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The first full-length study of the Old English version of Bede’s masterwork, dealing with e
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one of the most important texts to survive from Anglo-Saxon England. The subjects treated
range from a detailed analysis of the manuscripts and the medieval use of them to a very
satisfying conclusion that summarizes all the major issues related to the work, giving
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a compelling summary of the value and importance of this independent creation. Dr
Rowley convincingly argues that the Old English version is not an inferior imitation
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of Bede’s work, but represents an intelligent reworking of the text for a later generation. T Ec clEsiastica
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An exhaustive study and a major scholarly contribution. GEORGE HARDIN BROWN, h
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Professor Emeritus, Stanford University.
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The Old English version of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum is one of s sharon M. rowley
the earliest and most substantial surviving works of Old English prose. Translated l
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anonymously around the end of the ninth or beginning of the tenth century, the text,
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substantially shorter than Bede’s original, was well known, actively used and highly s
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influential in medieval England. However, despite its importance, it has been little t
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studied. o
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The author places the work in its manuscript context, arguing that the text was r
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an independent ecclesiastical translation, thoughtfully revised for its new audience. i
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Rather than looking back on the age of Bede from the perspective of a new national s
monarchy seeking to build a community by recalling a glorious English past, the Old h
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English version of Bede’s Historia transforms its source to focus on local history, key c
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Anglo-Saxon saints, and their miracles. The author argues that its reading reflects an
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ecclesiastical setting more than a political one, with uses more hagiographical than e
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royal. Rather than being used as a class-book or crib, it functioned as a resource for
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vernacular preaching, as a corpus of vernacular saints’ lives, for oral performance, and s
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episcopal authority. i
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SHAROn M. ROwlEy is Associate Professor of English at Christopher newport
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University, newport news VA.
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Cover: Corpus Christi College, Cambridge MS 41, p. 410, the beginning of the Old English version of Bede’s i
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‘Vision of Dryhthelm’, with part of the marginal ‘Homily on St Michael’. By permission of the Masters and f
Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. a
Series: Anglo-Saxon Studies
GEnERAl EDITORS: John Hines (Cardiff ), Catherine Cubitt (York)
An imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF (GB) and
668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US)
www.boydellandbrewer.com
Anglo-Saxon Studies 16
THE OLD ENGLISH VERSION OF
BEDE’S HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA
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Anglo-Saxon Studies
ISSN 1475–2468
General Editors
John Hines
Catherine Cubitt
‘Anglo-Saxon Studies’ aims to provide a forum for the best scholarship on
the Anglo-Saxon peoples in the period from the end of Roman Britain to
the Norman Conquest, including comparative studies involving adjacent
populations and periods; both new research and major re-assessments
of central topics are welcomed.
Books in the series may be based in any one of the principal disciplines
of archaeology, art history, history, language and literature, and inter- or
multi-disciplinary studies are encouraged.
Proposals or enquiries may be sent directly to the editors or the
publisher at the addresses given below; all submissions will receive
prompt and informed consideration.
Professor John Hines, Cardiff School of History and Archaeology, Cardiff
University, Colum Drive, Cardiff, Wales, CF10 3EU
Dr Catherine Cubitt, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York,
The King’s Manor, York, England, YO1 7EP
Boydell & Brewer, PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk, England, IP12 3DF
Previously published volumes in the series are listed at the back of this book
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THE OLD ENGLISH VERSION
OF BEDE’S
HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA
Sharon M. Rowley
D. S. BREWER
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© Sharon M. Rowley 2011
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,
transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner
The right of Sharon M. Rowley to be identified
as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published 2011
D. S. Brewer, Cambridge
ISBN 978-1-84384-273-6
D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA
website: www.boydellandbrewer.com
A CIP catalogue record of this publication is available
from the British Library
The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence
or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites
referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content
on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Papers used by Boydell & Brewer Ltd are natural, recyclable products
made from wood grown in sustainable forests.
