorem, etc.Google Scholar

52 Mensa, refectio etc: for the many references in the (sixth or seventh century?) Regula Magistri, see La Règle du Maître, ed. Vogüé, A. de, 2 vols., Sources Chretiennes 105–6 (Paris, 1964)Google Scholar, and its concordance volume by Clément, J.-M. et al. , Sources Chretiennes 107 (Paris, 1965), at 268–70 and 384–5Google Scholar; Regula Benedicti, ed. Hanslik, , chs. 35, 38, 39, 41 and 43Google Scholar; Regularis Concordia: the Monastic Agreement, ed. Symons, T. (London, 1953), chs. 24, 25, 55 and 58 (pp. 20, 21, 54 and 58)Google Scholar (‘refectio’), and also ed. Symons, T., rev. Spath, S. and Wegener, M., in Consuetudinum saeculi X/XI/XII monumenta non-Cluniacensia, ed. Hallinger, K., Corpus Consuetudinum Monasticarum 7.3 (Siegburg, 1984), chs. 30, 33, 83 and 88 (pp. 89, 91, 131 and 135).Google ScholarPrandium, cena: Reg. Mag., chs. 1, 26, 27, 28, 50 and 57; Reg. Ben., chs. 39, 41 and 42; for indirect evidence of the ‘prandium ad sextam’ in a ninth-century Mercian monastery, see below, p. 121. Commenting on Apoc. XIX.9 (ad cenam nuptiarum Agni), Gregory observes that ‘non ad prandium sed ad cenam vocatos narrat quia nimirum in fine diei convivium cena est’. For cena in Lent, see Regularis Concordia, ed. Symons, , ch. 60 (pp. 58–9)Google Scholar, with the editor's comment, p. xxxvGoogle Scholar, and in Corpus Consuetudinum 7.3, ch. 92 (p. 137); but in Reg. Ben. ch. 41, refectio is apparently used of the single meal on monastic feasting days, whether taken ‘ad nonam’ or ‘ad vesperam’.Google Scholar

53 Venerabilis Baedae Opera Historica, ed. Plummer, C., 2 vols. (Oxford, 1896) II, 55–6, 126–7 and passimGoogle Scholar: the first of these with many examples from The Old English Version of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Miller, T., 2 vols., EETS os 95–6 (London, 1890–1891).Google Scholar

54 Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, , no. 166 (p. 272): ‘similiter et non est in Christo divinitatis maiestas sicut in quolibet homine episcopalis dignitas verbi gratia’.Google Scholar

55 Precisely as in Caesarius of Aries' sermon to his fellow-bishops (‘sacerdotes’) cited above, n. 34, and by implication at the cathedral church of Worcester in Offa's lifetime (above, n. 46).

56 For Hexham, cf. above, n. 19.

57 As in Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, nos. 42, 48, 114, 115, etc.

58 ibid. p. 182; English translation in Appendix, below, p. 123. The editorial exemit is for the manuscripts' (H and H2) eximit: is that what Alcuin or his notary in fact wrote?Google Scholar

59 Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, no. 122; English translation in English Historical Documents c. 500–1042, ed. Whitelock, D., Eng. Hist. Documents 1, 2nd ed. (London, 1979)Google Scholar, no. 122. For the identification of the addressee, see below, pp. 117–19.

60 ‘The most noble young man N. did not die through his own sins, I believe: it was the revenge of the father's blood that fell upon the son. For you know well how much blood the father shed to secure the kingdom for his son’ (Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, , p. 179).Google Scholar Alcuin's use of ultio here as ‘a taking of revenge’ purely and simply (cf. Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, , no. 231 (p. 376)Google Scholar, ‘qui fortiter sanguinem domini sui vindicavit’, where the contemporary ‘Northumbrian Annals’, s.a. 799 (in Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, ed. Arnold, T., 2 vols., RS (London, 1882–1885) II, 62)Google Scholar have ‘in ultionem domini sui’) can be compared with the usage of the Canones Theodori IV.l (Finsterwalder, P., Die Canones Theodori Cantuariensis und ihre Überlieferungsformen (Weimar, 1929), p. 294)Google Scholar, Si quis pro ultione propinqui, etc.; the same chapter has the unique pecuniam aestimationis ‘man-price, wergeld’, not noted in Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, I (Oxford, 1975), 45Google Scholar, s.v. ‘aestimatio’; cf. vindicta in Canones Theodori IV.2 (p. 294).Google Scholar

