On the date, provenance and relationship of the ‘Solomon and Saturn’ dialogues

Anglo-Saxon England

Volumn 26, Issue , 1997, Pages 139-168

  O'neill, Patrick P ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA   (United States)

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EID: 63149102122     PISSN: 02636751     EISSN: 14740532     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0263675100002143     Document Type: Article

References (112)

1. See K. O'Brien O'Keeffe, Visible Song. Transitional Literacy in Old English Verse, CSASE 4 (Cambridge, 1990), 47-76 (with bibliography in nn. 1 and 2), and idem, The Geographic List of Solomon andSaturn IT, ASE 20 (1991), 123-41; and C. D. Wright, The Irish Tradition in Old English Literature, CSASE 6 (Cambridge, 1993), 233-56. Unrelated to the present dialogues is the socalled Prose Solomon and Saturn, on which see below, p. 143.
2. The other witness, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 41 (s. xi1 (after 1072); provenance Exeter), contains only ninety-three lines of the first poetic dialogue, entered in the margins (pp. 196-8) of a copy of the Old English Bede in a hand of s. xi1. Facsimiles of the texts of the dialogues as found in both manuscripts are now available in F. C. Robinson and E. G. Stanley, Old English Verse Texts from Many Sources: A Comprehensive Collection, EEMF 23 (Copenhagen, 1991), no. 12.
3. N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts conlainingAnglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957), no. 77; see also p. xliii, where he suggests that the Old English leaves were added in the eleventh century as a cover for the main manuscript, a liturgical service-book from Sherborne. On the latter, see T. Graham, The Old English Liturgical Directions in Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 422’, Anglia 111 (1993), 439-46. Ker's date for the script of CCCC 422 is corroborated by certain codicological and scribal similarities that it shares with other tenth-century Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. Thus, in CCCC 422, the hair-facing-flesh arrangement of the sheets; the ruling of more than one leaf at a time; and the use of the same ink as the main text for writing initials, all suggest usages from the first half of the tenth century; see Ker, Catalogue, pp. xxv, xxvi and xxxvii-xxxviii, respectively. Additionally, CCCC 422 consistendy accents prepositional on, and marks a major pause with a triangle of dots, two practices characteristic of Hand 3 of the Parker Chronicle (dated c. 955), who worked at Winchester, copying other contemporary manuscripts; see Ker, Catalogue, nos. 180 (1) and 264. See now D. N. Dumville, ‘English Square Minuscule Script: the Mid-Century Phases’, ASE2S (1994), 133-64, at 143-4 and 158-9, who classifies the script of CCCC 422 as English Square minuscule Phase II, which he would date ‘in principle to the 930s’.
4. The Poetical Dialogues of Solomon and Saturn, ed. R. J. Menner (New York, 1941); The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, ed. E. V. K. Dobbie, ASPR 6 (New York and London, 1942), 318. Another editorial problem is where to locate the first nine lines of poetry on p. 13. Dobbie leaves them suspended between the first and the second poetic dialogue; Menner treates them as the conclusion of the second poetic dialogue. See Dobbie, Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, pp. lviii-lix; Menner, Poetical Dialogues, pp. 10-12; and O’ Brien O’ Keeffe, Visible Song, pp. 68-69.
5. Menner, Poetical Dialogues, pp. 6 and 17. Dobbie, Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, pp. liv-lv, also argued for two independent poems, though he thought (p. lix) that Sol //imitated Soli.
6. Poetical Dialogues, pp. 9 (n. 5) and 56.
7. A notable exception is Daniel Donoghue, who suggests on metrical grounds that the two poems are by the same author; see below, n. 10.
8. In a section of Poetical Dialogues, pp. 5-7, entitled ‘Differences between the Two Poems’.
9. a section of Poetical Dialogues. p. 7.
10. D. Donoghue, Style in Old English Poetry: the Test of the Auxiliary (New Haven, CT, and London, 1987), pp. 91 and 173-177.
11. Here, and throughout, Menner's edition of the dialogues is cited, and his editorial conventions observed: italics for letters altered by Menner; square brackets for letters added; round brackets for letters indecipherable in the manuscript and supplied by Menner. Unless otherwise indicated, in citing Soil, the B-text (CCCC 41) is used for lines 1-29; thereafter, the A-text (CCCC 422).
