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RULING WOMEN; POPLTLAR REPRESENTATIONS OF QUEENSHIP IN LATE

ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Degree Requirements for the Degree Doctor of

Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By Stacy S. Klein, B.A., M.A.

*****

The Ohio State University

1998

Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Nicholas Howe, Advisor

Professor Lisa J. Kiser Advisor Professor Karen A. Winstead Department of English UMI Number: 9900858

This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Copyright by Stacy S. Klein 1998 ABSTRACT

My dissertation examines how Anglo-Saxon literary and historical narratives

worked to construct public attitudes toward queenship during the late ninth through early

eleventh centuries. This period witnessed dramatic changes in the social and symbolic

power of royal wives, including the establishment of new titles for queens and queen-

mothers, the increasing use of public anointing ceremonies for queens, the formal appointment of a queen as the official patron of female monasteries, the regular attendance of queens at meetings of the royal council, and queens’ participation as patrons and staunch supporters of the Benedictine reforms. Focusing on vernacular writings composed in

Wessex—which was the home of the royal family and the intellectual hub of the

Benedictine reforms— I examine how textual depictions of royal wives worked to create popular ideals of queenship and how these ideals were in turn used to propagate reformist ideologies of gender and family among the Anglo-Saxon laity.

Chapter one examines representations of queenship in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Asser’s Life of Alfred. Both texts demonstrate that ninth-century Wessex queens were valued mainly for their ability to create dynastic connections through marriage. Asser’s Life concomitantly shows that public attitudes toward queenship in ninth-century Wessex were far more complex than mere wholesale acceptance of the actual roles available to queens within that culture. Chapter two focuses on Cynewulfs Elene. reading the poem in the context of new titling practices for late Anglo-Saxon queens and changing attitudes toward royal concubinage. My third and fourth chapters investigate Ælfric's discussions of the Old

Testament queens Jezebel and Esther in his Old English biblical translations. I argue that

Ælfric uses Jezebel to offer a veiled critique of late tenth-century royal counsel, while

Esther functions as a means for him to address the problem of royal divorce and to examine the relationship between physical beauty and inner virtue. Throughout my dissertation, I argue that changing ideals of queenship were met with a profound ambivalence on the part of early medieval writers, who sought both to laud the accomplishments of queens as well as to prescribe limits over their spheres of influence.

m ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to express my warmest thanks to the many people who have supported me

during the writing of my dissertation. I am very grateful to Professor Lisa Kiser for

serving on my dissertation committee and for generously sharing with me over the past six

years her deep knowledge of medieval literature and culture. I want to express my

appreciation to Professor Karen Winstead, who has been an insightful reader of drafts and

an extremely supportive committee member. It is a pleasure to acknowledge Professor

Katherine O ’Brien O ’Keeffe, who has welcomed me into the community of Anglo-

Saxonists at large and written letters on my behalf. So, too. Professors Roberta Frank and

Christopher Highley have written on my behalf and helped me to secure funding for research.

My dissertation research was supported by a Ohio State University Presidential

Fellowship and GSARA Grant from the Graduate School, an Elizabeth Gee Fellowship from the Ohio State University Department of Women’s Studies, and a Summer

Fellowship from the Department of English. I am very grateful for the funding that allowed me to pursue my research.

I read parts of chapters-in-progress at the Modem Language Association and

International Congress for Medieval Studies at Western Michigan and would like to thank the audiences at these events for their interest and responses. I am grateful to Sandra

MacPherson, who provided helpful comments on chapter four. I also want to acknowledge Robin Norris, Maureen Novak, and Cynthia Wittman-ZoUinger for reading

iv and providing comments on various chapters and for offering sustaining intellectual support and friendship. I thank my parents, Dorothy and Marc Klein, for their support during my graduate studies. I am also deeply grateful to Paula Dayhoff, who has shared ideas with me about gender studies and very much enriched my life. Above all, I would like to thank my dissertation director. Professor Nicholas Howe, who has given me valuable critical advice, practical assistance, and encouragement at every stage of the project. I was privileged to have been able to work with such a wise scholar and teacher, and I owe an incalculable debt to him for all that he has done for me. VTTA

