1

ROYAL BOOKS IN ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND: THE IMPLICATIONS OF

BOOKS OWNED OR GIVEN BY KINGS

DAVID PRATT

ABSTRACT

This article examines the evidence for books associated with kings in Anglo-Saxon

England, making the case for the ninth century as the key period of change. A wide

variety of books were probably present in the household of later Anglo-Saxon kings.

There was a degree of connection between the gift of books by kings and practices of

ownership. The donation of de luxe gospel-books to favoured churches played a

distinctive role, emphasizing the king’s position in ecclesiastical leadership. In a number

of cases, gospel-books associated with kings subsequently acted as a repository for

documents, entered in the margins or fly-leaves by scribes at the recipient church.

Certain aspects of this practice strengthen the case for identifying several late Anglo-

Saxon gospel-books as royal gifts. Books given by kings had a numinous quality arising

from their royal associations. The strategies underpinning the dissemination of this

‘royal’ culture are explored.

The practice of the ownership of books by Anglo-Saxon kings relates to several

important areas of debate, not only the question of the personal learning of individual

kings but such broader issues as the literacy of the lay elite, the relationship of Anglo-

Saxon uses of the written word to Continental trends, and the nature of cultural

patronage.1 The phenomenon of books associated with kings is well known, arising

naturally for the later Anglo-Saxon period where a number of kings, notably Alfred,

Æthelstan, Edgar and Cnut, played important roles in literary and cultural patronage.

Their activities featured prominently in the recent British Library exhibition on royal

manuscripts, enabling fruitful comparison with the later medieval and Tudor periods.2

The field has therefore been shaped by valuable studies of groups of manuscripts

associated with particular kings; some of these are among the best known of Anglo-

1 An early version of this article was delivered at a conference entitled From the bibliophile kings to the

national heritages, hosted by the Bibliopegia Research Group, and held at the Faculty of Information

Sciences, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, 19-21 May 2010 (coordinator: Ana Belén Sànchez

Prieto). In the absence of proceedings, this article is offered here as a record of the Anglo-Saxon

component of the conference. I am extremely grateful to Simon Keynes, Rosamond McKitterick and

Tessa Webber for comments and discussion; and to Simon Keynes and David Woodman for generously

allowing me to take account of work in advance of publication. 2 S. McKendrick, J. Lowden and K. Doyle, Royal Manuscripts: the Genius of Illumination (London,

2011), esp. pp. 96-115 (nos. 1-10).

2

Saxon manuscripts, others more obscure.3 Perhaps as a result, the overall impression of

the evidence for royal book ownership might seem uneven, and dominated by the two

best documented cases, Alfred (871-99) and Æthelstan (924-39). Indeed, in a recent

survey chapter Richard Gameson has expressed the view that, with the exception of

these two rulers, ‘late Anglo-Saxon kings and queens do not emerge from the surviving

evidence as major sponsors of decorated book production’, suggesting a contrast with

the bibliophile activities of contemporaneous Ottonian rulers.4

The issue is complicated, however, by the distinction between books physically

in royal ownership and books given as gifts by kings, suggesting a variety of uses for

books. One should note especially the uncertain implications of books given as gifts,

which might, on the one hand, have been previously in royal possession, or, on the

other, have been acquired or commissioned for the purposes of gift.5 The issue relates

more broadly to the uses of books in elite contexts, which included an important role for

opulent display, but also more intimate engagement with their content.6 One must also

acknowledge the potential importance in such contexts of liturgical and devotional uses

of particular types of book.7 Perhaps because of these uncertainties, royal book

ownership has tended to be studied not as a practice in its own right, but in relation to

other themes, such as learned kingship, the history of libraries, literacy, or court culture

and patronage.8 There have been competing impressions of the degree and nature of

royal book ownership. On the one hand, there is a view which would emphasize the

3 S. Keynes, ‘King Athelstan’s Books’, Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies

presented to Peter Clemoes, ed. M. Lapidge and H. Gneuss (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 143-201; T. A.

Heslop, ‘The Production of de luxe Manuscripts and the Patronage of King Cnut and Queen Emma’,

ASE 19 (1990), 151-95; S. Foot, Æthelstan: the First King of England (New Haven, CT, 2011), pp. 57-

8, 106-7 and 117-21; cf. also D. Pratt, ‘The Illnesses of King Alfred the Great’, ASE 30 (2001), 39-90,

at 45-9 and 63-6; R. Jayatilaka, ‘King Alfred and his Circle’, The Cambridge History of the Book in

Britain I: c. 400-1100, ed. R. Gameson (Cambridge, 2012), 670-8. 4 R. Gameson, ‘Book Decoration in England, c. 871 - c. 1100’, The Cambridge History of the Book I, ed.

Gameson, 249-93, at 275, cf. 278. 5 For this issue, see Keynes, ‘King Athelstan’s Books’, pp. 146-7 and 197; R. Gameson, The Role of Art

in the Late Anglo-Saxon Church (Oxford, 1995), p. 257. 6 See esp. R. Gameson, ‘Ælfric and the Perception of Script and Picture in Anglo-Saxon England’,

ASSAH 5 (1992), 87-101; for books as material artefacts, see C. R. Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art: a New

Perspective (Manchester, 1982), pp. 94-8, 107 and 201-3. 7 See below, pp. 9, 13-15, 18, 23-4, 39-40, 44-5, 53-4, 58 and 63. 8 M. Lapidge, ‘Artistic and Literary Patronage in Anglo-Saxon Literature’, in his Anglo-Latin Literature

600-899 (London, 1996), pp. 37-91; idem, The Anglo-Saxon Library (Oxford, 2006), pp. 48-50, 115-20

and 237-9; C. P. Wormald, ‘The Uses of Literacy in Anglo-Saxon England and its Neighbours’, TRHS,

5th ser. (1977), 95-114; S. Kelly, ‘Anglo-Saxon Lay Society and the Written Word’, The Uses of

Literacy in Early Medieval Europe, ed. R. McKitterick (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 36-62; R. Deshman,

‘Christus Rex et Magi Reges: Kingship and Christology in Ottonian and Anglo-Saxon Art’, in his Eye

and Mind: Collected Essays in Anglo-Saxon and Early Medieval Art by Robert Deshman, ed. A. S.

Cohen (Kalamazoo, MI, 2010), pp. 137-71; K. E. Karkov, The Ruler Portraits of Anglo-Saxon England

(Woodbridge, 2004); M. Townend, ‘Contextualizing the Knútsdrápur: Skaldic Praise-Poetry at the

Court of Cnut’, ASE 30 (2001), 145-79; Jayatilaka, ‘King Alfred and his Circle’.

3

considerable scope for the ownership of books by kings and their close relatives,

especially in the later Anglo-Saxon period, from the ninth to the eleventh centuries.9 On

the other, in addition to Gameson’s view of developments after 939, other voices have

expressed scepticism, either in relation to the lay use of books in general, or to the

literacy of kings, or to the relationship of royal imagery to reality.10

Two evidential issues are especially relevant. Firstly, if England is viewed

comparatively, one must consider the extensive evidence for book owership on the part

of other European rulers, especially the Carolingian and Ottonian dynasties.11 From the

reign of Charlemagne onwards, there is remarkable evidence for books in the possession

of rulers, including many surviving manuscripts, and also booklists which have been

interpreted as describing a ‘palace library’.12 Collectively, the material spans a wide

range of types of book, not just devotional material and bibles but also works of

theology, history, other learned texts, poetry of a variety of kinds, and law-books. This

presents a dilemma for the Anglo-Saxonist, inasmuch as the English royal material is

not on the same scale, but there is a question whether England should be judged by the

9 J. W. Thompson, The Literacy of the Laity in the Middle Ages (New York, 1960), pp. 116-22; Keynes,

‘King Athelstan’s Books’, pp. 144-7 and 196-8; Lapidge, ‘Artistic and Literary Patronage’, pp. 49-69;

M. F. Smith, R. Fleming and P. Halpin, ‘Court and Piety in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, Catholic Hist.

Rev. 87 (2001), 569-602; D. Pratt, The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great (Cambridge, 2007);

McKendrick, Lowden and Doyle, Royal Manuscripts, pp. 96-115; S. Keynes, ‘Alfred the Great and the

Kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons’, The Brill Companion to Alfred the Great, ed. N. G. Discenza and P. E.

Szarmach (Leiden, forthcoming). 10 Doubts have been raised by Patrick Wormald over the impact of King Alfred’s educational reforms

(‘Uses of Literacy’, pp. 108-14), and more recently by Malcolm Godden over the degree of connection

between King Alfred and the vernacular works usually attributed to him: see M. R. Godden, ‘Did King

Alfred Write Anything?’, MÆ 76 (2007), pp. 1-23; idem, Stories from the Court of King Alfred’, Saints

and Scholars: New Perspectives on Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture in honour of Hugh Magennis,

ed. S. McWilliams (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 123-40. Cf. also M. B. Parkes, ‘The Literacy of the Laity’,

in his Scribes, Scripts and Readers: Studies in the Communication, Presentation and Dissemination of

Medieval Texts (London, 1991), pp. 275-97, at 275-6. 11 Much of the evidence is conveniently listed in P. E. Schramm and F. Mütherich, Denkmale der

deutschen Könige und Kaiser I: Ein Beitrag zur Herrschergeschichte von Karl dem Grossen bis

Friedrich II, 2nd ed. (Munich, 1981). In addition to the studies of Charlemagne’s library, listed in the

next footnote, see R. McKitterick ‘Charles the Bald (823-877) and his Library: the Patronage of

Learning’ and ‘The Palace School of Charles the Bald’, in her The Frankish Kings and Culture in the

Early Middle Ages (Aldershot, 1995), nos. V and VI, pp. 28-47 and 326-39; W. Koehler and F.

Mütherich, Die karolingischen Miniaturen, 7 vols. (Berlin, 1930-); N. Staubach, Rex Christianus:

Hofkultur und Herrschaftspropaganda im Reich Karls des Kahlen - Teil II: Grundlegung der ‘religion

royale’, Pictura et Poesis II/2 (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 1993), 221-81; F. Mütherich, ‘The

Library of Otto III’, The Role of the Book in Medieval Culture, ed. P. Ganz, 2 vols. (Turnhout, 1986) II,

11-25; H. Hoffmann, Buchkunst und Königtum im ottonischen und frühsalischen Reich, 2 vols., MGH

Schriften 30 (Stuttgart, 1986); H. Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination: an Historical Study, 2

vols., 2nd ed. (London, 1999); E. Garrison, Ottonian Imperial Art and Portraiture: the Artistic

Patronage of Otto III and Henry II (Farnham, 2012). 12 For the latter, see B. Bischoff, ‘The Court Library of Charlemagne’ and ‘The Court Library under

Louis the Pious’, in his Manuscripts and Libraries in the Age of Charlemagne, trans. M. Gorman

(Cambridge, 1994), pp. 20-55 and 76-92; D. Bullough, ‘Charlemagne’s Court Library Revisited’, EME

12 (2003), 339-63; R. McKitterick, Charlemagne (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 345-72.

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same standards.13 There are good arguments that the Carolingian Renaissance should be

regarded as exceptional in the overall scale of manuscript production, yet it also exerted

considerable influence on neighbouring regions.14 At the very least, the Anglo-Saxon,

Caroligian and Ottonian elite inhabited the same cultural world.

One faces, secondly, a range of evidential problems in the case of England. In

general the chances of manuscript survival here were weaker when compared with

Continental Europe, with the Norman Conquest and the Dissolution as major

breaches.15 There are very few lists of book collections of any kind, but while Anglo-

Saxon libraries may have been less substantial than their Continental counterparts, the

more widespread availability of Continental booklists provides greater opportunities to

reconstruct such collections.16 Another potentially distorting factor is the general

shortage of inscriptions of ownership or donation in Anglo-Saxon books.17 As will be

seen below, the giving of books appears to have been a regular practice among the later

Anglo-Saxon elite, which raises questions over the limited number of ex-dono

inscriptions. One possible explanation may lie in the general loss of original book

covers, since examples are known of inscriptions once present on the covers of books.18

13 For this issue, see Keynes, ‘King Athelstan’s Books’, pp. 196-7; cf. Wormald, ‘Uses of Literacy’, pp.

100 and 109. 14 For issues of scale, see D. Ganz, ‘Book Production in the Carolingian Empire and the Spread of

Caroline Minuscule’, The New Cambridge Medieval History II c.700-c.900, ed. R. McKitterick

(Cambridge, 1995), 786-808, at 786-9 and 801; R. Gameson, ‘Alfred the Great and the Destruction and

Production of Christian Books’, Scriptorium 49 (1995), 180-210, at 183-4; Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon

Library, pp. 58-60, and 127-8, cf. 130-1. 15 For the Norman Conquest, see Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library, pp. 70-4; Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon

Art, pp. 216-20 and 224-6; R. M. Thomson, ‘The Norman Conquest and English Libraries’, The Role of

the Book, ed. Ganz II, 27-40; D. N. Dumville, ‘Anglo-Saxon Books: Treasure in Norman Hands?’, ANS

16 (1993), 83-99; R. Gameson, ‘The Circulation of Books between England and the Continent, c. 871 -

c. 1100’, The Cambridge History of the Book I, ed. Gameson, 344-72, at 364-8; M. J. Faulkner, ‘The

Uses of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts c. 1066-1200’ (unpubl. DPhil dissertation, Univ. of Oxford, 1996),

esp. pp. 22-71. For early modern developments, see N. R. Ker, ‘The Migration of Manuscripts from the

English Medieval Libraries’, in his Books, Collectors and Libraries: Studies in Medieval Heritage, ed.

A. G. Watson (London, 1985), pp. 459-70; Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library, pp. 56, n. 23 and 74-7,

with references. 16 M. Lapidge, ‘Surviving Booklists from Anglo-Saxon England’, Learning and Literature, ed. Lapidge

and Gneuss, pp. 33-89; idem, The Anglo-Saxon Library, pp. 53-62 and 133-54; cf. R. McKitterick, The

Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 169-96, 245-52 and 261-6; Ganz, ‘Book

Production’, p. 787. 17 Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library, pp. 56-7, with references; see also D. Pratt, ‘The Voice of the King

in “King Edgar’s Establishment of Monasteries”’, ASE 41 (2013), p. 167, n. 108. 18 Heslop, ‘Production of de luxe Manuscripts’, pp. 180-1; cf. also Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, p. 201-3;

M. Gullick, ‘Bookbindings’, The Cambridge History of the Book I, ed. Gameson, 294-309, at 304-7.

For the inscription once present on the cover of Rheims, Bibliothèque Nationale Carnegie, 9 (England,

s. ximed; provenance Rheims, 1062 x 1065), the de luxe gospel-book given to Rhems by Ælfgar,

ealdorman of Mercia, in memory of his son Burgheard, see S. Baxter, ‘The Death of Burgheard son of

Ælfgar and its Context’, Frankland: the Franks and the World of the Early Middle Ages. Essays in

honour of Dame Jinty Nelson, ed. P. Fouracre and D. Ganz (Manchester, 2008), pp. 266-84, at 272-4.

For the inscription, recording the gift of Henry II and Kunigunde, once present on the cover of

Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Bibl. 140 (Reichenau, c. 1000; provenance Bamberg), the de luxe

5

There is also a general shortage of intimate narrative sources, describing the daily lives

of kings and their families, against which the use of books can be assessed.19 One must,

therefore, use different types of evidence in combination; there is a particular danger in

arguments relying on the silence of one evidential category.

The purpose of this article as to consider royal book ownership as a practice

which may be associated with a number of later Anglo-Saxon kings, and to explore the

nature of its relationship to the royal practice of giving books, of which a number of

instances are known. It is necessary to integrate all forms of evidence, not only

surviving manuscripts but also lost books known through references in other sources.

The study surveys the Anglo-Saxon period, allowing the case to be made for important

differences in the cultural configuration of later Anglo-Saxon England, and for a

continuous tradition of personal learning among King Alfred’s successors. A wide range

of types of books may be suspected to have been present in the household of later

Anglo-Saxon kings; among surviving manuscripts, nevertheless, one must be content

with a narrower group of books with strong claims to have been royal possessions. The

study of manuscripts known or suspected to have been given by kings suggests a degree

of connection between donation and practices of ownership. Donated books were an

important form of royal culture which could be disseminated widely to churches across

the kingdom. Certain donated books are likely to have spent a significant period in royal

ownership, but the sample is unlikely to be representative of books in royal possession.

The gift of de luxe gospel-books to favoured churches was a special practice, with

Carolingian precedents, communicating a royal image of ecclesiastical leadership. The

giving of gospel-books also involved exchange with Continental rulers and churches,

making important statements about the identity of English kingship. A further feature

shared by a number of gospel-books associated with kings was the subsequent entering

of documents in the margins or fly-leaves at the recipient church. The use of gospel-

books for this purpose was a late Anglo-Saxon trend, probably encouraged by the royal

gift of such books; the phenomenon strengthens the case for identifying several late

Anglo-Saxon gospel-books as royal gifts. The practice also attests to what might be

termed the numinous quality of books given by kings, namely, a special resonance

arising from their royal associations. Various acts of donation by later Anglo-Saxon

Apocalypse manuscript probably produced for Otto III, and subsequently given by Henry II and

Kunigunde to the church of St Stephen in Bamberg, see Garrison, Ottonian Imperial Art, pp. 114 and

155-6, n. 2, with references; Schramm and Mütherich, Denkmale, pp. 165 and 483 (no. 136);

Hoffmann, Buchkunst I, 309-10; Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination II, 55 and 220-1. 19 For relevant observations, see J. T. Rosenthal, ‘A Historiographical Survey: Anglo-Saxon Kings and

Kingship since World War II’, Jnl of Brit. Stud. 24 (1985), 72-93, at 74-9; S. Keynes, ‘Re-Reading

King Æthelred the Unready’, Writing Medieval Biography 750-1250: Essays in honour of Professor

Frank Barlow, ed. D. Bates, J. Crick and S. Hamilton (Woodbridge, 20060, pp. 77-97, at 77-8.

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kings expressed forms of power relating to wider political and ecclesiastical contexts

and priorities.

ROYAL BOOKS IN EARLY ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND

One may begin by considering the early Anglo-Saxon period, covering the seventh and

eighth centuries. The evidence for royal book ownership appears limited, a feature

which is probably significant: in this period there is only limited evidence for the wider

acquisition of literate skills by Anglo-Saxon laymen.20 For various reasons, Latin

literacy appears to have been more tightly restricted in Anglo-Saxon England. An

important factor was linguistic, in that the sharp divide between the spoken language,

Old English, and Latin, meant that the latter had to be learnt from scratch.21 Despite

certain similarities with the situation in early medieval Ireland, in England there was no

equivalent of the Irish tradition of secular learning represented by the class of lawyers

and other professionals.22 The early Anglo-Saxon aristocracy nevertheless had extensive

engagement with the written word through the use of written documents, principally in

respect of landholding.23 The Latin charter, introduced into England in the course of the

seventh century, conveyed a form of land tenure known strikingly as ‘bookland’. Yet in

general the aristocracy appear to have been content to employ such documents using

ecclesiastical intermediaries.24 Several instances are known of Latin documents being

translated orally for a wider lay audience.25

There are a handful of known examples of learned kings in this period, but their

circumstances may be revealing. Aldfrith, king of the Northumbrians (686-705),

received copies of learned Latin works from eminent scholars of his day: an account of

the Holy Places by Adomnán, abbot of Iona; and the Epistola ad Acircium, a

combination of numerological and metrical treatises, from Aldhelm, abbot of

Malmesbury.26 Aldfrith had originally been educated, however, in Ireland. One may

20 Wormald, ‘Uses of Literacy, p. 105; Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 82-4. 21 Wormald, ‘Uses of Literacy’, pp. 99-104; Kelly, ‘Lay Society’, pp. 38-9 and 57-9. 22 Wormald, ‘Uses of Literacy’, pp. 101-4. 23 Kelly, ‘Lay Society’, pp. 39-57; P. Wormald, ‘Bede and the Conversion of England: the Charter

Evidence’, in his The Times of Bede: Studies in Early English Christian Society and its Historian, ed.

S. Baxter (Oxford, 2006), pp. 135-66. 24 Kelly, ‘Lay Society’, pp. 43-50; cf. also K. A. Lowe, ‘Lay Literacy in Anglo-Saxon England and the

Development of the Chirograph’, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts and their Heritage, ed. P. Pulsiano and E.

M. Treharne (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 161-204. 25 Kelly, ‘Lay Society’, p. 57; S. Keynes, ‘Church Councils, Royal Assemblies, and Anglo-Saxon Royal

Diplomas’, Kingship, Legislation and Power in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. G. R. Owen-Crocker and B.

W. Schneider (forthcoming). 26 Wormald, ‘Uses of Literacy’, p. 105; Lapidge, ‘Artistic and Literary Patronage’, pp. 55 and 64-5;

idem, ‘Aldfrith’, The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. M. Lapidge, J. Blair, S.

7

compare Sigeberht, king of the East Angles in the 630s, who was also learned,

according to Bede; but Sigeberht had been educated in Gaul.27 Beyond these cases,

there are wider examples of kings acting as patrons to authors or receiving books. It is

unclear whether each instance should be interpreted as implying Latin literacy on the

part of the ruler, but one may discern two patterns in this fragmentary evidence. The

first is the patronage and ownership of books of historical writing. Bede’s Historia

ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, written in 731, was famously dedicated to the

Northumbrian king, Ceolwulf (729-37).28 Bede’s preface refers to all those who hear or

read his work, implying that he envisaged the text being read aloud to a wider audience,

and perhaps also orally translated.29 Offa, king of the Mercians (757-96), owned a copy

of the Historia ecclesiastica, and the work was almost certainly available to King Alfred

and his scholarly assistants in the late ninth century.30 It is quite possible that Bede’s

work had a special relevance for kings. One should compare Felix’s Life of St Guthlac, a

work of hagiography commissed by Ælfwald, king of the East Angles (713-49).31

Almost nothing else is known about Ælfwald, but he corresponded with the Anglo-

Saxon missionary, Boniface, and may well be an under-estimated figure.

A second phenomenon is the royal owership of bibles or part-bibles. From

several remarkable discoveries of fragmentary leaves in the twentieth century it is clear

that the church of Worcester in the later eleventh century possessed a massive de luxe

bible, one of three originally produced in the monastery of Monkwearmouth/Jarrow

during the abbacy of Ceolfrith (688-716).32 The volume is likely to be the ancient bible

which, according to tradition reported at Worcester, had been originally given to the

Keynes and D. Scragg, 2nd ed. (Oxford, forthcoming); B. Yorke, ‘Adomnán at the Court of King

Aldfrith’, Adomnán of Iona. Theologian, Lawmaker, Peacemaker, ed. J. M. Wooding, R. Aist, T. O.

Clancy and T. O’Laughlin (Dublin, 2010), pp. 36-50. 27 Wormald, ‘Uses of Literacy’, p. 105; B. Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England

(London, 1990), pp. 62, 65, 67-9 and 173-4. 28 Lapidge, ‘Artistic and Literary Patronage’, p. 65; D. P. Kirby, Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis

Anglorum: its Contemporary Setting, Jarrow Lecture 1992 (Jarrow, 1993), esp. pp. 5-6 and 10-15. 29 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica Praef., in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. B.

Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), p. 6.. 30 W. Levison, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford, 1946), pp. 244-6; Pratt,

Political Thought, pp. 143 and 154-5. 31 M. Lapidge, ‘Felix’, The Blackwell Encyclopaedia, ed. Lapidge et al.; Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms,

pp. 59, 63, 66-8 and 70-1; D. P. Kirby, The Earliest English Kings, 2nd ed. (London, 2000), pp. 109-10

and 112. 32 H. Gneuss, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: a List of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments

Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (Tempe, AZ, 2001), nos. 293 and 501.3; The Making of

England: Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture AD 600-900, ed. L. Webster and J. Backhouse (London, 1991),

pp. 122-3 (nos. 87a-c); C. H. Turner, Early Worcester MSS (Oxford, 1916), pp. xli-xlii; ‘Catalogus

Librorum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Wigornensis’ Made in 1622-1623 by Patrick Young, Librarian

to King James I, ed. I. Atkins and N. R. Ker (Cambridge, 1944), pp. 77-9; D. N. Dumville, Liturgy and

the Ecclesiastical History of Late Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 99-100, 104, 120 and

123; M. P. Brown, The Book of Cerne: Prayer, Patronage and Power in Ninth-Century England

(London, 1996), p. 166.

8

church by King Offa. As Derek Turner suggested, a plausible context for the volume

reaching Mercia would be the marriage of Offa’s daughter, Ælflæd, to the Northumbrian

king, Æthelred, in 792.33 Conceivably, therefore, the codex may have passed through

Northumbrian as well as Mercian royal hands. It is also possible that Offa’s interest in

such a manuscript had been part of wider practices. Certainly, Offa’s case bears

comparison with the Stockholm Codex Aureus, the opulent mid eighth-century gospel-

book which was held for ransom by a raiding viking army in mid or late ninth century,

and recovered through a payment of pure gold by Ealdorman Ælfred and his wife,

Werburh.34 The inscription recording their gift of the volume to Christ Church,

Canterbury, highlighted the pious nature of the donation, requiring that the book should

be read every month for the sake of the souls of Ælfred and his family.35 The fortuitous

nature of this record, matched by the case of Offa’s bible, leaves open the possibility of

a wider elite tradition.

THE NINTH CENTURY AND KING ALFRED

Notwithstanding these uncertainties, various considerations support the case for

regarding the ninth century as an important period of change, involving heightened lay

interaction with the written word.36 An important long-term process was the widening

use of ‘bookland’. Latin charters had originally been used for land held by the church,

but from the late eighth century onwards, charters were increasingly employed to

convey land into secular hands.37 One consequence was a rise in associated forms of

document written in the vernacular, such as wills, leases and forms of written

agreement.38 Many ninth-century examples involve secular parties, suggesting

increasing lay use and ownership of such documents. Another process was a rise in the

political importance of the royal household, a development connected with the

33 Turner, Early Worcester MSS, p. xlii. 34 Stockholm, Kungliga Biblioteket, A.135 (Kent (? Canterbury), s. viiimed; provenance Christ Church,

Canterbury); Gneuss, Handlist, no. 937; N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon,

Reissue with Supplement (Oxford, 1990), p. 456 (no. 385); J. J. G. Alexander, Insular Manuscripts 6th

to the 9th Century (London, 1978), pp. 56-7 (no. 30); Making of England, ed. Webster and Backhouse,

pp. 199-201 (no. 154); R. Gameson, The Codex Aureus: an Eighth-Century Gospel Book, Stockholm,

Kungliga Bibliotek, A. 135, EEMF 28 (Copenhagen, 2001); N. Brooks, The Early History of the

Church of Canterbury (Leicester, 1984), pp. 201-2, cf. 151-2; Pratt, Political Thought, p. 86. 35 S 1204 (CantCC 97); English Historical Documents c. 500-1042, ed. D. Whitelock, Eng. Hist.

Documents 1, 2nd ed. (London, 1979), 539-40 (no. 98). 36 Kelly, ‘Lay Society’, p. 45-56; Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 78-92. 37 Kelly, ‘Lay Society’, pp. 44-51; Pratt, Political Thought, p. 20, 26-7, 38-9, 44-5, 47-8, 53-4, 67-8, 76-

7, 85-6 and 99-100. 38 Kelly, ‘Lay Society’, pp. 46-51; K. A. Lowe, ‘The Nature and Effect of the Anglo-Saxon Vernacular

Will’, Jnl of Legal Hist. 19 (1998), 23-61; idem, ‘Lay Literacy’.

9

extension in the power of the West Saxon kingdom. Patterns of attestation in the witness

lists of West Saxon charters indicate the growing importance of the royal household as

an arena of power within West Saxon rule.39 There are signs, for example, of a group of

secular office-holders who had duties to serve the king in his household, comprising the

king’s discðegn or ‘steward’, his hræglðegn (‘keeper of the wardrobe’) and byrle or

‘butler’.40 Simon Keynes has highlighted the significance of an emerging body of royal

priests attached to the household, making a strong case for their involvement in the

drafting of charters and other documents, in addition to officiating in the household’s

religious observance.41

This was the context for a concomitant rise in ‘literate’ court culture, with the

use of books in this royal environment; the key evidence is the account by King Alfred’s

biographer, Asser, of the young king’s upbringing, indicating conditions prior to

Alfred’s rule. Alfred initially encountered vernacular poetry, in written form, receiving

the gift of a book of poetry from his mother; he then learnt the services of the divine

Office and possessed a personal prayerbook.42 The latter took the form of a libellus ‘in

which were written the day-time offices and some psalms and certain prayers which he

had learned in his youth’.43 In its specific form the volume bears comparison with

Carolingian prayerbooks and psalters personalized for lay use, most notably the

surviving prayerbook of Charles the Bald; Alfred’s example shows the influence, within

Wessex, of Carolingian trends in personal piety, involving lay devotion to the divine

Office, an obligation normally fulfilled only by ecclesiastics.44 As I have argued

39 S. Keynes, ‘Mercia and Wessex in the Ninth Century’, Mercia: an Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe,

ed. M. Brown and C. Farr (London, 2001), pp. 310-28, at 326 cf. 322; Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 28-

43 and 52-8. 40 S 348 (D. Whitelock, ‘Some Charters in the Name of King Alfred’, Saints, Scholars and Heroes:

Studies in Medieval Culture in honour of Charles W. Jones, ed. M. H. King and W. H. Stevens. 2 vols.