Typeset by Word and Page, Chester
Printed in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne
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Contents
List of Illustrations vi
Preface and Acknowledgements vii
Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
1. The Manuscripts and Editions of the OEHE 15
2. Backgrounds, Contexts and the History of Scholarship 36
3. Gentes Names and the Question of ‘National’ Identity
in the OEHE 57
4. Rewriting Salvation History 71
5. Who Read Æthelbert’s Letter? Translation, Mediation and
Authority in the OEHE 98
6. Queen Takes Bishop: Marriage, Conversion and Papal
Authority in the OEHE 114
7. Visions of the Otherworld: Endings, Emplacement
and Mutability in History 134
8. Anglo-Saxon Signs of Use in Manuscripts O, C and B 156
9. Later-Medieval Signs of Use in Manuscripts Ca and T 174
Conclusion 195
Appendix I. Summary of the Chapters and Chapter-Breaks 199
Appendix II. Forms of ‘Ongolþeode’ and ‘Angelcyn’ in the OEHE 206
Appendix III. Glosses in T 215
Appendix IV. Table of Glosses in T 224
Bibliography 229
Index 251
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Illustrations
PLATES
Plate 1. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Tanner 10, folio 68r 18
Plate 2. London, British Library, Cotton MS Otho B.XI, folio 28r 19
Plate 3. Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 279B, folio 31v 22
Plate 4. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 41, page 422 166
Plate 5. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 41, page 324 170
Plate 6. Cambridge, University Library, MS Kk.3.18, folio 8v 184
Plate 7. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Tanner 10, folio 1v 188
FIGURES
Fig. 1. Miller’s stemma 28
Fig. 2. Revised but still problematic stemma 30
TABLES
Table 1. Chapter-breaks from Book III.14–19 in the OEHE manuscripts 29
Table 2. The state of the OEHE manuscripts 31
Table 3. Gentes names in Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica 64
Table 4. Gentes names in the Corpus, OEHE and Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 65
Table 5. Gentes names in the OEHE and Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Totals 67
Table 6. Summary of sampled alterations in manuscript O 160
Table 7. Y-alterations in samples from manuscript O 161
Table 8. Later uses of Old English manuscripts 176
vi
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Preface and Acknowledgements
This book grew out of a project that I began during a National Endowment for
the Humanities Summer Seminar at the Parker Library, Cambridge, in 1997,
directed by Paul E. Szarmach and Timothy Graham. As I researched what
I thought would be a chapter on the Old English version of Bede’s Historia
Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum to add to my dissertation on ‘Reading Miracles in
Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica’, I realized not only how rich the manuscripts are,
but also the extent to which study of the translation has been overshadowed
by study of its source, Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica. So this became a project
of its own. Because editions have minimized the differences between the
Old English and the Latin, scholars have treated the Old English version of
Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica as if it were somehow still identical to the Latin.
By returning to the material texts to study translation as transformation,
and to examine the cultural and historical implications of the differences
between the two texts, this study fills a substantial gap in our understanding
of the transmission and reception of both Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica and the
OEHE. Combining an examination of the manuscript texts with a theoretically
informed sense of their historical, literary and cultural contexts, this study
not only analyzes traditional textual questions of variance, transmission and
transformation, but also seeks to explore larger questions about the sociology
of the text, the role and function of translation, and the uses of the vernacular
in medieval English culture.
Several chapters of the present work have been presented in preliminary
form elsewhere. The core of Chapter 2, under the title ‘Uncertain Origins
and Inconsistent Styles: Some Interpretative Dilemmas in the Old English
Bede’, was presented at the research workshop of the Department of Anglo-
Saxon, Norse and Celtic, Cambridge University, 30 May 2008. I presented a
preliminary version of Chapter 3 at the 34th meeting of the Southeastern
Medieval Association, St. Louis University, October 2008 and at the 44th
ICMS, Western Michigan University, May 2009. I would like to thank George
Molyneaux for discussing these issues with me, and for his corroboration
of some of the numbers. Working independently, Molyneaux and I reached
similar conclusions about the role of the OEHE in relation to notions of
English ideology; see George Molyneaux, ‘The Old English Bede: English
Ideology or Christian Instruction?’, English Historical Review 124 no. 511 (2009),
1289–1323. I presented a preliminary version of the first part of Chapter 4
as ‘The Fall of Britain and English Identity in the Old English Bede’, at the
37th ICMS, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2002, special 20th anniversary session
vii
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The Old English Version of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica
sponsored by Sources of Anglo-Saxon Culture. Part of an earlier version of
my discussion of the Easter controversy was published as ‘Translating His-
tory: The Paschal Controversy in the Old English Bede’, in Bède le vénérable
entre tradition et postérité, ed. Stéphane Lebecq, Michel Perrin and Olivier
Szerwiniack, Université Charles de Gaulle, Centre d’Histoire de l’Europe du
Nord-Ouest 34, 2005, pp. 297–308. I also presented a version of this at ‘Bède le
vénérable: bilan et perspectives’, Université de Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens
and Université de Lille, 3–5 July, 2002. Parts of Chapter 8 were originally
presented at the International Society for Anglo-Saxon Studies, Munich,
2005, the Southeastern Medieval Association, Oxford, MS, 2006, and part
of it was also presented at the Manuscripts of Bede AMARC (Association
for Manuscripts and Archives in Research Collections) meeting, Durham
University, August 2008. I would like to thank Roy Liuzza, Gregory Waite,
Winfried Rudolf, Calvin Kendall, Benjamin Albritton and Susan L’Engle for
their comments on and help with this chapter. All errors, of course, are my
own. A version of the section on glossing in T and Ca was published as S.
M. Rowley, ‘The Fourteenth-Century Glosses and Annotations in Oxford,
Bodleian Library MS Tanner 10’, Manuscripta 53.1 (2009), 49–85.