61 Handbook of British Chronology, ed. Fryde, E. B., Greenway, D. E., Porter, S. and Roy, I., 3rd ed. (London, 1986), pp. 218, 223, 217 and 220. The only Mercian charter-text datable to 797, S 152, has no witness-list; only four bishops subscribe S 150, a Chelsea conciliar record of 796.Google Scholar

62 A good recent account of the Mercian archbishopric of Lichfield is Brooks, N. P., The Early History of the Church of Canterbury, Stud. in the Early Hist. of Britain (Leicester, 1984), pp. 118–26.Google Scholar

63 Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, no. 128. Note that a text of this letter, imperfect at the beginning, is in all three copies of the early H collection, a complete text in both the English eleventh-century manuscripts (but in Vesp. in the admittedly anomalous quire 6, which is why Chase excludes it from his Two Alcuin Letter-Books). Æthelheard's desertion was the subject also of a letter Alcuin wrote to the ‘nobilissime genti et populo laudabili et regno imperiali Cantuuariorum’ (transmitted in two early continental collections), Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, no. 129. Dümmler intelligibly dated both letters to 797. Brooks says of no. 128, ‘written soon after Offa's death’ (Church of Canterbury, p. 121)Google Scholar, but sufficient time must be allowed for the news to reach the Frankish Court, and probably even longer if, as is likely, Alcuin had already moved to Tours (see on this Alcuin: Achievement and Reputation, ch. 6). But Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, nos. 100 (Charles to Offa), 101 (Alcuin to Offa, probably of late May/June when news of the death of King Æthelred of Northumbria on 18 April had reached the Frankish Court via the Mercian one) show that Archbishop Æthelheard was at that time in Francia and preparing to go to Rome. Professor Whitelock and (after her) Professor Brooks wish to identify Odberh[t]o presbitero – who is referred to in the first of these letters as an exile under Charles's protection and who (in their translation) ‘has been sent to Rome’ with Æthelheard – with Eadberht Praen whom rebel Kentings put on the throne after Offa's death. This claim raises major problems both of chronology and about the relationship in Offa's time between the future Kentish king and the archbishop. The second of these is probably the real problem. For however we interpret the letter's diregimus (the original reading of the only manuscript, Tib.), it is certainly not a past perfect: it must be either the present tense (cf. Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, no. 101: legatos Romam dirigit… digna dirigit munera) or for dirigemus, ‘we shall direct’. The words in the text after ‘legatus Romam dirigit’ are ‘ad iudicium domni apostolici et Aðelhardi archiepiscopi’, but whether Æthelheard made the journey to the papal court, without Eadberht, must remain uncertain, if improbable. He was evidently back in England in time for the Mercian king, Ecgfrith, who died 14 or 17 December 796, to grant him the minster (monasterium) of Pectanege – rather unconvincingly identified with Patney, Wilts. – which two years later he surrendered to Offa's widow (S 1258, discussed Brooks, Church of Canterbury, pp. 103–4 and 131).Google Scholar

64 See, for example, Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, nos. 10, 37 and 38; ibid. nos. 13, 25 and 115.

65 See Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. Cross, F. L. and Livingstone, E. A., 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1974), pp. 1249–50Google Scholar, with an excellent bibliography of editions of the Passio and modern commentaries, although medieval and modern liturgical commemoration is not considered. There is a nice irony that Speratus was commemorated by name in the early Spanish ‘Mozarabic’ liturgy, although usually in conjunction with Marina, in consequence of which Alcuin's arch-enemy Elipand of Toledo was able, only a year or two later, to quote a text from the missa sancti Sperati in support of ‘Adoptionism’: Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, , p.305.Google Scholar Although the text he cites (Ingeniti Patris unigenite … exitium sustulit mortis) is not to be found in the text of the mass-set in (uniquely?) London, BL, Add. 30845 (Le Liber Mozarabicus Sacramentorum, ed. Férotin, M. (Paris, 1912), cols. 577–80)Google Scholar, it occurs with only minor verbal differences as the first part of the capitula prayer at Lauds for the feast of the saint(s), on 21 July, in the printed Breviarium Gothicum ‘secundum regulam beatissimi Isidori’ (Toledo, 1502) (also PL 86, cols. 1164–5, from F. A. Lorenzana's new ed. of 1775). And it is unnecessary to accuse Elipand of not knowing the liturgical service from which his text was taken, in view of the evidence that the early Spanish Church used the word missa(e) also of sets of chants and prayers in the Office: see, e.g., Pinell, J. M., ‘Las Missae, grupos de cantos y oraciones en el oficio de la antigua liturgia hispana’, Archives Leoneses 8 (1954), 145–85.Google Scholar

