The Lindisfarne Gospels: Aldred's Gloss

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chapter 12 The Lindisfarne Gospels: Aldred’s Gloss For God and St Cuthbert and All the Saints Together Who are in the Island

E.G. Stanley

This chapter is about the interlinear glosses in the Aldred eft-alesenis. It matters: God’s word mattered to Lindisfarne Gospels and especially the slightly more Aldred. expansive explanations in the margins, all added in the The following is the colophon (fol. 259r):3 later tenth century by Aldred of Chester-le-Street. He con- centrated on the words of the gospels, which his glosses in † EADfrið biscop/b’ Lindisfearnensis æcclesiæ: he his Northumbrian dialect render one by one. His work ðis boc aurat æt fruma, Gode & Sancte Cuðberhte & reveals a devout mind, striving to present learnedly the allum ðæm halgum gimænelice ða ðe in eolonde often polysemous richness of the word of God for those sint. & Eðiluald Lindisfearneolondinga bisc’ hit uta whose Latinity was less good than his. The textual exam- giðryde & gibelde sua he uel cuðæ. & Billfrið se ples have been selected, without thought of how they may oncræ: he gismioðade ða gihrino ðaðe utan on sint, hang together, to illustrate the wealth of the glossator’s & hit gihrinade mið golde & mið gimmum, æc mið intellectual relationship with the Vulgate – material that suulfre of’gylded faconleas feh. & Aldred, p’sb’r indig- is not easy for modern readers, and often humbling. nus et misserrim’ mið Godes fultu’mæ & Sancti Cuðberhtes, hit of’gloesade on Englisc, & hine gihamadi mið ðæm ðriim dælum: Matheus dæl 1 Those Who Made the Lindisfarne Gospels Gode & Sancte Cuðberhti, Marc’ dæl ðæm bisc’, & Lucas dæl ðæm hiorode & æhtu ora seo/ulfres mið to Aldred, the scribe who wrote the glosses in Old inlade, & Sci Ioh’ dæl f’ hine seolfne \.i. f’e his saule/ & Northumbrian, the dialect of Old English that was spoken feouer ora seo/ulfres mið Gode & Sancti Cuðberhti, by the Anglo-Saxons in this part of the Island about a þætte he hæbbe ondfong ðerh Godes milsæ on heof- thousand years ago, wrote the colophon at the end of the num, seel & sibb on eorðo, forðgeong & giðyngo, uis- Gospel of St John. My title quotes from its opening words dom & snyttro ðerh Sancti Cuðberhtes earnunga. in translation. To anyone now the glosses may appear the †Eadfrið, Oeðiluald, Billfrið, Aldred, hoc Euange’ D’o visual ruination of the art of a great work of the visual arts, & Cuðberhto construxerunt ł ornauerunt. written by the glossator with various pens first in various [†Eadfrith, Bishop of Lindisfarne Church, at first shades of brown and from the second word in the second wrote this book for God and for St Cuthbert and for line on fol. 220v in red (ill. 11.2).1 He was aware of the glory of its art work. How then could he bring himself to spoil it? He was aware of the importance of showing that his 3 Cod. Lind., ii, ii, text 6, translation 10. My translation does not follow language could be close to the sacred wording of the that in the aforementioned facsimile edition exactly, but is heavily indebted to it. The punctuation, word division, and other manu- Gospel element by element – for example, when glossing script details of the text, though important, have been modified to at Matthew 20.28 redemtionem ‘redemption’ by the some extent. All quotations are as in The Four Gospels in Anglo- double gloss eft lesing ł alesenis;2 but we cannot be sure if Saxon, Northumbrian and Old Mercian Versions, ed. W.W. Skeat, 4 the prefix a- of alesenis renders the Latin prefix re- suffi- vols. (Oxford, 1871–7), though sometimes modified to bring them ciently, or whether we are meant to use the eft- of eft-lesing into better conformity with the manuscript. There is no phonologi- again and, to make assurance double sure, create with cal difference between pointed ‘v’ and ‘u’, and I follow Skeat in printing ‘u’ for both, in spite of N.R. Ker, ‘Aldred the Scribe’, Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association 38 (1943), 1–12 at 10 n. 1 (f). It may be of greater palaeographical significance. Turning 1 The red begins with þæt in John 5.10. On the nature of the red ink ‘v’ into ‘u’ is like not distinguishing the two forms of ‘s’, long s and and its possible implications see Andrew Beeby, Richard Gameson, round s in medieval and early modern scripts, and in printing up to Catherine Nicholson and Anthony Parker, Ch. 11 in this volume. the nineteenth century as well as even later in arty printing. I retain, 2 The ‘ł’ stands for uel, the bar being in fact a ‘u’ or ‘v’ imposed on the as did Skeat, ‘w’ for wynn, though not phonologically distinct from final letter of uel. consonantal ‘u’.