12. See E. G. Stanley, ‘Studies in the Prosaic Vocabulary of Old English Verse’, NM12 (1971), 385-418, at 391-2; and M. S. Griffith, ‘Poetic Language and the Paris Psalter: the Decay of the Old English Tradition’, ASE 20 (1991), 167-186
13. Altogether (ge)seman occurs six times in poetry; of diese occurrences, three are in Sol I and SolII (data from R. L. Venezky and A. diP. Healey, A. Microfiche Concordance to Old English (Toronto, 1980)).
14. Poetical Dialogues, pp. 6 and 49-50.
15. The Prose Solomon and Saturn and Adrian and Ritheus, ed. J. E. Cross and T. D. Hill (Toronto, 1982).
16. Indeed, using Menner's technique, one might well argue that the Prose Solomon and Saturn borrowed Solomon's name from the poetic dialogues.
17. On the broad geographical meaning of terms such as Libia and Indea in Old English poetry, see Andreas and the Fates of the Apostles, ed. K. R. Brooks (Oxford, 1961), pp. 120 (note on line 43) and 122 (note on line 76).
18. See O'Brien O'Keeffe, The Geographic List’, p. 138.
19. See the Appendix below, pp. 166-168.
20. Jb///191b-192, ‘Cristes [epe\\: / Hieryffo, Galilea, Hierusa[lem]’.
21. See jb///176b-192, and O'Brien O'Keeffe, “The Geographic List’, pp. 126 and 132-134.
22. ‘Curiosity questions me about that very often in this world; eager, it proceeds, disturbs the mind.’
23. ‘Curiosity about that matter has disturbed me for fifty years, by day and by night.’
24. ‘I sought further what the nature of the Pater noster was, in regard to mind or power, strength’…’
25. See below, p. 147, n. 37.
26. The manuscript reading Sara 5e man man age (468b) is problematic. Menner emends to Sara Se a manige, but I have preferred Dobbie's reading, Sara Se man age (‘of those who commit sin”); see Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, pp. 169-70. x Poetical Dialogues, p. 107, n o t e o n line 20a.
27. ‘Indeed Chobar is either the name of a river or, actually, in accordance with an interpretation of it by which it is translated graue, “weighty”, it signifies the Tigris and Euphrates and all the great and most impressive rivers which are said to exist in the land of the Chaldeans.’ Commentarii in HieechitlemUbriXIV, ed. F. Glorie, CCSL 75 (Turnhout, 1964), 5, lines 26-30.
28. Cf. Jerome's wording, ‘omnia magna et grauissima flumina’.
29. Sol I: ‘I shall betake myself willingly onto the water's spine, to seek the Chaldeans beyond the Chobar watershed’; Sol II: ‘if you depart into the Mediterranean, to seek [your] homeland beyond the Chobar watershed’.
30. T. A. Shippey's translation, Poems of Wisdom and Learning in Old English (Cambridge and Totowa, NJ, 1976), pp. 86-103, at 87, recognizes the geographical separation, but errs in sending Saturn in the opposite direction, ‘I know, then, that if you go away across the river Chebor to the Mediterranean to look for your home… ‘
31. With the phrase on wateres bricg of Sol I, compare Beowulf 47 \b, ofer wateres hrycg, referring to a sailing in the Baltic.
32. ‘Having been driven out, he fled, therefore, and came by sailing to Italy, where he wandered for a long time’: Institutions diuinae, l.xiii.6; Lactance, Institutions Divines, ed. P. Monat, Sources chretiennes 326 (Paris, 1986), 144. See also l.xi.55 and l.xiv.12. Actually, Lactantius derived his account from Minucius Felix and the latter, in turn, from Origen, but given the relative inaccessibility of the latter two works, it seems likely that Lactantius was the immediate source. See R. M. Ogilvie, The Library of Lactantius (Oxford, 1978), p. 93. 36 If the manuscript reading Creca is emended to Creta, as plausibly suggested by O'Brien O'Keeffe, The Geographic List’, p. 135.
33. This passage from Lactantius was also used by /Elfric and Wulfstan in their homilies Defalsis Sis. See Homilies of Mfric: A Supplementary Collection, ed. J. C. Pope, 2 vols., EETS os 259-60 (London, 1967-8) II, 676-712, at lines 104-12; and The Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. D. Bethurum (Oxford, 1957), pp. 2211, lines 39-47. Pace Bethurum (p. 336), iElfric and Wulstan's knowledge of Saturn cannot have derived from Hrabanus Maurus's De universo, since the latter makes no mention of banishment from Crete.