April II, 1967 ...... Bom, Syosset, New York

1989...... B.A. English, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire

1992 ...... M.A. English, University of Sussex, Palmer, England

1992-94...... Teaching Associate, Department of English, Ohio State University

Spring, 1995 ...... Teaching Associate, Department of Comparative Studies, Ohio State University

1995-97 ...... Editorial Assistant to Lisa J. Kiser (editor). Studies in the Age of Chaucer

1997-98 ...... Presidential Fellow, Ohio State University

PUBLICATIONS

‘Ælfnc’s Sources and his Gendered Audiences,” Essavs in Medieval Studies: 1996 Proceedings of the Illinois Medieval Association. Vol. 13(1997): 111-19.

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: English

VI TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Abstract ...... ii

Acknowledgements ...... iv

Vita...... V

List of Tables ...... ix

List of Figures ...... x

Introduction ...... 1

Chapters:

1. Queenship Remembered ...... 13 1.1 Queenship in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ...... 17 1.2 Low Times for Wessex Queens ...... 26 1.3 The Wicked Queen of Wessex ...... 36 1.4 Female Genealogies and Authorial Fictions ...... 41 1.5 The Marriage of a Twelve-Year-Old Frankish Princess ...... 51 1.6 Judith’s Coronation ...... 60

2. Queenship in Cynewulfs Elene ...... 65 2.1 Figuring Elene. . 2.2 Elene as an Exemplar for Empresses and Queens...... 75 2.3 Naming Elene...... 82 2.4 Queenship and Christian Conununity ...... 84 2.5 Elene and the Ethics of Destruction ...... 100 2.6 Cults of Queens and Crosses ...... 113

3. Figuring Jezebel: Queenship and Royal Counsel ...... 122 3.1 The Audience for Kings ...... 126 3.2 Jezebel’s Past ...... 131 3.3 Manuscript Evidence...... 136

vu 3.4 Kings: Ælfric’s Version of Queenship...... 140 3.5 Queenly Counsel and the Theft of a Vineyard ...... 152 3.6 Kings: A Testament to Æthelred’s Decline ...... 160

4. Beauty and the Banquet: Queenship in Ælfric’s Esther-Translation ...... 166 4.1 Manuscript Evidence...... 169 4.2 Esther. Religious Practice, and Lay B elief...... 171 4.3 The End of the Royal Marriage...... 183 4.4 The Two Queens’ Bodies ...... 193 4.5 Queenship and Royal Counsel ...... 205 4.6 Addendum: William L’Isle’s Habits of Textual Transmission. . . 213

5. Conclusion: Suggestions For Further Research ...... 221

Bibliography...... 225

vm UST OF TABLES

Table Page

1 References to Queens and Royal Women in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: 60BC-1042AD ...... 20

2 Total Chronicle References to Queens and Royal Women By Century; Naming and Titling Practices...... 22

IX LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

1 Frontispiece of the Encomium Emmae depicting Queen Emma, her sons, and the author of the Encomium ...... 90 INTRODUCTION

This study of late Anglo-Saxon queenship began as a small part of another project, which 1 am still researching, on relationships among women in Anglo-Saxon culture. One of these relationships was the bond of identification between literary and historical queens; specifically, 1 wanted to understand how Ælfnc’s depiction of the biblical queen Jezebel in his late tenth-century translation of Kings might have functioned as a negative exemplar for contemporary Anglo-Saxon queens. When 1 began reading secondary studies of late

Anglo-Saxon queenship, 1 soon encountered Pauline Stafford’s argument that the late tenth century witnessed a radical change in the power, status, and influence of Wessex queens, which set me to wondering how this change was perceived by contemporary Wessex writers. 1

There are few contemporary accounts of late Anglo-Saxon queenship.^ Perhaps it was difficult for Anglo-Saxon writers to compose direct commentaries on contemporary

^ Stafford, “The King’s Wife in Wessex, 800-1066,” Past and Present 91 (1981): 3-27. Rpt. in New Readings on Women in Old English Literature, ed. Helen Damico and Alexandra Hennessey Olsen (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990) 56-78. Citations of Stafford’s article throughout the dissertation are to this volume.

