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TOEBI Newsletter Volume 30 (2013) TOEBI Newsletter Volume 30 (2013) ISSN: 1694-3532 Jane Roberts and Leslie Webster (eds), modification, where often ‘the results fail to Anglo-Saxon Traces. Tempe: ACMRS, 2011. convince’ (p. 11), before moving on to xvi + 352 pp. 35 ills. Hardback. 9-7808- hyperarchaism, chronological different- 6698-4539. £58. iation, and the synchronicity of script and text. Her final point concerns the relation- This volume emanated from the thirteenth ship between litigation and forgery, the conference of the International Society of ‘need for documents in court […] which Anglo-Saxonists, held in London in 2007, on looked right’ (p. 29). This fascinating paper the theme of ‘Anglo-Saxon Traces’. contains many new ideas and moreover is Although the volume is certainly worth beautifully presented with copious manu- waiting for, it seems a pity that there was a script reproductions to illustrate each point delay of as much as four years between the made. actual conference and the publication of the volume. This has resulted in some of the In a carefully constructed and presented papers appearing a little dated, and paper, Joshua Davies outlines the story of St important new finds such as the Stafford- Ælfheah, starting and finishing with the shire Hoard making no appearance, even as (restored) eighteenth-century church of St comparative material. Alfege in Greenwich, a church designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor. Davies gives an in- However it is rare, in the present author’s teresting analysis of the differences experience, that a book of essays resulting between the various eleventh-century from a conference contains so many papers accounts of the death of Ælfheah and the of such interest as this collection does. Not subsequent translation of his remains from only would it be invidious to pick out some London to Canterbury. In the course of this, rather than others, but such a procedure he demonstrates the ways in which political would probably cast more light on the and religious events and narratives of the present reviewer’s interests than on the time were intertwined. intrinsic merit of the papers. Each paper is therefore mentioned individually, in alpha- Another particularly interesting paper is betical order of the author, so that readers that by Nicole Discenza, who discusses the may be able to assess which ones will be of uses made of Bede’s De temporum ratione particular interest to them. by Ælfric and Byrhtferth in their scientific works of c. 1000 AD. She discusses where Alphabetically the first, Julia Crick’s paper is they cover the same material as Bede but also the one that stands out re-eminently also where they differ from him, in for the present reviewer. Crick discusses the particular suggesting that ‘these English relationship between the sense of the past heirs of Bede in the Benedictine Reform in Anglo-Saxon England and the script seem to lose the very notion of employed for writing manuscripts. She observation’s role in science’ (p. 70). She starts by drawing attention to the ‘scale and compares the approaches of the two later significance of imitative copying’ (p. 3), writers, demonstrating how Ælfric con- alluding to both its ‘mimicry’ and ‘ideo- centrates on more basic notions of the logical freight’ (p. 6), before moving on to movements of the sun and moon, while the central concern of her paper, which is to Byrhtferth, building on Ælfric’s work, is consider charters written in a deliberately more concerned with the mathematical archaising script. She discusses script- notions behind these celestial movements. 1 TOEBI Newsletter Volume 30 (2013) ISSN: 1694-3532 This paper is full of interesting ideas and is value. Nevertheless, this is an exciting area also well-presented, ending with a useful of scholarship that old-fashioned scholars appendix which gives the contents of the (such as the present reviewer) ignore at three works discussed. their peril. In a copiously illustrated paper, Carol Farr Catherine Karkov gives a careful description discusses eight surviving examples of pocket of the frontispiece of the eighth-century Gospel Books, characteristic of the early Würzburg manuscript of the Pauline Irish Church, two of which had reached Epistles, Würzburg Universitätsbibliothek, Anglo-Saxon England before the end of the M.p.th.f.69. This full-page coloured illus- tenth century. The alterations made there, tration shows the Crucifixion with a boat and the subsequent history of these two scene beneath. Karkov first discusses manuscripts, are traced in detail. She various of the interpretations of this scene concludes that the Anglo-Saxons ‘trans- that have been suggested. She then gives formed them deftly’ to connect them ‘with her own neat and convincing explanation of their history and Christianity’ (p. 100). its meaning, setting it firmly in its place as the frontispiece of a copy of the Pauline Sue Hirst’s