66 Böhne, W., ‘Das älteste Lorscher Kalendar u. seine Vorlagen’, Die Reichsabtei Lorsch: Festschrift zum Gedenken an ihre Stiftung 764, ed. Knöpp, F., 2 vols. (Darmstadt, 1977) II, 171–220, uncovered the Wearmouth–Jarrow stratum, although with some errors of detail: but by linking his discussion of other entries (the majority) too closely with the sanctorals of Gelasian and Gregorian sacramentaries as evidence for ‘liturgical commemoration’ in England, Böhne failed to recognise their common martyrological source. The calendar and related texts are reconsidered, with particular reference to the York component, in ‘The “Schools of York” …’ (cited above, n. 24).Google Scholar

67 Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, , p. 181, apud n. 6.Google Scholar

68 Pheifer, J. D., Old English Glosses in the Épinal-Erfurt Glossary (Oxford, 1974), no. 77 (p. 6).Google Scholar Orosius as a source was first established by Schlutter and developed by Lindsay; ‘there is ample evidence to show that [the] Old English interpretations were part of a running gloss on the text’, and therefore very early (Pheifer, ibid, p. xlvii).

69 Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, , no. 3 (pp. 28–9).Google Scholar

70 For the interesting notion that Offa may have enhanced the standing of Bishop Eadberht of London (ob. 787 × 789) in the southern province by granting him coining rights (cf. the earlier archiepiscopal coinage of York) which were withdrawn when Lichfield was raised to an archbishopric, see Grierson, P. and Blackburn, M., Medieval European Coinage, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1986) I, 279. For a letter to the next bishop of Dunwich, which makes no reference to the political situation, see below, n. 76.Google Scholar

71 The first and last being S 123 and S 106 (endorsement). (The bishop's last recorded appearance would be 802 if S 154 were of that year and not 799. Contrary to most scholars, I believe that there are arguments for defending the earlier date, although they cannot be presented here.) The accepted date for the endorsement of S 106 is 801 (cf. still, Handbook of British Chronology, p. 218).Google Scholar Prof. Brooks has, however, proposed the date 800 or even 799 × 800: see Church of Canterbury, p. 126Google Scholar and his unpublished table of ‘Episcopal Witnesses to Mercian Charters’ (generously made available in manuscript). The evidence of the witness-lists in conjunction with non-charter evidence for some of the bishops involved (Alcuin's letters, Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, nos. 230–2, in conjunction with ASC, s.a. 799 D (for 801) and S 157 ‘dorse’ (not original!) which interestingly establishes that Æthelheard and the Mercian sub-king of Kent were both at Canterbury for the celebration of Easter (4 April) 801; and Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, no. 255) suggests that the choice is between 800 and the early part of 801. See also S. Keynes, ‘Theodore, Clofesho and the Diocese of Leicester’ (forthcoming).

72 Although (as Dr Simon Keynes pointed out to me) Matthew Paris tells the curious story of an ancient and decrepit priest named Unwona who deciphered a book about St Alban found in the monastery walls during the abbacy of Eadmur, whom he appears to place in the tenth century: Gesta abbatum monasterii Sancti Albani, in Chronica Monasterii S. Albani I, ed. Riley, H. T., RS (London, 1867), 26. Unwen in the poetic Widsith is phonologically and etymologically distinct.Google Scholar

73 Cf. Wright, J., Old English Grammar, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1934), § 121.Google Scholar

74 Letter to DrKeynes, S. (4 09 1991)Google Scholar, in response to a query prompted by an earlier version of the present article. For the intensive un-, see Roberts, J., ‘Old English UN- “Very” and Unferth’, ES 61 (1980), 289–92.Google Scholar

75 Certainly to Æthelheard are Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, nos. 17, 128, 230, 231, 255, 290 and 311; ibid. nos. 130, 291 and 292 are probably to him, and no. 256 may be. Additionally, ibid. no. 85, from the Frankish king, was composed by Alcuin.