^The two most substantive pre-Conquest accounts of contemporary queens are the Encomium Emmae Reginae (1041-421 and the Life of Edward the Confessor who Rests at Winchester (1065-70) These Latin biographies are the only known works that appear to have been commissioned by Anglo-Saxon queens. The standard editions of these works are Alistair Campbell, ed.. Encomium Emmae Reginae (London: Royal Historical Society, 1949); Frank Barlow, ed. and trans.. The Life of King Edward Who Rests at Winchester queenship without fearing loss of life or social status. Old Testament queens, early Roman queens, and pagan queens offered the Anglo-Saxon writer a safer means of exploring ideals of queenship without risking accusations of treachery. My dissertation, “Ruling

Women: Popular Representations of Queenship in Late Anglo-Saxon England,” examines

Anglo-Saxon accounts of such legendary queens in the literary and historical writings of late ninth- through early eleventh-century Wessex. I argue that Anglo-Saxon writers used these texts to shape public attitudes toward queenship during a historical period that witnessed dramatic changes in the social and symbolic power of English queens, including the establishment of new titles for queens and queen-mothers, the increasing use of public anointing ceremonies for queens, the formal appointment of a queen as the official patron of female monasteries, the regular attendance of queens at meetings of the royal council, and queens’ participation as patrons and staunch supporters of the newly-emergent English monastic reforms.

As my dissertation title, “Ruling Women,” suggests, early medieval writers concomitantly sought to describe the achievements of Anglo-Saxon queens and to limit their spheres of influence—in effect, to use textual representations as a means of “ruling” these powerful women. Focusing on texts composed in Wessex—which was the home of the royal family and the intellectual hub of the Benedictine reforms—I examine how textual depictions of royal wives worked to create popular ideals of queenship and how these ideals were in turn used to propagate reformist ideologies of gender and family among the

Anglo-Saxon laity. My project thus begins from the well-accepted premises that literary and historical writings have significant formative power; that the past is often used as a

(London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1962). For detailed discussions of these texts and the queens they depict, see Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith. veiled means to speak about the present; and that memories of the past may be given

expression in texts specifically because they address contemporary social changes.

An Anglo-Saxonist who seeks to study how textual representations constructed

“popular” attitudes toward any early medieval cultural phenomenon faces profound

difficulties, given the scarcity of sources on public opinion in this period, as well as the fact

that—aside from homilies—Anglo-Saxon texts were available to relatively limited publics,

consisting mainly of male and female monastics and pious noblemen. To reach a better

understanding of popular attitudes toward Anglo-Saxon queenship, I have focused as much

as possible on texts that were or could have been read by lay audiences: texts that were

composed in the vernacular as opposed to Latin and, particularly, texts that explicitly state

they were intended for laypeople, such as Ælfric’s translations of Kings and Esther.

Moreover, I have attempted not only to ascertain how early medieval writers encouraged

Anglo-Saxon laypeople to think about queenship, but also to elucidate the assumptions

about popular conceptions of queenship that motivated these authors to present their texts

as they did. Thus, a significant portion of chapter one is devoted to analyzing Asser’s Life

of Alfred, the single extant pre-Conquest text that purports to describe popular attitudes

toward queenship in late ninth-century Wessex. Many of the queens who figure prominently in my study were popular figures; that is, they had already accrued a host of imaginative connotations in late Anglo-Saxon culture, long before writers such as

Cynewulf and Ælfric chose to depict them. Female figures such as Elene, Jezebel, and

Esther are invoked repeatedly in English calendars, homilies, coronation ceremonies, public church festivals, patristic writings, early medieval writings (both English and continental), coins, litanies of the saints, and hagiographical narratives. They were complex, culturally enduring figures, open to diverse interpretations. And even if most of the Wessex populace never had access to the texts I discuss in my study, the authors of these texts were acutely aware that potential audiences would have heard of, and indeed

most likely have had some opinions on, the female characters who would figure

prominently in their narratives. I have thus attempted as much as possible to consider how

already-existing cultural perceptions of these female figures might have affected the ways in

which Anglo-Saxon writers chose to depict them.

