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Constat Ergo Inter Nos Verba Signa Esse*: The Understanding of the Miraculous in Anglo-Saxon Society
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
This paper investigates two important themes which have not hitherto been fully appreciated: how the Anglo-Saxons, during the whole lengthy process of their reception of Christianity, interpreted the meaning of those extraordinary events commonly called miracula, and what reflection on the vernacular was carried forward by the knowledge achieved for purposes of communication. Although the question of the vocabulary of ‘miracle’ in Antiquity and early Christian times has been dealt with elsewhere, any discussion of vernacular terminology is barely discernible and scarcely ever encountered. My intention is, therefore, to consider the intentional expressive activity of the Anglo-Saxons as a reflection of meaning on their language.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2005
Footnotes
*
Augustine, De magistro, 2, 3, ed. K.-D. Daur, CChr.SL 29 (Turnhout, 1970), 159.
References
1 See especially Moule, C. F. D., Miracles: Cambridge Studies in their Philosophy and History (London, 1965)Google Scholar, excursus 1 and 2, 235–8; Grant, Robert M., Miracle and Natural Law in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Thought (Amsterdam, 1952).Google Scholar
2 I am quite conscious that this raises two crucial questions. The first involves the interpretation of the reality learnt by means of words. The second concerns the relationship between word and meaning. The topic is immense, with many strands leading in many directions, as all would readily acknowledge. But the discussion pursued here will be far narrower, corresponding only to those aspects dealing with Anglo-Saxon semantic activity within the selected subject matter.
3 This deals inter alia with the martyrdom of St William, crucified by the Jews of Norwich under King Stephen (1135–54).
4 On Christianity in southern England before and at the turn of the sixth century, in addition to Henry Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England (3rd edn, London and University Park, PA, 1991), see now J. Stevenson, ‘Christianity in Sixth- and Seventh-Century Southumbria’, in Martin Carver, ed., The Age of Sutton Hoo: the Seventh Century in North-Western Europe (Woodbridge, 1992), 175–83; R. Meens, ‘A Background to Augustine’s mission to Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Saxon England 23 (1994), 5–17; Robert A. Markus, ‘Augustine and Gregory the Great’, in Richard Gameson, ed., St Augustine and the Conversion of England (Stroud, 1999), 41–9; I. N. Wood, ‘Augustine and Gaul’, in ibid., 68–82; C. Stancliffe, ‘The British Church and the Mission of Augustine’, in ibid., 107–51; B. Yorke, The Reception of Christianity at the Anglo-Saxon Royal Courts’, in ibid., 152–73.
5 On Anglo-Saxon paganism, see particularly Scragg, D. G., ed., Superstition and Popular Medicine in Anglo-Saxon England (Manchester, 1989)Google Scholar; Niles, J. D., ‘Pagan Survivals and Popular Belief’, in Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature (Cambridge, 1991), 126–41 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Meaney, A. L., ‘Anglo-Saxon Idolaters and Ecclesiasts from Theodore to Alcuin: a Source Study’, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 5 (1992), 103–24 Google Scholar; Murray, Alexander, ‘Missionaries and Magic in Dark Age Europe’, P&P 136 (1992), 186–205 Google Scholar [review article of Valerie I.J. Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Oxford, 1991)]; Wilson, David, Anglo-Saxon Paganism (London, 1992)Google Scholar.
6 See, for example, ‘The Laws of Wihtred of Kent’ (695 AD), ed. Dorothy Whitelock, in English Historical Documents, vol. I: c.500–1042 (London, 1955) [hereafter: EHD], chs 12 and 13, 363, or The Laws of Alfred’ (871–99), in ibid., Int 30, 373.
7 The earliest records, about AD 669, are found in Theodore’s Penitential. See, I, xv, 2 (a section headed ‘de cultura idolorum’); I, xv, 4; I, xiv, 16, in Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, ed. Arthur West Haddan and William Stubbs [hereafter: HS], 3 vols (Oxford 1869–79), 3: 188–90.