(Collegeville, MN, 1979) I, 77-98, at 78-9), with S. Keynes and M. Lapidge, Alfred the Great: Asser’s

Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources (Harmondsworth, 1983), pp. 179-81; S. Keynes,

The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘the Unready’ 978-1016: a Study in their Use as Historical Evidence

(Cambridge, 1980), pp. 158-61; R. Abels, Alfred the Great: War, Kingship and Culture in Anglo-Saxon

England (Manchester, 1998), pp. 264-5; Keynes, ‘Mercia and Wessex’, p. 326; Pratt, Political

Thought, pp. 30, 33, 36-7 and 168. 41 S. Keynes, ‘The West Saxon Charters of King Æthelwulf and his Sons’ EHR 109 (1994), 1109-49, at

1131-4 and 1146-7; Abels, Alfred, pp. 222 and 263; Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 40-1, 54-8, 86-8 and

122. 42 Asser, Vita Alfredi, cc. 22-4 (Asser’s Life of King Alfred, together with the Annals of St Neots,

erroneously ascribed to Asser, ed. W. H. Stevenson, new imp. (Oxford, 1959), pp. 19-21; Keynes and

Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 74-5); ibid., p. 239, n. 36; Kelly, ‘Lay Society’, pp. 59-60; Pratt, Political Thought,

pp. 89-92. 43 Asser, Vita Alfredi, c. 88 (ed. Stevenson, p. 73, lines 6-9; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 99). 44 Schatzkammer der Residenz, Munich, s.n., with original ivory plaques now in the Schweizerisches

Museum, Zurich (court school of Charles the Bald, 842 x 869): Koehler and Mütherich, Die

karolingischen Miniaturen, V: Die Hofschule Karls des Kahlen, 75-87, with pls. 1-3; R. Deshman, ‘The

Exalted Servant: the Ruler Theology of the Prayerbook of Charles the Bald’, in his Eye and Mind, ed.

10

elsewhere, Asser’s account is important since it may well preserve a wider form of

‘court’ education available to the secular elite, and also suggests, at this stage, emphasis

on the memorization and recitation of texts, rather than the ability to read directly.45

Under Alfred’s own rule (871-99), one has the impression of transformative

developments, in the form of what is generally termed his ‘educational programme’:

that is, major changes in education and learning promoted by the king in the 880s and

890s.46 As I haved argued, the Alfredian programme built on the court-based education

described above, but promoted two major shifts: firstly, a new emphasis on the ability of

the lay aristocracy to read English; and, secondly, the promotion not of poetry but prose

translations of learned Latin texts.47 Translations, promoted by the king, were seen as a

repository of ‘wisdom’ needed by all involved in rulership.48 King Alfred’s kingship

was modelled, above all, on that of the biblical Solomon.49 Although the overall

ambitions were inspired by Carolingian efforts and example, Alfred’s programme took a

distinctive form shaped by West Saxon conditions. The audiences for translated texts

were leading ecclesiastics and the lay elite, and also included aristocratic and royal

children educated in the royal household.50 Provisions included the reading aloud of

translated texts to those who were unable to read for themselves. The court education

was also in some sense bilingual, involving instruction in Latin as well as English,

though for the laity this Latin instruction was not necessarily at a high level.51

Crucially, the king himself was presented as a practitioner in learning. Here one

cannot sidestep the remarkable body of translations attributed to Alfred’s own

authorship: the Regula pastoralis by Pope Gregory the Great; the first fifty Psalms; the

Consolatio Philosophiae by Boethius; the Soliloquia by St Augustine; and also the

introduction to King Alfred’s law-book.52 Though doubts have occasionally been

Cohen, pp. 192-241. For Alfred’s prayerbook and its Continental precedents, see Pratt, ‘Illnesses’, pp.

45-9 and 63-6. 45 Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 89-90, cf. 118-26. 46 Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 25-41; S. Lerer, Literacy and Power in Anglo-Saxon Literature

(Lincoln, NE, 1991), pp. 61-96; P. A. Booth, ‘King Alfred versus Beowulf: the Re-education of the

Anglo-Saxon Aristocracy’, Bull. of the John Rylands Univ. Lib. of Manchester 79.3 (Autumn 1997),

41-66; N. G. Discenza, ‘Symbolic Capital and the Ruler in the Translation Program of Alfred the

Great’, Exemplaria 23 (2001), 433-67; Pratt, Political Thought, esp. pp. 115-34 and 166-78. 47 Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 118-29. 48 Ibid., pp. 115-78. 49 Abels, Alfred, pp. 248-9, 255-8, 282 and 311; A. Scharer, ‘The Writing of History at King Alfred’s

Court’, EME 5 (1996), 177-206, at 191-9; idem, Herrschaft und Repräsentation: Studien zur Hofkultur

König Alfreds des Großen (Vienna, 2001), pp. 83-108; Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 133, 151-66, 170-6,

264-5, 280-1, 286-7, 289-95, 302, 304-7, 318-21, 326-9, 334-7 and 339-45. 50 Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 120-3 and 166-72. 51 Ibid., pp. 120-1 and 166-7, cf. 89-90. 52 D. Whitelock, ‘The Prose of Alfred’s Reign’, in her From Bede to Alfred: Studies in Early Anglo-

Saxon Literature and History (London, 1980), no. VI, pp. 67-103; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 28-

32; A. J. Frantzen, King Alfred (Boston, MA, 1986); Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 115-78 and 193-337.

11

expressed about this attribution, most recently by Malcolm Godden, his grounds for

doubt involve a number of awkwardnesses in the reading of this vernacular material and

of Asser’s biography.53 There are strong linguistic and stylistic arguments for the unity

of the works attributed to the king as a distinctive corpus.54 There are also many

thematic connections between these texts, relating to power and rule, the need for

humility, the use of earthly resources, and the language of Solomon’s wise rule; the

handling of such themes, in ways supportive of Alfred’s rule, renders very credible

Asser’s picture of learned kingship.55 One should note, moreoever, that Alfred appears

to have received assistance from a number of scholarly assistants, including the

Welshman Asser and the monk and priest, Grimbald, recruited from Rheims.56 One

should therefore ascribe to Alfred a central role in uniting a project which drew,

necessarily and importantly, on these learned resources.

The case for the learned King Alfred complements the broader evidence for the

activities of the king’s scholarly circle, indicating extensive interaction with books of a

variety of kinds. One must envisage that the king and his assistants had access to Latin

exemplars for the varous royal translations, and to other sources which are known to

have informed these translations.57 Copies would presumably have been retained of the

king’s translations, and there are signs that other vernacular works passed through the

royal household, most notably Werferth’s Mercian translation of Pope Gregory’s

Dialogues and the ‘common stock’ of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.58 Another category

would have been personal books owned by Alfred. The understanding of Alfred’s

prayerbook is complicated slightly by Asser’s quasi-miraculous account of the king’s

transition to scholarly study and translation, assigned to St Martin’s Day (11 November)

53 M. Godden, ‘Did King Alfred Write Anything?’; idem, ‘Stories from the Court of King Alfred’. For

responses, from a variety of perspectives, to Godden’s doubts over the royal corpus, see J. Bately, ‘Did

King Alfred Actually Translate Anything? The Integrity of the Alfredian Canon Revisited’, MÆ 78

(2009), 189-215; D. Pratt, ‘Problems of Authorship and Audience in the Writings of King Alfred the

Great’, Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World, ed. P. Wormald and J. L. Nelson (Cambridge,

2007), pp. 162-91; idem, Political Thought, esp. pp. 115-20, 130-4, 165-71, 176-8, 251, 280-1, 290-5,

320, 325-32 and 334-45; idem, ‘The Voice of the King’, pp. 202-4. 54 See esp. J. M. Bately, ‘King Alfred and the Old English Translation of Orosius’, Anglia 88 (1970),

433-60, esp. 440-56; idem, ‘Lexical Evidence for the Authorship of the Prose Psalms in the Paris

Psalter’, ASE 10 (1982), 69-95; idem, ‘Old English Prose before and during the Reign of King Alfred’,

ASE 17 (1989), 93-138, at 118-38; with idem, ‘Did King Alfred Actually Translate Anything?’, for

Bately’s response to Godden’s doubts. 55 Pratt, Political Thought, passim, and esp. pp. 166-78. 56 Ibid., pp. 56-8 and 128-32, cf. 140-2, 160-8, 171, 219, 223, 226-34, 246, 270-7, 292-5, 317, 320 and

335, for evidence indicating the likely influence of the king’s scholarly helpers. 57 Ibid., esp. pp. 142-3, 230, 246, 271-3, 282 and 314, for exemplars; Jayatilaka, ‘King Alfred and his

Circle’, pp. 670-6. 58 For Bishop Wulfsige’s metrical preface to the translation of the Dialogues, see below, pp. 17 and 21.

For the transmission of the ‘common stock’ of the Chronicle, see Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 275-

80; J. M. Bately, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Texts and Textual Relationships, Reading Med. Stud,

Monograph 3 (Reading, 1991), esp. 59-62.

12

887: the background to this incident involved Asser’s reading aloud to the king, in

which Alfred ordered the writing down of certain favoured passages (testimonia:

probably, in immediate context, passages of Holy Scripture).59 Since Alfred’s libellus or

prayerbook was already ‘filled with all manner of things’, Asser prepared a new quire

(quaternio) to enable such passages to be gathered together separately.60 The process

contributed to the construction of a volume which the king called his ‘enchridion ... id

est manualem librum’, the size of a psalter, containing ‘flowers collected here and there

from various masters’ which, despite being mixed up, were assembled in the body of a

single libellus.61

Keynes and Lapidge regarded the enchiridion as an expansion of the prayerbook,

envisaging that the quire and other material had been added to the king’s original

volume.62 The book’s new title, however, and the concern to preserve the testimonia

separately, might be taken to indicate that the enchiridion had formed a separate

volume, in effect a florilegium.63 In this connection one should note the survival at

Worcester in the twelfth century of material known as the ‘Dicta regis Ælfredi’; the

same source appears to have been consulted by William of Malmesbury, who equated it

with King Alfred’s enchiridion or ‘hand-book’.64 Dorothy Whitelock expressed doubt

over the identification, suggesting that Malmesbury might have encountered a copy of

the Alfredian Soliloquies to which other material had been appended.65 The scenario

should be taken seriously, yet the various references to the ‘dicta’ or ‘hand-book’

suggest the existence of a composite text somehow identified as Alfredian.66 Indeed, the

fragments which have survived—relating to West Saxon royal genealogy, Aldhelm’s

59 Asser, Vita Alfredi, cc. 88-9 (ed. Stevenson, pp. 73-5; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 99-100). For

the events of 11 November 887, see esp. Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 28; Pratt, Political Thought,

pp. 119-20, 166 and 171, n. 308; Lerer, Literacy and Power, pp. 70-4. For a different view, see

Godden, ‘Stories from the Court of King Alfred’, pp. 130-1, questioning the conventional reading of the

relevant Latin sentence, to the effect that Alfred had begun to translate Latin into the vernacular for the

purposes of instructing others; but this should be compared with one of the acrostic poems attributed to

John the Old Saxon, for evidence that Alfred had indeed been represented to contemporaries in a

learned, teaching role: see below, p. 17. 60 Asser, Vita Alfredi, c. 88 (ed. Stevenson, p. 73, line 1, to p. 74, line 34; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred,

pp. 99-100). 61 Asser, Vita Alfredi, c. 89 (ed. Stevenson, p. 75, lines 15-23; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 100). 62 Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 268, n. 208. 63 Pratt, ‘Illnesses’, pp. 46-7; idem, Political Thought, p. 120; cf. also Keynes, ‘Alfred the Great and the

Kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons’. 64 For the relevant references, see Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 81, 91 and 141-2; idem, ‘Alfred’s

Handbook’ (article in preparation); P. G. Remley, ‘Aldhelm as Old English Poet: Exodus, Asser and the

Dicta Alfredi’, Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael

Lapidge, ed. K. O’Brien O’Keeffe and A. Orchard, 2 vols. (Toronto, 2005) I, 90-108, at 94-6 and 99-

100. 65 Whitelock, ‘The Prose of Alfred’s Reign’, pp. 71-3. 66 R. M. Thomson with M. Winterbottom, William of Malmesbury: Gesta Regum Anglorum / The History

of the English Kings II: General Introduction and Commentary (Oxford, 1999), 103-4; Pratt, Political

Thought, p. 127.

13

performance as a poet, and Pope Gregory’s attitude to his predecessor Pope Siricius

(384-9)—comprise material which may reasonably connected with the Alfredian royal

household, and in one case with Asser.67 Whether literally part of Alfred’s enchiridion,

or part of another compilation associated with the king, these fragments relate

intriguingly to Alfredian intellectual interests.

Surviving books associated with King Alfred: the Book of Nunnaminster

Two surviving books cast further light on the Alfredian royal household. In each case

the grounds for developing such a connection relate to a notable practice: namely, the

addition of the texts of charters and other documents into ecclesiastical books of high

status. The practice does not appear to have been widespread in England before the

tenth century; as will be explored below, instances of its adoption in the later Anglo-

Saxon period tend to occur in manuscripts of likely royal ownership or gift, suggesting a

significant relationship.68 The earliest example, London, British Library, Harley 2965,

the late eighth- or early ninth-century prayerbook known as the Book of Nunnaminster,

has long been associated with King Alfred’s wife, Ealhswith, on the basis of a note,

added to 40v in an early form of square minuscule script, recording the bounds of the

‘tenement’ (haga) ‘þe Ealhswið hæfð æt Wintan ceastre’: the land corresponds with the

site of the Nunnaminster, which Ealhswith (d. 902) is known to have founded.69

Ealhswith’s precise relationship to the volume may be debated: while her ownership is

recorded in the present tense, David Dumville has noted that the singling out of the

estate would only have made sense once the Nunnaminster had been founded,

suggesting the copying of an older document.70 One should, however, take account of

the practice in the tenth century whereby land forming part of the endowment of a

female religious house continued to be held individually by a prominent female, rather

than corporately by the house itself.71 The note could, then, readily have been composed

67 Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 81, 91, 141-2; Remley, ‘Aldhelm as Old English Poet’, pp. 94-100. 68 See below, pp. 49-60. 69 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 432; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 308-9 (no. 237); Alexander, Insular Manuscripts, p. 65

(no. 41); Making of England, ed. Webster and Backhouse, pp. 210-11 (no. 164); A. N. Doane, Anglo-

Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, 1 (Binghampton, NY, 1994), no. 271. S 1560 (Property

and Piety in Early Medieal Winchester: Documents relating to the Topography of the Anglo-Saxon and

Norman City and its Minsters, ed. A. R. Rumble, Winchester Stud. 4.iii: The Anglo-Saxon Minsters of

Winchester, ed. M. Biddle (Oxford, 2002), 47-8 (no. 1)). For the script and hand of the addition, see D.

N. Dumville, ‘English Square Minuscule Script: the Background and Earliest Phases’, ASE 16 (1987),

147-79, at 163-4; idem, Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 83-6; cf.

M. B. Parkes, ‘A Fragment of an Early-Tenth-Century Anglo-Saxon Manuscript and its Significance’,

in his Scribes, Scripts and Readers, pp. 171-85, at 173 and 177. 70 Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 84-5, with n. 141. 71 B. Yorke, ‘“Sisters Under the Skin”? Anglo-Saxon Nuns and Nunneries in Southern England’, Reading

Med. Stud. 15 (1989), 95-117, at 105-6; Pratt, ‘The Voice of the King’, pp. 188-9, 193-4 and 197-8.

14

and added to the manuscript during Ealhswith’s lifetime, in the early stages of the

Nunnaminster’s existence, the precise chronology of which remains obscure.72

Other considerations also support the case for Harley 2965 having been

personally owned by Ealhswith.73 The book is certainly of Mercian origin, one of a

group of four surviving Mercian prayerbooks from the late eighth or early ninth century;

since Ealhswith was the daughter of a Mercian ealdorman, her role would provide a

plausible context for it reaching Wessex.74 The volume also shows some signs of

having been written for female use: although the majority of gender forms are

masculine, there are two instances, unusually, of female forms within the main text,

suggesting that the compiler had female use in mind.75 While relating to the original

purposes of the volume, these features would be consistent with Ealhswith’s ownership

and might help to explain her interest in it. The likelihood that Ealhswith may have

made personal use of the prayerbook receives support from her husband’s devotions,

and the broader Carolingian influence on lay piety which Asser’s account implies.76

Indeed, a number of possible connections have been suggested between King Alfred’s

pious behaviour, closely linked to the effects of his mysterious adult illness, and certain

devotional themes in the four Mercian prayerbooks, particularly an association between

illness and sin, prayers for protection naming multiple parts of the body, and imagery

concerning vision, darkness and light.77 It is therefore striking that, uniquely within this

Mercian corpus, Harley 2965 transmits the prayer ‘De latrone’, appealing to the example

72 For the early history of the Nunnaminster, see S. Foot, Veiled Women, 2 vols. (Aldershot, 2000) II,

243-52; M. Biddle and D. J. Keene, ‘Winchester in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, Winchester in

the Early Middle Ages: an Edition and Discussion of the Winton Domesday, ed. M. Biddle, Winchester

Studies 1 (Oxford, 1976), 241-448, at 321-3. Although a date of foundation 899 (death of Alfred) x 902

(death of Ealhswith) has generally been suspected, and the completion of a high tower, reported by

Æthelweard for c. 908, may refer to the Nunnaminster (The Chronicle of Æthelweard, ed. A. Campbell

(London, 1962), p. 52), one cannot rule out the possibility that the community had origins which

predated Ealhswith’s widowhood. 73 Alexander, Insular Manuscripts, p. 65 (no. 41); Making of England, ed. Webster and Backhouse, pp.

210-11 (no. 164); M. P. Brown, ‘Female Book-Ownership and Production in Anglo-Saxon England: the

Evidence of the Ninth-Century Prayerbooks’, Lexis and Texts in Early English: Studies presented to

Jane Roberts, ed. C. J. Kay and L. M. Sylvester, Costerus, new ser. 133 (Amsterdam, 2001), 45-67, at

51-6. 74 For the Mercian group of prayerbooks, see esp. Brown, The Book of Cerne; P. Sims-Williams, Religion

and Literature in Western England 600-800, CSASE 3 (Cambridge, 1990), 273-327; T. H. Bestul,

‘Continental Sources of Anglo-Saxon Devotional Writing’, Sources of Anglo-Saxon Culture, ed. P. E.

Szarmach (Kalamazoo, MI, 1986), pp. 103-26, at 105-17; B. Raw, ‘Anglo-Saxon Prayerbooks’, The

Cambridge History of the Book I, ed. Gameson, 460-7, at 461-4. 75 An Ancient Manuscript of the Eighth or Ninth Century, formerly belonging to St Mary’s Abbey, or

Nunnaminster, ed. W. de G. Birch (London, 1889), pp. 15-17; Brown, ‘Female Book-Ownership’, pp.

55-6, cf. 57-8. 76 Pratt, ‘Illnesses’, esp. pp. 45-9 and 64-6. 77 Ibid., pp. 47-8 and 64-6; P. Kershaw, ‘Illness, Power and Prayer in Asser’s Life of King Alfred’, EME

10 (2001), 201-24, at 210-13; B. Raw, ‘Alfredian Piety: the Book of Nunnaminster’, Alfred the Wise:

Studies in honour of Janet Bately, ed. J. Roberts and J. L. Nelson, with M. Godden (Cambridge, 1997),

pp. 145-53.

15

of the thief who acknowledged Christ at the crucifixion.78 As Anton Scharer has

observed, the same biblical model was used by Asser, applied at some length to Alfred

in the account of St Martin’s Day 887.79 Although there is no direct textual relationship,

liturgical resonances might well have encouraged Asser’s striking image; Ealhswith’s

volume provides an important sample of Alfredian prayer.

Bern, Burgerbibliothek, 671

Another devotional book has a tantalizing series of additions. Bern, Burgerbibiothek,

671, a ‘pocket’ gospel book written in western Britain in the second half of the ninth

century, bears on 74v (in previously blank space at the end of St John’s gospel) two

acrostic poems with the legends ‘AELFRED/ELFRED’.80 Clearly relating to King

Alfred, the poems have been tentatively attributed by Michael Lapidge to the king’s

scholarly assistant John the Old Saxon, who composed a similar acrostic in honour of

Alfred’s grandson, the future King Æthelstan.81 The main text of the gospels, written by

two scribes, employs a cursive form of ‘reformed minuscule’, a script deriving from

Wales and southwestern Britain; the regularity of the book’s quires, suggesting English

influence, would provide a basis for attributing its production to Cornwall rather than

Wales.82 The acrostics are written in a larger, rounded form of the same script which

cannot be closely dated but would be consistent with having been written in the late

ninth or early tenth century.83 Comparison with a later form of ‘reformed minuscule’

occurring in tenth-century sections of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 572 might

again point to southwestern Britain for the acrostics hand.84

78 28v: An Ancient Manuscript, ed. Birch, pp. 74-5. 79 Asser, Vita Alfredi, cc. 89-91 (ed. Stevenson, pp. 75-6; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 100-1);

Scharer, ‘The Writing of History’, pp. 189-91. 80 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 795; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 4-5 (no. 6); W. M. Lindsay, Early Welsh Script

(Oxford, 2012), pp. 10-16 (no. 3) and 48-51 (pls. IV-V); O. Homburger, Die illustrierten Handschriften

der Burgerbibliothek Bern. Die vorkarolingischen und karolingische Handschriften (Bern, 1962), pp.

31-2; Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 79-83; J. P. McGowan, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in

Microfiche Facsimile, 20: Manuscripts in Switzerland (Tempe, AZ, 2012), no. 12. M. Lapidge, ‘Some

Latin Poems as Evidence for the Reign of Athelstan’, in his Anglo-Latin Literature 900-1066, pp. 49-

86, at 69-71; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 192. 81 Lapidge, ‘Some Latin Poems’, pp. 70-1, cf. 60-9. 82 Dumville, Liturgy, p. 117, n. 157; D. N. Dumville, A Palaeographer’s Review: the Insular System of

Scripts in the Early Middle Ages I (Suita, 1999), pp. 123-5; cf. Dumville, ‘English Square Minuscule

Script: the Background and Earliest Phases’, pp. 159-61. 83 Lindsay, Early Welsh Script, pp. 50-1 (pl. V); for preliminary views of the script as Celtic, cf. ibid., pp.

11-12; Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 79-80, n. 110. 84 E.g. 14r (script of the opening lines of the Book of Tobit): Lindsay, Early Welsh Script, pp. 60-1 (pl.

XIV); for this composite manuscript, see Gneuss, Handlist, no. 583; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 376-7 (no.

313); Dumville, Liturgy, pp. 116-17; idem, A Palaeographer’s Review, p. 125, n. 31; H. McKee,

‘Script in Wales, Scotland and Cornwall’, The Cambridge History of the Book I, ed. Gameson, 167-73,

at 170. For the suggestion that Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Voss. lat. F.96A, a binding leaf bearing

16

The book next received a series of additions relating to Bedwyn, Wiltshire, the

core of an important royal estate: firstly, a document announcing the dispostion of tithe

from Bedwyn and from Lambourn, Berkshire (75v); secondly, an incomplete set of

guild regulations probably concerning Bedwyn (75v-76r); and thirdly, two manumission

documents which include among their witnesses ‘all the servants of God at Bedwyn’

(76v).85 While the first two documents were written by different hands in the early tenth

century, the hand of the manumissions has been identified as that of the scribe who also

wrote the will of the nobleman Wulfgar, a document probably dating from the early

930s.86 Wulfgar’s will survives as an original single sheet from the archives of the Old

Minster, Winchester, physically attached from an early stage in its history to an original

charter of King Æthelstan in favour of Wulfgar, issued at Lifton, Devon, on 12th

November 931 and written by the royal charter scribe ‘Æthelstan A’, conveying an

estate at Ham, Wiltshire.87 This estate, and others bequeathed by Wulfgar, lay close to

the Bedwyn estate, while the names of several beneficiaries of the will recur in the Bern

671 manumissions.88 A pertinent question, given the contents of Bern 671, is whether

the scribe of Wulfgar’s will might have been in royal service. As Dumville has

observed, the text of the dorse of the will, which includes treatment of the Ham estate,

may have been written slightly later than that on the face, perhaps prompted by

Wulfgar’s obtaining of the Ham charter.89 It seems likely in this context, as Dumville

has argued, that Wulfgar had drawn upon the services of a scribe physically located on

Brittonic glosses, might have been written in Cornwall in the approximate date-range 850 x 930, see D.

N. Dumville, ‘Writers, Scribes and Readers in Brittany, AD 800-1100: the Evidence of Manuscripts’,

Medieval Celtic Literature and Society, ed. H. Fulton (Dublin, 2005), pp. 49-64, at 55-6. Cf. also

Rome, Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica, lat. 3363, containing Boethius, De consolatione

Philosophiae written in the Loire valley s. ixmed, with several layers of subsequent glossing (including

annotations in the hand of Dunstan at Glastonbury): Gneuss, Handlist, no. 908. In the light of recent

work, the earliest Insular glosses appear to have been written by two hands working in proximity, one

using a form of ‘reformed minuscule’, the other employing Caroline forms: see M. Godden, ‘Alfred,

Asser, and Boethius’, Latin Learning, ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe and Orchard, I, 326-48, at 333-5 and 343-

4. The earliest Insular glosses bear no relationship to the Old English translation of Boethius. One gloss

written by the Caroline hand has been identified as a specimen of Cornish: P. Sims-Williams, ‘A New

Brittonic Gloss on Boethius: ud rocashaas’, CMCS 50 (Winter 2005), 77-86. The case for attributing

this phase of glossing to Cornwall (rather than Wales) might be supported by the combination of scripts;

the use of Caroline forms would however point to a date in s. x1/2 rather than s. ixex, the dating

sometimes suggested: see Dumville, Liturgy, pp. 116-17, with n. 150; idem, A Palaeographer’s Review,

p. 125, n. 31. 85 Ptd by H. Meritt, ‘Old English Entries in a Manuscript at Bern’, JEGP 33 (1934), 343-51, at 344-6; see

also English Historical Documents, ed. Whitelock, pp. 605-6 (no. 138). D. A. E. Pelteret, Slavery in

Early Mediaeval England (Woodbridge, 1995), pp. 152-3 and 157-8; J. Blair, The Church in Anglo-

Saxon Society (Oxford, 2005), pp. 301, 440-3 and 453-5. 86 London, British Library, Cotton Charter viii.16[b]: S 1533 (ASCharters 26), reproduced in BMFacs.

iii.3. Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 78-80. 87 London, British Library, Cotton Charter viii.16[a]: S 416 (BCS 677), reproduced in BMFacs. iii.3.

Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 16, 25, and 44. 88 Dumville, Wessex and England, p. 110, with n. 260. 89 Ibid., pp. 78-9.

17

the Bedwyn estate, rather than at a royal assembly.90 Nevertheless the nature of the

Bedwyn arrangements, combining a royal estate with the presence of a religious

community, provides a notable context for both scribe and gospel book.

There are several grounds for associating Bern 671 with the royal household.

The acrostic poems give every impression of having been composed for King Alfred,

probably inspired by Carolingian examples of acrostics written for rulers, as well as

Insular acrostic poetry;91 the attribution to John the Old Saxon makes sense in view of

the close connections which they exhibit with Alfredian learning. Thus the first poem,

addressing Christ, appeals to the future salvation of the wise man, who will enjoy the

sight of the Divine Visage: the vision and the future sight of God was a major area of

Alfredian interest, featuring prominently in bishop Wulfsige of Sherborne’s metrical

preface to the translation of Pope Gregory’s Dialogues and, in intimate connection with

the concept of wisdom, throughout the royal translation of Augustine’s Soliloquies.92

The second poem, addressing Alfred himself, celebrates the king’s devotion to heavenly

matters, praising his right teaching regarding ‘the deceptive charm of [worldly] things’

(falsa dulcedine mureR [= rerum]).93 The statement effectively summarizes the

Solomonic principle, referred to by Asser, of the need for those ruling to reject glory and

wealth, if these qualities are not combined with wisdom; as I have argued, this

Solomonic model, combining wealth with wisdom, supplied language employed across

the Alfredian royal corpus of translations, and formed the organizing principle of

90 Ibid.; cf. also Keynes, Diplomas, p. 21, n. 21 91 A number of Carolingian acrostics were written for rulers or their consorts (ed. E. Duemmler, MGH

PLAC 1 (Berlin, 1881), 90-1, 112-13, 156-7, 226-7); ed. E. Duemmler, MGH PLAC 2 (Berlin, 1884),

165-7; ed. L. Traube, MGH PLAC 3 (Berlin, 1896), 562-5; PL 107, cols. 141-4); for the most well

known example, see E. Sears, ‘Louis the Pious as Miles Christi: the Dedicatory Image in Hrabanus

Maurus’s De laudibus sanctae crucis’, Charlemagne’s Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis

the Pious, ed. P. Godman and R. Collins (Oxford, 1990), pp. 605-28. 92 Lapidge, ‘Some Latin Poems’, p. 70; D. Yerkes, ‘The Full Text of the Metrical Preface to Wærferth’s

Old English Translation of Gregory’s Dialogues’, Speculum 55 (1979), 505-13, at 512; Pratt, Political

Thought, pp. 335-6, cf. 317-37. For the case for placing the Fuller brooch in the same Alfredian

intellectual context, see ibid., pp. 187-9; D. Pratt, ‘Persuasion and Invention at the Court of King Alfred

the Great’, Court Culture in the Early Middle Ages: the Proceedings of the First Alcuin Conference, ed.