My research is indebted to a number of biographical and historical accounts of

Anglo-Saxon queenship. Pauline Stafford's Queens. Concubines, and Dowagers: The

King’s Wife in the Earlv Middle Ages f 19831 focuses on queens and royal consorts in

Francia, Italy, and England from 500 AD through the mid eleventh century, tracing the

lives of individual royal women to “give some picture of the life of an early medieval queen.” Stafford’s Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women’s Power in

Eleventh-Centurv England H 9971 offers nuanced discussions of the historical roles

available to eleventh-century English queens, as well as detailed discussions of the lives,

households, and landholdings of Emma and Edith. Judith Abbott’s “Queens and

Queenship in Anglo-Saxon England, 954-1066: Holy and Unholy Alliances” (1989) examines the lives and families of eight late Anglo-Saxon queens and royal consorts,

bringing together further biographical information on individual queens. Julie Ann Smith’s

“Queen-Making and Queenship in Early Medieval England and Francia” (1993) sheds light on changing ideals of Anglo-Saxon queenship through examining the development of late

Anglo-Saxon and Frankish queens’ coronation ordines.^

^Pauline Stafford, Queens. Concubines, and Dowagers: The King’s Wife in the Earlv Middle Ages (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1983) preface, xiii; Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women’s Power in Eleventh-Centurv England (Qxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997); Judith Elaine Abbott, “Queens and Queenship in Anglo-Saxon England, 954-1066: Holy and Unholy Alliances,” diss.. University of Connecticut, 1989; Julie Ann Smith, “Queen-Making and Queenship in Early Medieval England and Francia,” diss.. University of York, 1993. My work on popular attitudes toward late Anglo-Saxon queenship has also

benefited from studies of medieval royal culture that depart from biographically-driven

methods of inquiry and instead seek to understand sovereignty and royal culture as an

integral part of the lives of early medieval laypeople. Janet Nelson’s Politics and Ritual in

Earlv Medieval Europe (1986) investigates how early medieval rituals such as coronation

ceremonies were used both to influence local beliefs and to advance national political goals.

Susan Ridyard’s The Roval Saints of Anglo-Saxon England (1988) examines royal saints

in mid tenth- through twelfth-century Latin saints’ lives, demonstrating that Anglo-Saxon

royal figures lived on in popular memory even after they were long dead and entombed in

elaborate caskets. Louise Fradenburg’s Citv. Marriage. Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late

Medieval Scotland (1991) and her introduction to the collection of essays Women and

Sovereignty (19921 explore the idea of sovereignty as a public performance heavily

dependent on popular perceptions of the queen, and reveal the imaginative work queens

and royal marriages perform in creating and sustaining support among the sovereign's

subjects.'^

While my dissertation is indebted to the work of these authors, it also departs

significantly from former studies of Anglo-Saxon queenship on a number of levels. Many

studies have attempted to reconstruct biographical and historical accounts of individual queens and royal consorts, but little attention has been given to investigating how late

Anglo-Saxon laypeople were encouraged to understand queenship. Nor has anyone explored how ideals of queenship were used to promulgate specific reformist ideologies of

^Janet L. Nelson, Politics and Ritual in Earlv Medieval England (London: Hambledon Press, 1986); Susan J. Ridyard, The Roval Saints of Anglo-Saxon England: A Studv of West Saxon and East Anglian Cults (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988); Louise Olga Fradenburg, Citv. Marriage. Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval Scotland (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991); Fradenburg, introduction. Women and Sovereignty, ed. Fradenburg (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992). gender and family among the laity. Moreover, former studies of Anglo-Saxon queenship

have focused primarily on Latin biographies, documentary sources (i.e. charters,

coronation ordines. wills), post-Conquest saints’ lives, and continental rememberings of an

Anglo-Saxon past, all of which chart the lives of historical queens. While my dissertation

makes use of these sources, its primary focus is on literary and historical narratives, most

of which are concerned with queens who never lived in Anglo-Saxon England, but rather

inhabited a distant, legendary past. My study is also distinguished from others in its

emphasis on Wessex during a period in which the power, status, and influence of the

queen were undergoing significant changes.