all the saints together who [? = whose relics] are in appropriately called.5 His community was that of Chester- the Island. And Æthelwald, Bishop of the Lindisfarne le-Street, and the Bishop of that ecclesiastical establish- Islanders, pressed it on the outside and covered it ment was Ælfsige from 968 to 990. Exact dating of the over, as he well knew how to. And Billfrith, the glosses in the Lindisfarne Gospels and in the Durham anchorite, forged the ornaments which are on the Collectar is not possible. Aldred did not use red ink when outside and adorned it with gold and with jewels he began the Gospel glosses, and the Collectar glosses are and also with gilded-over silver – (?)sinlessly- in red ink. That has given approximate dates of 950–970 obtained property. And Aldred, unworthy priest, the for the Gospels and about 970 for the Collectar.6 lowest, glossed it between the lines in English with For the Durham Collectar Ælfsige is of importance; in God’s help and St Cuthbert’s. And by its three parts the colophon, in which Aldred describes himself as p’fast, he established his home: the part of Matthew (and he gives details about where he was when he wrote the its preliminaries) for God and St Cuthbert, the part colophon in the glossed book: of Mark (and its preliminaries) for the Bishop, the part of Luke (and its preliminaries) for the Besuðan Wudigan Gæte æt Aclee on Westseaxum on Community plus eight ores of silver for his induc- Laurentius Mæssan daegi on Wodnes dægi Ælfsige tion, and the part of St John (and its preliminaries) ðæm biscope in his getelde, Aldred se p’fast ðas for himself \that is, for his soul/ plus four ores of sil- feower collectæ on fif næht aldne mona ær underne ver for God and St Cuthbert, so that he may have awrat. admission into heaven; on earth happiness and [To the south of Woodyate(s) at Oakley, among peace, success and advancement through the mer- the West Saxons, on the Feast-Day of St Laurence (10 its of St Cuthbert, wisdom and discernment. August), Wednesday, the Provost Aldred wrote for †Eadfrith, Æthelwald, Billfrith, Aldred made, or, as Bishop Ælfsige in his tent these four collects, before the case may be, embellished this Gospel Book for Tierce, the moon being five nights old.] God and Cuthbert.] We shall never know why the Provost was with the Bishop In the margin of fol. 259r Aldred gives further details when he wrote the colophon.7 By road it is about 335 about himself, that his father was called Ælfred and that his mother was a good woman, Alfredi natus Aldredus uocor, bonæ mulieris \.i. til w’/ filius eximius loquor, ‘I am 5 dcl, A.IV.19. Cf. The Durham Collectar, ed. A. Corrêa, hbs 107 (1992), named Aldred son of Alfred, I am called the excellent son p. 77 n. 2 cont. for p’fast and for the dating of the glosses in the two manuscripts. The Latin gospel texts are given as the work of of a good woman \that is, of a good woman/’.4 Eadfrith, bishop of Lindisfarne from 698 to 722. 6 Michelle P. Brown, ‘Lindisfarne Gospels’, The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. M. Lapidge et al. (Oxford, 1999), p. 288, 2 Aldred of Chester-le-Street, and Away among the gives the date of Aldred’s provostship as 970; but that is not a firm West Saxons date, just the approximate date of the colophon and of the four Latin collects in veneration of St Cuthbert to which he refers. See Aldred, the glossator, entered the community of St A. Hamilton Thompson in Rituale Ecclesiae Dunelmensis. The Cuthbert, and when he refers to ‘success and advance- Durham Collectar, ed. U. Lindelöf, with an Introduction by A. Hamilton Thompson, ss 140 (1927), pp. xiv-xvii; cf. Cod. Lind., ii, ment’ he may be referring to his own advancement, per- ii, 25–6. For the place-names see A.D. Mills, The Place-Names of haps recent, for he gives his title as p’fast, that is, ‘provost’, Dorset ii, epns 52 (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 266 (Oakley), 271–2 when we meet him in the other book glossed by him (Woodyates). Christopher Hohler appears to date the Collectar as between the lines, the ‘Durham Ritual’ as it has been ‘about 980’ in his important discussion of the St Cuthbert collects, called, or ‘The Durham Collectar’ as it is now more ‘The Durham Services in Honour of St. Cuthbert’, The Relics of St Cuthbert, ed. C.F. Battiscombe (Oxford, 1956), 155–91, at p. 158. Hohler was writing when the date of c. 970 had been authoritatively assigned to the colophon and the Cuthbert collects (on evidence, 4 A.S.C. Ross (Cod. Lind., ii, ii, 10, and ‘Prolegomena to an Edition of surveyed by Thompson in Rituale Ecclesiae Dunelmensis, ed. the Old English Gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels’, Journal of English Lindelöf, p. xvi). See further Durham Collectar, ed. Corrêa, pp. 78–9 and Germanic Philology 42 (1943), 309–21 at 321) gives details about and footnotes. this marginal note, and why it is probably wrong to interpret ‘.i. tilw’ 7 Cf. Durham Collectar, ed. Corrêa, pp. 120–1. There may have been explaining bonæ mulieris as a personal name (*Tilwinn, supposedly some connection between Wessex, the kings of the West-Saxons, the name of Aldred’s mother), rather than as til w[if ] ‘good woman’. and the Community of St Cuthbert at various times in the tenth