C. Cubitt (Turnhout, 2002), pp. 189-221, at 206-20. 93 Lapidge, ‘Some Latin Poems’, p. 70. For ‘Fle[c]tas iam mentem sacris’ in line 3, cf. the notable phrase

in Alfred’s Prose Preface ‘forðæmðe we noldon to ðæm spore mid ure mode anlutan’ (‘because we

were unwilling to incline our minds to the track’): C. Schreiber, King Alfred’s Old English Translation

of Pope Gregory the Great’s Regula Pastoralis and its Cultural Context: a Study and Partial Edition

According to All Surviving Manuscripts Based on Corpus Christi College 12 (Munich, 2002), p. 193.

Cf. also ‘pene omnes illius regionis potentes et nobiles ad secularia magis quam ad divina mentem

declinaverant negotia’ (‘nearly all the magnates and nobles of that land had inclined their minds more to

worldly than to divine affairs’): Asser, Vita Alfredi, c. 106 (ed. Stevenson, p. 92; Keynes and Lapidge,

Alfred, p. 109), with Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 155, 157 and 189-90. For other hunting imagery

within the translation of Boethius, see N. G. Discenza, The King’s English: Strategies of Translation in

the Old English Boethius (Albany, NY, 2005), pp. 101-4.

18

Alfred’s Prose Preface to the translation of the Regula pastoralis.94 Indeed, the acrostic

seems likely to be alluding specifically to the translation of Boethius, given the focus

within that text of the qualified rejection of worldly goods, if not held in accordance

with the love of wisdom alone.95

The positioning of the acrostics within Bern 671 appears to have been

significant: the treatment of Christ in the first poem necessarily has textual links with

the gospels which precede it. Although the received text is unlikely to represent the

precise form in which the acrostics were originally composed, their addition to the

manuscript conveyed a clear message connecting the gospels with the contemplation of

Christ and with Alfred’s own learned role. Like other ‘pocket’ gospel books, Bern 671

lacks prefatory material to the gospels and, with pages measuring 160 x 114 mm, would

have been intended for personal use, thereby enhancing the acrostics’ message.96 The

book has a compelling provenance, locatable to the Bedwyn estate, probably by the 920s

at the latest, most likely in possession of the community there.97 As will become clear,

the use of the volume for the copying of significant documents might be taken as a

further indicator of royal connections.98 Bedwyn was of some importance to King

Alfred, listed among the lands bequeathed to Edward the Elder in Alfred’s will: the hill-

fort of Chisbury, one of the burhs of the Burghal Hidage, formed part of the estate,

while Lambourn, associated with Bedwyn in the tithe document, had been bequeathed to

Ealhswith.99 The Bedwyn estate was appreciably enlarged early in Edward’s reign

through the acquisition of Stoke by Shalbourne from the Old Minster, Winchester.100

Part of a broader policy of strategic land exchange under Alfred and Edward, the

transaction, together with the guild statutes, may indicate a significant shift of focus

94 Asser, Vita Alfredi, c. 76 (ed. Stevenson, pp. 60-1; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 92). Pratt, Political

Thought, pp. 151-7, 175-6, 259, 280-307, 319-20 and 328-9. 95 Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 280-307. 96 For the genre, see P. McGurk, ‘The Irish Pocket Gospel Book’, Sacris Erudiri 8 (1956), 249-70;

Dumville, Liturgy, pp. 111-12. 97 Dumville, Wessex and England, p. 82, suggesting that the tithe document may have been written in the

920s. 98 See below, pp. 49-60. 99 S 1507 (NMWinch 1); N. Brooks, ‘The Unidentified Forts of the Burghal Hidage’, in his Communities

and Warfare 700-1400 (London, 2000), pp. 93-113, at 93-8; D. A. Hinton, Alfred’s Kingdom: Wessex

and the South 800-1500 (London, 1977), pp. 33 and 74-5. For the complex history of the Bedwyn

estate, see Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 107-12; Foot, Veiled Women II, 35-8. As Keynes and

Lapidge point out (Alfred, p. 323, n. 88, cf. 318, n. 28), Lambourn was later bequeathed by Æthelflæd

of Damerham, the second wife of King Edmund (S 1494), so may have been among estates used to

support royal women; whereas Bedwyn was in the later tenth century identified among estates used to

support kings’ sons. 100 S 373 (BCS 612) and S 1286 (BCS 611), both issued at Bickleigh, Devon, in 904. Dumville, Wessex

and England, pp. 107-9; Keynes, ‘West Saxon Charters’, pp. 1144-5.

19

away from the hill-fort towards a reorganized royal estate centre.101 Contact with the

royal household would therefore provide the most economical explanation for the

volume reaching Bedwyn.102

Lastly the Cornish (rather than Welsh) features of the manuscript, while not

themselves diagnostic of the book’s patronage, harmonize with evidence for important

political, ecclesiastical and scholarly connections in Alfred’s time. Cornwall may have

fallen under West Saxon dominance from the reign of King Ecgberht (802-39), though

what this meant in practice is largely hidden from view.103 Nevertheless Asser reports

that Alfred went hunting in Cornwall in his youth, and as king made distributions to

churches there;104 Alfred’s will included two references to Cornish landholding, while

Asser himself was granted Exeter (perhaps as suffragan bishop) ‘with all the jurisdiction

(cum omni parochia) pertaining to it in Saxon territory and in Cornwall’.105 Such

connections may be presumed to have encouraged scholarly contact and influence, as

attested by the importing into Wessex of manuscripts of Cornish origin in this period,

part of broader interaction between Wessex and the Celtic world which extended to the

importing of scholarly personnel.106 One can therefore imagine how a gospel book

101 Dumville, Wessex and England, p. 46, cf. pp. 107-12; for this policy, see ibid., pp. 44-6; Pratt,

Political Thought, pp. 101-2, 172-3, 175, 210, 212-13, 307, 334 and 341. Brooks, ‘Unidentified Forts’,

p. 98; Hinton, Alfred’s Kingdom, pp. 74-5. 102 Dumville, Liturgy, p. 111; M. Gretsch, The Intellectual Foundations of the English Benedictine

Reform (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 343-4; Blair, Church, p. 349. 103 For Cornwall in the ninth and tenth centuries, see T. M. Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons 350-

1064 (Oxford, 2013), pp. 428-32 and 569-70; O. J. Padel, ‘Cornwall’, The Blackwell Encyclopaedia,

ed. Lapidge et al., with references; idem, ‘Place-names and the Saxon Conquest of Devon and

Cornwall’, Britons in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. N. Higham (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 215-30; idem,

Slavery in Saxon Cornwall: the Bodmin Manumissions, Kathleen Hughes Memorial Lectures 7

(Cambridge, 2009); C. Insley, ‘Kings and Lords in Tenth-Century Cornwall’, History 98 (2013), 2-22. 104 Asser, Vita Alfredi, cc. 74 and 102 (ed. Stevenson, pp. 55 and 89; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 89

and 107). Bickleigh, Devon, was a evidently a royal hunting lodge in the early tenth century: cf. above,

p. 18, n. 100. 105 S 1507 (NMWinch 1); Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 317, n. 18 (Stratton, Cornwall) and p. 321, n.

56 (Lifton, Devon, with land pertaining to it in Cornwall). King Æthelstan’s charter of 12 November

931 in favour of Wulfgar was issued at Lifton (S 416): see above, p. 16. Asser, Vita Alfredi, c. 81 (ed.

Stevenson, p. 68; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 97, with pp. 264-5, n. 193); see now O. J. Padel,

‘Asser’s parochia of Exeter’, Tome: Studies in Medieval Celtic History and Law in honour of Thomas

Charles-Edwards, ed. F. Edmonds and P. Russell (Woodbridge, 2011), pp. 65-72. 106 Dumville, ‘English Square Minuscule Script: the Background and Earliest Phases’, pp. 151 and 159-

61; idem, Liturgy, pp. 111-19, esp. 116-17; cf. idem, Wessex and England, pp. 154-9, 180-2 and 200-2;

Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons, pp. 634-6 and 647; H. McKee, ‘The Circulation of Books

between England and the Celtic Realms’, The Cambridge History of the Book I, ed. Gameson, 338-43.

Oliver Padel has suggested that the Abbot Seigno, probably the abbot of Athelney, Somerset,

mentioned in a unique Cornish charter from the reign of Æthelstan (S 1207), may have been of Cornish

origin: O. J. Padel, ‘The Charter of Lanlawren (Cornwall)’, Latin Learning, ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe and

Orchard I, 74-85, at 78 and 81. For Vatican lat. 3363, see above, p. 16, n. 84. For the Breton

contribution, see also M. Lapidge, ‘Israel the Grammarian in Anglo-Saxon England’, in his Anglo-Latin

Literature 900-1066, pp. 87-104; for an alternative view of Israel’s origins, cf. M. Wood, ‘“Stand

Strong Against the Monsters”: Kingship and Learning in the Empire of King Æthelstan’, Lay

20

produced in Cornwall might have reached the royal household, and also came to be

inscribed with the ‘AELFRED/ELFRED’ acrostics by a scribe of Cornish origin or

training. In this context the fact cannot be overlooked that the second acrostic directly

addresses Alfred, raising the possibility of the volume’s personal use by the king, or at

the very least a learned owner favourable to him.107 With its striking provenance, the

gospel book provides a tangible link to Alfred and his scholarly circle.

From these various traces what should be stressed is the ‘public’ nature of royal

learned interaction under King Alfred. The picture of an institutionalized ‘library’ is

perhaps unhelpful here: one might rather imagine books reaching the court environment

from a variety of sources and being used for a variety of purposes.108 There are,

nevertheless, grounds for suspecting a role for the king’s secular officials. The role of

the hræglðegn probably extended to responsibility for the king’s ‘treasures’ (the Latin

equivalent was thesaurarius), and thus may well have included responsibility for the

royal archive of charters and other documents, together, perhaps, with valuable books

personally associated with the king.109 As Asser indicates, there would have been much

reading aloud in the king’s circle.110

Manuscripts of the royal translation of the ‘Regula pastoralis’

Surviving Alfredian vernacular books are, unfortunately, scarce. Most texts are

preserved in later manuscripts; perhaps significantly, the translation of Gregory’s

Regula pastoralis, copies of which were distributed to the bishops of southern England,

offering the best chances of long-term survival in ecclesiastical archives, yields the two

Intellectuals in the Carolingian World, ed. Wormald and Nelson, pp. 192-217, at 205-6. Cf. also below,

pp. 33-4, 49-50 and 52. 107 Lapidge, ‘Some Latin Poems’, p. 70. 108 See the judicious comments of D. N. Dumville, ‘English Libraries before 1066: Use and Abuse of the

Manuscript Evidence’, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: Basic Readings, ed. M. P. Richards (New York, NY,

1994), pp. 169-219, at 192-4. 109 Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 158-61, cf. 147-9, for the actions of King Eadred (946-55), towards the end of

his reign when suffering from illness, in entrusting his suppellectiles (lit. ‘household goods’ or

‘effects’), comprising ‘many charters and also the ancient treasures (thesauros) of preceding kings, as

well as various precious things (gazas) he had acquired himself’, to Dunstan, abbot of Glastonbury, and

other ‘keepers of the royal treasures’ (regalium gazarum custodes); the king ordered the goods to be

returned to him shortly before his death: B., Vita S. Dunstani, c. 19, cf. c. 20, in The Early Lives of St

Dunstan, ed. M. Winterbottom and M. Lapidge (Oxford, 2012), pp. 60 and 64. Books might well have

formed part of these goods, especially since holy relics were regarded as part of the king’s thesauri

(ibid., pp. 148-9). For probable connections between relics and books as objects of royal ownership, see

Keynes, ‘King Athelstan’s Books’, pp. 143-7, cf. 177-8; Heslop, ‘Production of de luxe Manuscripts’,

pp. 156-8, 179-80 and 182-8; Foot, Æthelstan, pp. 68-9. 110 Asser, Vita Alfredi, cc. 76, 77 and 88, cf. 106 (ed. Stevenson, p. 59, lines 9-10, p. 63, lines 20-6, p.

73, lines 1-4, and p. 94, lines 46-54; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 91, 93, 99 and 110).

21

examples of book production on Alfred’s behalf.111 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton

20 famously includes an inscription identifying the book as the copy sent to the see of

Worcester.112 Fragments also survive of London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B. xi,

another late ninth-century copy now all but destroyed by fire; the volume appears to

have been important, and rather than sent to a bishop, intended for use centrally.113 As

Keynes has argued, the scribal practices of these manuscripts are compatible with the

involvement of the body of royal priests attached to the royal household, representing an

extension of their likely role in the production of charters and other documents.114

These two Alfredian books are but fragments of a much more intensive process of book

production, which involved a general pattern of books being distributed under royal

auspices. In his metrical preface to Werferth’s Mercian translation of Pope Gregory’s

Dialogues, bishop Wulfsige of Sherborne described Alfred as ‘the greatest treasure-

giver of all the kings he has ever heard tell of’.115 The effusive praise occurred in the

context of a further book given by the king: the exemplar on which Wulfsige’s copy had

been based.

BOOKS IN ROYAL OR SECULAR ARISTOCRATIC HANDS

IN LATER ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND

There is a strong case, moreover, for the survival of many of the mechanisms and

principles of Alfredian education in later Anglo-Saxon England. There was much

copying of Alfredian literature in the tenth century, the court itself remained an

important centre for instruction and learning, and Alfred’s programme inspired a

111 For the dissemination of this translation, see S. Keynes, ‘The Power of the Written Word: Alfredian

England 871-899’, Alfred the Great: Papers from the Eleventh-Centenary Conferences, ed. T. Reuter

(Aldershot, 2003), pp. 175-97, at 193-6; C. Schreiber, King Alfred’s Old English Translation, pp. 51-

82; Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 180-3. 112 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 626; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 384-6 (no. 324); N. R. Ker, The Pastoral Care: King

Alfred’s Translation of St Gregory’s Regula Pastoralis, MS Hatton 20 in the Bodleian Library at

Oxford, MS. Cotton Tiberius B. XI in the British Museum, MS. Anhang 19 in the Landesbibliothek at

Kassel, EEMF 6 (Copenhagen, 1956); Making of England, ed. Webster and Backhouse, pp. 260-1 (no.

235); The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art 966-1066, ed. J. Backhouse, D. H. Turner and L. Webster

(London, 1984), pp. 20-1 (no. 1); Schreiber, King Alfred’s Old English Translation, pp. 53-5; C.

Franzen, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, 6: Worcester Manuscripts (Tempe, AZ,

1998), no. 377. 113 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 375; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 257-9 (no. 195); idem, Pastoral Care, pp. 12-19;

Schreiber, King Alfred’s Old English Translation, pp. 51-2. 114 Keynes, ‘Power of the Written Word’, pp. 193-7. 115 D. Yerkes, ‘The Full Text of the Metrical Preface to Wærferth’s Old English Translation of Gregory’s

Dialogues’, Speculum 55 (1979), 505-13 , at 513; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 188.

22

number of further efforts to provide works of vernacular prose.116 Particularly striking is

the career of the monastic reformer, Æthelwold, abbot of Abingdon (c. 954-63) and

bishop of Winchester (963-84), who was educated to a high level at the court of

Alfred’s grandson, King Æthelstan (924-39).117 Æthelwold’s translation of the Rule of

St Benedict, commissioned or promoted under the patronage of King Edgar (957/9-75)

and his queen, Ælfthryth, was publicly addressed to ‘unlearned laymen’ (ungelærede

woroldmenn), a term possibly implying a lay readership as well as use by monastic

novitiates.118 The format of the translation, in one version accompanied by a preface

recording Edgar’s approval, consciously echoed the format of Alfredian texts.119

The education of members of the royal family

A further dimension can be seen in the education of royal children. There is a strong

case for a continuous tradition of personal learning in the West Saxon dynasty,

stretching from Alfred to the eleventh century. Alfred’s own children variously

benefited from court instruction according to Asser.120 William of Malmesbury reports

the high level of education enjoyed by the children of Alfred’s son Edward the Elder,

describing Æthelstan as ‘the most learned (litteratius) ruler of the English’: given

William’s enthusiastic account of Alfred’s reign, the detail is striking.121 King Edgar

himself is known to have received instruction in his youth from Æthelwold;122 his son,

116 M. Lapidge, ‘Schools, Learning and Literature in Tenth-Century England’, in his Anglo-Latin

Literature 900-1066 (London, 1993), pp. 1-48; Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 141-205; M.

Gretsch, Intellectual Foundations; Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 345-6 and 348. 117 M. Lapidge, ‘Æthelwold as Scholar and Teacher’, in his Anglo-Latin Literature 900-1066, pp. 183-

211; Gretsch, Intellectual Foundations, esp. pp. 332-48 and 428-9. 118 Councils & Synods with other Documents Relating to the English Church, I: A.D. 871-1204, ed. D.

Whitelock, M. Brett and C. N. L. Brooke, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1981), pt 1: 871-1066, 151 (no. 33);

Gretsch, Intellectual Foudations, p. 237, n. 32, and p. 279, cf. 123; cf. M. Gretsch, ‘The Benedictine

Rule in Old English: a Document of Bishop Æthelwold’s Reform Politics’, Words, Texts and

Manuscripts: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Culture presented to Helmut Gneuss, ed. M. Korhammer, K.

Reichl and H. Sauer (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 131-58, at 146; Pratt, ‘The Voice of the King’, p. 163, cf.

p. 173. 119 Gretsch, ‘Benedictine Rule’, pp. 149-50; idem, Intellectual Foundations, p. 123; Pratt, ‘The Voice of

the King’, pp. 164-8, 187 and 197. 120 Asser, Vita Alfredi, c. 75 (ed. Stevenson, pp. 57-9; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 90-1); Pratt,

Political Thought, pp. 120-1 and 167. 121 William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum II.126 and II.132, cf. II.133, in William of Malmesbury: Gesta

Regum Anglorum / The History of the English Kings, ed. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson and M.

Winterbottom, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1998-9) I, 198-200 and 210); Foot, Æthelstan, pp. 34-7. 122 Regularis Concordia, ed. T. Symons (London, 1953), p. 1; Byrhtferth of Ramsey, Vita S. Oswaldi

III.11, in Byrhtferth of Ramsey: the Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine, ed. M. Lapidge (Oxford, 2009),

pp. 76-8. For the tradition, probably reliable, Edgar had as an infant been entrusted to Ælfwynn, wife of

Æthelstan ‘Half King’, following the death of his mother Ælfgifu in 944, see C. Hart, ‘Athelstan “Half

King” and his Family’, in his The Danelaw (London, 1992), pp. 569-604, at 579-80, 586 and 589.

23

Edward the Martyr, was ‘versed in divine law by the teaching of Bishop Sidemann [of

Crediton]’, according to Byrhtferth’s Life of St Oswald.123

The pattern can be traced further through certain female members of the dynasty,

whose lives are unusually well documented. The female religious house of Wilton

appears to have played a central role in the education of royal and aristocratic

women.124 Although the use of Wilton would have been specific to women, their

attendance appears to have been informal and compatible with a secular career.125 The

education that they received illustrates the value attached to learning in court circles.

Thus Edgar’s daughter, Edith (961 x 964 - 984 x 987), was entrusted by Edgar to

Wilton, where her mother, Edgar’s second wife, Wulfthryth, had been installed as

abbess.126 Edith gained profiency in Latin, and her Life, by the late eleventh-century

hagiographer Goscelin, refers to a manual of devotions written in her own hand.127

Significantly, Edith appears to have remained a secular member of the community,

reflecting a wider pattern.128 Her example bears comparison with another Edith (d.

1075), the future queen of Edward the Confessor. The daughter of Godwine, earl of

Wessex, as a child she had been similarly educated at Wilton, probably in the 1020s;

according to the Life of Edward, subsequently commissioned by her, as queen she had

held responsibility for the teaching of children of royal blood.129 One should also

compare another member of the royal dynasty, Margaret (d. 1093), daughter of Edward

the Exile (d. 1057) and thus a close kinswoman of the Confessor, who later married the

Scottish king, Malcolm III (1058-93); her career is largely known from the Life

commissioned by her daughter, Matilda, queen of Henry I of England.130 Margaret was

123 Byrhtferth of Ramsey, Vita S. Oswaldi IV.18 (ed. Lapidge, p. 138, with p. 139, n. 172). 124 S. Hollis, ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, Writing the Wilton Women: Goscelin’s Legend of Edith

and Liber confortatorius, ed. S. Hollis (Turnhout, 2004), pp. 307-38; B. Yorke, Nunneries and the

Anglo-Saxon Royal Houses (London, 2003), pp. 129 and 158-9; cf. also S. Foot, Veiled Women, 2 vols.

(Aldershot, 2000) II, 221-31. 125 Hollis, ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, pp. 309-10 and 324-38. 126 S. Hollis, ‘St Edith and the Wilton Community’, Writing the Wilton Women, ed. Hollis, pp. 245-80. 127 Goscelin of Canterbury, Vita S. Edithae, c. 8 (A. Wilmart, ‘La légende de Ste Édith en prose et vers

par le moine Goscelin’, AB 56 (1938), 5-101 and 265-307, at 55-7; M. Wright and K. Loncar, ‘The Vita

of Edith’, Writing the Wilton Women, ed. Hollis, pp. 23-67, at 34-5); Hollis, ‘Wilton as a Centre of

Learning’, pp. 310-18. 128 Hollis, ‘St Edith and the Wilton Community’, pp. 249-50; Hollis, ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’,

pp. 309-10 and 324-7. 129 Vita Ædwardi regis I.2 (The Life of Edward Who Rests at Westminster, ed. F. Barlow, 2nd ed.

(Oxford, 1992), pp. 22-4); P. Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women’s Power

in Eleventh-Century England (Oxford, 1997), pp. 257-9 and 268-9; Hollis, ‘Wilton as a Centre of

Learning’, pp. 330-4. Cf. also E. M. Tyler, ‘The Vita Ædwardi: the Politics of Poetry at Wilton Abbey’,

ANS 31 (2009), 135-56, at 152-56, suggesting the Wilton community as a significant audience for the

Vita Ædwardi. 130 D. Baker, ‘“A Nursery of Saints”” St Margaret of Scotland Reconsidered’, Medieval Women, ed. D.

Baker (Oxford, 1978), pp. 119-41; L. Huneycutt, ‘The Idea of a Perfect Princess: the Life of St

Margaret in the Reign of Matilda II (1100-1118)’, ANS 12 (1989), 81-97; V. Wall, ‘Queen Margaret of

Scotland (1070-1093): Burying the Past, Enshrining the Future’, Queens and Queenship in Medieval

24

also probably educated at Wilton, and was reportedly well versed in scripture and ‘the

opinions of the Fathers’.131 Her personal gospel lectionary remarkably survives as

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Lat. liturg. f. 5, dating from the second or third quarters of the

eleventh century.132 Although Richard Gameson has questioned how much Margaret’s

gospel lectionary may reveal about female lay literacy, her case gains strength from the

examples of the two Ediths, and from the nexus of connections centred on Wilton.133

Margaret’s daughter, Matilda, was also educated at Wilton, and subsequently acted as

patron to a number of Latin poems, in addition to the Life of her mother.134 Probably

contributing actively to literary patronage at the court of Henry I, her role represented an

important element of continuity from the late Anglo-Saxon to the Anglo-Norman

world.135

These patterns throw into focus the unusual case of Emma, wife and queen of

both Æthelred II and Cnut, who had been reared in Normandy. Very little is known of

her upbringing, but it seems likely that she would have received formal instruction.136

Her mother, Gunnor, had been of Danish noble descent, and acted as a patron to Dudo

of St-Quentin and in respect of Latin poetry by Warner of Rouen.137 As Elizabeth Tyler

has argued, the complexity of Emma’s linguistic environment, intensified by each of her

marriages, provides a notable context for her subsequent patronage of books and

texts.138 As will be seen below, even on a conservative reading of the evidence, Emma

and Cnut clearly acted as significant patrons of manuscript production.139 Many of their

activities bore a relationship to earlier royal practice, and participated in wider European

Europe, ed. A. J. Duggan (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 27-38; A. J. Wilson, St Margaret Queen of

Scotland, rev. ed. (Edinburgh, 2001). 131 Turgot, Vita S. Margaretae Scotorum Reginae, cc. 3, 6, 8 and 10 (Symeonis Dunelmensis Opera et

Collectanea I, ed. I. H. Hinde, Publications of the Surtees Society 51 (Durham, 1868), 238, 240-1, 244-

5 and 247-9); translation available in L. Huneycutt, Matilda of Scotland: a Study in Medieval

Queenship (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 162-78, cf. also 10-17. R. Rushforth, St Margaret’s Gospel-Book:

the Favourite Book of an Eleventh-Century Queen of Scots (Oxford, 2007), pp. 63-4; Hollis, ‘Wilton as

a Centre of Learning’, pp. 333-5. 132 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 650; Golden Age, ed. Backhouse et al., pp. 83 and 85-6 (no. 69); Dumville,

Liturgy, p. 108; R. Gameson, ‘The Gospels of Margaret of Scotland: the Literacy of an Eleventh-

Century Queen’, Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence, ed. L. Smith and J. H. M.

Taylor (London, 1997), pp. 149-71; Rushforth, St Margaret’s Gospel-Book. 133 Gameson, ‘The Gospels of Margaret of Scotland’, pp. 161-4; cf. Hollis, ‘Wilton as a Centre of

Learning’, pp. 333-4, cf. 321-2 and 337-8; Rushforth, St Margaret’s Gospel-Book, pp. 57-83. 134 E. M. C. van Houts, ‘Latin Poetry and the Anglo-Norman Court 1066-1135: the Carmen de Hastingae

Proelio’, JMH 15 (1989), 39-62, at 50-1; Huneycutt, Matilda of Scotland, pp. 18-21 and 129-34. 135 Huneycutt, Matilda of Scotland, pp. 134-43. 136 Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, pp. 211-14. 137 E. M. C. van Houts, ‘Countess Gunnor of Normandy (c. 950-1031)’, Collegium medievale 12 (1999),

7-24. 138 E. M. Tyler, ‘Crossing Conquests: Polyglot Royal Women and Literary Culture in Eleventh-Century

England’, Conceptualizing Multilingualism in Medieval England, c.800 - c.1250, ed. E. M. Tyler

(Turnhout, 2011), pp. 171-96, at 176-83; cf. also Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, pp. 213-14. 139 See below, pp. 43-5.

25

patterns of cultural emulation. Yet Emma’s Continental origins and connections, the

niceties of her queenly career, and her previous experience of West Saxon royal piety

under Æthelred were all highly relevant to political display. Emma’s active use of

scholarly culture is exemplified by the Encomium Emmae reginae, the extraordinary

Latin historical work defending her actions and career, which she commissioned from a

monk of St-Bertin, in St-Omer, Flanders, in 1041-2.140 The sole surviving medieval

manuscript, London, British Library, Additional 33241, dating from the mid eleventh

century, appears to have been a volume of some importance, adorned with the prefatory

image of Emma enthroned, receiving the Encomium from its author, with her sons

Harthacnut and Edward in attendance.141 Although the manuscript has some

peculiarities, and has occasionally been assigned to Normandy, a good case has been

made for suspecting production at St-Omer, partly on the basis of the imposing

treatment of the opening leaves, which is compatible with the volume having served as a

presentation or display copy.142 Although the provenance cannot be diagnostic, St

Augustine’s, Canterbury, was a house to which Emma herself gave gifts.143 Whatever

the case, Emma’s ownership of a copy of the Encomium appears to be celebrated in the

prefatory image, boldly precocious in showing a queen enthroned.144 The closest

precedents for this feature, significantly, were depictions of enthroned Ottonian male

rulers, themselves partly inspired by an earlier representation of Charles the Bald; the

imagery and resonances may well have been known to the Encomium artist.145

140 Encomium Emmae Reginae, ed. A. Campbell, reprinted with a supplementary introduction by S.

Keynes (Cambridge, 1998); see esp. Keynes, Encomium, pp. xxxix-lxxi; Stafford, Queen Emma and

Queen Edith, pp. 12-40; A. Orchard, ‘The Literary Background to the Encomium Emmae Reginae’,

JML 11 (2001), 156-83; E. M. Tyler, ‘Fictions of Family: the Encomium Emmae Reginae and Virgil’s

Aeneid’, Viator 36 (2005), 149-79. 141 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 287; Golden Age, ed. Backhouse et al., p. 145 (no. 148); Keynes, Encomium,

xli-xlv. 142 See R. Gameson, ‘L’Angleterre et la Flandre aux Xe et XIe siècles’, Les échanges culturels au moyen

âge, Publications de la Sorbonne, Série histoire ancienne et médiévale 70 (Paris, 2002), 165-206, at

175; idem, ‘Book Decoration’, p. 277. 143 Keynes, Encomium, pp. xlv and lxxvii; Heslop, ‘Production of de luxe Manuscripts’, p. 184. 144 For the novelty of the image, see C. Neuman de Vegvar, ‘A Paean for a Queen: the Frontispiece to the

“Encomium Emmae Regine”’, Anglo-Saxon History: Basic Readings, ed. D. A. E. Pelteret (New York,

NY, 2000), pp. 317-21; P. Stafford, ‘Emma: the Powers of the Queen in the Eleventh Century’, Queens

and Queenship, ed. Duggan, pp. 3-26, at 4-5; C. E. Karkov, ‘Emma: Image and Ideology’, Early

Medieval Studies in memory of Patrick Wormald, ed. S. Baxter, C. E. Karkov, J. L. Nelson and D.