Several scholars have suggested factors that may have led to the increased power

and status of tenth-century Wessex queens. D. A. Bullough has posited that granting the

queen increased power was part of an overall effort, beginning in continental Europe

during the ninth century and gradually spreading to England, to bring the earthly queen’s

position more into line with that of her heavenly counterpart: the Virgin Mary, Queen of

Heaven.5 Pauline Stafford has argued that the growth of powerful noble clans, from which

the queen was often selected, contributed to the queen’s increased status, both by providing

support for individual queens, and also by leading to a series of disputed successions during which queens were often enlisted to back potential heirs to the Wessex throne.^

Both Bullough and Stafford readily admit to the extreme difficulty of charting the historical factors underlying the tenth-century queen’s increased status. Bullough freely states that his

^D. A. Bullough, “The Continental Background of the Reform,” Tenth-Centurv Studies: Essays in Commemoration of the Millennium of the Council of Winchester and the Regularis Concordia, ed. David Parsons (London: Phillimore and Co., 1975) 35-36.

^Stafford, “The King’s Wife,” esp. 59-62. remarks are “speculations which others may pursue if they wish” and, as Stafford notes,

“The link between the power of nobles and queens is neither simple nor straightforward.”^

I am inclined to seek a partial explanation for the increased status of tenth-century

Wessex queens in the mid to late tenth-century Benedictine reforms, which encouraged

strong alliances between the church and the royal family. While one of the main purposes

of the reforms was to abolish lay control over monastic establishments, an exception was

made for the royal family. The code of monastic law known as the Regularis Concordia, an

official reform document issued at the Council of Winchester (965-75), clearly

distinguishes royal involvement in monastic life from that of other laypeople, articulating an

official church stance toward the royal family as one that strongly encouraged alliances

between the monasteries and the royal family:

The assembly wisely, and under severe censure and anathema, forbade the holy monasteries to acknowledge the overlordship of secular persons, a thing which might lead to utter loss and ruin as it did in past times. On the other hand, they conunanded that the sovereign power of the King and (Queen—and that only—should ever be besought with confident petition, both for the safeguarding of holy places and for the increase of the goods of the Church. As often therefore as it shall be to their advantage, the fathers and mothers of each house shall have humble access to the King and Queen in the fear of God and observance of the Rule.8

Similarly, the Concordia prescribes that the monks pray several times daily for the king and queen, a distinctly Anglo-Saxon innovation that appears in none of the continental consuetudinaries that were likely to have served as sources for the Concordia.^ The

^Bullough, 36; Stafford, “The King’s Wife,” 62.

^Thomas Symons, ed., Regularis Concordia Anglicae nationis monachorum sanctimonialiumque (New York: Oxford UP, 1953) 7.

^Regularis Concordia. 14 n. 3. Concordia also specifically discusses the queen’s role in monastic life, stating that just as

King Edgar is to safeguard the male houses. Queen Ælfthryth is to be the “protectress and fearless guardian of the communities of nuns.”^0

Monastic reforms are only one of a host of complicated factors that led to the increased status and power of tenth-century Wessex queens. Regardless of what may have caused these changes, documentary evidence such as royal charters, wills, and queens’ coronation ordines indeed reveals that the official status of the tenth-century West Saxon queen was far greater than that of her ninth-century counterpart.^ ^ While the literary and historical sources I examine confirm this change, my dissertation does not attempt to further explain the causes underlying the enhanced status of tenth-century Wessex queens.

Rather, I seek to understand the diverse and complex range of attitudes toward queenship exhibited in late ninth- through early eleventh-century literary and historical narratives and how these texts work to construct popular attitudes toward queenship.

Chapter one examines representations of queenship produced in late ninth-century

Wessex, a historical period during which queens were excluded from the majority of royal council meetings, very seldom served as witnesses to land-grant charters, were not named by formal titles, and were not usually given coronation ceremonies. Focusing on the

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Asser’s Life of King Alfred. I demonstrate that these texts.

^ORegularis Concordia. 2.