8 Cubitt, Catherine, Anglo-Saxon Church Councils, C.650-C.850 (London and New York, 1995), 119.Google Scholar
9 Council of Clofesho, ch. 3, HS, 3: 363.
10 EHD, I, ch. 19, 772. A discussion of the legatine report is in Cubitt, Councils, 153–90.
11 Alcuin, Epistolae, ed. E. Duemmler, in Epistolae Karolini Aevi, II, MGH, Epistolae 4 (Berlin, 1895), nn. 2, 3, 290.
12 HS, 3:413–31. In the form in which we have it, the Ecgberht Penitential was codified and expanded on the continent in Carolingian times (c.800). See Allen J. Frantzen, The Literature of Penance in Anglo-Saxon England (New Brunswick, NJ, 1983), 7–72.
13 In a well-known letter to the bishops of England, Pope Formosus (891–6) wrote that he had heard ‘that abominable rites of the pagans have sprouted again … in the land of the English’, EHD, I, 820.
14 Wulfstan’s Canons of Edgar, ed. Roger Fowler, Early English Text Society, os 266 (Oxford and London, 1972).
15 EHD, I, 420 (II Cnut, no. 5 and 5.1).
16 Ibid., 437 (no. 47 and no. 48).
17 In Old English: aelf, dweorg, puca, puce, ore, scinna, scucca, ent, fifel, thyrs, orcneas, draca, gigantes, eotenas.
18 See, for example, the impressive sequence of Old English charms, as collected in Oswald Cockayne, ed., Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England, 3 vols, RS (London, 1864–6, repr. 1961), esp. vol. 2 (Bald’s Leechhook) and 3 (Lacnunga). Editions of the O.E. charms are also to be found in Elliott van Kirk Dobbie, The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 6 (New York, 1942), cxxx, cxxxi, cxxxvi, 123–4; G. Storms, Anglo-Saxon Magic (The Hague, 1948), 196–203, 283, 295; J. H. G. Grattan and Charles Singer, Anglo-Saxon Magic and Medicine: Illustrated Specially from the Semi-Pagan Text ‘Lacnunga’ (London, 1952), 188–91. A useful discussion of the whole topic is in A. L. Meaney,’Women, Witchcraft and Magic in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Scragg, Superstition, 9–40; N. Thun, ‘The Malignant Elves: Notes on Anglo-Saxon Magic and Germanic Myth’, Studia Neophilologica 41 (1969), 378–96. See also Felix’s Life of Saint Guthlac, ed. and transl. Bertram Colgrave (Cambridge, 1956, repr. 1985) and the heroic poem Beowulf, vv. 740–5: Beowulf with the Finneshurg Fragment, ed. C. L. Wrenn (London, 1958), 114.
19 Markus, R. A., Signs and Meanings: World and Text in Ancient Christianity (Liverpool, 1996), 130.Google Scholar
20 Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus octogintatribus, 79, 4, ed. Almut Mutzenbecher, CChr.SL 44A (Turnhout, 1974), 228–9; see Markus, Signs, 133–4.
21 Matt. 4, 2–7; 12, 38; 16,1–4; Luke 4, 23; 23, 8.
22 See Colgrave, Bertram, ‘Bede’s Miracle Stories’, in Thompson, A. H., ed., Bede, his Life, Times and Writings: Essays in Commemoration of the Twelfth Centenary of his Death (Oxford, 1935, repr. New York, 1966), 201–29, 203.Google Scholar
23 For example, Homiliae in Evangelium, I,4, I,3, II,29: PL 76, 1090–91, 1110 and 1215 respectively. The whole discussion is in William D. McCready, Signs of Sanctity: Miracles in the Thought of Gregory the Great, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Studies and Texts 91 (Toronto, 1989).
24 McCready, , Signs of Sanctity, 81–3.Google Scholar
25 Thomas, Charles, Bede, Archaeology, and the Cult of Relics, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow on Tyne, 1973), 2–7.Google Scholar
26 As Colgrave pointed out in ‘Bede’s Miracle Stories’, 205, his miracle stories are almost confined to the Historia Ecclesiastica [hereafter: HE], the Prose and Verse Lives of Cuthbert, and the Martyrology.