Pelteret (Farnham, 2009), pp. 509-20, at 517; cf. also idem, Ruler Portraits, pp. 146-56. 145 For Ottonian depictions of enthroned rulers, and the model provided by Munich, Bayerische

Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14000 (‘Codex Aureus of St Emmeram’; court school of Charles the Bald, 870),

present at Regensburg in this period, see below, p. 61, n. 338.

26

Books owned by members of the secular aristocracy

Royal practices were part of a wider lay tradition. This is shown most clearly by the

example of Æthelweard, ealdorman of the western provinces (d. c. 998), who, informed

by the precedents of Alfred and Edgar, acted as patron to Ælfric of Eynsham,

commissioning a number of vernacular prose texts, including the Lives of Saints and a

version of Genesis.146 The Latin Chronicon which survives in Æthelweard’s name

amounted to an ambitious new history of the English and their ruling dynasty.147

Although doubts have occasionally been raised whether the Chronicon had in reality

been Æthelweard’s work, most recently by Godden, as Mechthild Gretsch has shown,

there are indications that Æthelweard had competence in reading Latin to a reasonable

standard, while certain features of the Chronicon, most notably its exuberant stylistic

pretensions and often ungrammatical syntax, support the picture of an educated

layman.148 That Æthelweard was far from unique in his interests is supported by several

instances of other laymen owning books in the later Anglo-Saxon period. Thus

ealdorman Ordulf, the uncle of King Æthelred II, and founder of Tavistock abbey, was

bequeathed copies of ‘Hrabanus [Maurus] and a Martyrology’, by Ælfwold, bishop of

Crediton, in the early eleventh century.149 A later ealdorman Æthelweard, who married

a daughter of the historian Æthelweard’s son, Æthelmær, gave a manuscript, now

London, Lambeth Palace 149, containing Bede’s In Apocalpysin and Augustine’s De

adulterinis coniugiis, to a monastery dedicated to St Mary, probably Buckfast, Devon,

of which he was regarded as the founder.150 Two extensively illustrated manuscripts,

conveying vernacular versions of parts of the Old Testament, may well have had lay

146 See now M. Gretsch, ‘Historiography and Literary Patronage in Late Anglo-Saxon England: the

Evidence of Æthelweard’s Chronicon’, ASE 41 (2013), pp. 205-48. 147 E. van Houts, ‘Women and the Writing of History in the Early Middle Ages: the Case of Abbess

Matilda of Essen and Æthelweard’, EME 1 (1992), 53-68; S. Ashley, ‘The Lay Intellectual in Anglo-

Saxon England: Ealdorman Æthelweard and the Politics of History’, Lay Intellectuals in the

Carolingian World, ed. Wormald and Nelson, pp. 218-45. 148 Gretsch, ‘Historiography and Literary Patronage’, pp. 111-12 and 238-42; cf. Godden, ‘Did King

Alfred Write Anything?’, p. 6. 149 S 1492 (Councils & Synods, pp. 382-6 (no. 51); Lapidge, ‘Surviving Booklists’, pp. 55-6; Gretsch,

‘Historiography and Literary Patronage’, p. 248, n. 188. For Ordulf’s career, see Keynes, Diplomas, p.

188, 192 and 209. 150 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 506; Ker, Catalogue, p. 340 (no. 275); M. T. Hussey, Anglo-Saxon

Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, 22: Exeter Manuscripts (forthcoming), no. 311. S. Keynes,

‘Cnut’s Earls’, The Reign of Cnut: King of England, Denmark and Norway, ed. A. R. Rumble (London,

1994), pp. 43-88, at 68-9; R. Gameson, ‘The Origin of the Exeter Book of Old English Poetry’, ASE 25

(1996), 135-85, at 162-79; Gretsch, ‘Historiography and Literary Patronage’, p. 248, n. 188. For

Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 23, vol. i (southern England, c. 1000; provenance Malmesbury), a

lavishly illustrated copy of Prudentius’s Psychomachia, given to Malmesbury by a certain Æthelweard,

possibly the same ealdorman, see Keynes, ‘Cnut’s Earls’, p. 69, n. 150; D. N. Dumville, English

Caroline Script and Monastic History: Studies in Benedictinism, A.D. 950-1030 (Woodbridge, 1993),

pp. 105-6. See also Lapidge, ‘Artistic and Literary Patronage’, pp. 46-7, likening the volume to ‘an

Anglo-Saxon “coffee-table book”.

27

patrons. Oxford, Bodliean Library, Junius 11, the main section of which, containing the

Old English poems Genesis A and B, Exodus and Daniel, is conventionally dated to the

turn of the eleventh century, appears to have been written for a certain ‘Ælfwine’,

depicted in a portrait roundel (p. 2).151 Wearing a cloak and lacking a tonsure, the figure

has been persuasively identified by Barbara Raw as a layman.152 Since Ælfwine was a

relatively common name, it would be hazardous to venture a closer identification, but

prosopographical analysis suggests at least two prominent Ælfwines among the

contemporaneous secular elite: firstly, Ælfwine, father of the Mercian ealdorman,

Leofwine, plausibly identified as the Ælfwine killed at the battle of Maldon in 991;153

and secondly, the king’s thegn Ælfwine, beneficiary of a charter of King Æthelred, dated

984, conveying land in Oxfordshire, who served as King Æthelred’s scriptor.154 As a

lay royal scribe, the latter would be a striking candidate for the book’s original

patron.155 London, British Library, Cotton Claudius B. iv, a lavishly illustrated copy of

the ‘Old English Hexateuch’ from the second quarter of the eleventh century, combining

translations by Ælfric with those of another translator, has been plausibly interpreted as

evidence for a broader enterprise at St Augustine’s, Canterbury, to produce multiple

copies of such codices for lay use.156 As Raw has observed, the unfinished illustrative

schemes in Junius 11 and Claudius B. iv may have contributed to the unusual

151 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 640; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 406-8 (no. 334); E. Temple, Anglo-Saxon

Manuscripts 900-1066 (London, 1976), pp. 146-8 (no. 58); Golden Age, ed. Backhouse et al., p. 152

(no. 154); I. Gollancz, The ‘Cædmon Manuscript’ of Anglo-Saxon Biblical Poetry (London, 1927); P.

G. Remley, ‘Junius Manuscript’, The Blackwell Encyclopaedia, ed. Lapidge et al.. For arguments for a

slightly earlier date of production, c. 950-c. 980, on art-historical grounds, see L. Lockett, ‘An

Integrated Re-examination of the Dating of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 11’, ASE 31 (2002), 141-

73. 152 B. Raw, ‘The Probable Derivation of most of the Illustrations in Junius II from an Illustrated Old

Saxon Genesis’, ASE 5 (1976), 133-48, at 135. 153 S. Baxter, The Earls of Mercia: Lordship and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 2007),

pp. 17-19 and 74; PASE (2005), s.n. ‘Ælfwine 29’. 154 S 853 (Burt 24); Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 135-6, 147, 149 and 160; S. Baxter and J. Blair, ‘Land

Tenure and Royal Patronage in the Early English Kingdom: a Model and Case Study’, ANS 28 (2006),

19-46, at 30-3, 37, 41, 43 and 45; PASE (2005), s.n. ‘Ælfwine 32’, cf. ‘Ælfwine 41’, represented as a

king’s thegn in charter attestations, 983 - 1012 x 1013, who may have been the same person; cf. also S.

Keynes, An Atlas of Attestations in Anglo-Saxon Charters, c. 670-1066 (Cambridge, 2002, Tables

LXIII and LXIV). 155 The second artist of Junius 11 has been identified as also having illustrated Corpus 23, vol. i (see

above, p. 26, n. 150), and might thus be envisaged as an artist accustomed to working under lay

patronage. For Christ Church, Canterbury as the likely medieval provenance for Junius 11, see R.

Thomson, ‘Identifiable Books from the Pre-Conquest Library of Malmesbury Abbey’, ASE 10 (1982),

1-19, at 16-18. 156 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 315; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 178-9 (no. 142); Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts,

pp. 102-4 (no. 86); Golden Age, ed. Backhouse et al., p. 153 (no. 157); A. N. Doane, Anglo-Saxon

Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, 7: Anglo-Saxon Bibles and ‘The Book of Cerne’ (Tempe, AZ,

2002), no. 182; C. R. Dodwell and P. Clemoes, The Old English Illustrated Hexateuch (British Museum

Cotton Claudius B. i), EEMF 18 (1974), p. 58; Raw, ‘The Probable Derivation of most of the

Illustrations in Junius II’, p. 135.

28

preservation of both books, in ecclesiastical hands.157 Another book-owning layman

was possibly Odda of Deerhurst (d. 1056), earl in the west midlands during the

Confessor’s reign: a short Worcester book-list includes ‘Oddan boc’ among a list of

books in English, perhaps identifying a book given or bequeathed by him.158 The Old

English poem known as Thureth celebrates the generosity of a certain Thored, in all

likelihood a nobleman, in commissioning an ornate binding for London, British Library,

Cotton Claudius A. iii, fols. 31-86 and 87-105, a late tenth or early eleventh-century

pontifical of uncertain origin once owned by Wulfstan, archbishop of York (d. 1023).159

Although the poem has often been connected with Thored, ealdorman of Northumbria

during Æthelred’s reign (fl. 979-92), Wormald advanced an alternative case for a

Fenland Thored, son of Earl Oslac of Northumbria (?963x6-75): whatever the case, the

lay patronage of a bishop’s book would be striking, and may indicate some special

association between Thored and the manuscript.160

The general context for such practices lay in the social and political

consequences of the monastic reform movement: not just the foundation or refoundation

of reformed houses by individual aristocratic families, but aspects of the extension of

previously monastic ideals to members of the secular elite.161 It would be insufficient to

157 Raw, ‘The Probable Derivation of most of the Illustrations in Junius II’, p. 135. 158 Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. A. J. Robertson, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1956), p. 250 (Appendix II, no. 5),

with p. 499; Lapidge, ‘Surviving Booklists’, pp. 130-2, suggesting the alternative identification of a mid

eleventh-century monk of Worcester; cf. now P. Stokes, ‘The Vision of Leofric: Manuscript, Text and

Context’, RES 63 (2012), 529-50, at 533-5, suggesting a date of s. xiex for the manuscript of the book-

list. For Odda’s career, see A. Williams, The World Before Domesday: the English Aristocracy, 900-

1066 (London, 2008), pp. 11-17 and 20-2. Cf. also D. Ganz, ‘Review Article: When is a Library not a

Library?’, EME 17 (2009), 444-53, at 447, for the suggestion that the list of books ‘þe Æþestanes

wæran’, written s. x2/2, in British Library, Cotton Domitian i, 55v might have been those of a scholar

working under the patronage of the important ealdorman, Æthelstan ‘Half King’ (who died after 957,

having entered monastic retirement at Glastonbury): cf. Lapidge, ‘Surviving Booklists’, pp. 113-16. The

idea has attractions, but explanation would be needed for the provenance of the surviving books to

which the booklist appears to refer, from St Augustine’s, Canterbury (including Domitian i, probably

also produced at St Augustine’s): Ker, Catalogue, nos. 120 and 326. 159 31v: The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, ed. E. V. K. Dobbie, ASPR 6 (New York, NY, 1942), 97; C.

Ronalds and M. C. Ross, ‘Thureth: a Neglected Old English Poem and its History in Anglo-Saxon

Scholarship’, N&Q 246 (2001), 359-70. ‘Claudius Pontifical I’: Gneuss, Handlist, no. 314; Ker,

Catalogue, pp. 177-8 (no. 141). For the relationship to fols. 32-8, bearing the Latin and Old English

versions of the law-code known as VI Æthelred, in hand of s. xi1/4, see Wormald, The Making of

English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century. I: Legislation and its Limits (Oxford, 1999), 191-2. It

is hard to be certain that the writing of Thureth postdated the addition of the law-code texts: cf. Ronalds

and Ross, ‘Thureth’, p. 363, n. 23. 160 Wormald, Making of English Law I, 192-4, with references; cf. Dumville, Liturgy, pp. 78-9. For

discussion of the pontifical, see now C. A. Jones, ‘Wulfstan’s Liturgical Interests’, Wulfstan,

Archbishop of York: the Proceedings of the Second Alcuin Conference, ed. M. Townend (Turnhout,

2004), pp. 325-52, at 334-46. 161 M. McC. Gatch, ‘Piety and Liturgy in the Old English Vision of Leofric’, Words, Texts and

Manuscripts, ed. Korhammer et al., pp. 159-79, at 161-2; Smith, Fleming and Halpin, ‘Court and

Piety’, pp. 579-88; C. Cubitt, ‘Ælfric’s Lay Patrons’, A Companion to Ælfric, ed. H. Magennis and M.

Swan (Leiden, 2009), pp. 165-92, esp. 181-4 and 187-90; A. Williams, ‘Thegnly Piety and

Ecclesiastical Patronage in the Late Old English Kingdom’, ANS 24 (2002), 1-24, at 21-2; idem, ‘The

29

imagine lay piety as acting at a distance from the physical technology of learning.162 In

some cases the engagement with monastic life was relatively extreme: both Æthelmær

and Odda entered monastic retirement.163 Yet the Old English Vision of Earl Leofric

provides a glimpse of practices associated with an earl in power, Leofric, earl of Mercia

(d. 1057).164 Probably written shortly after the earl’s death by an author who had known

him, the text describes Leofric as having visited churches at night in order to pray, and

hearing at least two Masses daily.165 One might compare Leofric’s contemporary, Earl

Harold Godwineson, brother of Queen Edith, who is known to have possessed an

extensive collection of relics, and was a generous donor to Waltham abbey.166 Harold’s

case yields a further, unexpected glimpse of book ownership: an early twelfth-century

source, a treatise on hawking by Adelard of Bath, refers enigmatically to the ‘Haraoldi

regis libri’ in terms which suggest writings in English relating to falconry.167 The

nearest parallel is probably the Old English corpus of medical literature, but the

reference may indicate an entire class of books largely hidden from view.

Another category badly under-represented among surviving books is vernacular

poetry. The survival of two Old English battle poems, the Battle of Brunanburh and the

Battle of Maldon, together with other poems preserved within the Anglo-Saxon

Chronicle, suggests a broader genre of court poetry relating to contemporary deeds.168

Piety of Earl Godwine’, ANS 34 (2012), 237-56, at 244-6 and 252-3; cf. also Pratt, ‘Illnesses’, pp. 40-

51. For parallel Carolingian developments, see S. Airlie, ‘The Anxiety of Sanctity: St Gerald of Aurillac

and his Maker’, JEH 43 (1992), 372-95; J. M. H. Smith, ‘Gender and Ideology in the Early Middle

Ages’, Gender and Christian Religion, ed. R. N. Swanson, Stud. in Church Hist. 34 (Woodbridge,

1998), 51-73, at 61-73; J. L. Nelson, ‘Monks, Secular Men and Masculinity, c. 900’, Masculinity in

Medieval Europe, ed. D. M. Hadley (Harlow, 1999), pp. 121-42; R. Stone, Morality and Masculinity in

the Carolingian Empire (Cambridge, 2012). 162 Cf. Wormald, ‘Uses of Literacy’, pp. 109-111. 163 S. Keynes, ‘An Abbot, an Archbishop, and the Viking Raids of 1006-7 and 1009-12’, ASE 36 (2007),

151-220, at 160 and 169-70, with references; idem, ‘King Æthelred’s Charter for Eynsham Abbey

(1005)’, Early Medieval Studies, ed. Baxter et al., pp. 451-73, at 451, 454-6 and 470; Williams, The

World Before Domesday, p. 16. 164 Gatch, ‘Piety and Liturgy’; S. Baxter, The Earls of Mercia: Lordship and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon

England (Oxford, 2007), pp. 1-4, 14, 154, 169 and 196; Stokes, ‘The Vision of Leofric’. 165 Stokes, ‘The Vision of Leofric’, pp. 548-9. 166 Smith, Fleming and Halpin, ‘Court and Piety’, pp. 582-8; see also N. Rogers, ‘The Waltham Abbey

Relic-List’, England in the Eleventh Century: Proceedings of the 1990 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. C.

Hicks (Stamford, 1992), pp. 157-81; Blair, Church, pp. 358 and 362-3. 167 Smith, Fleming and Halpin, ‘Court and Piety’, p. 583; C. H. Haskins, ‘King Harold’s Books’, EHR 37

(1922), 398-400. Cf. R. M. Wilson, The Lost Literature of Medieval England, 2nd ed. (London, 1970),

p. 69, for a treatise on hunting attributed to King Alfred in the library catalogue (s. xiv) of Christ

Church, Canterbury; the claim is probably a misidentification arising from confusion with Albert the

Great. 168 J. Thormann, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Poems and the Making of the English Nation’, Anglo-

Saxonism and the Construction of Social Identity, ed. A. J. Frantzen and J. D. Niles (Gainesville, FL,

1997), pp. 60-85; The Battle of Maldon, AD 991, ed. D. Scragg (Manchester, 1991); M. Townend, ‘Pre-

Cnut Praise-Poetry in Viking Age England’, RES 51 (2000), 349-70; T. A. Bredehoft, Textual

Histories: Readings in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Toronto, 2001); Foot, Æthelstan, pp. 112-15, with

30

One faces the poor preservation of vernacular poetry in general, largely restricted to four

codices; yet it should be noted that Lambeth 149 was written by the same scribe as the

Exeter Book, and both volumes were among those given to Exeter cathedral by Bishop

Leofric (d. 1072).169 It is quite possible that the Exeter Book had also been owned by

Æthelmær, just as Junius 11 may have been produced for the layman Ælfwine. In the

age of Danish conquest, furthermore, a group of Old Norse poems have been tentatively

identified as court poetry from the circle of King Cnut.170 Nor should one unhesitatingly

dismiss an early modern tradition which identified London, British Library, Cotton

Caligula A. vii, the later tenth-century English copy of the Old Saxon Heliand, as a

book once owned by King Cnut.171 The attribution rests solely on a Cottonian fly-leaf

inscription: the claim may be nothing more than a wishful extrapolation from a note,

added by the same hand on the opening page of the Heliand (11r), identifying the text as

‘Evangelia in lingua Danica’, but one cannot rule out the possibility that annotator had

some other basis for associating the volume with Cnut.172 An Old Norse saga suggests

that Edward the Confessor had been accustomed to recite a saga recounting the deeds of

the Norwegian king, Olaf Tryggvason, to the men of his court on the first day of Easter,

using a book that Olaf himself had sent to King Æthelred from Jerusalem.173 Though

the evidence is late, and some details probably fanciful, the story must be set alongside

references; S. Thompson Smith, ‘The Edgar Poems and the Poetics of Failure in the Anglo-Saxon

Chronicle’, ASE 39 (2011), 105-37. 169 Exeter, Cathedral Library, 3501 (‘Exeter Book’; southern England, c. 975; provenance Exeter by s.

xi3/4); Gneuss, Handlist, no. 257; Ker, Catalogue, p. 153 (no. 116); Golden Age, ed. Backhouse et al.,

p. 149 (no. 153); Hussey, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, 22, no. 130. Keynes,

‘Cnut’s Earls’, p. 69, n. 150; Gameson, ‘The Origin of the Exeter Book’, pp. 162-79. 170 R. Frank, ‘King Cnut in the Verse of his Skalds’, The Reign of Cnut, ed. Rumble, pp. 106-24;

Townend, ‘Contextualizing the Knútsdrápur’; idem, ‘Knútr and the Cult of St Óláfr: Poetry and

Patronage in Eleventh-Century Norway and England’, Viking & Med. Scandinavia 1 (2005), 251-79;

idem, ‘Cnut’s Poets: an Old Norse Litarary Community in Eleventh-Century England’, Conceptualizing

Multilingualism, ed. Tyler, pp. 197-216. 171 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 308; Ker, Catalogue, p. 172 (no. 137); Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp.

59-60 (no. 33); Doane, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, 1, no. 177. The circulation

within England, by the tenth century at the latest, of the Heliand and also an Old Saxon versification of

Genesis (a portion of which lies behind Genesis B, Old English verse translating the original Old Saxon

text) is an important and relatively neglected phenomenon: see Gretsch, Intellectual Foundations, pp.

388-9, 397-8 and 415; R. McKitterick, ‘Exchanges between the British Isles and the Continent, c. 450 -

c.900’, The Cambridge History of the Book I, ed. Gameson, 313-37, at 330-1. As has sometimes been

noted, the royal household would provide one potentially relevant set of East Frankish connections in

the ninth and tenth centuries (Raw, ‘The Probable Derivation of most of the Illustrations in Junius II’,

esp. 146-8; A. N. Doane, The Saxon Genesis: an Edition of the West Saxon Genesis B and the Old

Saxon Vatican Genesis (Madison, WI, 1991), pp. 51-3), but ecclesiastical and scholarly contact was

also more general. 172 For these additions, see Doane, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, 1, 2-3; cf. R.

Priebsch, The Heliand Manuscript Cotton Caligula A. VII in the British Museum: a Study (Oxford,

1925), pp. 48-9. 173 Wilson, Lost Literature, p. 50; F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT, 1997),

pp. 6-7, cf. 13-14.

31

the considerable evidence for the Confessor’s personal piety. Part of the value of lay

literate skills may have lain their multi-faceted application.

Two evidential issues relating to later Anglo-Saxon England provide an

important context in which the picture presented above should be judged. The first is the

continuing shortage of intimate narrative sources; for example, the surviving royal

biographies, comprising only the Lives of Alfred and Edward the Confessor, and the

Encomium of Queen Emma, compares unfavourably with the Carolingian corpus.174

The evidence discussed above thus has additional significance, and that relating to

female literacy particular value. The phenomenon of the educated royal or noble woman

should not be regarded as a separate gendered category: the flexibility of female secular

careers has already been noted.175 More is known about Edith of Wilton, and Queens

Edith and Margaret because certain details of their lives are credibly recorded in

hagiographical sources.176 These detailed examples should be set alongside the blunter

fact, that royal males are regularly reported as having been educated.177

A second issue concerns the corpus of wills, where there are only limited

references to books in secular hands, which led Patrick Wormald to suggest a contrast

with the ninth-century Carolingian evidence and practices.178 Yet Anglo-Saxon wills

typically had landholding as their major focus, and were selective in their disposal of

personal possessions.179 Gender appears to have been a major factor: as Linda Tollerton

has explored for wills of the tenth and eleventh centuries, outside the heriot payment

(due to the lord on the death of his man), female wills were significantly more likely to

include moveable wealth, referring to a wider range of items.180 One explanation may

174 Rosenthal, ‘A Historiographical Survey’, pp. 74-9; cf. M. Innes and R. McKitterick, ‘The Writing of

History’, Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, ed. R. McKitterick (Cambridge, 1994), pp.

193-220. 175 Cf. Wormald, ‘Uses of Literacy’, p. 110; see above, p. 23. 176 Hollis, ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, pp. 318--38. 177 The Anglo-Saxon examples appear to differ from that of Queen Margaret’s husband, the Scottish

king, Malcom III, whose interest in her books is reported in Turgot’s Life, despite the fact that he

himself had been ‘ignorant of letters’ (ignarus [...] literarum): Turgot, Vita S. Margaretae Scotorum

Reginae, c. 6 (ed. Hinde, p. 241); cf. Gameson, ‘The Gospels of Margaret of Scotland’, pp. 158-9 and

163. One common usage of the term illiteratus denoted an individual unable to read Latin specifically:

H. Grundmann, ‘Litteratus - illiteratus: der Wandel einer Bildungsnorm vom Altertum zum Mittelalter’,

Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 40 (1958), 1-66; R. McKitterick, ‘Introduction’, The Uses of Literacy, ed.

McKitterick, pp. 1-10, at 3. It is just possible that Turgot’s formulation should be understood in the

same terms, as opposed to an inability to read letters of any form. 178 Wormald, ‘Uses of Literacy’, pp. 99 and 110; cf. McKitterick, Carolingians and the Written Word,

pp. 245-50. 179 M. M. Sheehan, The Will in Medieval England (Toronto, 1963), pp. 99-106, cf. 83-99; Lowe, ‘The

Nature and Effect of the Anglo-Saxon Vernacular Will’, pp. 37-41; J. Crick, ‘Women, Wills and

Movable Wealth in Pre-Conquest England’, Gender and Material Culture in Historical Perspective, ed.

M. Donald and L. Hurcombe (London, 2000), pp. 17-37; L. Tollerton, Wills and Will-Making in Anglo-

Saxon England (Woodbridge, 2011), esp. pp. 180-227. 180 Tollerton, Wills, p. 221.

32

be the association between female will-making and widowhood, where moveable wealth

may have had a more important role in the assertion of status.181 It is also revealing to

consider the treatment of land in wills: as Wormald showed, wills did not normally

include the testator’s entire landholding, but only land which was capable of being

alienated, that is, the testator’s bookland.182 Other land was subject to customary laws

of inheritance. Such principles may help to make sense of the handling of personal

possessions. On the one hand, the prominence of references to books in the wills of

bishops, and also to some extent in the wills of secular women, may have had specific

causes: both categories of individual are likely to have had more complex testatory

arrangements, with more dispositions falling outside the normal customary

principles.183 By the same token, there is a danger of investing significance in the

silence of secular male wills. For example, King Alfred’s will makes no mention of

books, but barely refers to personal possessions at all: his goods were distributed by

value only.184 Books may have been implicitly included in this distribution;

alternatively, they could have been divided among relatives according to customary

principles, or subject to separate, oral gift.185 Yet one should ask whether royal books

would necessarily have been regarded as part of the king’s personal possessions. Within

royal landholding an important distinction existed between lands specifically attached to

the royal office and lands which were the king’s personal property.186 A further

possibility is that royal books had a similar ‘official’ status, and could therefore pass to

subsequent kings.187

181 Ibid., pp. 221-2 and 295-8, cf. 145-65 and 167-9 182 P. Wormald, ‘On þa wæpnedhealfe: Kingship and Royal Property from Æthelwulf to Edward the

Elder, Edward the Elder 899-924, ed. N. J. Higham and D. H. Hill (London, 2001), pp. 264-79, a view

supported by his reading of S 1507 (will of Ealdorman Ælfred); for a slightly different interpretation,

see J. Hudson, The Oxford History of the Laws of England II: 871-1216 (Oxford, 2012), 126-8. Cf. also

J. Mumby, ‘Property Rights in Anglo-Saxon Wills: a Synoptic View’, Gender and Historiography:

Studies in the Earlier Middle Ages in honour of Pauline Stafford, ed. J. L. Nelson, S. Reynolds and S.

M. Johns (London, 2012), pp. 159-74. 183 Cf. Wormald, ‘Uses of Literacy’, p. 110. For books bequeathed by women, see Crick, ‘Women, Wills

and Moveable Wealth’, pp. 25-6; Tollerton, Wills, pp. 212, 275-6 and 295-8. The Ulf who bequeathed a

mass-book to St Albans in the mid eleventh century (S 1532) seems most likely to have been a widowed

nobleman who had entered into confraternity with a religious community: ibid., p. 214, with references. 184 S 1507 (WinchNM 1), with Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 174-8, at 177. 185 For the former mechanism, see Hudson, Oxford History, p. 152. For the latter, cf. Sheehan, The Will,

pp. 100-1; see also p. 103 for the observation that ‘to succeed to a property was, normally, to succeed to

its equipment’. 186 Wormald, ‘On þa wæpnedhealfe’, p. 268. 187 Such a scenario might have a Continental parallel in the fate of the books of Otto III, which came into

the possession of Henry II after Otto’s death in 1002. Otto did not make a will; the precise mechanism

of transmission is unknown: see Mütherich, ‘The Library of Otto III’, pp. 12-13. For a view of the

patronage of Henry II highlighting the shrewd harnessing and refocusing of Otto III’s memory, see

Garrison, Ottonian Imperial Art, pp. 1-10 and 87-171.

33

BOOKS AS ROYAL GIFTS IN LATER ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND

If one looks closely enough, there are grounds for suspecting the existence of a wide

range of types of books in the circle of later Anglo-Saxon kings and their children—

prayerbooks, books of vernacular poetry, gospel-books, copies of the works of King

Alfred and other Alfredian and later vernacular prose texts—together with documentary

material of a variety of kinds, including charters, copies of law-codes, wills and

letters.188 This provides a broader context within which to consider one final class of

evidence: surviving books which were royal gifts in later Anglo-Saxon England. The

phenomenon was widespread, and appears to have received impetus from King Alfred’s

dissemination of his translation of the Regula pastoralis. One may now consider two

further known phases of donation, under Æthelstan and Cnut; in each case, one is

dealing with an impressive series of surviving manuscripts which are known or

suspected to have been royal gifts. The evidence is not only revealing but also

tantalizing in its broader implications.