^ ^For a discussion of Anglo-Saxon queens and royal women as witnesses to charters, see Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith. 91, 182, 183 n 106, 193-206, 231-32, 265- 66; Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge, trans., Alfred the Great (London: Penguin Books, 1983) 235; Kevnes. The Diplomas of Ælthelred ’The Unreadv 978-1016 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP) 187. For discussions of queens’ anointing, see Smith, “Queen-Making and Queenship”; Stafford, Queens. Concubines, and Dowagers. 127-34, 207-208; Janet Nelson, “The Second English Ordo,” Politics and Ritual in Earlv Medieval Europe. 361-374. For further discussion of queens in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, see my chapter one. like the historical evidence, suggest that ninth-century Wessex queens had limited social

status and political power and were valued mainly for their ability to create dynastic

connections between kingdoms through marriage, to produce heirs, and to provide their

sons with a noble maternal lineage that would shore up their claims to the Wessex throne. I

argue that the self-presentation of these texts as exemplary histories for the English nation

works to legitimize the restrictions placed on royal women’s political power in late ninth- century England by creating a model of English queenship in which the queen’s lack of status and political power is presented as one component of a successful political reign. At the same time, Asser’s Life repeatedly demonstrates that public attitudes toward queenship

in ninth-century Wessex, including his own, were far from mere wholesale acceptance of the limited roles available to queens within that culture.

My second chapter examines the Cynewulf-poet’s alliterative Elene. an Old English account of the legendary queen Helena, who assisted men in recovering the material fragments of the cross as well as the obscure history of the Cmcifixion. Drawing on

Patrick Conner’s recent redating of Elene to the tenth rather than the ninth century, I offer an historicist reading of the poem that situates its aristocratic heroine in the context of contemporary changes in late Anglo-Saxon queenship. Specifically, I examine Cynewulfs references to Elene as “cwen,” “guôcwen,” “sigecwen,” “hlæfdige,” and “wif ’ in the context of new titling practices for late Anglo-Saxon queens and queen-mothers. 1 explore

Cynewulf s decision to omit any mention of Elene as the concubine of the third-century

Constantius Chlorus in the context of Anglo-Saxon reformist writings that attempt to construct royal marriages as exemplary or, at least, licit unions. And I examine Elene s role in establishing and maintaining Christian community alongside reformist writings that legitimize the participation of queens in specific aspects of the reforms. I then turn to the question of why, if Cynewulf s Elene was indeed composed during a period that witnessed significant increases in the social and symbolic power of Anglo-Saxon queens, its queen

Elene plays a considerably lesser role than that of her Latin counterpart in the Inventio.

My third and fourth chapters investigate Ælfnc’s discussions of the Old Testament queens Jezebel and Esther in his prose translations of Kings (c. 998 A.D.) and Esther

(c. 1002-05 A.D.). I compare Ælfric’s Old English translations with his Vulgate and Old

Latin sources and situate his variations in the context of contemporary shifts in the social and symbolic power of late Anglo-Saxon queens. My chapter on Jezebel demonstrates that

Ælfric uses the biblical queen to offer a veiled critique of late tenth-century royal counsel, a problematic issue at this time given the queen’s increasing attendance at meetings o f the royal council and King Æthelred’s inability to distinguish between good and bad counsel.

My chapter on Esther examines Ælfric’s depiction of the biblical queen as an exemplar of queenship as weU as an exemplar for the laity. I argue that Ælfric uses Esther to propagate a series of ideological tenets central to the late tenth-century Benedictine reforms; the idea of the queen as both a symbol and a proponent of lay faith, the idea of marriage as a binding contract that could be broken only under conditions clearly defined by ecclesiastical laws, and the idea that a person’s physical appearance should reflect his or her character.

However, in struggling to make his biblical exemplar, Esther, reflect contemporary reformist ideologies, Ælfric must make many changes to the sources from which he is translating. Through his Esther-translation. Ælfric thus suggests the inherent problems in using pre-Christian exemplars for Anglo-Saxon lay audiences.