76 As ibid. no. 189 to Cyneberht of Winchester (whose name Alcuin surprisingly suppresses in ibid. no. 232 (p. 377)) and ibid. no. 301, jointly to Alhheard of Elmham and Tidferth of Dunwich. Both letters are in the H collection only.

77 The letters are ibid. nos. 36, 300, 103 and 102. No. 36 (of which there is an effective translation by Allott, S., Alcuin of York (York, 1974), pp. 56–7Google Scholar, except for an extraordinary misuse of the masculine gender in the second part: ‘she will sing an everlasting song of praise before her bridegroom’) was dated by Dümmler ‘c. 793–795’, but there are some, inconclusive, arguments for 796 × 798. No. 300 (of c. 797 × 798?) has the lemma Ad Aedilburgam filiam regis Offani cognomento Eugeniam in both H manuscripts, obviously from their archetype: if I am right that this is Alcuin's ‘personal’ letter-collection, the identification is an authoritative one. Offa's daughter Æthelburg is recorded otherwise (and earlier) only as a witness to S 127, a royal grant to Chertsey in 787. The traditional identification of her abbey as Fladbury is certainly mistaken: Æthelburg abbess of Fladbury and other monasteries in the 770s (and 780s?) is a quite different person, on whom see most recently Sims-Williams, P., Religion and Literature in Western England 600–800, CSASE 3 (Cambridge, 1990), 37–8 and 132–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Which of them (if indeed either) is the Eðilburg who is the eighty-fourth entry in the ‘Nomina reginarum et abbatissarum’ in the ‘Lindisfarne’ Liber Vitae (ed. Gerchow, , Gedenküberlieferung der Angel-sachsen, p. 305)Google Scholar, it is hardly possible to say.

78 Letters from Alcuin: ibid. nos. 64 and 101, and the letter on archiepiscopal consecrations datable 792/3, edited by Lehmann, P. in Sitzungsberichte der Bayerische Akademie, München, 1920, no. 13 (1921), 29–34Google Scholar ( = Levison, W., England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford, 1946), pp. 245–6)Google Scholar from The Hague, Kon. Bibl., 70. H. (?N. France, s. x), fols. 58–97). This last letter was known to Wulfstan of Worcester and York in the early eleventh century: for the possibility that he had found it in the former place rather than the latter and that it was part of a dossier on the archbishopric of Lichfield which also provided William of Malmesbury with the texts of two letters not preserved elsewhere, see Alcuin: Achievement and Reputation, chs. 1 and 8. Letters from King Charles: Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, nos. 87 and 100. In his generally excellent account of ‘The Age of Offa and Alcuin’ (The Anglo-Saxons, ed. Campbell, J. (London, 1982), at pp. 101–28)Google Scholar, Patrick Wormald unfortunately overlooked no. 87 (preserved in the ‘Tours’ collection of Alcuin's correspondence and evidently composed by him; Offa is Charles's dilectus frater et amicus) when he referred (‘Age of Offa’, p. 101)Google Scholar to Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, no. 100 as ‘the only [letter] extant from a European king to any Anglo-Saxon ruler; it is the only one to survive in which Charlemagne calls another western king his “brother”’. Moreover, in ibid. no. 85, which Charles addressed to Archbishop ibidthelheard of Canterbury and Bishop Ceolwulf of Lindsey, asking them to intervene on behalf of exiles, and was also composed by Alcuin, Offa is frater meus carissimus. Dümmler's date for Epistolae, no. 100 (only in the ‘English’ collection) is somewhat too early: it was almost certainly written after Alcuin had left the Court for Tours (although before Offa's death was known there) and is therefore unlikely to have been composed by him. Alcuin to the anonymous abbot: Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, no. 63 (‘Idcirco scripsi ad Offanum regem, ut te adiuvaret et defenderet sanctam ecclesiam secundum potestatem (al. possibilitatem)’).

79 ibid. no. 123.

