King Alfred’s Preface and the Teaching of Latin in Anglo-Saxon England

English Historical Review

Volumn 117, Issue 472, 2002, Pages 596-604

  Godden, Malcolm ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 84966777536     PISSN: 00138266     EISSN: 14774534     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/ehr/117.472.596     Document Type: Article

References (28)

1. King Alfred’s West-Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care, ed. H. Sweet, E[arly] E[nglish] T[ext] S[eries] OS 45 and 50 (London, 1871), p 7.
2. Ibid., p 7.
3. English Historical Documents: Vol. I, c.500–1042, ed. D. Whitelock (1st edition, London and New York, 1955), p 819. The translation appears unchanged in the second edition of 1979. In her 1967 revision of Sweet’s Reader she added a note to the passage stating that hierran hade meant ‘the ecclesiastical order’, though without giving her evidence; Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Reader, rev. D. Whitelock (15th edn, Oxford, 1967), p 224.
4. Anglo-Saxon Prose, ed. and trans. by Michael Swanton (London, 1975), p 32; S. Keynes and M. Lapidge, Alfred the Great (Harmondsworth, 1983), p 126; Poems and Prose from the Old English, trans. by Burton Raffel, ed. Alexandra H. Olsen and Burton Raffel (New Haven and London, 1998), p 199.
5. D. Whitelock, ‘The Prose of Alfred’s Reign’, in Continuations and Beginnings, ed. E. G. Stanley (London, 1966), pp 68–9. Cf too C. P. Wormald, ‘The Uses of Literacy in Anglo-Saxon England and its Neighbours’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society xxvii (1977), 95–114, at 103; Jennifer Morrish, ‘King Alfred’s letter as a Source on Learning in England’, in Studies in Earlier Old English Prose, ed. P. E. Szarmach (Albany, 1986), pp 87–107, at 89; Richard Abels, Alfred the Great: War, Kingship and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1998), p 227.
6. D. N. Dumville, Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar (Woodbridge, 1992), p 195. Similarly Michael Lapidge, in his chapter on the Anglo-Latin background in Stanley B. Greenfield and Daniel G. Calder, A New Critical History of Old English Literature (New York and London, 1986), briefly summarizes Alfred’s complaint about the ignorance of Latin in his time and comments ‘Alfred took decisive measures to correct this situation’ (p 25).
7. D. Bullough, ‘The educational tradition in England from Alfred to Ælfric: teaching utriusque linguae’, Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’ Alto Medioevo 19 (Spoleto 1972), 453–94, at 458; Alfred Smyth, King Alfred the Great (Oxford, 1995), p 560.
8. Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland, ed. A. W. Haddan and W. Stubbs, 3 vols (Oxford 1869–78), iii.362–76, §10; Wulfstan’s Canons of Edgar, ed. R. Fowler, EETS os 266 (London, 1972), p 9, §32.
9. Asser’s Life of King Alfred, ed. W. H. Stevenson (Oxford, 1904), ch. 75, lines 11–21.
10. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, completed by R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom, 2 vols (Oxford, 1998–9), i.221 [ii.135.6].
11. Sweet, King Alfred, p 2: ‘ægðer ge godcundra hada ge woruldcundra’.
12. Epistola Bede ad Ecgbertum Episcopum, ed. C. Plummer, in Venerabilis Baedae Opera Historica, 2 vols (Oxford, 1896; reprinted as one volume, 1975), i.405–23, at 408–9; Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, iii.362–76, §10; Ælfric refers in detail to unlearned clerics with little knowledge of Latin in his preface to Genesis (The Old English Version of the Heptateuch, Ælfric’s Treatise on the Old and New Testament, and his Preface to Genesis, ed. S. J. Crawford, EETS, os 160 (London, 1922; reprinted with the text of two additional manuscripts transcribed by N. R. Ker, London, 1969), pp 76–80), and much of his output is evidently for their use; and Byrhtferth in his Enchiridion explains several times that the Latin parts are for monks and the English for clerics; Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion, ed. P. S. Baker and M. Lapidge, EETS ss 15 (Oxford, 1995).
13. J. Bosworth and T. N. Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (London, 1898); T. N. Toller, Supplement (Oxford, 1921), with Revised and Enlarged Addenda by A. Campbell (Oxford, 1972).
14. The Complete Corpus of Old English in Machine Readable Form (TEI compatible version), Dictionary of Old English Project, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto.
15. Regula Pastoralis in Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844–64), lxxvii.107.
16. Sweet, King Alfred, p 411.
17. Ibid., p 410.
18. That Alfred might well have thought in terms of monks having secular overlords is suggested by clause 20 of his Laws: ‘Gif man oðres monnes munuce feoh oðfæste butan ðæs munuces hlafordes lefnesse . . . ‘[’If someone entrusts property to another man’s monk without the permission of the monk’s lord . . .’] (Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. F. Liebermann, 3 vols (Halle, 1903–16), ii.60.
19. Regula Pastoralis in PL lxxvii.170.
20. Sweet, King Alfred, pp 410–13.
21. Stevenson, Asser’s Life, c.93.
22. Sweet, King Alfred, pp 400–401. By Godes ðiowas Alfred here and elsewhere seems to denote the clergy.
23. King Alfred’s Version of St Augustine’s Soliloquies, ed. T. A. Carnicelli (Cambridge Mass, 1969), p 72.
24. Stevenson, Asser’s Life, c.94.
25. Sweet, King Alfred, pp 31–3.
26. Ibid., pp 31–32.
27. Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, ed. W. W. Skeat, EETS os 76, 82, 94, 114 (London, 1881–1900; reprinted as two volumes, 1966), ii.228 (item 31, line 140); The Blickling Homilies, ed. R. Morris (EETS os 58, 63, 73, Oxford, 1874–80; reprinted as one volume 1967), p 219.
28. Liebermann, Gesetze, ii.258 (VI Ethelred 52). It is possible that the clause intended a distinction between hierarchies among the laity (‘mihtigra for worulde’) and hierarchies among the clergy (‘hearra on hade’), but even so it would be recognizing differences of rank within the ordained rather than using a simple ranking of lay and religious.