A few further introductory comments may be helpful. The first concerns the chronological and geographical scope of this project. Despite the fact that there are fascinating discussions of queenship in both eighth- and mid to late eleventh-century

Anglo-Saxon writings, I have limited my investigations to texts produced in the late ninth through early eleventh centuries because it was during this period that the social and

10 symbolic power of Wessex queens changed dramatically. Moreover, because the cultural

phenomenon with which I am dealing is specific to Wessex queens, the bulk of my

analysis is concentrated on texts that were written in Wessex. Although I draw on early

medieval discussions of Frankish, Welsh, Mercian, and Northumbrian queenship, I am

wary of using these broader cultural contexts to address an extremely localized cultural

phenomena. The study of queenship in early medieval Francia, Wales, Mercia,

Northumbria, and Kent is thus left to other scholars.

Second, 1 make no claims as to the effects these texts actually had on popular

attitudes toward queenship in late ninth- through early eleventh-century Wessex. Indeed, as one scholar remarked while I was working on this dissertation: “How do we know that these texts actually did anything? Maybe they were just thrown in the garbage can.” The

scarcity and expense of texts in pre-Conquest England, as well as the fact that the texts I examine were considered valuable enough to preserve for approximately a century, renders

it highly improbable that these writings were thrown in an Anglo-Saxon garbage can

(whatever that might have looked like). Nonetheless, given the lack of evidence on the reception of Anglo-Saxon writings, it is possible to argue only for the effects these texts seem to be working toward as opposed to the effects they actually achieved.

Finally, I am not concerned with the extent to which the representations of queenship that I have examined are actually “true” or even whether Anglo-Saxon readers would have thought them “true.” It matters to me not whether Queen Eadburh actually poisoned her husband's dearest retainer, or Elene sat on a throne, or Jezebel’s body was eaten by dogs. What interests me is the fact that these stories appealed to Wessex writers enough for them to record or translate them, the fact that these narratives display an insistent interest in queenship, and the ways in which these portrayals of queens construct popular ideals of queenship for contemporary audiences.

11 Late ninth- through early eleventh-century Wessex was a time of complex, rapidly changing ideas about queenship, a period that, some scholars argue, witnessed the emergence of queenship as an office rather than a position defined merely by the particular woman who inhabited itJ^ That ideas of queenship in Anglo-Saxon culture were neither simple nor self-evident is apparent even at a lexical level: the Old English word “cwen” was used to refer to queens, married noblewomen, and the Virgin Mary, while the closely- related word “cwene” was used to denote ordinary wives, concubines of priests, and prostitutes. As the tenth-century queen stepped forward to exercise political power formerly unavailable to her earlier historical counterparts, contemporary writers felt an increasing need to define the queen within the parameters of monastic needs and the perceived needs of lay society. My dissertation examines how these writers attempted to control, shape, and represent the rapid changes in late Anglo-Saxon queenship by investigating the literary and historical narratives that became the means for exploring and conceptualizing these changes.

l^See Smith, “Queen-Making and Queenship” and also Abbott, “Queens and Queenship.”

l^See Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller, eds.. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionarv (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1882; rpt. 1972) 177-78.

12 CHAPTER 1

QUEENSHIP REMEMBERED

The story of queenship in ninth-century Wessex is the story of how it was remembered by a small group of highly partisan ecclesiasts living in Alfred’s court. Here, in the years between 880 and 899, Alfred and his coterie of learned scribes and scholars produced a number of vernacular translations as part of the king’s program for the revival of learning in England, including Gregory’s Pastoral Care and Dialogues. Boethius’

Consolation of Philosophv. St. Augustine’s Soliloquies, the first fifty psalms of the

Psalter, Orosius’ Historv Against the Pagans, and Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the

English People. This same intellectual milieu produced the so-called “Conunon Stock” of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as well as Asser’s Life of Alfred (893), the earliest known biography of an Anglo-Saxon king.^

This chapter examines the construction of queenship in Asser’s Life of Alfred and the An^lo-Saxon Chronicle.^ The pairing of the two texts is important, not only because

^There has been considerable debate over both the date and authenticity of the Life of King Alfred. Most recently, Alfred P. Smyth has argued that the Life was not written by Asset but is a later forgery, most likely composed in the late tenth or early eleventh century by either Byrhtferth of Ramsey or one of his circle; see King Alfred the Great (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995). I am inclined to agree with the view propounded by William Henry Stevenson, Dorothy Whitelock, Simon Keynes, and Michael Lapidge: that the Life is not a later forgery.