Books given by King Æthelstan (924-39)

In the case of Æthelstan, there is a corpus of six manuscripts which can be clearly

identified as gifts by Æthelstan to religious houses; five out of the six bear inscriptions

recording the king’s gift and the beneficiary. Since these manuscripts have been the

subject of a fine study by Keynes, the corpus may be conveniently summarized with

reference to each manuscript’s origins and ecclesiastical recipient. Two manuscripts

were gifts to Christ Church, Canterbury: London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A. ii,

a de luxe Continental gospel-book of the late ninth or early tenth century, which may

have reached Æthelstan in association with the marriage of Æthelstan’s half-sister,

Eadgyth, to the Emperor Otto I (929 x 930);189 and London, Lambeth Palace 1370 (olim

771), an Irish ‘pocket’ gospelbook of the second half of the ninth century, seemingly

previously owned by the Irish ecclesiastic Mael Brigte mac Tornáin (d. 927).190 St

188 For the latter, see A. R. Rumble, ‘Anglo-Saxon Royal Archives: their Nature, Extent, Survival and

Loss’, Kingship, Legislation and Power, ed. Owen-Crocker and Schneider (forthcoming). 189 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 362; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 239-40 (no. 185); Schramm and Mütherich,

Denkmale, pp. 140 and 481 (no. 64); Keynes, ‘King Athelstan’s Books’, pp. 147-53; Golden Age, ed.

Backhouse et al., p. 20 (no. 3); McKendrick, Lowden and Doyle, Royal Manuscripts, pp. 102-3 (no. 4);

Foot, Æthelstan, pp. 94 and 118; Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 87-94. 190 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 521; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 346-7 (no. 284); Alexander, Insular Manuscripts, pp.

86-7 (no. 70); Keynes, ‘King Athelstan’s Books’, pp. 153-9; Foot, Æthelstan, pp. 106-7 and 118;

Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 85-7; D. Woodman, ‘“Æthelstan A” and

the Rhetoric of Rule’, ASE 42 (forthcoming). For Mael Brigte mac Tornáin, see D. N. Dumville, ‘Mael

Brigte mac Tornáin, Pluralist Coarb (†927)’, JCS 4 (2004), 97-116.

34

Augustine’s, Canterbury, received London, British Library, Royal 1. A. xviii, a gospel-

book, probably of Breton origin, of the late ninth or early tenth century.191 St Peter’s,

Bath, was given London, British Library, Cotton Claudius B. v, a copy of the Acts of the

Council of Constantinople (680), written on the Continent in the late ninth century.192

Two manuscripts were gifts to St Cuthbert’s, Chester-le-Street: London, British Library,

Cotton Otho B. ix, a de luxe gospel-book, probably of Breton origin, of the late ninth or

early tenth century, a volume now known only from fragments, but which once included

a portrait-page bearing a depiction of Æthelstan presenting a book to St Cuthbert,

probably influenced by Carolingian models;193 and Cambridge, Corpus Christi College

183, a manuscript wholly produced in England during Æthelstan’s reign, probably in

Wessex, containing Bede’s two Lives of St Cuthbert, plus episcopal lists of the English

church, and bearing a imposing portrait-page, clearly related to the depiction of the king

once present in Otho B. ix.194

To this corpus Keynes tentatively added two further manuscripts possibly owned

by Æthelstan. London, British Library, Royal 1 B. vii, a Northumbrian gospel-book of

the first half of the eighth century, includes the record of a manumission by King

Æthelstan.195 The inclusion of two royal priests among witnesses suggests that the hired

mentioned in the manumission referred to the royal household, and that the manuscript

191 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 444; Keynes, ‘King Athelstan’s Books’, pp. 165-70; Foot, Æthelstan, p. 118. 192 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 316; Keynes, ‘King Athelstan’s Books’, pp. 159-65; Foot, Æthelstan, p. 119. 193 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 354; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 223-4 (no. 176); Keynes, ‘King Athelstan’s Books’,

pp. 170-9; Foot, Æthelstan, pp. 107 and 121-2. 194 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 56; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 64-5 (no. 43); Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp.

37-8 (no. 6); Keynes, ‘King Athelstan’s Books’, pp. 180-5; Foot, Æthelstan, pp. 120-1; Woodman,

‘“Æthelstan A” and the Rhetoric of Rule’. Cf. D. Rollason, ‘St Cuthbert and Wessex; the Evidence of

Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 183’, St Cuthbert, his Cult and his Community to AD 1200, ed.

G. Bonner, D. Rollason and C. Stancliffe (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 413-24, at 420-4, for the suggestion

that Corpus 183 might have been initially produced for use in Wessex, and only reached Chester-le-

Street or Durham at a later stage in its history. Although the ruler-portraits in Corpus 183 and Otho B.

ix have received considerable discussion, the relative rarity of Anglo-Saxon royal portrait miniatures,

and the fact that Æthelstan was explicitly identified in Otho B. ix as giving the gospel-book to the see of

St Cuthbert, underpins the case for regarding the depictions as a pair. Rollason suggested that in the

Corpus 183 portrait Æthelstan might be depicted reading the book in his hands, rather than in the act of

gift; it should therefore be noted that the king’s eyes are directed laterally to the haloed figure, rather

than downwards towards the page. For the inventory in Northumbrian dialect on 96v (an added flyleaf),

see Ker, Catalogue, p. 65, whose view, that this placed the manuscript in Northumbria s. x, appears to

reflect a palaeographical, as well as linguistic, judgement (cf. Rollason, ‘St Cuthbert and Wessex’, p.

422, n. 44). For the two depictions of Æthelstan, see also Karkov, Ruler Portraits, pp. 55-68. M. Wood,

‘The Making of King Æthelstan’s Empire: an English Charlemagne?’, Ideal and Reality in Frankish

and Anglo-Saxon Society, ed. P. Wormald with D. Bullough and R. Collins (Oxford, 1983), pp. 250-72,

at 268-8. 195 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 445; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 316-17 (no. 246); Alexander, Insular Manuscripts, p.

48 (no. 20); Keynes, ‘King Athelstan’s Books’, pp. 185-9; R. Gameson, ‘The Royal 1. B. vii Gospels

and English Book Production in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries’, The Early Medieval Bible: its

Production, Decoration, and Use, ed. R. Gameson (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 24-52; Doane, Anglo-Saxon

Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, 7, no. 281; McKendrick, Lowden and Doyle, Royal Manuscripts,

pp. 96-7 (no. 1); Foot, Æthelstan, pp. 65 and 189-90.

35

had been a royal possession when the manumission was recorded. Coburg,

Landesbibliothek I, a gospel-book written at Metz in the mid ninth century, bears an

inscription associating King Æthelstan with a ‘Queen Eadgifu’.196 The reference is

arguably most likely to concern Æthelstan’s step-mother, but could conceivably be to

Æthelstan’s half-sister of the same name, who had married the West Frankish ruler

Charles the Simple, and spent a significant period in exile in Wessex between 923 or

929 and 936. The manuscript has a Gandersheim provenance, and might be suspected to

have reached Germany in the course of Æthelstan’s extensive contacts with his brother-

in-law, Otto I.197

Keynes’ detailed scrutiny of this corpus permits some broader observations on

what appears to have been a major phase of royal book donation. The dominance of

imported books over those of native origin, generally involving books with a degree of

age rather than of recent production, is striking, and suggests not only the cosmopolitan

connections of the West Saxon dynasty but Æthelstan’s ideological pretensions in re-

using volumes obtained from the Frankish world, Ireland and Northumbria.198 The

regular presence of inscriptions indicates the importance attached to the recording of

Æthelstan’s gifts. Keynes has additionally advanced grounds for identifying a number of

the inscriptions as the work of scribes in royal service, strengthening the impression of

acts of donation genuinely emanating from the political centre, and by implication

involving the king directly.199 This view is strengthened by the seemingly ‘public’

nature of the inscriptions, which commonly involve the conceit of addressing quisquis

hoc legerit (‘whoever reads this’). As I have argued elsewhere, in this and in certain

other themes the Æthelstan inscriptions, which are are mostly in Latin, appear to build

on the earlier Alfredian tradition of prefaces to vernacular works, suggesting that

196 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 809; Schramm and Mütherich, Denkmale, pp. 139-40 and 481 (no. 63); Keynes,

‘King Athelstan’s Books’, pp. 189-93; Foot, Æthelstan, pp. 57-8. 197 Considerations of space preclude fuller discussion of the so-called ‘Æthelstan’ Psalter, London,

British Library, Cotton Galba A. xviii (northern Francia, s. ix1/2, with subsequent augmentations; in

England by s. xin at the latest), a complex manuscript which has often been regarded as a likely royal

possession: Gneuss, Handlist, no. 334; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp. 36-7 (no. 5); Keynes,

‘King Athelstan’s Books’, pp. 193-6; idem, ‘Anglo-Saxon Entries in the “Liber Vitae” of Brescia’,

Alfred the Wise: Studies in honour of Janet Bately, ed. J. Roberts and J. L. Nelson with M. Godden

(Cambridge, 1997), pp. 99-119, at 117-19; R. Deshman, ‘The Galba Psalter: Pictures, Texts, and

Context in an Early Medieval Prayerbook’, in his Eye and Mind, ed. Cohen, pp. 35-57; McKendrick,

Lowden and Doyle, Royal Manuscripts, pp. 100-1 (no. 3); Foot, Æthelstan, pp. 105 and 195. As Simon

Keynes has noted, the early additions to the manuscript would be compatible with a link either to the

royal household or to one of the Winchester houses; the idea that the book had been specifically owned

by Æthelstan rests on a sixteenth-century note of uncertain authority. Of the added material, the most

suggestive is the Greek litany at the end of the volume, transmitted in a form also found in a dossier of

material associated with the scholar Israel the Grammarian; for Israel’s career, and patronage by King

Æthelstan, see Lapidge, ‘Israel the Grammarian’, pp. 99-103. 198 For the ideological significance of learning in this context see esp. Wood, ‘The Making of King

Æthelstan’s Empire’; cf. Keynes, ‘King Athelstan’s Books’, pp. 146 and 197-8. 199 Keynes, ‘King Athelstan’s Books’, pp. 150, 156-9 and 167-70, cf. 176.

36

Æthelstan’s donations were seen to bear a relationship to Alfred’s earlier generosity in

the giving of books, particularly the distribution of the translation of the Regula

pastoralis.200 Certainly, in the case of Christ Church, Canterbury, and other southern

sees which had received a copy of Alfred’s translation, such a tradition of learned

‘markers’ or signs, identifying books as specifically royal in origin, might well have

been recognized. As will be seen, there are several examples of books of royal origin

being used in ways which suggest that they had special significance for their subsequent

owners.201 By analogy with Alfred’s generosity, and given the many vagaries of

manuscript surival, the Æthelstan corpus should probably be seen as preserving merely

the rump of a larger number of donated manuscripts.202

A further consideration is the likely selectivity of the corpus as books which the

king had chosen donate, and which may well have been selected for complex reasons

relating to their contents, origins and character. It would therefore be dangerous to

regard the corpus as a representative sample of books in royal ownership;203 it is also

uncertain in most cases whether the book had been royal property for a significant

period before being given by Æthelstan. The majority of books are nevertheless of

probable ninth- rather than tenth-century origin, raising the possibility at least of longer-

term possession stretching beyond Æthelstan’s reign to Edward the Elder or Alfred:

Lambeth 1370 and Claudius B. v offer the widest parameters for putative royal

acquisition in the late ninth or early tenth century.204 The relative chronology of the gifts

is difficult to assess, and one cannot rule out the possibility of a focused campaign of

gift-giving at a certain point in the reign. Nonetheless the likely association of Otho B.

ix with Æthelstan’s campaign north in 934, and the fact that the completion of Corpus

183 must be placed in the period June 934 - October 939, suggests two acts of donation

in respect of the Chester-le-Street community;205 whereas the context for Tiberius A. ii,

if it had indeed been given to Æthelstan in 929 x 930, would imply a period with the

book in royal possession, since the ex-dono inscription appears to date from the later

930s.206 These examples, indicating the complex circulation and re-use of books for

royal purposes, arguably strengthen the case for suspecting that some of the other books

had experienced a significant period in royal possession.

200 Pratt, ‘The Voice of the King’, pp. 164-8. 201 See below, pp. 49-53, cf. above, pp. 13-20. 202 Leland in the sixteenth century reported finding several books at Bath which had been given by

Æthelstan, but only Claudius B. v now survives: Keynes, ‘King Athelstan’s Books’, p. 164; Foot,

Æthelstan, p. 119. 203 Keynes, ‘King Athelstan’s Books’, p. 146. 204 Ibid., pp. 154-5 and 160, n. 92. 205 Ibid., p. 178 and 182-4; Foot, Æthelstan, pp. 121-2. 206 Keynes, ‘King Athelstan’s Books’, pp. 147-50.

37

Especially striking is the dominance of gospel-books within the corpus,

comprising six out of the eight manuscripts. The preference for the use of gospel-books

as gifts appears to have been conscious, and may be attributable to a number of factors.

In the first place gospel-books had resonance as prestige items specially associated with

kings.207 That the gospels had specific importance is suggested by evidence for the

playing of ‘Gospel Dice’ in Æthelstan’s household, an elaborate board-game seemingly

devised by scholars in the king’s service.208 One might think of Offa’s bible codex as a

possible precedent for Æthelstan’s patronage, but probably more pertinent is the

extensive evidence for the production of sumptuous gospel-books under the patronage

of the Carolingian dynasty, which reached its high point under Charlemagne.209 The

practice involved the promotion of a standard gospel text and format, a goal which is

ruled out in Æthelstan’s case by the electic range of manuscripts.210 Yet in the

Carolingian case codices were typically gifted to churches; the practice remained

important among Æthelstan’s European contemporaries, as suggested by the Coburg

gospel-book, which might well have been given to Gandersheim by Otto I.211 The West

Frankish king Radulf (923-36) is also known to have given libri preciosissimi to

Sens.212 Given the re-use of de luxe manuscripts of Carolingian origin, and the inclusion

of a number of Carolingian royal books in the book collection of Otto III, some which

might well have reached the Ottonian court at an earlier stage, the West Saxon gift-

giving emerges as the conscious emulation of Carolingian ecclesiastical leadership.213

207 R. McKitterick, ‘Royal Patronage of Culture in the Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians:

Motives and Consequences’, in her The Frankish Kings and Culture, no. VII, pp. 93-129, at 117;

Wood, ‘The Making of King Æthelstan’s Empire’, p. 269. 208 Lapidge, ‘Israel the Grammarian’, pp. 89 and 103; M. Bayless, ‘Alea, tæfl, and Related Games:

Vocabulary and Context’, Latin Learning, ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe and Orchard I, 9-27, esp. 9-10 and 20-

3; Foot, Æthelstan, pp. 104-5 and 108. 209 McKitterick, ‘Royal Patronage of Culture’, pp. 103-110. 210 Ibid., pp. 112-17. 211 Keynes, ‘King Athelstan’s Books’, p. 193. 212 For Radulf, see J. Wollasch. ‘Kaiser und Könige als Brüder der Mönche: zum Herrscherbild in

liturgischen Handschriften des 9. bis 11. Jahrhunderts’, DAEM 40 (1984), 1-20, at 12. Cf. Mayr-

Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination I, 47-55, suggesting a range of contrasts between Germany and

West Francia in patterns of royal patronage. For the now-lost prayer-book or psalter of Queen Emma,

wife of King Lothar (954-86), a richly illuminated book probably produced in northeastern France 979

x c.990 (destroyed by fire at Rheims in 1774), see W. Cahn, ‘The Psalter of Queen Emma’, Cahiers

archéologiques 33 (1985), 72-85. For the gift, by Arnulf of Carinthia, of the de luxe gospel book

produced under the patronage of Charles the Bald, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14000

(‘Codex Aureus of St Emmeram’; court school of Charles the Bald, 870) to Regensburg in 893, see

Schramm and Mütherich, Denkmale, pp. 134-5 and 480 (no. 52); Wollasch, ‘Kaiser und Könige, p. 12;

McKitterick, ‘Charles the Bald (823-877) and his Library’, p. 38, n. 2; Garrison, Ottonian Imperial Art,

pp. 17-18 and 126-7. 213 See R. McKitterick, ‘Ottonian Intellectual Culture in the Tenth Century ad the Role of Theophanu’,

EME 2 (1993), 53-74, at 61, highlighting gifts given by King Odo of West Francia to Arnulf in 895 as a

possible route by which Carolingian royal manuscripts reached the Ottonian court library. As I have

argued elsewhere, whereas Carolingian court culture was also typically characterized by gifts, of a

38

The practice adds a further dimension to the prominence of Charlemagne’s memory in

Æthelstan’s court culture, demonstrated, for example, by the court poem Carta dirige

gressus.214

Secondly, the donation of gospel-books might be linked with the increasing

Christological dimensions which have been detected in West Saxon royal ideology in

the tenth century.215 The strongest evidence relates to Edgar’s kingship, but the A

version of the Second English Ordo for the anointing of kings, the compilation of which

has been placed in either the late ninth century or first quarter of the tenth century, made

greater reference to Christ, in addition to Old Testament precedent.216 The gifts of

gospel-books may be the early expression of a trend which would reach its high point

under King Edgar. Indeed, an intriguing case has been made by Michael Wood for

attributing the production of the Old English translation of the gospels to Æthelstan’s

patronage; though the argument necessarily involes some conjecture, Æthelstan’s gifts

would provide a credible context for elite interest in the gospel text.217 Thirdly,

Æthelstan’s gifts related to the specific context of his political achievement: namely, his

creation of a single ‘kingdom of the English’, following his conquest of Northumbria in

927.218 Æthelstan had thus given a measure of political unity, for the first time, to the

territory contiguous with the ecclesiastical structures of the English church.219 The

intensity of Æthelstan’s book-giving gave symbolic expression both to his newly created

hegemony, and to the potential which it offered for the establishing of a special

relationship between the English church and the king, in the manner of Charlemagne’s

ecclesiastical leadership. These concerns probably lie behind the depictions of Æthelstan

variety of kinds, given to rulers, West Saxon kings appear to have held a tighter monopoly over the

giving of gifts: see Pratt, Political Thought, esp. pp. 38-43, 99, 104-5, 134, 339-45 and 349. 214 Lapidge, ‘Some Latin Poems’, pp. 71-81 and 86; Wood, ‘The Making of King Æthelstan’s Empire’,

pp. 250-2 and 268-72. 215 E. John, Orbis Britanniae (Leicester, 1966), pp. 56-8; R. Deshman, ‘Christus Rex et Magi Reges’; A.

Jones, ‘The Significance of the Regal Consecration of Edgar in 973’, JEH 33 (1982), 375-90, at 375-6,

383-6 and 389-90. 216 Ordines Coronationis Franciae: Texts and Ordines for the Coronation of Frankish and French Kings

and Queens in the Middle Ages, ed. R. A. Jackson, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, PA, 1995 and 200) I, 183,

184, 186, 187 and 190. For the A version and its dating, see J. L. Nelson, ‘The Second English Ordo’,

in her Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London, 1986), pp. 361-74, at 361-7, cf. idem,

‘The First Use of the Second Anglo-Saxon Ordo’, Myth, Rulership, Church and Charters: Essays in

honour of Nicholas Brooks, ed. A. Wareham and J. Barrow (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 117-26 for her

revised view. I hope to consider this question further in a future publication. 217 M. Wood, ‘“Stand Strong Against the Monsters”: Kingship and Learning in the Empire of King

Æthelstan’, Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World, ed. Wormald and Nelson, pp. 192-217, at 213-

15. 218 S. Keynes, ‘England, c. 900-1016’, in The New Cambridge Medieval History III c.900-c.1024, ed. T.

Reuter (Cambridge, 1999), 456-84, at 468-71; Wood, ‘“Stand Strong Against the Monsters”’, pp. pp.

199-203; Foot, Æthelstan, pp. 25-8, 127-57 and 212-16. 219 J. Campbell, ‘The United Kingdom of England: the Anglo-Saxon Achievement’, in his The Anglo-

Saxon State (London, 2000), pp. 31-53, at 43-6.

39

himself, seemingly influenced by Carolingian models, in supplicatory gesture towards St

Cuthbert; they are encapsulated, indeed, by the gifts to the Chester-le-Street community,

which also received land from the king, and might also be detected in the interest in the

deeper history of the church suggested by Claudius B. v.

The generally de luxe nature of the Æthelstan gospel-books raises interesting

questions over their use by recipient churches. It is possible that such books were treated

as ornamental or display items, used more occasionally for personal reading and rituals,

for example, in the taking of oaths. Liturgically, a gospel-book had specific uses in the

lection within the Mass, and in the ordination of bishops.220 Doubts have sometimes

been raised about the use of late Anglo-Saxon gospel-books in the Mass: many

examples lack the capitulary which provided a means of identifying the correct gospel

reading within the liturgical year.221 Yet another copy of the capitulary could, one

presumes, have been consulted. The reading of the gospel within the Mass had potent

symbolism; there are indications, within the Gallican tradition, of a ceremony involving

the formal carrying of the book to the lectern from which it was read.222 It should be

noted that the books given by Æthelstan would very likely have had ornate bindings in

gold and gems. Only in the case of the Coburg gospel-book, bearing a Carolingian ivory

of the Metz school, does part of the original binding survive in situ, but bejewelled

covers are explicitly referred to in Rex pius Æthelstan, the presentation poem in

Tiberius A. ii.223 Some impression of the imposing nature of late Anglo-Saxon de luxe

bindings may be gained from the metal covers of two gospel-books, now in the Pierpont

Morgan Library, New York, once owned by Judith, countess of Flanders (d. 1094), wife

of Tostig Godwineson, earl of Northumbria (d. 1066): since these books were written in

England, it is quite possible that the metal covers were also of Anglo-Saxon, rather than

Flemish, origin.224

220 L. Duchesne, Christian Worship: its Origin and Evolution (London, 1903), pp. 196, 375 and 378, cf.

301; see also Gatch, ‘Piety and Liturgy in the Old English Vision of Leofric’, pp. 169-70. 221 R. M. Liuzza, ‘Who Read the Gospels in Old English?’, Words and Works: Studies in Medieval

English Language and Literature in honour of Fred C. Robinson, ed. P. S. Baker and N. Howe

(Toronto, 1998), pp. 3-24, at 13-14; P. McGurk and J. Rosenthal, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Gospelbooks of

Judith, Countess of Flanders: their Text, Make-up and Function’, ASE 24 (1995), 251-308, at 256 and

279. For the capitulary, see also P. McGurk, ‘Text’, The York Gospels, ed. N. Barker, The Roxburghe

Club (London, 1986), pp. 43-63 at 45-8; McKitterick, ‘Royal Patronage of Culture’, pp. 113-14. 222 Duchesne, Christian Worship, p. 196; Gameson, The Role of Art, pp. 60-1; Mayr-Harting, Ottonian

Book Illumination II, 76, cf. I, 49. 223 The ivory depicts the Ascension; a further ivory, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, depicting

the Crucifixion, is thought to have been a second element of the original binding: see Keynes, ‘King

Athelstan’s Books’, p. 192, n. 235, with references; cf. also Wood, ‘The Making of King Æthelstan’s

Empire’, pp. 260-1. For references to opulent book covers in written sources, see Dodwell, Anglo-

Saxon Art, pp. 201-3; Gullick, ‘Bookbindings’, pp. 304-6. Lapidge, ‘Some Latin Poems’, pp. 83-4, with

n. 155. 224 New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M. 708 (England, s. ximed; provenance Bavaria, c. 1071,

provenance Weingarten s. xiex): Gneuss, Handlist, no. 860; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp.

109-10 (no. 94). New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M. 709 (England, s. ximed; provenance Bavaria,

40

In this connection one should also consider the widespread use of liturgical

commemoration by the West Saxon dynasty, which included the performance of regular

devotions on behalf of the king and his family.225 The earliest signs may be detected

under Alfred’s father, Æthelwulf, in connection with his ‘Second’ Decimation of 854, a

significant administrative act which appears to have lessened the burdens falling on

landholders.226 The standard text found in a number of charters made provision for the

singing of psalms and the celebrating of two Masses in churches throughout the

kingdom every Saturday, one for King Æthelwulf, one for bishops and ealdormen.227

Since Æthelwulf is described as ‘the living king’, it is quite possible that the practice

had been intended to continue under his successors. This view would be compatible

with the law-code V Æthelstan, recording decrees issued by a royal assembly at Exeter,

which makes provision for the singing of fifty psalms in all monasteries every Friday for

the king ‘and for all who wish what he wishes’, that is, by implication, those bound by

specific obligations of service as king’s thegn.228 The choice of Friday, perhaps

dovetailing with the arrangements begun in 854, and the link with the content of

Æthelstan’s legislation, concerning the establishment of the tithing system, suggests a

broader pattern of royal liturgical commemoration associated with acts of administrative

reform.229 Overall, there are good grounds for suspecting the use of royally donated

gospel-books on notable liturgical occasions including, perhaps especially, Masses said

on behalf of the king. The giving of books, prominently recorded by inscription or

presentation page, would have had special value in these circumstances, as a means of

associating Æthelstan’s person with the force of prayers and devotions.

c. 1071, provenance Weingarten s. xiex): Gneuss, Handlist, no. 861; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts,

pp. 108-9 (no. 93). See McGurk and Rosenthal, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Gospelbooks of Judith, Countess of

Flanders’, pp. 277-80; W. M. Hinkle, ‘The Gift of an Anglo-Saxon Gospel Book to the Abbey of Saint-

Remi, Reims’, JBAA 33 (1970), 21-35, at 33-5; Rushforth, St Margaret’s Gospel-Book, pp. 50-1; cf.

Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, p. 311, n. 136; Gullick, ‘Bookbindings’, p. 307. 225 Royal book-giving is importantly connected with liturgical commemoration in a Continental context

by Wollasch, ‘Kaiser und Könige’. For an integrated interpretation of Ottonian patronage emphasizing

the role of books in memorialization, and the likely liturgical use of de luxe illuminated manuscripts,

see Garrison, Ottonian Imperial Art, esp. pp. 6-10, 46-50 and 124-54. 226 Keynes, ‘West Saxon Charters’, pp. 1119-23; Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 66-72 and 334; cf. also J.

L. Nelson, ‘Presidential Address: England and the Continent in the Ninth Century: III, Rights and

Rituals’, TRHS, 6th ser. 14 (2004), 1-24, at 14-24. 227 H. P. R. Finberg, The Early Charters of Wessex (Leicester, 1964), pp. 209-13, at 210-11. 228 V Æthelstan 3 (F. Liebermann, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, 3 vols. (Halle, 1903-16) I, 168). 229 D. Pratt, ‘Written Law and the Communication of Authority in Tenth-Century England’, England and

the Continent in the Tenth Century: Studies in honour of Wilhelm Levison (1876-1947), ed. D.

Rollason, C. Leyser and H. Williams (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 331-50, esp. 346; Foot, Æthelstan, pp. 136-

48. For Carolingian precedents, and later Anglo-Saxon instances of the same phenomenon, see Keynes,

‘An Abbot, an Archbishop’, pp. 180-9. Further interest in royal commemoration during Æthelstan’s

reign is indicated by the recording of the king’s name in a number of Continental confraternity books, in

association with the visit to Germany by Cenwald, bishop of Worcester, in 929: see Keynes, ‘King

Athelstan’s Books’, pp. 198-201.

41

Gospel-books as gifts in later Anglo-Saxon England

Yet Æthelstan was not unique in this respect, and might well have been the founder of a

wider strategy. Thus William of Malmesbury reports the gift of a gospel-book to

Glastonbury by King Edmund (939-46).230 Ely material, describing the sumptuous

gospel-books present there in the twelfth-century, refers to a gospel-book with richly

adorned covers given by King Edgar.231 Had either book survived, one may be certain

that it would now be among the most important of late Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. Such

references also suggest that the cases of Æthelstan and Cnut, while better documented,

differed from other late Anglo-Saxon kings only in the intensity of their patronage and

gift-giving.232 This picture is supported from a further angle by notable evidence for

wider participation in the giving of gospel-books by the secular elite. This includes one

surviving manuscript gifted by a male aristocrat, the Burgheard Gospels, Rheims,

Bibliothèque Municipale Carnegie, 9, identifiable as the book given to Rheims by

Ælfgar, earl of Mercia (d. c. 1062), in memory of his son, Burgheard, who died there in

1061 en route to Rome.233 The codex originally had bejewelled gold covers, depicting

the Crucifixion on the front, and inscribed with a poem recording the donation. To this

might be added the group of four gospel-books owned Judith, countess of Flanders, who

subsequently married Welf IV of Bavaria; at least three of the volumes appear to have

reached the Bavarian monastery of Weingarten as a bequest on Judith’s death in

1094.234 Harold Godwineson, as earl, is reported to have given three large gospel-books

with gold covers to Waltham abbey, along with five other books bound in silver gilt.