34. ‘for behold, I shall support the Chaldeans, a bitter and swift nation… inspiring dread and terror’.
35. ‘they strove against the Lord's power; consequently, they did not complete that project’. See Menner, Poetical Dialogues, pp. 131-132.
36. Poetical Dialogues. pp. 51 and 121.
37. For example, the poet of the Old English Daniel, ed. R. T. Farrell, Daniel and Aarias (London, 1974), characterizes Nabuchodonosor as breme (104a), mcere and modig (105a) and egesfuljlda bearnum (106a).
38. ‘Behold, I shall sustain Nabuchodonosor and the Chaldeans, a people most aggressive and swift whose strength and boldness to fight, almost all the Greeks… attest.’ ‘So great was the number of [their] captives and booty…. He also, that is, Nabuchodonosor, was possessed of such power and pride that he strove to overcome nature itself and to seize the most wealthy cities by means of the strength of his army’. “When he threw up his fortification and nothing could withstand his forces, then his spirit was turned to pride’: Commentarii in Abacucpropbetam, ed. M. Adriaen, S. Hieronymi Presbyteri Commentarii in Prophetas Minores, CCSL 76A (Turnhout, 1970), 585-6, lines 160-3,182-9 and 198-200.
39. ‘long ago your people demonstrated that lesson: they strove against the Lord's power; consequently, they did not complete that project (sc. of die Tower)’. For the identification of the Genesis source, but not its significance, see Menner, Poetical Dialogues, pp. 131-
40. The land of Sennaar is the location of Babylon where the plain of Dura was and the tower [of Babel] which those people who had migrated from the east attempted to build up to the sky’: Commentarii in Daniekm Ubri/II, ed. F. Glorie.CCSL 75A (Turnhout, 1964), 778, line 28.
41. ‘And at the same time it should be noted, according to the anagogical interpretation, that the king of Babylon was not able to take away all of God's vessels… but only part of the vessels of God's temple, which are to be understood as the dogmas of truth. For if you peruse all the books of the philosophers you will inevitably find in them some part of God's vessels… But because they [jr. the Chaldeans] join falsehood with truth and squander the good of nature with many evils, therefore they are recorded as having taken part of God's vessels, but not all the vessels complete and integral’. Commentarii in Danielem, ed. Glorie, p. 778, lines 30-41.
42. ‘indeed usage and ordinary speech uses for “sorcerers” the term magi, who are regarded [however] quite differently among their own people, because they are the philosophers of the Chaldeans; and even the kings and the leaders of that same people do everything to acquire knowledge of this skill. From which it came about that on the birth of Christ the Saviour they first discovered his place of origin, and journeying to holy Bethlehem they worshipped the boy, having been shown the way by a star overhead’: Commentarii in Danielem, ed. Glorie, p. 784, lines 164-171
43. SanctiHieronymiEpistulael, ed. I. Hilberg, CSEL 54 (Vienna, 1910), 443-445.
44. See M. Herren, “Wozu diente die Falschung der Kosmographie des Aethicus’, Lateiniscbe Kultur im VIII. Jahrhundert Traube-Gedenkschrift, ed. A. Lehner and W. Berschin (St Ottilien, 1989), pp. 145-59, esp. 156. A new edition is now available: Die Kosmographie des Aethicus, ed. O. Prinz, MGH, Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 14 (Munich, 1993).
45. See O'Brien O'Keeffe, The Geographic list’, pp. 128-141
46. It even has a section entitled ‘De Gentibus, quae Vetus Testamentum non habent [sic]’, ed. P r i n z, Kosmographie, p. 117.
47. In Alfred's Wessex, thirty pounds of refined gold would have purchased the wergild of fifteen men of the highest social status. See S. Keynes and M. Lapidge, Alfred the Great. Asset's Life of KingAlfredand Other Contemporary Sources (Harmondsworth, 1983), pp. 311-12 (n. 2).