27 HE, IV, 11, ed. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Oxford, 1969), 366–8.
28 Ibid.
29 Evidence in ibid., II: 2; III: 8, 10, 12, 15, 19; IV: 7, 10, 28, 30, 43; V: 2.
30 Ibid.,IV:6.
31 Ibid.
32 On Bede, McCready, William D., Miracles and the Venerable Bede, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Studies and Texts 118 (Toronto, 1994).Google Scholar
33 HE, IV: 17.
34 Cf. Fadda, Anna Maria Luiselli, ‘The Vernacular and the Propagation of the Faith in Anglo-Saxon Missionary Activity’, in Holtrop, Pieter N. and McLeod, Hugh, eds, Missions and Missionaries, SCH.S 13 (Woodbridge, 2000), 1–15.Google Scholar
35 See McCready, , Signs of Sanctity, esp. 212–30.Google Scholar
36 For useful discussions on Anglo-Saxon magic, see Barley, N., ‘Anglo-Saxon Magico-Medicine’, Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford 3 (1972), 67–77 Google Scholar; Cameron, M. L., ‘Anglo-Saxon Medicine and Magic’, Anglo-Saxon England 17 (1988), 191–215 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Scragg, Superstition; Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism; Griffiths, Bill, Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Magic (Hockwold-cum-Wilton, 1996)Google Scholar; Jolly, Karen Louise, Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: Elf Charms in Context (Chapel Hill, NC, and London, 1996).Google Scholar
37 HE, III: 8.
38 The Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. T. Miller, EETS os 95–6 [text] and 110–11 [glossary] (London, 1890–1 and 1898), 96: 531.
39 ActaSS, 1 Sept., I: 299–304; ‘Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum Bibliothecae Civitatis Carnotensis’, AnBoll 8 (1889), 86–208, ‘Appendix ad cod. 84: Vita Sancti Aegidii’, 102–20. Cf. Anna Maria Luiselli Fadda, ed., ‘La versione anglosassone della Vita sancti Aegidii abbatis’, Romanobarbarica 7 (1982–3), 273–352; the Latin text of the Vita is repr. in the appendix, at 342–52.
40 Fadda, Luiselli, ‘La versione anglosassone’, 345.Google Scholar
41 Ibid., 310.
42 Ibid., 342.
43 Ibid., 302.
44 References in Sweet, Henry and Hoad, T. H., A Second Anglo-Saxon Reader, Archaic and Dialectal (2nd edn, Oxford, 1978), 122.Google Scholar
45 Wülcker, Richard Paul and Wright, Thomas, Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies, 2 vols (2nd edn, London, 1884, repr. Darmstadt, 1968), 1: 108, I. 17.Google Scholar
46 Aelfric brought out his work known as Catholic Homilies in two volumes, the first in 990, the second the following year. See The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church, ed. Benjamin Thorpe, 2 vols (London, 1844–6, repr. 1971), 1: 58,1. 14. A similar reference is found in the homily ‘Dominica II post Aepiphania Domini, nuptiae factae sunt in Chana Galileae’, in Aelfric’s Catholic Homilies, ed. Malcolm Godden, EETS, 2nd ser., 5 (London and New York, 1979), 29.
47 Catholic Homilies, 8.
48 Ex. 15, 11;Deut. 6,10; Ps. 106, 7; 107, 8; 145, 9.
49 Augustine, De doctrina Christiana, I. 2, 2, ed. Josef Martin, CChr.SL 32 (Turnhout, 1962), 7–8; cp. Markus, Signs and Meanings, 86.
50 See Gneuss, Helmut, ‘The Study of Language in Anglo-Saxon England’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 72 (1990), 3–32 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Fadda, Luiselli, “The Vernacular and the Propagation of the Faith’, 1–15.Google Scholar
51 Augustine, De doctrina Christiana, II. 3, 4, ed. Martin, 33–4. Cp. idem, Sermo 288, 3, 4: PL 38, cols 1304–6 and de Trinitate, XIII. 1, 4, ed. W. J. Mountain and F. Glorie, CChr.SL 50A (Turnhout, 1968), 383–5.
52 Augustine, De doctrina Christiana, II, 1, ed. Martin, 32; for further discussion see Markus, Signs and Meanings, 29 and 93–101.
53 Markus, Signs and Meanings, 41.
54 Augustine, De catechizandis rudibus, ed. I. B. Bauer, CChr.SL 46 (Turnhout, 1969), 155–78, at 122; further discussion in Markus, Signs and Meanings, 110.
55 McCready, , Signs of Sanctity, 63.Google Scholar
56 See Fadda, Luiselli, ‘The Vernacular and the Propagation of the Faith’, 1–15.Google Scholar
57 Augustine, De doctrina Christiana, II, 1, ed. Martin, 32.
58 Markus, , Signs and Meaning, 65.Google Scholar