None of these books is known to have survived, but two were still at Waltham in the

230 William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum II.143 (ed. Mynors, et al. I, 230, cf. II, 128); William of

Malmesbury, De antiquitate Glastonie ecclesie, c. 54 (J. Scott, The Early History of Glastonbury: a

Edition, Translation and Study of William of Malmesbury’s De antiquitate Glastonie ecclesie

(Woodbridge, 1981), pp. 114-15). 231 Liber Eliensis, ed. E. O. Blake (London, 1962), pp. 290-1; Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, p. 202;

Gameson, ‘Book Decoration’, p. 275. 232 Cf. Gameson, ‘Book Decoration’, pp. 275 and 278, suggesting royal patronage may have been weaker

after 939. 233 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 906; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp. 121-2 (no. 105); Hinkle, ‘The Gift

of an Anglo-Saxon Gospel Book’; S. Baxter, ‘The Death of Burgheard son of Ælfgar and its Context’,

Frankland: the Franks and the World of the Early Middle Ages. Essays in honour of Dame Jinty

Nelson, ed. P. Fouracre and D. Ganz (Manchester, 2008), pp. 266-84, at 272-4; Gameson, ‘Book

Decoration’, pp. 270-1. 234 For Pierpont Morgan M. 708 and M. 709, see above, pp. 39-40, n. 224. Fulda, Hessische

Landesbibliothek, Aa. 21 (England, s. ximed and Continent, 1065 x 1071; provenance Bavaria, c. 1071,

provenance Weingarten s. xiex): Gneuss, Handlist, no. 827.5; Rushforth, St Margaret’s Gospel-Book,

pp. 50-1 and 80-1. Monte Cassino, Archivio della Badia, BB. 437 (England, s. ximed; provenance

Bavaria, c. 1071; provenance Italy, c. 1089): Gneuss, Handlist, no. 851; Temple, Anglo-Saxon

Manuscripts, pp. 111-12 (no. 95). See McGurk and Rosenthal, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Gospelbooks of

Judith, Countess of Flanders’; Smith, Fleming and Halpin, ‘Court and Piety’, pp. 584, 592 and 595.

42

sixteenth century, and seemingly contained gospel material in Old English.235 A

Canterbury obituary list records two thegns, Thored (fl. 1033-6) and Osbern Bigga (fl. c.

1043), each of whom gave two gospel-books to Christ Church.236 A certain Æthelflæd,

the daughter of an ealdorman, is reported to have given a gospel-book to Abingdon.237

A thirteenth-century annotation to a mid eleventh-century gospel-book, London, British

Library, Royal 1 D. iii, records the tradition that the volume had been given to the

catheral church of Rochester by Godgifu (d. c. 1056), sister of Edward the Confesor.238

From fuller details in the early thirteenth-century Registrum Roffense the gospel-book

appears to have reached Rochester long after Godgifu’s death, probably in the mid

twelfth century, from her former manor of Lambeth: these details leave open the

possibility, nevertheless, that Godgifu had been the original patron of the manuscript.

The cluster of examples from the last generation before the Norman Conquest is

striking, and might well represent a pronounced extension of royal practices to the

secular elite, a form of piety closely linked with the expression of wealth and power.239

One must in particular qualify Henry Mayr-Harting’s suggestion, that ‘almost every

illustrated book of any importance in this period, whether in the Ottonian Empire or in

England, was either intended for a royal court or for a church or churchman closely

associated with royal rule’.240 Even in the German case, it should be noted that the most

significant episcopal patron of the age, Egbert, archbishop of Trier (977-93), had been

of noble birth; The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 76. F. I., a ninth-century Franco-

Saxon gospel-book, includes two miniatures depicting Egbert’s parents, Count Dietrich

and his wife Hildegard, which were added to commemorate their gift of the codex to the

235 Smith, Fleming and Halpin, ‘Court and Piety’, p. 584; for relics also given by Harold to Waltham, see

ibid., pp. 577 and 587-8; Rogers, ‘The Waltham Abbey Relic-List’. 236 Smith, Fleming and Halpin, ‘Court and Piety, pp. 584-5, n. 81; R. Fleming, ‘Christchurch’s Sisters

and Brothers: an Edition and Discussion of Canterbury Obituary Lists’, The Culture of Christendom:

Essays in Medieval History in commemoration of Denis L. T. Bethell, ed. M. A. Meyer (London, 1993),

pp. 115-53, at 128. Gervase of Canterbury’s identification of Osbern as Æthelric Bigga is probably

incorrect; Osbern is known to have been Æthelric Bigga’s son: see Brooks, Canterbury, pp. 302-3.

None of these gospel-books is known to have survived. For the suggestion that London, British Library,

Royal 1. D. ix might have been one of the books given by Thored, see Brooks and Kelly, Charters of

Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 1134-5, and below, p. 53. This Kentish Thored is unlikely to be the

‘Thored’ who paid for an ornate binding for ‘Claudius Pontifical I’: see Wormald, Making of English

Law I, 192-4, and above, p. 28. 237 Smith, Fleming and Halpin, ‘Court and Piety’, p. 585; Historia Ecclesie Abbendonensis / The History

of the Abbey of Abingdon, ed. J. Hudson, 2 vols. (Oxford, 2002-7) I, 172 (I.107), with n. 379. 238 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 446; McKendrick, Lowden and Doyle, Royal Manuscripts, pp. 112-13 (no. 9);

Faulkner, ‘The Uses of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts c. 1066-1200’, pp. 65-6. For Godgifu, who had two

important marriages, to Count Drogo of the Vexin (probably 1024), and to Count Eustace II of

Boulogne (probably 1036), see E. van Houts, ‘Edward and Normandy’, Edward the Confessor: the Man

and the Legend, ed. R. Mortimer (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 63-76, at 63-70. 239 Smith, Fleming and Halpin, ‘Court and Piety’, esp. pp. 579-81 and 600-602; Heslop, ‘Production of

de luxe Manuscripts’, p. 179. 240 Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination I, 51.

43

family monastery of Egmont, c. 940 x 970.241 A pericopes book probably produced at

Reichenau in the early or mid eleventh century, Lille, Bibliothèque de l’Institut

catholique, 1, includes a miniature depicting Werner and his wife Irmingard, in all

likelihood members of a leading aristocratic family, in the act of pious donation; the

dedicatory inscription describes Irmingard as having made the gift for the soul of her

dead husband.242 One might compare two of Judith’s gospel-books, which include

prefatory miniatures: both appear to be early additions, but while the example in Fulda,

Hessische Landesbibliothek, Aa. 21, was the work of a Low Countries artist (4v), the

image in New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M. 709, depicting a noble lady at the foot

of Christ in Crucifixion (1v), has not been securely localised.243 The overall pattern of

the English evidence for lay patronage bears comparison with Carolingian Francia,

where the intensive royal donation of gospel-books and bibles under Charlemagne was

followed by a role for lay patrons, reaching a high point in the early to mid ninth

century.244

Books given by King Cnut (1016-35)

All this is a relevant context for a second attested phase of royal gospel-book donation,

under King Cnut (1016-35). The evidence in this case is more controversial: in the

absence of ex-dono inscriptions, the attribution of a number of manuscripts to Cnut’s

patronage must rest on other grounds. Of central importance is the remarkable narrative

account in the Life of St Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester (1062-95), by William of

Malmesbury, a Latin translation of a now lost Life in Old English written shortly after

Wulfstan’s death by the monk Coleman. William’s Life tells of two sumptuous

manuscripts which had the principal letters written in gold, a sacramentary and a psalter;

241 Ibid. II, 60. 242 ‘Pericopes Book of St-Mihiel’: K. Schmid, ‘Zum Stifterbild im Liller Evangelistar des 11.

Jahrhunderts’, FS 16 (1982), 143-60 and plates IV-V; Gameson, ‘The Gospels of Margaret of

Scotland’, p. 159. Cf. F. Fuchs and U. Kuder, ‘Das Liller Evangelistar, eine “reichenauische”

Bilderhandschrift der salischen Zeit. Neue Beobachtungen’, FS 32 (1998), 365-99 and plates XXIV-

XXXIX, suggesting production at Hirsau c. 1090, a view questioned by H. Hoffmann, Schreibschulen

des 10. und des 11. Jahrhunderts im Südwesten des Deutschen Reichs, 2 vols., MGH Schriften 53.I-II

(Hanover, 2004) I, 215-16. 243 McGurk and Rosenthal, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Gospelbooks of Judith, Countess of Flanders’, pp. 280-8.

The latter miniature is reproduced in Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, Ill. 289, and Rushforth, St

Margaret’s Gospel-Book, p. 80. 244 McKitterick, ‘Royal Patronage of Culture’, pp. 103-8 and 127-9; for a convenient summary of the lay,

non-royal patrons of de luxe bibles produced at Tours in this period, see D. Ganz, ‘Mass Production of

Early Medieval Manuscripts: the Carolingian Bibles from Tours’, The Early Medieval Book: its

Production, Decoration and Use, ed. R. Gameson (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 53-62, at 60-1. Cf. Nancy,

Trésor de la Cathédrale, s.n. Gospel-Book of St Gauzlin (Tours, c. 835), a de luxe bible produced for

the named patron ‘Arnaldus’, probably the lay fidelis of that name under Louis the Pious: see B.

Fischer, ‘Die Alkuin-Bibeln’, in his Lateinische Bibelhandschrifte im frühen Mittelalter (Freiburg,

1985), pp. 203-403, at 393-4.

44

both had been produced at the monastery of Peterborough by Wulfstan’s teacher

Ernuvius (OE Earnwig). The books had been given by Earnwig as gifts to Cnut and

Queen Emma respectively.245 Cnut had then given them to the see of Cologne in

Germany; they had then ultimately been given to Ealdred, bishop of Worcester, while on

an embassy to the Emperor Henry III, by implication in 1054.246 Neither book survives,

but the testimony here is early, its details are compelling and appear to provide a

glimpse of the production of a royal manuscript.247 The generosity of Cnut and Emma

to English churches is well documented, and included Emma’s gift of a golden gospel-

book to Christ Church, Canterbury.248 Emma is also known to have given a large

illuminated psalter to her brother, Robert, archbishop of Rouen, while Cnut sent another

book written in gold, an illustrated book of saints, to William, duke of Aquitaine,

probably in 1024.249 Intriguingly, in 1029 the West Frankish king Robert the Pious

(996-1031) is known to have given six gospel-books to St-Aignan, Orléans, ‘with a

missal from overseas well made in ivory and silver’ (cum missali transmarino bene

245 William of Malmesbury, Vita S. Wulfstani I.1, in William of Malmesbury: Saints’ Lives / Lives of SS.

Wulfstan, Dunstan, Patrick, Benignus and Indract, ed. M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson (Oxford,

2002), p. 16; Heslop, ‘Production of de luxe Manuscripts’, pp. 159-60; M. K. Lawson, Cnut: the Danes

in England in the Early Eleventh Century (Harlow, 1993), p. 159; Gameson, ‘The Circulation of

Books’, pp. 344 and 362. Cf. also Gameson, ‘Book Decoration’, p. 277, questioning Cnut’s active

patronage, on the basis that the books were offered as gifts by Earnwig. A role for gift exchange need

not rule out the possibility of more complex interaction between Peterborough and the royal household.

In hagiographical context, moreover, the story illustrated Earnwig’s preference for worldly advantage,

which may have encouraged the assigning of agency to Earnwig rather than Cnut and Emma. 246 William of Malmesbury, Vita S. Wulfstani I.9 (ed. Winterbottom and Thomson, p. 40). L. M. Larson,

Canute the Great (New York, 1912), p. 227, not unreasonably suggests a context for the gifts to

Cologne in Cnut’s journey to Rome in 1027 for the coronation of Emperor Conrad II. For the broader

context of contact and interaction between England and Germany in the later Anglo-Saxon period, see

Deshman, ‘Christus Rex et Magi Reges’, esp. pp. 157-61; K. Leyser, ‘The Ottonians and Wessex’, in

his Communications and Power in Medieval Europe: the Carolingian and Ottonian Centuries, ed. T.

Reuter (London, 1994), pp. 73-104; van Houts, ‘Women and the Writing of History’; Gameson, ‘The

Circulation of Books’, pp. 361-3. 247 A modern tradition should be reported which would associate King Cnut with Cambridge, Clare

College 30, Parts I and II (both parts Worcester, s. xi2/2 or xi3/4), comprising two manuscripts of

theological texts: Gneuss, Handlist, nos. 34 and 34.1; R. Gameson, The Manuscripts of Early Norman

England (c.1066-1130) (Oxford, 1999), p. 60 (nos. 50 and 51). The tradition, of uncertain origin and

represented in a label of later twenieth-century date, suggests that the volume might have been one of

the books written by Earnwig and subsequently given by Cnut to Cologne. The manuscripts’ contents

do not accord, however, with the books described in Coleman’s story, and an association with Cnut

appears to be precluded by their later date. I am most grateful to Mrs Anne Hughes, the Librarian and

Curator of the Fellows’ Library, for her kind assistance. 248 Heslop, ‘Production of de luxe Manuscripts’, pp. 157-8, 181 and 184. 249 Ibid., pp. 158-9; Lawson, Cnut, p. 159; Gameson, ‘The Circulation of Books’, pp. 358 and 360. For

the psalter, see Orderic Vitalis, Historia ecclesiastica III.ii.42, in The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic

Vitalis, ed. M. Chibnall, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1968-80) II, 42, where Emma is described as ‘the wife of the

English king Æthelred’. It is difficult to be certain that the gift should be dated before 1017 on this basis

(cf. Gameson, ‘The Circulation of Books’, p. 358): Orderic’s formulation might reflect his awareness of

the importance of Emma’s first marriage for the Confessor’s lineage. It is unclear from Orderic’s story

whether the psalter had been a personal possession of the queen: the large format arguably points

against this possibility.

45

parato hebore et argento); it is interesting to find Cnut’s contemporary in possession of

such a high-status manuscript.250

T. A. Heslop, in making the case for Cnut’s patronage, connected this narrative

evidence with, firstly, the remarkable preponderance of de luxe gospel-books surviving

from the early eleventh century, and, secondly, two specific groups of de luxe

manuscripts connected by the involvement of scribes.251 These manuscripts are best

summarized in tabular form. Heslop’s palaeographical analysis has been qualified

slightly in an important study by Dumville, which is taken account of here.252 These

groups comprise, firstly, de luxe manuscripts involving the work of two scribes, B and

C, for whom Heslop suggested a Peterborough location; and, secondly, de luxe

manuscripts involving the distinguished Anglo-Saxon scribe, Eadui (OE Eadwig)

Basan, who was probably based at Christ Church, Canterbury, from c. 1020:

Group 1 - ? Peterborough production ?

Shelfmark Scribes Date Medieval provenance

London, British Library,

Royal 1. D. ix (‘Royal

Gospels’)253

B and

C

before

1020

Christ Church, Canterbury by

1017 x 1020

London, British Library, Loan

11 (‘Kederminster

Gospels’)254

C and

B

s. xi1/4 Windsor (s. xiv)

Cambridge, Trinity College

B. 10. 4 (‘Trinity

Gospels’)255

B s. xi1/4 unknown

250 Helgaud of Fleury, Vita Rotberti Pii, c. 22 (Vie de Robert le Pieux. Epitoma Vitae Regis Rotberti Pii,

ed. R.-H. Bautier and G. Labory, Sources d’histoire médiévale 1 (Paris, 1965), p. 112; Wollasch,

‘Kaiser und Könige’, p. 11. For the use of transmarinus by Continental writers to indicate England

specifically, see J. L. Nelson, ‘“A King Across the Sea”: Alfred in Continental Perspective’, in her

Rulers and Ruling Families in Early Medieval Europe: Alfred, Charles the Bald and Others (Aldershot,

1999), no. I, pp. 45-7. 251 Heslop, ‘Production of de luxe Manuscripts’, pp. 152-6 and 162-81. 252 Dumville, English Caroline Script, pp. 111-40; also idem, ‘On the Dating of Some Late Anglo-Saxon

Liturgical Manuscripts’, Trans. of the Cambridge Bibliographical Soc. 10 (1996 for 1991-5), 40-57. 253 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 447; Ker, Catalogue, p. 317 (no. 247); Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp.

88-9 (no. 70); Golden Age, ed. Backhouse et al., p. 69 (no. 52); Doane, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in

Microfiche Facsimile, 7, no. 282; McKendrick, Lowden and Doyle, Royal Manuscripts, pp. 108-9 (no.

7); Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 94-5. 254 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 501; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, p. 89 (no. 71); Golden Age, ed.

Backhouse et al., p. 68 (no. 51). 255 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 172; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp. 83-4 (no. 65); Golden Age, ed.

Backhouse et al., p. 68 (no. 49).

46

Rouen, Bibliothèque

Municipale, Y. 6 (274)

(Sacramentary; ‘Missal of

Robert of Jumièges’)256

B s. xi1/4 given to Jumièges by Robert

as bishop of London (1044 x

1051)

Copenhagen, Kongelige

Bibliotek, G. K. S. 10 (2_)

(‘Copenhagen Gospels’)257

A and

B

s. xi1/4 Scandinavia (s. xvi); probably

had left England by s. xiiex

Salisbury, Cathedral Library,

Portfolio 4/1 (fragment of a

leaf from gospel-book)258

B s. xi1/4 unknown

Group 2 - de luxe books associated with Anglo-Saxon scribe Eadui (‘Eadwig’) Basan

Shelfmark Scribes Date Medieval provenance

Hanover, Kestner-Museum,

W. M. XXIa, 36 (‘Eadwig

Gospels’)259

Eadui s. xi1/4 Germany by s. xi

London, British Library,

Additional 34890

(‘Grimbald Gospels’)260

Eadui s. xi1/4 New Minster, Winchester by s.

xiex

York, Minster Library,

Additional 1 (‘York

Gospels’)261

Eadui

et al.

before

1023

York by 1020 x 1023

256 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 141; Ker, Catalogue, p. 449 (no. 377); Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp.

89-91 (no. 72); Golden Age, ed. Backhouse et al., p. 69 (no. 50); Dumville, ‘On the Dating’, p. 52; P. J.

Lucas and A. M. Lucas, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, 18: Manuscripts in France

(Tempe, AZ, 2012), no. 445. 257 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 812; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, p. 69 (no. 47); Golden Age, ed.

Backhouse et al., p. 68 (no. 48); Dumville, ‘On the Dating’, p. 44; S. L. Keefer, D. Rollason and A. N.

Doane, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, 14: Manuscripts of Durham, Ripon, and

York (Tempe, AZ, 2007), no. 494. 258 Formerly collection of Mr H. Bailey of Salisbury (? Winchester): T. A. M. Bishop, ‘The Copenhagen

Gospel-Book’, Nordisk Tidskrift för Bok- och Biblioteksväsen 54 (1967), 33-41, at 40; Dumville,

English Caroline Script, p. 139; H. Gneuss, ‘Second Addenda and Corrigenda to the Handlist of Anglo-

Saxon Manuscripts’, ASE 40 (2011), 293-306, at 300 (no. 754.8). Cf. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de

France, lat. 987, fols. 85-111 (southern England, s. xi2/4 or s. xi3/4; provenance France before s. xviex?):

Gneuss, Handlist, no. 880; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, p. 54 (no. 25); Golden Age, ed.

Backhouse et al., p. 60 (no. 39). As Dumville notes, this benedictional was added to the group by Derek

Turner (Golden Age, ed. Backhouse et al., p. 60; cf. Heslop, ‘Production of de luxe Manuscripts’, p.

170-1, n. 57); both Heslop and Dumville would reject Turner’s identification of fols. 85-111 as the

work of scribe B. 259 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 831; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp. 85-6 (no. 67); Golden Age, ed.

Backhouse et al., p. 72 (no. 56). 260 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 290; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp. 86-8 (no. 68); Golden Age, ed.

Backhouse et al., p. 72 (no. 55); McKendrick, Lowden and Doyle, Royal Manuscripts, pp. 14-15 (no.

10); Dumville, ‘On the Dating’, pp. 44-5.

47

London, British Library,

Arundel 155 (‘Eadwig

Psalter’)262

Eadui 1012 x

1023

Christ Church, Canterbury

Florence, Biblioteca Medicea

Laurenziana, Plut. XVII. 20

(Gospel lectionary)263

Eadui

and

?C

s. xi1/4

Continent by s. xi

Connections between these two groups are suggested by Florence Plut. XVII. 20, the

bulk of which was written by Eadui, but contains on fol. 1 features which suggested to

Heslop the work of scribe C.264 A variety of possible circumstances of production might

be indicated by these patterns. Heslop suggested multi-centric production under a single

(royal) source of patronage, involving collaboration between Peterborough and

Canterbury, and perhaps other centres as well.265 The case for Peterborough’s

involvement has rested on the apparent Peterborough connections of the exemplar for

the ‘Missal of Robert of Jumièges’, and the fact that another book written by scribe C,

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 163, fols. 2-5 and 8-227, was at Peterborough in the

twelfth century.266 As Dumville has pointed out, these features of the evidence might be

variously explained, and since Canterbury production has been seen to make sense from

an art-historical perspective, could be compatible with the hypothesis that both groups

had been produced at a single centre, Christ Church, Canterbury.267 These Peterborough

links seem noteworthy, nevertheless, given the role assigned to Peterborough in the Life

of Wulfstan. A further complication arises from uncertainties over the career of Eadui

Basan, who was reponsible for adding the text of a writ of King Cnut, datable 1017 x

1020, to Royal 1. D. ix, and was the draftsman of a charter dated 1018 in favour of

Ælfstan, archbishop of Canterbury, which survives as a single-sheet in what appears to

261 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 774; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp. 79-80 (no. 61); Golden Age, ed.

Backhouse et al., p. 72 (no. 54); Dumville, ‘On the Dating’, pp. 53-4. 262 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 306; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 167-71 (no. 135); Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts,

pp. 84-5 (no. 66); Golden Age, ed. Backhouse et al., pp. 72 and 74 (no. 57). 263 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 827; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, p. 88 (no. 69). 264 Heslop, ‘Production of de luxe Manuscripts’, pp. 173-4; Dumville, English Caroline Script, p. 117,

120 and 127. 265 Heslop, ‘Production of de luxe Manuscripts’, pp. 172-8. For balanced discussion, see P. McGurk,

‘Anglo-Saxon Gospel-Books, c. 900-1066’, The Cambridge History of the Book I, ed. Gameson, 436-

48, at 442-3. 266 Ibid., pp. 152-6 and 161-2, building on the view of Bishop, ‘The Copenhagen Gospel-Book’, pp. 40-

1. 267 Dumville, English Caroline Script, pp. 116-20; cf. also idem, Liturgy, pp. 25-6 and 37-8; R.

Gameson, ‘Manuscript Art at Christ Church, Canterbury, in the Generation after St Dunstan’, St

Dunstan: his Life, Times and Cult, ed. N. Ramsay, M. Sparks and T. Tatton-Brown (Woodbridge,

1992), pp. 107-220.

48

have been its original form.268 It is just possible, as Dumville has suggested, that Eadui

may have been a royal scribe for a period in his career before c. 1020.269 The idea has

some attractions, though an explanation would be needed for the exclusively Christ

Church transmission of his surviving diplomatic work.270 At the very least, one should

be alive to the range of possibilities suggested by manuscripts connected by the work of

a single, expert scribe.

It should be stressed that the manuscripts considered by Heslop are among the

most magnificent from later Anglo-Saxon England, typically elaborately decorated,

including portrait-pages and other illustrations, with some use of gold, and written in an

elegant form of Caroline minuscule. If one judges their form alone, the books might be

compatible with elite patronage of a variety of kinds. The lack of ex-dono inscriptions,

contrasting with Æthelstan’s case, is striking whatever form of patronage is envisaged.

Yet many of these volumes are likely to have had elaborate book covers, none of which

survives; these might well have provided a record of donation, as in the case of the

Burgheard Gospels a generation later.271 Despite these uncertainties, several of the

manuscripts seem especially suggestive of the likelihood of their having been used as

royal gifts. One pattern points towards gifts abroad, of the sort that Cnut and Emma are

known to have made. The Eadwig Gospels, for example, include a colophon in Eadui’s

name which, in apparent reference to the future owner of the book, employs the formula

‘seruus Dei .N.’, perhaps implying that the scribe had known the book to be a

commission, but had not known the name of its intended recipient.272 The manuscript

has a north German provenance, and additions of the eleventh and twelfth century

268 44v: S 985 (CantCC 145). London, British Library, Stowe Charter 38: S 950 (CantCC 144),

reproduced in OSFacs. iii.39 and Golden Age, ed. Backhouse et al., pp. 166-7 (no. 169). 269 Dumville, English Caroline Script, pp. 122-8; see now S. Keynes, ‘Church Councils, Royal

Assemblies’. For Eadui’s career, see also R. W. Pfaff, ‘Eadui Basan: Scriptorum Princeps?’, England in

the Eleventh Century, ed. Hicks, pp. 267-83; R. Gameson, ‘The Colophon of the Eadwig Gospels’, ASE

31 (2002), 201-22, at 201-13; C. Farr, ‘Style in Late Anglo-Saxon England: Questions of Learning and

Intention’, Anglo-Saxon Styles, ed. C. E. Karkov and G. H. Brown (Albany, NY, 2003), pp. 115-30, at

117-28; R. Rushforth, ‘English Caroline Minuscule’, The Cambridge History of the Book I, ed.

Gameson, 197-210, at 205-8. 270 See now Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 56-7, 1054-5 and 1059. 271 Heslop, ‘Production of de luxe Manuscripts’, pp. 180-1; cf. above, pp. 4-5, cf. 28 and 39. For

balanced treatment of the issue of patronage, see McGurk, ‘Anglo-Saxon Gospel-Books’, pp. 443-5; cf.

doubts expressed by Gameson, The Role of Art, pp. 258-9; idem, ‘Book Decoration’, p. 277. 272 Pfaff, ‘Eadui Basan’, pp. 268-9; cf. Heslop, ‘Production of de luxe Manuscripts’, pp. 175-6;

Dumville, English Caroline Script, pp. 120-2 and 127. For the view that ‘.N.’ may have represented a

universal appeal to future readers, see Gameson, ‘The Colophon of the Eadwig Gospels’, pp. 209-213;

as Gameson acknowledges (p. 213), such a reading need not be incompatible with the book having been

written as a specific commission; cf. also C. E. Karkov, ‘Writing and Having Written: Word and Image

in the Eadwig Gospels’, Writing and Texts in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. A. R. Rumble (Cambridge,

2006), pp. 44-61, at 44-5 and 58-61.

49

indicate that it reached Germany at an early stage in its history.273 The Florence gospel

lectionary had also reached the Continent in the eleventh century.274 The Copenhagen

Gospels are notable in having a Scandinavian provenance, having left England by the

twelfth century at the latest.275 One must also compare New York, Pierpont Morgan

Library, M. 869, the Arenberg Gospels, lying outside the two groups, the production of

which is generally assigned to Christ Church, Canterbury.276 The codex has a

provenance from the church of St Severin, Cologne, and had reached Cologne by the

early twelfth century at the latest.277 As Heslop argued, the manuscript might be as late

as the 1020s; given Cnut’s known generosity to Cologne, it is quite possible that it

represents a further royal gift.278

The case for regarding some further gospel-books as royal gifts within England

is strengthened by consideration of a practice which has already been encountered:

namely, the addition of the texts of charters and other documents into ecclesiastical

books of high status, especially gospel-books. As David Dumville and Dafydd Jenkins

have observed, the practice has several precedents in manuscripts associated with Wales

and western Britain, and does not appear to have been widespread in England before the

tenth century.279 The earliest examples of royal charters and writs added to gospel-

273 Gameson, ‘The Colophon of the Eadwig Gospels’, pp. 221-2; Liuzza, ‘Who Read the Gospels in Old

English?’, p. 22. 274 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 827; cf. also Dumville, English Caroline Script, p. 127. 275 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 812. 276 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 864; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp. 74-5 (no. 56); Golden Age, ed.

Backhouse et al., p. 68 (no. 47). 277 Liuzza, ‘Who Read the Gospels in Old English?’, p. 23; Gameson, ‘The Circulation of Books’, p.

362. 278 Heslop, ‘Production of de luxe Manuscripts’, pp. 153 and 169-70. Cf. Deshman, ‘Christus Rex et

Magi Reges’, p. 158, who suggested that the book might have reached Cologne during the

archiepiscopate of Heribert (999-1021), who had previously been in the service of Otto III (d. 1002).

The dating of the manuscript, often assigned to s. xex, depends in part on a possible scribal relationship

to London, British Library, Harley 603 (‘Harley Psalter’: Christ Church, Canterbury, s. x/xi or s. x1/2),

the precise dating of which is itself uncertain: see Gameson, ‘Manuscript Art at Christ Church,

Canterbury’, pp. 200, 203-4 and 208; Dumville, English Caroline Script, pp. 106-7, 109-10, 122, 128

and 130; W. Noel, The Harley Psalter (Cambridge, 1995), p. 39, n. 54, cf. pp. 136-40. 279 Dumville, Liturgy, pp. 119-27, cf. 111-19; D. Jenkins, ‘From Wales to Weltenberg? Some

Considerations on the Origins of the Use of Sacred Books for the Preservation of Secular Records’,

Vom mittelalterlichen Recht zur neuzeitlichen Rechtswissenschaft: Bedingungen, Wege und Probleme

der europäischen Rechtsgeschichte, ed. N. Brieskorn, P. Mikat, D. Müller and D., Willoweit

(Paderborn, 1994), pp. 75-88. See also Charles-Edwards, Wales the the Britons, pp. 246-8; F.