48. Menner, Poetical Dialogues, pp. 3-4 and 16-
49. As first recognized by H. Sweet, ‘Collation of the Poetical Salomon and Saturn with the MS.’, Anglia 1 (1878), 150-4, at 152-3. Having previously edited Alfred's translation of the Regulapastoralis from two early West Saxon copies, Sweet was in a good position to recognize the spelling similarities.
50. Of different origins; see A. Campbell, Old English Grammar {coir, ed., Oxford, 1977), §299.
51. In line references to text of Soil shared by the two manuscripts, readings particular to CCCC 422 are identified by ‘A’, and those particular to CCCC 41 by ‘B’.
52. Campbell, Old English Grammar, §300.
53. Old English Grammar. §296.
54. Old English Grammar. §60.
55. See K. Brunner, Altenglische Grammatik nach der angelsdchsischen Grammatik von Eduard Sievers, 3 rd ed. (Tubingen, 1965), §§196.1 and 201.6. The Hatton scribe uses this spelling no less than 192 times, as against only six occurrences in the other early West Saxon manuscript of CP, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B. xi (as preserved in a transcript, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 53). See P. J. Cosi]n, Altwestsdchsische Grammatik, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1883-6) 1,194 (§146).
56. Poetical Dialogues, p. 17.
57. Poetical Dialogues. pp. 20-1. The list of eight words given there was reduced to the present four in a later article, The Vocabulary of the Old English Poems on Judgement Day’, PMLA 62 (1947), 583-97, at 586.
58. I n Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford, 1953), pp. 119-39, at 130.
59. Though Sisam was not willing to conclude that the dialogue poems were originally West Saxon. See now R. D. Fulk, A History of Old English Meter (Philadelphia, PA, 1992), pp. 328-9 (§359), who questions Sisam's evidence.
60. ‘concerning the reflections and doubts of his mind, how his intellect answered his mind, when the latter was in doubt about something, or desired to know about something that it previously was unable to perceive clearly’ (Soli/ 2, 14-18). Quotations from Konig Alfreds des Grossen Bearbeilung derSoliloquien desAugustinus, ed. W. Endter, Bibliothek der angelsachsischen Prosa 11 (Hamburg, 1922). In Bo the relationship between the characters is more complicated; see K. Otten, Konig Alfreds Boethius, Studien zur englischen Philologie ns 3 (Tubingen, 1964), 165-73, esp. 167 and n. 24.
61. ‘I concede that I have been very fairly outwitted and that I am always much happier when you outwit me with such arguments man I ever was when I outwitted another man’ (So/il62,25-8).
62. “Nevertheless, he who had come on a journey, travelled from afar, was happy; his spirit had never before rejoiced.’
63. So/II 407b, onfadergeardar, Bo8\, 6-8, pugebundepatfyr midstride unanbindendlicum racentum, pat hit tie mag cuman to his agenum earde, pat is to pam mastanfyre 3e ojer us is, pjlas hitforlate pa eordan fYou have bound that fire with the most indissoluble fetters, lest it leave the earth, so that it is not able to come to its proper home, that is, to the superior fire that resides above us”); cf. also Bo 92,18 and 136,13.
64. SolIIAX 1-15 lists birds, fish, stones, branches, mountains and even water as containing fire; Bo 81,4-6, instances stones and water.
65. Bo 81,4-6, Swa is eacparjyron dam stanum and on Sam watere, swide earfodhame, achit ispeahpara (‘So also in that instance fire is very difficult to perceive in stones and water, yet it is a part of them”); Sol7/409-10, Hit bid eallenga eorl[e] togesihde/dam degedalan can Dryhtnes decelan. Menner's translation of the latter, Poetical Dialogues, p. 138, ‘it is wholly visible to the hero who can share in the Lord's light’, misses the contextual meaning of gedalan. Translate: ‘It is altogether visible to the nobleman, to him [only] who is able to discern the Lord's light’. None of this matter is present in De consolatione Philosophiae, ed. L. Bieler, CCSL 94 (Turnhout, 1957), III, m. ix, lines 11-12 (p. 52), which merely states that God prevents ‘the purer fire from flying up through the air’ f n e purior ignis/euolet”). Ideas similar to those shared by Alfred's Bo and Sol II Att found in later Boethian commentaries; see, for example, the relevant scholia in Trier, Stadtbibliothek, 1093 (Echternach, s. x), ‘ignis hanc naturam habeat ut altiora semper petat… ut quo naturaliter tendit. i. ad altiora ubi propriam sedem habet’. I am grateful to D r Joseph Wittig for supplying me with the text of his forthcoming edition of these scholia.