80 Beornwine: ibid. n. 82; that his name does not figure in the witness-lists of any of Offa's charters does not, I think, throw doubt on the suggestion made in the text, since ‘ordinary’ courtiers apparently never subscribe. Hundrada: ibid. no. 62.

81 Or perhaps not! The Ardbertus vir inluster (a late Antique title of dignity, used rather differently in Merovingian and early Carolingian documents) to whom Alcuin wrote a purely personal letter from St Martin's, ibid. no. 302, is most reasonably identified with the Heardberht who as dux, perhaps comes and finally princeps attested Mercian charters from 794 (S 137) or later- there seems to be more than one ealdorman of that name – to 814 or 816 (S 172, 180). As well as counselling his ‘most noble and dearest’ correspondent on his conduct, Alcuin asks him to arrange for his (Alcuin's) commemoration in prayer ‘throughout the churches subject to his authority (ecclesias ditionis vestrae)’: whether these are ones over which Ardbert has personal lordship or are all those in his area of ealdormanic jurisdiction is unfortunately not now determinable.

82 Willelmi Malmesbiriensis monachi de Gestis Regum Anglorum, ed. Stubbs, W., 2 vols., RS (London, 1887) I, 73 and 94Google Scholar; Thacker, A. T., ‘Some Terms for Noblemen in Anglo-Saxon England, c. 650–900’, ASSAH 2 (1981), 201–36, at 219–20.Google Scholar Why William chose that particular name is certainly not obvious (Osbaldo patricio et Osberhto duci in the address-clause of an earlier Alcuin letter, Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, no. 18, is not a particularly plausible source): but quoting ibid. nos. 114 and 121 in De Gestis Regum Anglorum, ed. Stubbs I, 68, William twice falsely names Alcuin's magister as ‘Egbertus’, although manuscripts of the first letter correctly say Aelberhtus and manuscripts of the second give no name.

83 Thomson, ‘William and the Letters of Alcuin’ (cited above, n. 10). In Tib. the ‘formulaic’ section begins on 130v (Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, no. 291) and continues to 143r (ibid. no. 103) excluding 134v–136v, with ibid. no. 122 on 136v–138v. Only the second half of the group, beginning at 139v (ibid. no. 45), is copied in the Wulfstan manuscript Vesp. (168v–171r: ed. Chase, , Two Alcuin Letter-Books, pp. 30–6).Google Scholar

84 Brorda in charter witness-lists: compare Thacker, ‘Some Terms’, pp. 212–13, 216–17 and 217–19Google Scholar, with Prof. N. P. Brooks's tables of ‘Attestations of Lay Nobles 757–875’ (still only in manuscript but generously made available), here based on S 49, 58–63, 108–55 and therefore apparently conflating two Brordas. But Thacker's suggestion (ibid. pp. 212–13), that the divide between the two can be dated ‘780 or thereabouts’ rests on a misapprehension about the date of Offa's confirmation of the ducal grant, S 1184 (of which there is a new facsimile in Facsimiles of Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. Keynes, S., AS Charters, Supplementary ser. 1 (Oxford, 1991), no. 2).Google ScholarLiber Vitae entry: ed. Gerchow, , Gedenküberlieferung der Angelsachsen, p. 304Google Scholar; Eadbald, who from 780 normally attests in third place, figures for the last time in 789 (S 130, 1430) or (if the witness-list of S 133 is authentically of its purported date) in 790. Legatine council: Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, , no. 3 (p. 29).Google Scholar

85 Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, no. 8. Brorda and Alcuin had both been present at the 786 legatine council, in company (of course) with Unuuona. There may have been unrecorded occasions earlier when the two men met (cf. next note), but from almost immediately after the synod until early 790 Alcuin was in Francia, and it does not seem that he visited Mercia on his return journey to Northumbria, although initially he had expected to do so.

86 ‘Mindful of your praiseworthy loyalty and of the friendship made between us long ago, I wanted to send you a letter to remind you of my feelings and welfare: for we are now unlikely to have the pleasure of meeting and talking confidentially because of the great distance and rough seas between us’.

87 Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, no. 9, to Abbot Adalhard of Corbie.