Wormald, ‘The Sherborne ”Chartulary”’, Fritz Saxl, 1890-1948: a Volume of Memorial Essays, ed. D.

J. Gordon (London, 1957), pp. 101-19, at 106-9; Keynes, ‘King Athelstan’s Books’, p. 189, n. 216; S.

Keynes, ‘The Additions in Old English’, and B. Barr, ‘The History of the Volume’, The York Gospels,

ed Barker, pp. 81-99, at 81, and pp. 101-176, at 104; S. Keynes, The Liber Vitae of the New Minster

and Hyde Abbey, Winchester, EEMF 26 (Copenhagen, 1996), 55. For a useful study of the role of

gospel-books as the repository for documents in the late Anglo-Saxon and post-Conquest periods, see

Faulkner, ‘The Uses of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts c. 1066-1200’, pp. 152-77.

50

books in England date, as will be seen, from the early eleventh century;280 but instances

involving manumissions, guild statutes and private vernacular documents relating to

landholding survive from the tenth century.281 Indeed, one stimulus for the English use

of gospel-books in this way may have been the recording of manumissions in writing,

encouraged by influences from western Britain.282 It is striking that two of the earliest

written manumissions occur in gospel-books with royal associations: namely, Royal 1

B. vii, the Northumbrian gospel-book bearing the record of King Æthelstan’s

manumission;283 and Bern 671, the ‘pocket’ gospel book containing the

‘AELFRED/ELFRED’ acrostics.284 The next earliest record concerned a manumission

by King Eadwig (955-9), and occurs in London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B. v,

vol. 1, fol. 75, the fragment of an eighth-century Northumbrian gospel-book of Exeter

provenance.285 The manumission formed an annotation to a record of the Exeter guild

statutes, which were added to this leaf in the first half of the tenth century; the

manumission was reportedly written in Eadwig’s presence.286 Even if allowances are

made for the likelihood that royal manumissions were considered more worthy of

record, the pattern suggests a link between gospel-books with royal associations and the

adding of pertinent documentary material.287

280 For valuable discussion of the practice, see Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury,

pp. 53-8. 281 For the earliest examples of the latter, see two vernacular documents added to Cambridge, Corpus

Christi College 286 (‘Gospels of St Augustine’: s. vi2/2 or vi/vii, Italy; provenance St Augustine’s,

Canterbury, s. x): S 1198 (CantStA 24), the vernacular record of a grant of renders by Ealhburh to St

Augustine’s, Canterbury (c. 850), entered on 74v in a hand probably dating to the 920s; and S 1455

(CantStA 31), the vernacular record of an agreeement between Wulfric, abbot of St Augustine’s,

Canterbury, and Ealdred, son of Lyfing, about land at Cilfe, Kent (c. 985 x 1006), entered on 77v in a

hand of s. xex: Gneuss, Handlist, no. 83; Ker, Catalogue, p. 95 (no. 55); Making of England, ed.

Wehster and Backhouse, pp. 17-19 (no. 1); Kelly, Charters of St Augustine’s, Canterbury, pp. xxxviii-

xxxix, 95 and 118-19. Also S 1218a (ASCharters 71), the vernacular record of a grant by Ælfhelm to

his goldsmith, Leofsige, preserved as an addition, in a hand of s. x2/2, to London, British Library, Cotton

Tiberius B. v, vol. 1, fol. 74, a detached leaf from the gospel-book Cambridge, University Library, Kk.

1. 24 (Northumbria, s. viii; Ely provenance): Gneuss, Handlist, no. 21; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 35-6 (no.

22). 282 Cf. Pelteret, Slavery, pp. xiv-xvi and 137-41. Cf. esp. London, British Library, Additional 9381

(‘Bodmin Gospels’: Brittany, s. ix/x, with manumissions added s. xmed - xi/xii; provenance s. x St

Petroc’s, Padstow, then Bodmin): Dumville, Liturgy, pp. 114, 120 and 122-3; Pelteret, Slavery, pp. xiv-

xv; Padel, Slavery in Saxon Cornwall. 283 15v: Select English Historical Documents, ed. Harmer, pp. 32-3 (no. 19); Ker, Catalogue, pp. 316-17

(no. 246); Keynes, ‘King Athelstan’s Books’, pp. 185-6 and 188-9; Pelteret, Slavery, pp. 146-8 and

161; Foot, Æthelstan, pp. 65 and 189-90. Cf. above, pp. 34-5. 284 7v: Merritt, ‘Old English Entries’, p. 346; Pelteret, Slavery, pp. 152-3 and 157-8. See above, pp. 15-

20. 285 P. Conner, Anglo-Saxon Exeter: a Tenth-Century Cultural History (Woodbridge, 1993), p. 168, cf.

pp. 165-8: Gneuss, Handlist, no. 374; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 256-7 (no. 194); Pelteret, Slavery, pp. 148

and 159. 286 Councils & Synods; pp. 58-60; Conner, Anglo-Saxon Exeter, pp. 168-9. 287 See Dumville, Liturgy, pp. 126-7, who notes that ‘there are almost twice as many gospel-books and

gospel-lectionaries from Anglo-Saxon England with no documentary texts as there are with such

51

Probable gifts by King Cnut: London, British Library, Royal 1. D. ix

It is in this broader context that one should consider Royal 1. D. ix, sometimes known

as the Royal Gospels, written by scribes B and C, probably before 1020. The codex was

present at Christ Church, Canterbury, at an early stage, and received two documentary

additions, both in the vernacular: firstly, a record of Cnut’s spiritual confraternity with

the Christ Church community, also that of his brother, Harald, and of Thorð, Kartoca

and Thuri, probably the names of thegns with landholding in Kent (43v); and secondly,

a purported writ in Cnut’s name, written in the hand of Eadui, recording Cnut’s

conferring of certain privileges on Christ Church, including permission to draw up a

new ‘charter of freedom’ (freols) (44v).288 The writ describes Cnut as having laid Christ

Church’s existing freolsas on the church’s altar in a formal ceremony. Though irregular

in some respects, the writ, seemingly drafted 1017 x 1020, in all likelihood refers to a

real event in the time of Archbishop Lyfing (1013-20).289 As will be discussed below,

the general context related to important dealings between Cnut and Christ Church both

in the latter part of the Lyfing’s archiepiscopate and following the appointment of

Archbishop Æthelnoth in 1020.290

The treatment of the writ has further significance, however, since it is one of a

number of documents added to royal books at Christ Church in this period, forming a

documentary connection with the books that Christ Church had received from King

Æthelstan.291 These documents include several writs and a purported royal charter,

amounting to the earliest examples of the preservation of such documents within gospel-

books; the practice appears to have become more widespread later in the eleventh

additions’, and comparing evidence for the excision of vernacular material from certain gospel-books in

the post-Reformation period, which might imply the loss of some added material. The general pattern

nevertheless suggests that the entering of documents in gospel-books in the late Anglo-Saxon period

involved an important degree of selectivity in the books chosen for such purposes. 288 Ptd by Ker, Catalogue, p. 317; J. Gerchow, ‘Prayers for King Cnut: the Liturgical Commemoration of

a Conqueror’, England in the Eleventh Century, ed. Hicks, pp. 219-38, at 237. S 985 (CantCC 145).

For the additions to Royal 1. D. ix, see Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, pp.

94-5; Faulkner, ‘The Uses of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts c. 1066-1200’, p. 155. 289 See Brooks, Canterbury, pp. 288-90 (cf. also Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church,

Canterbury, pp. 1060-1), who shows that the document was dependent on S 22 (CantCC 8), the forged

privilege in the name of King Wihtred (690-725), the production of which may be associated with

Wulfred, archbishop of Canterbury (805-17/18 and 821-32). As Brooks notes, the case for Eadui’s

intimate involvement in proceedings is strengthened by the fact that the earliest manuscript of S 22,

London, British Library, Stowe Charter 2 (reproduced in OSFacs. iii.2), is in Eadui’s hand: see Brooks

and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 307-9. See also Lawson, Cnut, pp. 88 and 127-

8; Dumville, English Caroline Script, p. 122, n. 55; Rushforth, ‘English Caroline Minuscule’, p. 207;

Keynes, ‘Church Councils, Royal Assemblies’. 290 See below, pp. 62-3. 291 For the Christ Church gospel-books containing added documents, see Brooks and Kelly, Charters of

Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 85-95, cf. 53-8.

52

century.292 Thus Tiberius A.ii, the de luxe Continental gospel-book containing the poem

Rex pius Æthelstan, received copies in Latin and Old English of a forged refoundation

charter for Christ Church in the name of King Æthelred, dated 1006, purportedly

reestablishing the house as a monastic community.293 As Nicholas Brooks has observed,

the freolsas deposited by Cnut on the church’s altar probably included a spurious charter

of King Æthelberht and a forged privilege in the name of King Wihtred associated with

Archbishop Wulfred (805-817/18 and 821-32); it is therefore tempting to see the forged

Æthelred charter as having served a similar purpose.294 Furthermore, Lambeth Palace

1370, the Irish ‘pocket’ gospel-book also given by Æthelstan, received two closely

associated documents: firstly, a copy of a writ in the name of Wulfstan, archbishop of

York, reporting the consecration of Æthelnoth as archbishop of Canterbury in 1020; and

secondly, a copy of a writ of Cnut recording his grant to Æthelnoth of judicial and

financial rights over men variously under his lordship.295 In this case, as Brooks notes,

the items appear to have been entered into the gospel-book at at a slightly later stage,

probably towards the end of Æthelnoth’s archiepiscopate (1020-38).296 Indeed, since the

added documents as a whole primarily concern Archbishop Æthelnoth, Brooks and

Kelly have suggested that Lambeth Palace 1370 might have been his personal

possession.297 The archiepiscopal focus of the additions is striking, though the long-

292 The relevant gospel-books are conveniently laid out by Dumville, Liturgy, pp. 120-2; see also

Faulkner, ‘The Uses of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts c. 1066-1200’, pp. 154-63; cf. the comments of

Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 53-4. 293 Now London, British Library, Cotton Claudius A. iii, fols. 2-6: S 914 (CantCC 140 i and 140 ii). For

the reconstruction of the original structure of Tiberius A. ii, which also included London, British

Library, Cotton Faustina B. vi, fols. 95 and 98-100, bearing additions of s. xii, see now Brooks and

Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, p. 88-94 and 1026-7, cf. also N. R. Ker, ‘Membra

Disiecta’, Brit. Museum Quarterly 12 (1938), 130-5, at 130-1; Faulkner, ‘The Uses of Anglo-Saxon

Manuscripts c. 1066-1200’, pp. 157-9. For the case for regarding S 914 as a forgery, see Brooks,

Canterbury, pp. 257-8, a view which depends on a number of considerations, including the

impossibility of the date 1006, and its incompatibility with the witness list. Cf. now Brooks and Kelly,

Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 1027-31, for the suggestion that the Old English version

(which lacks a dating clause) could be prior to the Latin text, and on this basis might be authentic. There

are certainly differences between the two versions, but the Latin text includes recognizable formulas,

represented in the Old English text, indicating the textual priority of the former. A further point against

S 914 is the prominence accorded to King Æthelberht, which looks suspicious in the light of S 985

(CantCC 145), the irregular writ of Cnut: see above, p. 51. There is now consensus that the hand of the

charter texts is unlikely to be that of Eadui (cf. Brooks, Canterbury, p. 257), and may be broadly

assigned to the second, third or fourth decades of s. xi: see Dumville, English Caroline Scirpt, p. 126, n.

75; Gameson, ‘The Colophon of the Eadwig Gospels’, p. 202, n. 4; Brooks and Kelly, Charters of

Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 1026-7. 294 Brooks, Canterbury, pp. 289-90. For S 22, see above, p. 51, n. 289. 295 69v: S 1386 (CantCC 150). 114v: S 986 (CantCC 150A). For these and other additions of s. xi to

Lambeth Palace 1370, including documents on the detached leaf London, British Library, Cotton

Tiberius B. iv, fol. 87, see Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 86-7, cf.

1124-6. 296 Brooks, Canterbury, p. 290; Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 1074-5

and 1077; cf. Ker, Catalogue, pp. 239-40. 297 Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, p. 87, cf. p. 53.

53

term presence of the volume at Christ Church should also be considered. Almost

certainly authentic, nevertheless, these documents might well have been regarded as

pertaining to Canterbury’s rights.

These patterns have several important implications. The first is that the

concerted campaign of entering documents in gospel-books at Christ Church under

Æthelnoth suggests that Royal 1. D. ix may also, like Tiberius A. ii and Lambeth 1370,

have been a royal gift. Brooks and Kelly have recently suggested an alternative view of

the codex, connecting the name ‘Thorð’, in the notice of spiritual confraternity in Royal

1. D. ix (43v), with the Kentish thegn, Thored, recorded as having given two gospel-

books to Christ Church in an obituary list, suggesting that Royal 1. D. ix might be one

of Thored’s gifts.298 Yet the notice of spiritual confraternity assigns the greatest weight

to Cnut himself, his name recorded in capital letters, and account must also be taken of

the broader pattern of the entering of documents at Christ Church, which otherwise

focused intensively on the gospel-books given by King Æthelstan. Indeed, a possible

connection cannot be ruled out between Royal 1. D. ix and the ‘golden gospels’

reportedly given to Christ Church by Emma, though the context for her gift is unknown;

the volume might equally have been given by Cnut in other circumstances.299 Royal 1.

D. ix need not, as Heslop pointed out, have been a Christ Church production; it is

striking that in this case Eadui’s work was restricted to one of the documentary

additions.300 Secondly, if, as seems likely, Royal 1. D. ix represented a gift to Christ

Church by Cnut, the context involved his intimate dealings with Lyfing and Æthelnoth,

and the assertion of the house’s monastic identity.301 Thirdly, the entering of documents

appears to have been connected with the solemn purposes underlying Cnut’s ritual

depositing of freolsas on the Christ Church altar. The ritual may have encouraged the

subsequent copying of various documents supportive of Canterbury’s rights in gospel-

books given by kings. Indeed, in the case of Tiberius A. ii, one cannot rule out the

possibility that the forged refoundation charter had been present at the time of the ritual,

298 Ibid., pp. 1134-5. For the obituary list, see above, p. 42, n. 236. The name Thored was not uncommon

in this period; for valuable prosopographical discussion, see also Wormald, Making of English Law I,

192-4. 299 Gervase of Canterbury, Gesta regum, ‘De Cnutone rege’ (Gervasii Cantuaresis Opera Historica, ed.

W. Stubbs, 2 vols. (London, 1879-80) II, 56; Heslop, ‘Production of de luxe Manuscripts’, p. 157, 181

and 184. Cf. S 1229 (CantCC 175) for Emma’s grant of Newington, Oxfordshire, to Christ Church,

datable to 1042 x 1052, a further charter surviving as a copy entered into Tiberius A. ii, in a hand of s.

ximed: now London, British Library, Cotton Claudius A. iii, 6r (see Ker, Catalogue, no. 185, p. 240;

Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, p. 90). As Heslop notes, it is unclear

whether the ‘golden gospels’ had been given in conjunction with Newington and Britwell, mentioned by

Gervase, or in a separate context. 300 Heslop, ‘Production of de luxe Manuscripts’, pp. 154-5; cf. Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ

Church, Canterbury, p. 94. 301 The connection between the documents added to gospel-books and the monastic identity of the

community is rightly emphasized by Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, p. 56.

54

enabling the book to participate in Cnut’s ritual act.302 Fourthly, one may observe in this

distinctive treatment signs that books given by kings had a numinous quality, an

association with royal culture that transcended merely physical features. The origins of

these volumes mattered, and were harnessed by the Christ Church community in order

to bolster and commemorate a favourable view of Canterbury’s rights and privileges.

The York Gospels

A parallel case may be York, Minster Library, Additional 1, known as the York

Gospels, another numinous manuscript with a complex history. The dating of the

manuscript is clouded by its having been written in the four stages: firstly, the work of

the principal scribe, whose script, a form of Caroline minuscule, has various

peculiarities (24r-156r); secondly, preliminaries to the gospels, written in English square

minuscule of the tenth century (fols. 10-14); thirdly, canon tables and a picture of

Matthew, written in Anglo-Caroline minuscule of the early eleventh century, in a

Canterbury style; fourthly, the opening of St Matthew’s gospel, in the hand of Eadui

(23v).303 The manuscript reached York at an early stage in its history, as shown by

further additions (156v-161v), which include corrections in the hand of Wulfstan,

archbishop of York (d. 1023).304 A likely context for the volume reaching York is the

302 The physical involvement of books in the ritual is perhaps more likely in the case of the Æthelstan

gospel-books, Tiberius A. ii and Lambeth 1370, than Royal 1. D. ix. See Brooks and Kelly, Charters of

Christ Church, Canterbury, p. 88, for the suggestion that Tiberius A. ii may have been kept on the altar

of Christ, on the basis of a section of S 1047 (CantCC 181), a spurious charter in the name of the

Confessor, once present in Tiberius A. ii (now London, British Library, Cotton Claudius A. iii, 6v: the

relevant section is written in a hand of the 1070s). The wording of the charter, describing the

Confessor’s purported dedication of an enactment to Christ, leaves open the possibility that the volume

was envisaged as having been present on the altar for the duration of the ritual only. 303 Dumville, ‘On the Dating’, pp. 53-4 (cf. idem, English Caroline Script, p. 123), raising the possibility

of a Continental origin for the principal scribe, cf. the case for a English scribe advanced by P. McGurk,

‘Palaeography’, The York Gospels, ed. Barker, pp. 37-42, at 41-2; also Barr, ‘The History of the

Volume’, pp. 101-4. On either view, the production of the book’s principal contents seems likely to

have begun in s. xex. Cf. Heslop, ‘Production of de luxe Manuscripts’, pp. 166-9, and T. A. Heslop, ‘Art

and the Man: Archbishop Wulfstan and the York Gospelbook’, Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, ed.

Townend, pp. 279-308, at 285-98, envisaging a single phase of production contemporaneous with

Eadui’s work, a view which, notwithstanding debate over the script of the principal scribe, is difficult to

reconcile with the English square minuscule of fols. 10-14 (cf. M. P. Brown, review of The York

Gospels, ed. Barker, in The Book Collector 38 (1989), 551-5, at 553-5). The balance of opinion would

associate the display-script on 23r (the display page of St Matthew’s Gospel) with Eadui; Heslop has

advanced credible grounds for regarding the display-script on 61r (the display page of St Mark’s

Gospel) as the hand of Eadui, but if so, considerations of layout would imply that this work had been

executed subsequent to the main text and initial on the same page (cf. Heslop, ‘Art and the Man’, p.

287). The finding need not have any deeper implications for the chronology of construction. 304 158r, 159r and 159v: N. R. Ker, ‘The Handwriting of Archbishop Wulfstan’, England before the

Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources presented to Dorothy Whitelock, ed. P. Clemoes and K. Hughes

(Cambridge, 1971), pp. 315-31, at 330-1, cf. 318-19; Keynes, ‘The Additions in Old English’, pp. 82-3

and 92.

55

consecration of Æthelnoth by Wulfstan, which occurred on 13 November 1020.305 The

volume could have been a gift from Canterbury, but as Wulfstan’s writ (preserved in

Lambeth 1370) reveals, the consecration was evidently of some importance, and had

been undertaken on Cnut’s specific instructions: one should also note the uncertainties

over the nature of Eadui’s position at this stage in his career.306 If, moreover, Cnut had

given Royal 1. D. ix to Canterbury, there would be a further supportive context for his

gift of a gospel-book to the northern archiepiscopal see.

The case for the manuscript having been a royal gift is again strengthened by

early additions, in this case associated with Archbishop Wulfstan.307 This does not rule

out a role which other factors may have played in encouraging the recording of

documents in gospel-books in the eleventh century, but the patterns of addition, and the

early and intensive treatment of royal documents in the Canterbury manuscripts,

suggests that the reverence accorded to gospel-books given by kings may have been a

significant factor. The additions in the York Gospels begin with three vernacular

surveys of archiepiscopal estates, at Sherburn-in-Elmet, Otley and Ripon, including

lands which are known to have been previously lost and regained; the estates appear to

have been regarded as significant to the York endowment.308 There follow three

homiletic tracts by Wulfstan; each comprises a catena of statements which recur in

other works by Wulfstan, especially law-codes.309 The first, entitled Sermo Lupi, should

be distinguished from Wulfstan’s famous Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, and focuses on the

duties of the servants of God and of all Christians, in respect of God’s law and the

305 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 1020D: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS D, ed. G. P. Cubbin, The Anglo-

Saxon Chronicle: a Collaborative Edition, ed. D. Dumville and S. Keynes 6 (Cambridge, 1996), p. 63

(text); The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: a Revised Translation, ed. D. Whitelock, with D. C. Douglas and

S. I. Tucker (London, 1961; rev. 1965), p. 98 (translation); Barr, ‘The History of the Volume’, p. 105. 306 69v: S 1386 (CantCC 150); for Eadui’s career, cf. above, pp. 45-8, 51 and 53. Barr, ‘The History of

the Volume’, p. 105, suggested the scenario of a royal gift while acknowledging other possibilities; cf.

Heslop, ‘Art and the Man’, pp. 304-5, favouring a gift by Cnut and/or Emma while also acknowledging

the possibility of Canterbury patronage (cf. also Lawson, Cnut, p. 135); see also Wormald, Making of

English Law I, 195, suggesting ‘presentation by Canterbury to Wulfstan on the occasion of his

consecrating Archbishop Æthelnoth in 1020’. 307 Keynes, ‘The Additions in Old English’; Wormald, Making of English Law I, 195-7; S. Baxter,

‘Archbishop Wulfstan and the Administration of God’s Property’, Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, ed.

Townend, pp. 161-205, at 179-90; Heslop, ‘Art and the Man’, pp. 282-5; E. Treharne, ‘The Politics of

Early English’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 88.1 (Spring 2006), 101-

22, at 109-22; idem, Living through Conquest: the Politics of Early English, 1020-1220 (Oxford,

2012), pp. 22-7 and 58-68. ‘Art and the Man’ 308 S 1461a (North 7); Keynes, ‘The Additions in Old English’, pp. 83-91; Baxter, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan

and the Administration of God’s Property’, pp. 179-86; Woodman, Charters of Northern Houses, pp.

63-4, 124-6, 135-6 and 143-8. 309 Keynes, ‘The Additions in Old English’, pp. 91-5; Wormald, Making of English Law I, 196; J.

Wilcox, ‘Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi ad Anglos as Political Performance’, Wulfstan, Archbishop of York,

ed. Townend, pp. 375-96, at 394.

56

avoidance of sin, including treatment of the rules of Christian marriage.310 The second,

Be hæðendome, opens with a pronouncement against heathen practices but then attacks

a broader range of actions contrary to God’s law; as Keynes has observed, the tract is

notable in adopting the tone of the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos in the context of Cnut’s

reign.311 The third, Be Cristendome, rehearses the duties of all Christians towards

churches, with particular reference to tithe, St Peter’s Pence, church-scot and other

payments.312 Wulfstan’s tracts are followed by a political document of some

importance, the only surviving copy of Cnut’s first letter to the English people, first

drafted in 1019 or 1020.313 The letter probably descends from a document originally

widely circulated to the English elite, perhaps by being read out at meetings of the shire-

court.314 The letter was in all likelihood sent during Cnut’s visit to Denmark during the

winter of 1019/20, and highlighted the success of his intervention there from an English

perspective. As Elaine Treharne has emphasized, such long-distance communication by

the Danish Cnut made politically significant use of the written vernacular.315 The

transmitted text of the letter probably represents a version redrafted by Wulfstan; it is

therefore striking, as Keynes has noted, that the strongest signs of Wulfstan’s style occur

in the latter part, which includes pronouncements against the killing of kin and other

bloodshed, the marrying of religious women, and the upholding of zealous Christian

observance.316 These themes, while widely paralleled in Wulfstan’s writings, also bear

comparison with the content of the three preceding tracts. Cnut’s letter, moveover,

commented significantly on his relations with the bishops of England, highlighting

letters sent to him by the Pope (Benedict VIII), recently brought from Rome by

Archbishop Lyfing, urging Cnut to exalt the praise of God and to uphold justice and

security.317 In the same letter, Cnut urged his archbishops and bishops to be zealous

310 Wulfstan: Sammlung der ihm zugeschriebenen Homilien nebst Untersuchungen über ihre Echtheit,

ed. A. S. Napier, repr. with bibliographical supplement by K. Ostheeren (Dublin, 1967), pp. 307-9 (no.

LIX); Keynes, ‘The Additions in Old English’, pp. 92-3. 311 Wulfstan, ed. Napier, pp. 309-10 (no. LX); translation available in Treharne, Living through

Conquest, p. 64. Keynes, ‘The Additions in Old English’, pp. 93-4. 312 Wulfstan, ed. Napier, pp. 310-11 (no. LXI); translation available in Treharne, Living through

Conquest, pp. 65-6. 313 Liebermann, Gesetze I, 273-5; see also Councils & Synods, pp. 435-41 (no. 61). Keynes, ‘The

Additions in Old English’, pp. 95-6; Wormald, Making of English Law I, 347-8. 314 F. E. Harmer, Anglo-Saxon Writs (Manchester, 1952), pp. 56-7; Lawson, Cnut, pp. 63-4, cf. 88 and

91. 315 Treharne, ‘The Politics of Early English’, pp. 110-19. 316 Liebermann, Gesetze I, 274-5 (chs. 14-20); Keynes, ‘The Additions in Old English’, p. 96. For the

change of voice, from first-person singular to first-person plural, in ch. 14, see Treharne, ‘The Politics

of Early English’, p. 118; idem, Living through Conquest, p. 26. 317 Liebermann, Gesetze I, 273 (ch. 3). Appointed archbishop in 1013, Lyfing had travelled to Rome,

probably in 1017/18, to collect his pallium: Brooks, Canterbury, pp. 278-9 and 288; Brooks and Kelly,

Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, p. 218. It is possible that Lyfing’s dealings with Benedict VIII

might have concerned this practice, the source of some controversy in this period, to judge from the

letter of protest, probably drafted by Archbishop Wulfstan, from the bishops of Britain to the Pope:

57

with regard to ‘the rights of God’ (Godes gerihta) in their dioceses, and his ealdormen

to assist the bishops in this task.318

Various considerations suggest that the collocation of these documents was of

considerable significance. As Stephen Baxter has explored, it is difficult not to see

connections between the estate-surveys, which relate to the recovery of certain lands to

the see of York, and two themes in the tracts: payments to churches, prominent in Be

Cristendome, and ‘the rights of God’, emphasized in the Sermo Lupi and Cnut’s

letter.319 As Treharne has argued, the manuscript and thematic connections between the

tracts and Cnut’s letter suggest that the group represented a cogent statement by

Wulfstan on conditions in the early 1020s.320 What needs stress is the degree of

connection between the immediate concerns, of landholding and ‘the rights of God’, and

Cnut’s broader strategies of accommodation early in his reign. Thus one cornerstone of

Cnut’s position, enshrined in the 1018 Oxford agreement and the law-code of the same

year drafted by Wulfstan, was his zealous observance of the laws of King Edgar;321

significantly, the tract Be Cristendome drew ultimately on Edgar’s Andover code, II-III

Edgar, and the sequence of legislation inspired by it.322 Cnut’s letter, meanwhile, was a

further aspect of his beneficent actions towards the church, as prompted by Archbishop

Councils & Synods, pp. 445-7 (no. 61). Whitelock (Councils & Synods, pp. 441-5) proposed a date of c.

1020, but cf. Brooks, Canterbury, pp. 291 and 386, n. 104, suggesting composition in the late tenth or

early eleventh century. As Brooks suggests (p. 288), Lyfing’s belated collection of his pallium might

explain why Ælfwig, bishop of London, was consecrated at York in 1014. Whitelock suggested that the

question of who was to perform Æthelnoth’s consecration could have been the cause of dispute in 1020:

Councils & Synods, pp. 442-5 and 447-8; cf. also Lawson, Cnut, p. 217. As Brooks pointed out

(Canterbury, p. 386, no. 104), there is no evidence that the consecration had been disputed, and the

letter of protest did not address the issue. Yet it should be noted that, since all archbishops of

Canterbury since Plegmund (890-923) had been translated from other sees, Æthelnoth might have

presented a special case: Whitelock, Councils & Synods, p. 444; cf. also now Brooks and Kelly,

Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 291-20 and 1075-6. 318 Liebermann, Gesetze I, 273-4 (ch. 8). For ‘Godes gerihta’, see Harmer, Writs, p. 487. 319 Baxter, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan and the Administration of God’s Property’, pp. 187-9. 320 Treharne, Living through Conquest, pp. 66-8; cf. idem, ‘The Politics of Early English’, pp. 110-19.

Baxter, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan and the Administration of God’s Property’, p. 189, has suggested that the

tracts and Cnut’s letter may not have been added to the manuscript at the same time. This might be

suggested by the fact that the corrections in Wulfstan’s hand are restricted to the tracts, and do not

extend to Cnut’s letter. Both the tracts and Cnut’s letter are, however, the work of the same scribe, and

the mise en page of Cnut’s letter has a number of correspondences with that of the tracts: see Wormald,

Making of English Law I, 196-7; also Treharne, Living through Conquest, pp. 66-7. In all likelihood,

the outer chronological limits for the writing of these items are 1020 (consecration of Ætheloth and

latest possible date for sending of Cnut’s letter) and May 1023 (death of Wulfstan): see Keynes, ‘The

Additions in Old English’, p. 83. 321 D. Whitelock, ‘Wulfstan and the Laws of Cnut’, EHR 63 (1948), 433-52; P. Stafford, ‘The Laws of

Cnut and the History of Anglo-Saxon Royal Promises’, ASE 10 (1982), 173-90, esp. 173-6; A. G.