66. In Sol II 384-89, Saturn asks why water cannot remain still, Acforhwam winned Sis watergeond woroldrice/…. Ne mot on dag restan,/neahtes neded…. Ic wihte ne cannforhwan se stream ne mot stillan neahtes’ (‘But why does this water force its way forward through the world…. It is not allowed to stay still during the day, and it ventures forth at n i g h t…. I am by no means able to understand why that stream is not allowed to stay still at night7). Cf. Bo 53, 3-8,… swa swa eall watru cum ad of dare sa, and eft cumaS ealle to dare sa ? Nis nan to das lytelanylm pat he pa sa negesece; and eft of dare sa he gelent in on pa eordan, and swa he bid smugende geond pa eordan od he eft cymd to dam ilcan awelmepehearutfleow,andswaefttoparesa({… just as all waters proceed from the sea and afterwards all return to the sea? No spring is too small to seek the sea; and again it arrives from the sea into the earth; and so it goes creeping through the earth until it comes again to the same spring from which it emerged; and so again to the sea1).
67. Directly in Bo 49,22-3, Se ilcaforwyrnd para sapat heo ne mot pone peorscwold oferstappan pare eorpan (That same power [sc. ‘Godes mint7] restrains the sea so that it is not permitted to overstep the threshold of the earth1); indirectly in Sol II314-17, when Saturn describes what will happen when God does relax his control of the sea on Judgement Day, tumult of Judgement Day.1) Contrast De consolatione II, m.8, lines 9-12 (ed. Bieler, p. 36), ‘ut fluctus auidum mare/certo fine coherceat/ne terris liceat uagis/latos tendere terminos’, where the controlling agent is Amor.
68. Bo 37, 17-21, Hu ne wast pu pat bit nis nauhtgecynde ne nauhtgewunelicpat anig iviSenveardping bion gemengedmd ddrum widerweardum, o33e anigegeferrcedenne wifi habban?\Ac seogecyndhit onscunaipat hi ne magon iveorSan togadere gemenged, pe ma Se pat good and patyfel magon atgadere bion (‘Don't you know that it is not at all natural or customary that any opposite be mixed or have any intercourse with another opposite? On the contrary, nature shuns their mingling. All the more reason then that good and evil cannot be joined together”). By contrast, De consolatione II, 6, 36-8 (Bieler, 30) restricts its application to the incompatibility of true honour with wickedness, ‘si ipsis dignitatibus ac potestatibus inesset aliquid naturalis ac proprii boni, numquam pessimis prouerirent’. Other topics shared by Sol II and Bo are: (1) God's tolerance of evil people; a guiding theme in Bo, it is discussed in Sol II350, forhwon Sonne leofaS se nyrsa leng?; (2) how to counter the effects of hostile Fate; Sol 1146-69 recommends the Paternoster, Sol II430-3 suggests a combination of intelligence, the help of friends, and the Holy Spirit to moderate its blows; and Bo 138, 15-18, advises man to be philosophical. Both condemn the man who indulges in complaining about his fate; Bo 67, 27-9, be scealtiligan arestpathe… ado of his mode ungerisenliceymbhogan, and foliate pa seofunga his eormpa (‘he ought first to strive… to remove from his mind misguided anxieties and leave behind the lamenting of his sorrows’) and SolII342-3, Unlade bid and ormodse 5e a wile /geomrian ongihSe (Wretched and spiridess is the one who persistendy wishes to indulge in anxiety1).
69. “You have read’, she said, ‘in the fables h ow the Giants assaulted heaven; but t he benign power overthrew them also, as was only p r o p e r ’ (ed. Bieler, p. 61).
70. See P. J. Frankis, the Thematic Significance o f entageweorc and related Imagery in The Wanderer1, ASE 2 (1973), 253-69, at 261-3; and E. R. Grathwohl, ‘Infabulisgigantar. a Study of Sources for a Digression in King Alfred's Boethius’ (unpubl. MA dissertation, Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1981).
71. Frankis, The Thematic Significance’, pp. 263-4, regards Alfred's Deira as ‘a strikingly Anglicized form of the biblical Dura’, a deliberate attempt to correlate Nimrod's Babel with contemporary pagan Scandinavian settlements in Northumbria.