interesting paper discusses the Epistles. importance of Mucking and East Tilbury, in the lower Thames area, in the fifth, sixth Disease and disability in Anglo-Saxon and seventh centuries. Her discussion England are discussed by Christina Lee, mentions the Mucking settlement’s good using both archaeological and documentary defensive position and the evidence of evidence. Among other interesting ob- agricultural and other activity there. The servations, she points out that individuals settlement contained high-status burials with congenital abnormalities, when cared with evidence from the early grave-goods of for, could and did attain normal life both late Roman and Germanic contacts expectancy. She suggests that some Christ- and trade links. She concludes by suggesting ian burial evidence indicates that such that the minster at East Tilbury may, in the individuals might have been considered ‘in eighth and ninth centuries, have taken over need of greater spiritual assistance’ than the role of ‘meeting place and mart’ (p. 115) other people (p. 163). However, the opp- occupied by Mucking in the earlier period. osite argument (incorporating a belief that has been encountered by the present The problems of studying the geography of reviewer today) is surely also possible, that Anglo-Saxon England form the starting point such individuals were totally innocent, even for Martyn Jessup and Hafed Walda’s paper. perhaps especially holy, and hence their They suggest that the use of digital method- immediate entry into Heaven was assured. ologies, or digital humanities, forms a useful modern approach to this important area of Juliet Mullins discusses the sources used by scholarship. Some of the projects discussed, Alcuin of York in writing his vita of St Martin for example those concerned with maps and how he adapts his sources to suit his and mapping, using a GIS (Geographical hagiographical purpose. The main source Information System), are yielding good was the first vita, written by Sulpicius results. Others, for example PASE, although Severus in the fourth century, and the endorsed by Jessup and Walda, seem to the Sulpician corpus available to Alcuin at Tours. present reviewer to be of more limited Mullins demonstrates that Alcuin portrays 2 TOEBI Newsletter Volume 30 (2013) ISSN: 1694-3532 St Martin as ‘a member of the established examines in fascinating detail the uses of, church whose miracles confirm the merit of and translations given to, the Old English his position’ (p. 172), as well as an word laf. Having dismissed as improbable enlightener of the heathen and a bulwark the usual explanations of the second el- against heresy and heretics. Her paper ement of the place-name as laf ‘remnant’, concludes with a short discussion of the use she proposes a new etymology, that the made of Alcuin’s vita by Ælfric when he second element is an unrecorded Old came to write his Lives of Saints. English word *laf ‘blade’, comparing Middle English lof ‘rudder; rudder-blade’. The el- Richard North considers the ‘obscure [and] ement *laf ‘blade’ could refer to either a long-running quarrel’ (p. 181) that took blade of grass or the blade of a weapon and place between Archbishop Wulfred of both these possible etymologies of the Canterbury and King Cenwulf of Mercia. As place-name are discussed in detail. he reinterprets this part of early ninth- century Mercian history, North gives the Anton Scharer discusses the significance of reader a careful comparison of the two royal treasure in early medieval society, vitae of St Kenelm. He also discusses in making some cogent comparisons between detail the relationship between the shad- Anglo-Saxon England and the kingdoms of owy Cynehelm, possibly the son of King the Lombards and the Franks. He then goes Cenwulf, and the legendary St Kenelm. on to consider how certain items of royal wealth, for example crowns, became In a paper densely packed with scholarship, imbued with symbolic value and thus rose Jennifer O’Reilly discusses the Angli in to becoming royal insignia. He suggests that Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, with particular such items were part of the ‘Christianisation reference to the island geography of the of kingship’ (p. 45), which helped to ensure British Isles and Bede’s image of the their longevity. building of the (spiritual) temple. She starts with a discussion of the patristic exegesis of In what could be regarded as a comp- Psalm 96, with particular reference to the lementary paper to that by Jennifer O’Reilly, commentaries by Augustine, Gregory and Diarmuid Scully considers Bede’s ‘under- Bede, noting that the link between the standing of Britain’s relationship with Rome’ multitude of islands in the Psalm and the (p. 243). Scully starts by demonstrating how building of the temple was the image of Bede, following Orosius, prefaces his work stone. Bede’s use of the term Angli, rather of history with a geographical description.
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