Kennedy, ‘Cnut’s Law Code of 1018’, ASE 11 (1983), 57-81; Lawson, Cnut, pp. 20 and 53; Wormald,

Making of English Law I, 129-33, 346-7 and 463-4. 322 Baxter, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan and the Administration of God’s Property’, p. 188, cf. 186-7; Keynes,

‘The Additions in Old English’, pp. 94-5.

58

Lyfing; the letter too made appeal to Edgar’s laws and the Oxford agreement.323 Seen in

this light, the combination of documents added to the York Gospels amounted to a

symbolic statement of Cnut’s rapid accommodation with the English ecclesiastical

establishment, spelling out the implications of rule in the manner of King Edgar, both

from a York perspective and from that of the wider church. The parallel with the

entering of documents in Christ Church gospel-books is striking, and might even

suggest knowledge on Wulfstan’s part of one or other of the Canterbury books. At the

very least, the ceremonial role accorded to a gospel-book in the ordination of bishops

seems likely to be relevant here, and might help to explain the contexts in which

Æthelnoth’s consecration was remembered.324 Unfortunately one can only speculate

which gospel-book, of the various books then available at Canterbury and York, might

have been used by Wulfstan in Æthelnoth’s case.

The Grimbald Gospels

One further book which may be viewed in the same light is London, British Library,

Additional 34890, known as the Grimbald Gospels.325 The book is among the most

lavish of the de luxe gospel-books, written entirely by Eadui and with decoration

incorporating silver and gold, with a late eleventh-century provenance of the New

Minster, Winchester. Strongly associated with the West Saxon dynasty, the house

benefited at an early stage from favourable actions by Cnut.326 According to a charter

issued at Easter 1019, the king had previously been misled by a youth of Winchester

into believing that he had the power to grant an estate of five hides at Drayton,

Hampshire, but by the terms of the charter the estate was restored to the New Minster,

and other charters annulled.327 Cnut’s generosity extended to the gift of a large gold

cross of considerable value, probably inset with precious stones and relics.328 This gift

was duly celebrated in the portrait-page (6r) of the New Minster Liber Vitae, the new

confraternity book constructed c. 1031 under Abbot Ælfwine (1031-57).329 The

323 Liebermann, Gesetze I, 274 (ch. 13); see Keynes, ‘The Additions in Old English’, p. 96, n. 71;

Wormald, Making of English Law I, 347-8. 324 Cf. above, p. 39. 325 Gneuss, Handlist, no. 290; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp. 86-7 (no. 68); Golden Age, ed.

Backhouse et al., p. 72 (no. 55); McKendrick, Lowden and Doyle, Royal Manuscripts, pp. 14-15 (no.

10); Dumville, ‘On the Dating’, pp. 44-5. 326 Keynes, The Liber Vitae of the New Minster, pp. 34-7; Lawson, Cnut, p. 154 327 S 956 (WinchNM 33), with English Historical Documents, ed. Whitelock, pp. 599-601 (no. 132),

which survives in its original form: Winchester, Winchester College Muniments 12093, reproduced in

OSFacs. ii, Winchester College, 4. 328 Heslop, ‘Production of de luxe Manuscripts’, pp. 157 and 187; Keynes, The Liber Vitae of the New

Minster, pp. 35-7; Lawson, Cnut, pp. 133-5. 329 London, British Library, Stowe 944, fols. 6-61: Gneuss, Handlist, no. 500; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 338-

40 (no. 274); Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp. 95-6 (no. 78); Golden Age, ed. Backhouse et al.,

59

depiction of Cnut, prominently paired with Emma, consciously evoked that of King

Edgar (2v) in the New Minster Refoundation Charter, presenting a potent image of

continuity under Cnut’s rule.330 It would not be surprising, then, if Cnut had further

sealed his relationship to the New Minster by the gift of a magnificent gospel-book.

In this case, too, one may point to added material: in the late eleventh century,

the codex received a copy of the letter from Fulk, archbishop of Rheims, to King Alfred,

recommending Grimbald to his service (c. 886).331 The significance of this letter should

not be under-estimated, since Grimbald (d. 901) was remembered as a saint of great

importance for the New Minster community, and regarded, probably from the later tenth

century, as having played a central role in the house’s founding under Edward the

Elder.332 Yet Fulk’s letter does not appear to have been previously known in a

Winchester context, and its copying in Additional 34890 may have reflected the New

Minster community’s belated knowledge of a source central to the understanding of

p. 78 (no. 62); Keynes, The Liber Vitae of the New Minster, esp. pp. 37-9 and 79-80; McKendrick,

Lowden and Doyle, Royal Manuscripts, pp. 110-11 (no. 8). 330 London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian A. viii, fols. 1-33 (Winchester, 966): Gneuss, Handlist, no.

70; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, p. 44 (no. 16); Golden Age, ed. Backhouse et al., p. 47 (no. 26);

McKendrick, Lowden and Doyle, Royal Manuscripts, pp. 104-5 (no. 5). Keynes, The Liber Vitae of the

New Minster, pp. 38-9 and 79-80, with references; Karkov, Ruler Portraits, pp. 119-56, cf. 85-93;

idem, ‘Emma: Image and Ideology’, pp. 513-15. For Emma’s generosity to the Winchester male houses

after Cnut’s death, see Heslop, ‘Production of de luxe Manuscripts’, pp. 157-8 and 186-8; Keynes, The

Liber Vitae of the New Minster, pp. 40-1; L. Jones, ‘Emma’s Greek Scrine’, Early Medieval Studies, ed.

Baxter et al., pp. 499-507. 331 158r-160v: Councils & Synods, pp. 7-12 (no. 4); English Historical Documents, ed. Whitelock, pp.

883-6 (no. 223); Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 182-6. The same scribe also added copies of two

post-Conquest charters relating to Riwallon, abbot of the New Minster (1072-88), to the New Minster

Liber Vitae, British Library, Stowe 944, 41r and 59r: see Keynes, The Liber Vitae of the New Minster,

pp. 101-2 and 106; Dumville, ‘On the Dating’, pp. 44-5; cf. Gameson, ‘The Colophon of the Eadwig

Gospels’, p. 203, n. 15, suggesting a date of s. xiiin. I am most grateful to Tessa Webber for affirming to

me her view that the hand, showing strong signs of the influence of Mont St-Michel practices, may be

dated with some confidence to s. xi4/4. For a broader post-Conquest context for the scribe’s actions, see

Faulkner, ‘The Uses of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts c. 1066-1200’, p. 176, n. 165, cf. pp. 172-7,

comparing the copying of letters in the flyleaves of manuscripts, some of pre-Conquest origin; see also

pp. 155-62), arguing that records copied into pre-Conquest gospel-books ‘accrued a special type of

symbolic capital’ arising from the antiquity of the host manuscript’ (p. 156). For Fulk’s letter, see

Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 331-3; J. L. Nelson, ‘...sicut olim gens Francorum...nunc gens

Anglorum’: Fulk’s Letter to Alfred Revisited’, in her Rulers and Ruling Families, no. V, pp. 141-58;

Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 25, 51-2, 57-8, 148, 167, 211, 219, 223 and 226-8. 332 See P. Grierson, ‘Grimbald of St Bertin’s’, EHR 55 (1940), 529-61; M. Lapidge, ‘Grimbald of Saint-

Bertin’, The Blackwell Encyclopaedia, ed. Lapidge et al.. This view is dependent on liturgical lections

for St Grimbald, preserved in the fourteenth-century ‘Breviary of Hyde Abbey’, which appear to derive

from a now-lost Vita of Grimbald written in the second half of the tenth century; and an account of the

early history of the New Minster, seemingly composed in the late tenth century, preserved in the New

Minster Liber Vitae, British Library, Stowe 944, 8r-12v: see Keynes, The Liber Vitae of the New

Minster, pp. 81-2, cf. 16-18, for Grimbald’s monasteriolum in Winchester as a possible forerunner to

the New Minster. It should be noted that the account in the Liber Vitae is not consistent in various

respects with the lost Vita.

60

Grimbald’s career.333 Moreover, the letter attested to the West Saxon tradition of

learned kingship, which Cnut himself had been presented as extending. Fulk’s letter was

thus a muniment of immense importance, and appears to have contributed to the further

development of Grimbald’s cult in the later middle ages at Hyde Abbey, where the

house relocated in 1110.334 The entering of the letter in Additional 34890 suggests that

the volume had, in the manner of the various gospel-books at Christ Church, and the

York Gospels at York, special status for the community and its memory.

Royal strategy in the giving of books by King Cnut

Overall, this phase of gospel-book donation under Cnut seems to have been closely

connected with Cnut’s early efforts to stabilize his rule in the aftermath of conquest.

Particularly pertinent was Cnut’s shrewd use of his marriage to Emma, as Æthelred’s

widow, in 1017, and his careful cultivation of relations with leading churches of the

kingdom.335 Book-giving here involved the conscious emulation of Æthelstan and other

kings of the West Saxon dynasty, and also the native English production of de luxe

books, of the highest possible standard, in what appears to have been an early and rapid

burst of royal largesse. Cnut’s strategy probably also owed some direct inspiration to his

German contemporaries Henry II (1002-24) and Conrad II (1024-39), both associated

with the gift of de luxe manuscripts.336 The former had an extensive book collection,

333 Neither the account in the Liber Vitae nor the lost Vita shows knowledge of Fulk’s letter. Without

considering the implications of Additional 34890, Grierson (‘Grimbald of St Bertin’s’, pp. 548 and

559-60) suggested that Fulk’s letter had only become known at Winchester in the twelfth century. 334 For a second Vita of Grimbald, seemingly composed 1131 x 1141, also now lost, see Grierson,

‘Grimbald of St Bertin’s’, pp. 531-8. For the Aa group of manuscripts of William of Malmesbury’s

Gesta regum, which preserve an interpolation relating to Grimbald apparently derived from the Vita

prima, see Mynors, Thomson and Winterbottom, William of Malmesbury: Gesta Regum Anglorum I,

835-6 and II, 99-100, cf. Grierson, ‘Grimbald of St Bertin’s’, pp. 559-60; the Aa group probably

derives from a now-lost Winchester exemplar. For twelfth-century references to the church or

monastery ‘of St Grimbald’, referring to the New Minster/Hyde community, see Keynes, The Liber

Vitae of the New Minster, pp. 35 and 43, cf. 105, for Grimbald’s relics. 335 Lawson, Cnut, pp. 81-9, cf. 117-60; Gerchow, ‘Prayers for King Cnut’, pp. 221, 223-4 annd 235-8;

Keynes, The Liber Vitae of the New Minster, pp. 34-5; P. Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, pp.

226-33. 336 For contact and interaction with Germany as a relevant source of inspiration in this period, see

Deshman, ‘Christus Rex et Magi Reges’; Leyser, ‘The Ottonians and Wessex’; Lawson, Cnut, pp. 121

and 136-8; Gerchow, ‘Prayers for King Cnut’, pp. 225-30; cf. A. S. Cohen, The Uta Codex: Art,

Philosophy and Reform in Eleventh-Century Germany (University Park, PA, 2000), pp. 150-5, for the

influence on German illumination of Anglo-Saxon models, including de luxe manuscripts then imported

from England. Cf. also Gameson, ‘Book Decoration’, p. 275, suggesting a contrast in the scale of royal

patronage, after 939, between England and Germany; cf. also Hoffmann, Buchkunst I, 23-4. For an

interpretation of Henry II’s patronage focusing on relations with Aachen and Bamberg, see Garrison,

Ottonian Imperial Art, pp. 87-171. For books owned and/or given by Henry II, see Schramm and

Mütherich, Denkmale, pp. 155-62, 164-5, 167-8 and 484-6 (nos. 108, 110-18, 121-8, 135-6 and 141-2);

Wollasch, ‘Kaiser und Könige’, pp. 4 and 12-14; Mütherich, ‘The Library of Otto III’; Mayr-Harting,

Ottonian Book Illumination I, 66-7 and 179-201, and II, 11-24; G. Suckale-Redlefsen, ‘Prachtvolle

61

having taken possession of the books of Otto III, and gave generously to the churches of

Bamberg, Regensburg (St-Emmeram) and Monte Cassino.337 Many of these gifts were

books recently commissioned by Henry from ecclesiastical ateliers, decorated with

dedicatory images and inscriptions influenced by Carolingian models; others were of

ninth- and tenth-century origin.338 As M. K. Lawson has observed, the Christ-centred

nature of Ottonian and Salian ruler-depiction provides a further context for Cnut’s

various pious actions.339 Moreover, in addition to his gifts to St-Aignan, Orléans, the

West Frankish king Robert the Pious gave Henry II a gospel book decorated with gold

and precious stones in 1023,340 and is known to have commissioned a sumptuous

gospel-lectionary, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 1126, illustrated by an

imported Lombard scribe.341 Cnut’s gifts abroad—to Scandinavia, Germany and West

Bücher zur Zierde der Kirchen’, Kaiser Heinrich II. 1002-1024, ed. J. Kirmeier, B. Schneidmüller, S

Weinfurter and E. Brockhoff (Augsburg, 2002), pp. 52-77. For Conrad II, see Schramm and Mütherich,

Denkmale, pp. 170-1 and 486 (no. 148); Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination II, 187; cf.

Wollasch, ‘Kaiser und Könige’, p. 13. 337 Schramm and Mütherich, Denkmale, pp. 155-9, 161-2, 165 and 484-5 (nos. 108, 110, 115-18, 122-4,

126-8 and 136: books with Bamberg provenance, presumed to have reached the see by gift in or after

1007, or by bequest); pp. 157-8 and 484-5 (nos. 111 and 114: early Regensburg provenance); pp. 167

and 486 (no. 141: early Monte Cassino provenance), cf. Wollasch, ‘Kaiser und Könige’, pp. 12-13. 338 Schramm and Mütherich, Denkmale, pp. 156-9, 161, 165, 167-8 and 484-6 (nos. 110-12, 114-18,

123-4, 136 and 142: contemporaneous production); pp. 155-6, 158, 161-2 and 484-5 (nos. 108, 113,

125, 127 and 128: books of ninth- or tenth-century origin). For Henry’s re-use of older manuscripts as a

form of spolia, see Garrison, Ottonian Imperial Art, pp. 124-55 and 165-71. The interaction with

Carolingian models is exemplified by the reverence accorded to Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek,

Clm 14000 (‘Codex Aureus of St Emmeram’; court school of Charles the Bald, 870), the gospel book

produced under the patronage of Charles the Bald, which had been present at Regensburg since s. ixex.

The volume received restoration work in s. x4/4 under Abbot Ramwold, and was a major source of

inspiration for Regensburg artists, the depiction of Charles the Bald (5v) providing a model for the

enthroned representation of Henry II (11v) in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 4456

(‘Sacramentary of Henry II’, Regensbury, 1002 x 1014): Schramm and Mütherich, Denkmale, pp. 134-

5, 157, 480 and 484 (nos. 52 and 111); Hoffmann, Buchkunst I, 293-4. See W. J. Diebold, ‘The Anxiety

of Influence in Early Medieval Art? The Codex Aureus of Charles the Bald in Ottonian Regensburg’,

Under the Influence: the Concept of Influence and the Study of Illuminated Manuscripts, ed. J. Lowden

and A. Bovey (Turnhout, 2007), pp. 51-64; Suckale-Redlefsen, ‘Prachtvolle Bücher’, pp. 57-60;

Garrison, Ottonian Imperial Art and Portraiture, pp. 138-55. For other aspects of the Carolingian

volume’s influence, see K. Hoffmann, ‘Das Herrscherbild im “Evangeliar Ottos III” (clm 4453)’, FS 7

(1973), 324-41 and plates XXI-XXXII, at 324 and 328-9; Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination I,

61-2 and 160, and II, 99 and 150-1; Cohen, The Uta Codex, pp. 138-57. These images of enthroned

male rulers provide an important context for the prefatory image of Emma in the principal manuscript

of the Encomium Emmae reginae: see above, p. 25. 339 Lawson, Cnut, pp. 121 and 136-8, cf. 134. Cf. also Deshman, ‘Christus Rex et Magi Reges’, pp. 151-

9’ Gerchow, ‘Prayers for King Cnut’, pp. 225-30; Keynes, The Liber Vitae of the New Minster, pp. 36-

7. 340 Wollasch, ‘Kaiser und Könige’, p. 14; Hoffmann, Buchkunst I, 15. For the suggestion that Paris,

Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 8851 (‘Sainte-Chapelle Gospels’: Trier, s. xex; given to La

Sainte-Chapelle, Paris, by Charles V of France in 1379) may have reached West Frankish royal hands

as the gift of a German emperor in s. xi1/2, see C. Nordenfalk, ‘Miniature ottonienne et ateliers

capétiens’, Art de France 4 (1964), 44-59, at 47-8.; cf. Schramm and Mütherich, Denkmale, pp. 148

and 482-3 (no. 83); Hoffmann, Buchkunst I, 483. 341 ‘Gaignières Gospels’; the book was a royal gift to Fleury, where it had been produced. R. Recht, ‘The

Carolingian Empire and its Legacy’, The Grand Atelier: Pathways of Art in Europe, 5th-18th

62

Francia—reinforced his new-found status on a international stage, namely, his

membership of a wider group of European rulers charged with Frankish-style

ecclesiastical leadership.

Cnut’s gifts to English churches must be seen in the continuing context of

liturgical commemoration in respect of English kings. The earlier royal programmes of

commemoration may well have continued, while Cnut’s personal confraternity was

prominently recorded at Christ Church, Canterbury, and the New Minster.342 Yet the

book-giving was also entwined with Cnut’s more specific dealings with the English

church on his assumption of power. At the forefront was a strategy of beneficence

towards the landholding of certain churches, previously under pressure due to problems

of expropriation and high taxation in the latter part of Æthelred’s reign: a strategy

seemingly encouraged by Archbishop Lyfing.343 A second focus was the appointment of

Æthelnoth as Lyfing’s successor in 1020. Probably the son of Æthelmær, the south-

western ealdorman in the latter part of Æthelred’s reign, and thus grandson of the

historian Æthelweard, Æthelnoth represented a favourable choice for Christ Church

since he was a monk and dean of the community.344 The appointment gave Cnut the

opportunity to bolster his relationship with the southern archiepiscopal see; this in turn

connected with efforts at Christ Church to assert the monastic identity of the community

and the house’s possession of a range of privileges. A third dimension was the securing

of close relations with Wulfstan, archbishop of York, representing an important element

of political and intellectual continuity from Æthelred’s rule.345 Cnut’s letter to the

English, as preserved by Wulfstan, emphasized the new king’s commitment to uphold

‘the rights of God’. Fourthly, Cnut’s gifts invoked the deeper West Saxon tradition of

generosity to the church, encapsulated by the memory of Æthelstan and Edgar. This was

symbolized, above all, by the generosity to Christ Church and the New Minster, but

Cnut and Emma are known to have given rich treasures and relics to a wide range of

Centuries, ed. R. Recht, with C. Périer-d’Ieteren and P. Griener (Brussels, 2007), pp. 76-97, at 82-3,

with 272-3 (no. II.29); Nordenfalk, ‘Miniature ottonienne et ateliers capétiens’, pp. 49-53; Hoffmann,

Buchkunst I, 51-2; Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination I, 53. 342 For Christ Church, Canterbury, see above, pp. 51 and 53; for the New Minster, see Gerchow, ‘Prayers

for King Cnut’, pp. 222-35; Keynes, The Liber Vitae of the New Minster, pp. 35-7 and 79-80. Cf.

Keynes, ‘An Abbot, an Archbishop’, pp. 180-9, for recent use of liturgical commemoration under

Æthelred. 343 Brooks, Canterbury, pp. 287-90; Lawson, Cnut, pp. 126-9; Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ

Church, Canterbury, pp. 218-19; cf. also Keynes, The Liber Vitae of the New Minster, pp. 34-5. 344 Brooks, Canterbury, pp. 290-5, cf. 278-9; Lawson, Cnut, pp. 148-9l; Brooks and Kelly, Charters of

Christ Church, Canterbury, p. 219. 345 Lawson, Cnut, pp. 61-3, 88-9, 126, 128-9, 135 and 139; D. Whitelock, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan:

Homilist and Statesman’, TRHS 4th ser. 24 (1942), 25-45; P. Wormald, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan:

Eleventh-Century State-Builder’, Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, ed. Townend, pp. 9-27.

63

English churches.346 Some of the other de luxe manuscripts of the age might well have

been connected with this context.

CONCLUSIONS

One may conclude by observing the need to integrate all available evidence for royal

book ownership, in particular by comparing surviving books with what is known to

have been lost, and by taking account of misleading silences in particular categories of

eidence. When taken as a whole, the evidence is considerable for book ownership and

for close interaction with books by later Anglo-Saxon kings and their families. The

practice was fundamentally reliant on the royal household, as a place of learning and

education also intimately associated with the production of charters and other

documents. Indeed, a strong case can be made for a continuous tradition of personal

learning within the West Saxon royal dynasty, extending from the mid ninth century to

the eve of the Norman Conquest, and including the period of Anglo-Danish rule.

Linguistically, the education of members of the dynasty involved a considerable role for

the vernacular, but also, at the very least, the comprehension of simple Latin texts in

such areas as the liturgy and private prayer. In general, one would not expect vernacular

books in royal ownership to have survived, but it remains striking to note the pious

contexts suggested by the surviving books most strongly associated with leading

members of the royal dynasty: namely, the Book of Nunnaminster, probably owned by

Alfred’s wife, Ealhswith; and two ‘pocket’ gospel-books, Bern 671, which it is tempting

to associate with Alfred; and Lambeth Palace 1370, certainly given and quite possibly

owned by Æthelstan. One might also compare Bodley Lat. liturg. f. 5, the gospel-

lectionary owned by Queen Margaret. Crucially, these practices were part of a wider lay

tradition, as suggested in particular by the careers of bishop Æthelwold and ealdorman

346 Heslop, ‘Production of de luxe Manuscripts’, pp. 156-8 and 182-8; Lawson, Cnut, pp. 135-8.

Comparison might be made with London, British Library, Harley 76 (‘Bury Gospels’: southern

England, s. xi; provenance Bury St Edmunds s. xiex), conventionally assigned to the third or fourth

decades of s. xi, and sometimes seen as relating to Christ Church production and the group of

manuscripts associated with Eadui: Gneuss, Handlist, no. 76; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, p. 93

(no. 75); see esp. Heslop, ‘Production of de luxe Manuscripts’, pp. 153, 172, 175 and 182; Gameson,

‘Manuscript Art at Christ Church, Canterbury’, pp. 207-8 and 211-13; Lawson, Cnut, p. 146. At the end

of s. xi, the gospel-book was at Bury and received copies of documents relating to the abbey’s

resistance to episcopal control (137v-141r), including a forged bilingual charter of privileges in the

name of Cnut (S 980). In a detailed study of the manuscript, however, Rebecca Rushforth has made a

convincing case for its production at Bury s. ximed: R. Rushforth, ‘The Eleventh- and Early Twelfth-

Century Manuscripts of Bury St Edmunds Abbey’, 2 vols. (unpubl. PhD dissertation, Univ. of

Cambridge, 2002) I, 146-58, cf. I, 28-30 for the additions. For these documents and other records added

to books at Bury in the post-Conquest period, see also Faulkner, ‘The Uses of Anglo-Saxon

Manuscripts c. 1066-1200’, pp. 159-68 and 170-1; R. Rushforth, ‘The Bury Psalter and the

Descendants of Edward the Exile’, ASE 34 (2005), 255-61.

64

Æthelweard, by the variety of lay contexts indicated for the reception of vernacular

literature in the late Anglo-Saxon period, and by the striking examples of books

bequeathed or owned by members of the lay elite.

The giving of books by kings to religious houses was not an isolated practice but

closely connected to the personal learning of the dynasty. Indeed, one may discern a

continuous tradition of royal book-giving in the later Anglo-Saxon period. In the

Æthelstan inscriptions and the use of gospel-books by Cnut, the practices of later kings

consciously evoked the gifts given by their predecessors. Behind the two later phases lay

Alfred’s seminal actions in distributing copies of the translation of the Regula

pastoralis. In the Alfredian prefaces, the Æthelstan inscriptions, and, in the case of

Cnut, quite possibly features of the book covers as well as certain qualities of the script

and decoration, one may observe ‘markers’ identifying books as royal in origin, forming

a specifically ‘royal’ form of culture then disseminated to the kingdom at large. In

addition to these well documented examples, gifts are also recorded for King Edmund

and King Edgar, suggesting a common form of royal practice. A further uniting feature

was the inclusion of work by royal scribes, strongly suspected in the dissemination of

the translation of the Regula pastoralis, in the Æthelstan inscriptions, and perhaps even

the acrostics in Bern 671; uncertainties over Eadui’s career raise this possibility for

Cnut’s case also. The likely contribution of royal scribes provides important evidence

for a degree of intersection between donated books and the royal household. Some

books may well have spent a significant period in royal ownership prior to their

donation, the most suggestive cases being Lambeth 1370, Claudius B. v and Tiberius A.

ii among those given by Æthelstan, and also the Bern gospel-book, if this too had been

gifted. There is the likelihood of some books being retained in the royal household

across several reigns, though this cannot be conclusively demonstrated; by the same

token, the overall corpus of donated books is unlikely to be representative of books in

royal possession.

The priorities at work in donation are well illustrated by the predominance of

gospel-books, the giving of which had specific associations with kingship, informed by

Carolingian precedents. The subsequent treatment of these volumes suggests that they

held special importance in the eyes of their owners, a numinous quality arising from the

memory of royal donation, which transcended merely physical features of their

construction and decoration. As a sign of the ruler’s good will towards the recipient

institution, and a symbolic focus for collective memory, the royally given gospel-book

had links with practices of royal liturgical commemoration, also promoted by kings in

the later Anglo-Saxon period; these would have been strengthened if, as seems likely,

such books were physically used within the Mass or in the ordination of bishops. The

most intensive phases of donation, under Æthelstan and Cnut, appear to have been

65

driven by contemporary political circumstances; both reigns involved contexts of

conquest and consolidation, which placed a premium on the relationship between the

king and the English church, and on the cultivation of favourable relations with

important houses. The giving of gospel-books enabled the expression of claims to

ecclesiastical leadership on the part of the royal donor, involving considerable emulation

of Carolingian patterns and the model of Charlemagne. The posturing had external

dimensions: in giving gifts to churches and rulers abroad, Æthelstan and Cnut were

engaging in the international display of Frankish-style ecclesiastical leadership.

Audiences included other European rulers pursuing similar strategies of gift and

expression; for Æthelstan and Cnut, such gifts were a means of reinforcing their prestige

in the post-Carolingian west.

Yet the most important audiences for gift-giving were probably internal, an

interpretation supported by the subsequent reverence shown to royal gospel-books by

their recipients. The practice, emerging in the later Anglo-Saxon period, of entering

documents in gospel-books was probably encouraged by the availability of gospel-books

given by kings. The adding of documents at Christ Church under Archbishop Æthelnoth

forms a striking link between the gospel-books given to the house by Æthelstan, namely,

Lambeth 1370 and Tiberius A. ii, and the gospel-book plausibly associated with Cnut’s

patronage, Royal 1. D. ix. There are, moreover, further parallels in the adding of

documents to related gospel-books at York and the New Minster, a pattern which

strengthens the case for regarding Royal 1. D. ix, the York Gospels and Grimbald

Gospels as royal gifts. More broadly, the adding of documents also provides strong

evidence for the numinous quality of such royal gifts: namely, that gospel-books

received from kings were regarded, by implication because of their origins, as an

appropriate repository for documents central to the community’s landholding and

memory. The aim was probably not simply that of preserving documentation but rather

endowing it with further spiritual protection; the entering of important documents also

celebrated the special relationship with the king which, through the gift, the community

appeared to have secured. At Christ Church there may have been a direct link with

Cnut’s act of depositing freolsas on the church’s altar: the entering of documents here

provided further spiritual testimony of the community’s rights and king’s good will.

Across the various contexts which have been identified for royal books, finally,

one may observe the public nature of book use in the royal environment. This extended

beyond what were probably, as in the Chester-le-Street case, elaborate ceremonies of

book donation to the more intimate rituals of the royal household, involving the reading

aloud of vernacular books to court audiences, and the probably conspicuous disciplines

of private prayer. The public nature of book use is further evident in the wider emulation

of certain royal practices by the secular aristocracy, such as the owning and giving of

66

books, and in Æthelweard’s case, the patronage and even composition of literary texts;

such emulation extended to the donation of gospel-books by the secular elite by the last

generation before the Norman Conquest. Books in Anglo-Saxon England were valuable,

and valued, partly because they had the capacity to send complex and powerful

messages. The patterns here analysed indicate that, from the ninth century onwards, this

potential was intensively exploited by kings, in ways which had a profound effect on

late Anglo-Saxon elite culture, on the relationship between kings and the English

church, and on many aspects of lay aristocratic life.