72. Commentarii in Danielem, ed. Glorie, p. 798, line 473. Conceivably, Alfred was influenced in his choice of this reading by the Old English homonym Deira, the Northumbrian territory which figures in Bede's Historia ecdesiastica and in the anonymous Whitby Life of Gregory, and was led to identify Deira as a people, in accordance with the Anglo-Saxon practice of equating a kingdom with its ruling tribe.
73. See above, p. 150.
74. Bo 99,17-20, SwagebyreS a/cum para p e wind wid Sam gadcundan arm/alder, negewyxS him nan weorSstipe on Sam, ac wyrS segewanodpe hi ar hafdon (‘So it happens to all those who struggle against divine power; they do not accrue any honour thereby; rather, the honour which they possessed before is lessened”); Sol 7/318-20, Wa bid donne Sissum modgum monnum…. leo Sat Sine leode gecySSon:/ wunnon hie wid Dryhtnes miehtum; fordan hie Sat wore negedegdon (‘Suffering will then be the lot of these arrogant men…. Long ago your people bore witness to the same message: they strove against the Lord's power; consequendy, they did not complete that project”).
75. Indeed, it could be argued that in this milieu originated the name and identity of Saturn as found in the dialogues. By reinterpreting the classical legend of Jove and the giants in the light of the Genesis story, Alfred, in effect, linked Saturn (one of the main characters of the legend) with the story of the Tower of Babel. The main objection, of course, is that Saturn was on the side of the gods against the giants, though an exact correspondence of roles is hardly to be expected here. Menner, Poetical Dialogues, pp. 107-8, and O'Brien O'Keeffe, The Geographic List’, p. 137 and n. 66, attempt to explain Saturn's Chaldean identity by reference to Isidore, Btymologiae VIII.xi.23, which identifies Ninus, the first king of the Assyrians, with Saturn. However, despite the geographical proximity of Assyrians and Chaldeans, Isidore had no doubt that they were different peoples; see, for example, Etym. IX.ii.3, ‘Assur, a quo Assyriorum pullulavit imperium… Arphaxat, a quo gens Chaldaeorum exorta est’ (‘Assur from whom the empire of the Assyrians sprung…. Arphaxat from whom the race of the Chaldeans originated”). In any case, Sol //319b implies, in its use of the temporal adverb ieo (‘of old”), that Saturn was a relatively late descendant in the genealogy of his people, the Chaldeans, not the progenitor envisaged by Isidore.
76. For s o m e examples, see Menner, Poetical Dialogues, pp. 37-42.
77. Geto/occurs once, in Sol 143.
78. Quotations from Menner's edition, the Prose Dialogue of MS A’, in Poetical Dialogues, appendix (pp. 168-71), identified by page and line.
79. See Menner, Poetical Dialogues, pp. 41-2. For example, of the four prayers to be sung in Charm no. 27 {Anglo-SaxonMagic, ed. G. Storms (The Hague, 1948)), ‘Sing p o n n e Credo and Paternoster and pis leof: Beati immaculati pone sealm, mid ad dominum }?am xii gebed sealmum’, it is significant that the final two are identified as psalms, but no generic identification is given to either the Credo o r Patera possible canticles.
80. See Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (Leipzig, 1968-81) IX.2, 971, S.V., I I. B. l b J. F. Niermeyer, Mediae LatinitatisLexicon Minus (Leiden, 1976), p. 748, S.V., 4; F. Blatt and Y. Lefevre, Novum Glossarium MediaeLatinitatis, O (Copenhagen, 1983), S.V., III.C.2.
81. Ed. W Levison, MGH, SS rer. Merov. 5 (1910), 583-606, at 597, line 10.
82. Of the seventeen occurrences of organ listed in A Microfiche Concordance to Old English, ed. A. dip. Healey and R. L. Venezky (Toronto, 1980), only the present three from the dialogues and (probably) the example quoted below (p. 160, n. 93) have this specialized meaning.