It is a pleasure and honor to acknowledge and thank the many exceed-
ingly generous scholars, friends, teachers and mentors who have helped
me learn and write, as well as the libraries and funding agencies that have
provided the access to resources and funding necessary to bring this book to
publication. The aforementioned National Endowment for the Humanities
Summer Seminar provided a rigorous and lively intellectual atmosphere
in which I conceived this study. I cannot thank Paul Szarmach and Tim
Graham enough for their invaluable and generous guidance along the way.
But my debts and gratitude go much further back. Starting with my studies
at Temple University and continuing through my years at the University of
Chicago, Ann E. Matonis, Christina von Nolcken, David Bevington, Leslie
T. Woodward, Susan M. Kim and Susan Seitner have generously helped me
learn, fostered my scholarship and kept me on track. Roy Michael Liuzza
has also been an inspiration, friend and mentor to me for a long time now;
without his own scholarship, feedback and generous editing, this book would
be a pale shadow of itself. George Hardin Brown has also been astonishingly
generous, making not only his own work, deep knowledge and sharp eyes
available to me, but also his copy of John Smith’s 1722 edition of the OEHE.
Many other friends and scholars have helped and inspired me over the
years, including Jana Adamitis, Tom Bredehoft, Virginia Blanton, Patrick
Conner, Kees Dekker, Carolin Esser, Allen Frantzen, Tom Hall, Stephen Har-
ris, Julian Harrison, Susan Irvine, David Johnson, Aaron Kleist, Clare Lees,
Soon-Ai Low, Margarita Marinova, George Molyneaux, Daniel O’Donnell,
Gillian Overing, Kathryn Powell, Christine Rauer, Winfried Rudolf, Paul
Russell, Helene Scheck, Diarmuid Scully, Peter Stokes, Nancy Thompson,
Elaine Treharne, Dana-Linn Whiteside, Jonathan Wilcox and Benjamin With-
ers. Raeleen Chai-Elsholz also deserves huge, unqualified thanks. She read
viii
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Preface and Acknowledgements
every chapter as I revised and wrote during the summer of 2009, providing
crucial feedback, moral support and good chocolate. Gregory Waite, who
recently teamed up with me to edit a new edition of the OEHE, provided a
vital scholarly resource to me from the beginning, in the form of his most
insightful dissertation. Now, I am honored to thank him for his generous,
helpful feedback on a draft of this book. I have already benefited tremendously
from our collaboration and am looking forward to our continued work on the
edition. Finally, I should like to thank the anonymous reader for Boydell and
Brewer for many astute and helpful comments, as well as Caroline Palmer
and Rohais Haughton for their patience, support and hard work.
In addition to the NEH Summer Seminar, a National Endowment for the
Humanities Fellowship (2007–8) provided funding and time crucial to the
completion of this book. During my fellowship year I was also granted leave
time from teaching by Christopher Newport University and honored by
two honorary posts at Cambridge University, as Visiting Fellow at Corpus
Christi College and as Honorary Research Associate to the Department of
Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, both during Lent Term, 2008. These appoint-
ments provided me with access to the wonderfully rich scholarly resources
of Cambridge, including libraries, workshops, seminars and people. The
Neil Ker Memorial Fund of the British Academy provided funding on two
different occasions: first for travel and research in 2006, and again in 2010
for the manuscript images included in this volume. Christopher Newport
University Dean’s Office grants and Faculty Senate also provided funding
for travel and resources from 2004–10. Finally, the University of Puerto Rico’s
Fondos Institucionales para la Investigación provided funding for resources
and travel at the very start of this project.
I would also like to acknowledge the many libraries that granted me
access over the years, and thank the librarians who helped me. The Parker
Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, must top my list. I would like
to thank Donnelley Fellow librarian, Dr. Christopher de Hamel, and the
Parker sub-librarians, Ms. Gill Cannell and Dr. Suzanne Paul for their help,
support, patience, expertise, cookies and coffee over the years. The Digiti-
zation Team working on the Parker on the Web project in early 2008 were
also extremely generous with their time and expertise, especially Nigel
Morgan, Benjamin Albritton and Elizabeth Boyle. I would also like to thank
the Cambridge University Library and the staff in Special Collections; the
British Library and Curator of Medieval Manuscripts, Julian Harrison; the
Bodleian Library, Oxford, and the Curators of Medieval Manuscripts, Dr.
Bruce Barker-Benfield and Dr. Martin Kauffmann; I would like to thank the
keepers of the archives at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, along with the
former archivist Dr. Michael Stansfield and present archivist Dr. Julian Reid.
Repeated access to the manuscripts and the help and expertise of the staffs
at each of these libraries and archives have helped make this book possible.
I would like to express my gratitude to Brepols Publishers, who graciously
granted me exceptional permission to reproduce verbatim the material in
Appendices III and IV, which first appeared in ‘The Fourteenth-Century
ix
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