88 ibid. nos. 111, 113 (on successive folios of all three manuscripts of the H collection: but the order of the opening words of the second of these should surely be ‘Praesagum nomen tibi inposuere parentes’ – a hexameter – as in the independent copy in S and in Graz, Universitätsbibliothek, 790 (Salzburg, c. 836–50), 64r) and 110. Megenfrid was the king's messenger to Alcuin in 798 when he resisted pressure to join the Court in Saxony, and Alcuin was later to write to the king (emperor) lamenting the death of his ‘most dear friend’ in Italy in 800: ibid. nos. 149 (p. 242) and 211. He is also (apparently) the only Frankish magnate in the ‘Lindisfarne’ nomina regum vel ducum; see (no. 77), Maegenfrith (no. 79 being Karlus): ed. Gerchow, , Gedenküberlieferung der Angelsachsen, p. 304.Google Scholar

89 They would have been acquainted at least since 786; see above, n. 85.

90 Historia regum, in Symeonis Opera, ed. Arnold, II, 32 and 42Google Scholar; Epistolae Bonifatii, ed. Tangl, , no. 47 (p. 76), responding to a letter (litteras: not a plural in translation) from the archbishop. A note on the textual source(s) of this letter, which throws a flickering light on early Leicester ‘learning’, will appear elsewhere.Google Scholar

91 764–?774 × 775, 780–1: S 106–11, 104, 116–18 and 1257;?775–9: S 145, 113, 141, 147, 57(if of 777 or later) and 114; and Brooks's table of ‘Episcopal Witnesses to the Charters’.

92 S 120 and 121. The first of these was granted in sede regali sedens… in Tamouuorðie, the second sedens in regali palatio in Tamuuorthige. The latter is transmitted in a part of ‘Hemming's Cartulary’ which was in fact written after 1095 (Ker, N. R., ‘Hemming's Cartulary: a Description of the Two Worcester Cartularies in Cotton Tiberius A XIII’, repr. in his Books, Collectors and Libraries: Studies in the Medieval Heritage (London, 1985), pp. 31–59 (at p. 45))Google Scholar to document ‘a history of the estates obtained or regained by Bishops Ealdred and Wulfstan [II]’. The use of palatium in a (genuine) charter would be uniquely early: but the possibility that it was used in late-eighth-century Mercia (although hardly as early as 781?) is made less unlikely by in palatio regis in the already-quoted Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, no. 62 (above, p. 117).Google Scholar

93 1257.

94 S 123, Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, , no. 3 (pp. 28–9), S 132 and S 150.Google Scholar

95 S 154 and 106 (cf. above, n. 71).

96 ‘Theodore, Clofesho and the Diocese of Leicester’ (forthcoming).

97 Dornier, A., ‘The Anglo-Saxon Monastery at Breedon-on-the Hill, Leicestershire’, Mercian Studies, ed. Dornier, A. (Leicester, 1977), pp. 155–68, has nothing to offer.Google Scholar

98 S 197; Hart, C. R., The Early Charters of Northern England and the North Midlands (Leicester, 1975), pp. 68–9 (no. 34).Google ScholarFor the monastic mid-day prandium, see above, p. 108 and n. 52.Google Scholar

99 It is also an appropriate context for Breedon church's unusually elaborate architectural decoration, in which the influence of a Carolingian Court-school or Court-related manuscript has been detected: Jewell, R. I. H., ‘The Anglo-Saxon Friezes at Breedon-on-the-Hill, Leicestershire’, Archaeologia 108 (1986), 95–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

100 For what it is worth, I note the existence of an eighth-century Mercian Ingeld, dux et praefectus under King Æthelbald, whose son Æthelmund received grants as minister and finally as princeps from the Hwicean sub-king Uhtred, from Offa and from Ecgfrith, dying in battle in 802: details in Sims, Williams, Religion and Literature, pp. 38–9. To speculate wildly: could carmina about Ingeld have been intended as a so-called ‘graceful tribute’ to the son or some other member of the ealdorman's family, just as tales about King Offa of Angeln are interpreted as an oblique tribute to Offa of Mercia?Google Scholar

101 Earlier versions of this paper were read to seminars at the University of St Andrews and the University of Pennsylvania. Veronica Smart and Peter Kitson have been generous in their help and advice on problems of Old English. A first, over-long, draft benefitted greatly from the sharp criticisms and editing of Patrick Wormald and Simon Keynes. Alice Harting-Correa insisted on the clarification of some badly expressed passages in the text.