83. There are also two instances of nominative plural organa, perhaps modelled on the /-stem inflexion.
84. J. Bosworth and T. N. Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (Oxford, 1892-8), p. 765a, S.V. organorganes, propose as a third example the following quotation from an anomymous homily, ‘ac)?a:r is aa singalic organa sweg \>e from englum 7 heah-englum on pxs hehstan Cyninges gesihSe bid sungen’, horn Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, ed. B. Thorpe, 2 vols. (London, 1840) II, 400 [= p. 469 of the 1840 folio edition]; see also J. Bately, Anonymous Old English Homilies: A Preliminary Bibliography of Source Studies (Binghamton, NY, 1993), p. 50. They were probably influenced by Thorpe's translation: ‘but there is ever constant sound of organs, which are played by angels and archangels in the sight of the highest King’. However, since the reference almost certainly is to Rev. V.9-13, which describes the myriads of angels who surround the throne of the Lamb, forever singing ‘a new canticle’ (novum canticum), it is more likely that organa (sweg) refers to this angelic canticle and, consequently, is singular, a reading which accords well in number with its defining adjectival clause, pe… bid sungen. Perhaps organa is a copyist's error for organan; in any case it does not belong to the a-stem declension. The form se organan of Ji>//B53a, where A53a has se organ, may reflect contamination by the dominant weak inflection.
85. See J. Mearns, The Canticles of the Western Church (Cambridge, 1916), pp. 62-67
86. See P. P. O'Neill, ‘Latin Learning at Winchester in the Early Eleventh Century: the Evidence of the Lambeth Psalter’, ASE 20 (1991), 143-66, at 149-150
87. For evidence that the exemplar of this manuscript (CCCC 422) was itself a copy, see Menner, Poetical Dialogues, p. 3, and R. I. Page, ‘A Note on the Text of MS CCCC 422 (Solomon and Saturn)’, ME 34 (1965), 36-9, at 38.
88. They are printed in Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland, ed. A. W. Haddan and W. Stubbs, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1871) III, 527-659.
89. D. N. Dumville, Wessex and England/rom Alfred to Edgar(y(/oodbndge, 1992), p. 162.
90. For what it is worth as an isolated witness, the Junius Psalter (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 27), written probably in the 920s (see Dumville, Wessex and England, p. 106) presents a very conservative text of the Roman psalter. Unfortunately, the final gathering, which presumably contained the canticles, is now lost.
91. Councils and Synods with other Documents relating to the English Church, ed. D. W h i t e l o c k etal., 2 vols. (Oxford, 1964-81) I, 7-12, at 8,10 and 12, respectively. For an English translation, see Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred the Great, pp. 26-27.
92. As argued by A. Correa, The Durham Collector, HBS 107 (London, 1992), 121-122.
93. See Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred the Great, p. 214, n. 26; and M. Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Litanies of the Saints, HBS 106 (London, 1991), 65. But this tempting scenario is rejected by D. N. Dumville, English Caroline Script and Monastic History: Studies in Benedictinism, A.D. 950-1030 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1993), p. 131, n. 91, who finds it implausible ‘that Count Achadeus, having no doubt paid handsomely for the book's creation, would have been content to see it taken across the sea a year later’. On the same grounds one might argue that Achadeus could have been convinced to part with it for an equally handsome recompense.
94. Asser's Life of KingAlfred, ed. W. H. Stevenson (Oxford, 1904, repr. 1959), p. 63. Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred the Great, p. 93, translate: ‘he [Alfred] sent messengers across the sea to Gaul to seek instructors. From there, he summoned Grimbald, a priest and monk and a very venerable man, an excellent chanter, extremely learned in every kind of ecclesiastical doctrine and in the Holy Scriptures ‘
95. Asser's Life of KingAlfred, p. 24, lines 1-3 (trans. Keynes and Lapidge, p. 75, ‘After this he learned the “daily round”, that is, the services of the hours, and then certain psalms and many prayers’). Likewise p. 76, lines 12-14, ‘Divina quoque ministeria et missam scilicet cotidie audire, psalmos quosdam et orationes et horas diurnas et nocturnas celebrare…’ (Keynes and Lapidge, p. 91, ‘He was also in the invariable habit of listening daily to divine services and Mass, and of participating in certain psalms and prayers and in the day-time and night-time offices… ”); and p. 88, lines 6-9, ‘subito ostendens libellum, quern in sinum suum sedulo portabat, in quo diurnus cursus et psalmi quidam atque orationes quaedam, quas ille in iuventute sua legerat, scripti habebantur…’ (Keynes and Lapidge, p. 99, ‘he suddenly showed me a little book which he constandy carried on his person, and in which were written the day-time offices and some psalms and certain prayers which he had learned in his youth’).
96. Details are provided in my forthcoming edition of Alfred's translation of the first fifty psalms, to be published by the Medieval Academy of America.
97. Likewise PS. XXIV.17, tobradandgemanigfealdod'combining Ro. dilatatae and G a. multtplicatae.
98. Menner, Poetical Dialogues, p. 9, noting that there is no visual break in CCCC 422 between Soli and the succeeding Prose Dialogue, considered (and rejected) the possibility that ‘the poem was a partial versification of the first portion of a longer prose piece’, of which the present Prose Dialogue represents the remainder. See now Wright, The Irish Tradition, p. 234, who argues that the two pieces ‘may well be translations of two parts of the same Latin source, and, if so, are probably by the same author’. His case would be greatly strengthened if that putative Latin source were discovered.
99. See Sol 7/171-172a, modgleawe men,… gewesanymbe bira wisdom (‘wise men… debating each one's wisdom”).
100. As against O'Brien O'Keeffe's claim, Visible Song, p. 70, that the ‘central tension of Solomon and Saturn I lies in the opposition of speaking and writing both as modes of discourse and as means to power’.
101. See W. A. Kretzschmar, ‘Adaptation and anwea/din the Old English Orosius’, ASE16 (1987), 1275.
102. ‘Saturn said: Lo! I have enjoyed the books of all foreign lands, by means of skill in letters, have unlocked the knowledge of Libya and Greece; likewise also the historia of the kingdom of India. The commentators have guided me to narratives, faithfully collected in that great book hard like a sword, such as I was never able to find in all those ancient writings. I sought further what was the nature of the Pater noster, adorned with palm-branches, with regard to mind or power, strength or possessions or nobility’.
103. What Orosius calls the Triquadrum’ of Africa, Europe and Asia; cf. The Old English Orosius, ed. J. Bately, EETS ss 6 (London, 1980), 8, lines 11-14, Ure ieldran ealnepisneymbhwyrft pises middangeardes… on preo todaldon… Asiam 7 Europem 7 Affricum (‘Our ancestors divided the full expanse of this earth… into three parts… Asia and Europe and Africa”).
104. See M. Forster, ‘Die liturgische Bedeutung von ae. traht, Beiblatt yrAnglia 53 (1942), 180-4; and H. Gneuss, ‘linguistic Borrowing and Old English Lexicography: Old English Terms for the Books of the Liturgy’, Problems of Old English Lexicography, ed. A. Bammesberger, Eichstatter Beitrage, Abteilung Sprache und literatur 15 (Regensburg, 1985), 107-29, at 116.
105. See the numerous entries under tr(e)aht-in A Microfiche Concordance to Old English.
106. See especially the prologue to Luke's Gospel (Luke 1.1-2), multi conati sunt ordinare narrationem quae in nobis conpletae sunt rerum, sicut tradiderunt nobis qui ab initio ipsi viderunt…. (‘Many have attempted to present in order a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled among us, according as they transmitted them to us, who were from the beginning eyewitnesses’); and the epilogue to John's Gospel (John XXI.24), hie est discipulus qui testimonium perhibet de his et scripsit haec et scimus quia verum est testimonium eius (This is the disciple who bears witness to these events and has written these things; and we know that his testimony is true”).
107. PoeticalDialogues, pp. 105-106.
108. On Meces as a ‘genitive of quality’, see B. Mitchell, Old English Syntax, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1985), §1292. On the rare neuter inflexion of hoc, see Sievers-Brunner,v4//?Hg/// Grammatik, §284, n. 4.
109. Compare ‘heardum mece’ glossing diraframea (from Aldhelm's De laudibus virginitatis) in Old English Glosses, chiefly Unpublished, ed. A. S. Napier, Anecdota Oxoniensia 4 (Oxford, 1900), 25 (nos. 890 and 891).
110. PL 77, col. 114B. Alfred's translation: ‘When a man has his sword by his side, then he controls his unlawful desires with the words of the sacred teachings.’
111. ‘O mighty one, bind now your sword over your thigh-that is the spiritual teaching which is contained in the Gospel, which is sharper than any sword.’ Alfred's translation reflects the influence of the Gallican psalter reading, superfemur.
112. ‘A Note on the Text’, p. 37.