^References to Asser’s Life of Alfred will be to the following editions; Latin citations refer to Asser’s Life of King Alfred Together with the Annals of St, Neol’s. ed. William Henry Stevenson, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1904); English translations refer to Alfred the

13 they were composed during the same time and in the same intellectual circles, but because

Asser’s Life draws heavily on the Alfredian section of the Chronicle, interspersing this

Chronicle material with additional passages of original prose that consist mainly of interpretations, additions, and glosses on the life of the king, his family, and his culture.

Moreover, both texts contain many citations and discussions of queenship in the ninth century, a period that is otherwise notable for its lack of historical documentation or literary sources concerning contemporary queenship. Of course, no two texts—regardless of how rich they might be concerning the topic at hand—should be taken as indicative of the contemporary thinking of an entire culture, and particularly one as complex, varied and fluid as ninth-century Wessex. Asser’s Life and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are also particularly fruitful sources for investigating representations of the past because these texts were themselves bom out of a royal program designed in part both to ensure that textual accounts of the past were disseminated and understood by large segments of the Wessex populace, and to record the ninth-century Wessex present as history for future generations .3 As such, these texts are deeply engaged with the very idea of historical representation as well as its objectives.

Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporarv Sources, ed. and trans. Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge (London; Penguin Books, 1983). References to both the Latin and English texts will be cited parenthetically by chapter and page number. Throughout this chapter, I have adhered to the practice of citing the English translation of Asser’s Life, citing the Latin only when the language of the original is relevant to my argument.

^The purposes of the Alfredian translation program are succinctly set out in Alfred’s Preface to his translation of Pope Gregory the Great’s Cura Pastoral is. In the Preface, Alfred laments what he views as the overall decline of learning and Latin literacy in England. One of the most serious results of the decline of Latin literacy, Alfred claims, is the fact that this decline erased virtually all knowledge of past wisdom, which the forefathers had recorded in Latin texts, not thinking that later audiences would ever be unable to read Latin. Imagining several clerics (“godes ôiowa’’) who could not read Latin in the face of a group of English churches filled with Latin texts, Alfred states “As if they had said, ‘Our forefathers, who formerly held these places, loved wisdom, and through it

14 Asser, in particular, is extremely straightforward about the purposes of the Life. He suggests that historical biography is to function much like Scripture or hagiography, and offers his biography of the king not as a simple account of what happened during Alfred’s lifetime, but as an exemplary narrative promoting a carefully constructed set of royal and cultural ideals for future readers to emulate. His didactic purpose is outlined, for example, in a passage very similar to one found in Bede’s Ecclesiastical Historv of the English

People, in which Asser defends his decision to include in the Life an account of a crime

“unworthy to be recorded”:

On one occasion a crime was perpetuated in that monastery which I would not commit to the oblivion of silence, mute in its taciturnity (even though the crime itself is unworthy to be recorded), since throughout Scripture the foul deeds of the unrighteous are sown among the holy deeds of the righteous like cockles and tares in the crop of wheat: the good deeds so that they can be praised, followed and emulated and their imitators be deemed worthy of every holy honor; the evil deeds, on the other hand, that they may be disparaged, cursed, and entirely shunned, and their imitators reproached with all hatred, contempt, and punishment.'^ (Life of Alfred, ch. 95, p. 103-04)

Unlike Asser’s Life, the Chronicle never overtly announces itself as an exemplary narrative. However, because the ninth-century annals recount the history of a successful political reign that culminated in both the defeat of the Vikings and the unification of much they obtained wealth and bequeathed it to us. In this we can see their tracks, but we cannot follow them, and therefore we have lost both the wealth and the wisdom . . . Henry Sweet, ed.. King Alfred’s West-Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care. EETS 45 and 50 (London: Oxford University Press, 1871-72), 251.

^Asser’s explanation of the purpose of historical biography bears a striking resemblance to Bede’s explanatory statement on the purposes of history in the Preface to his Ecclesiastical Historv of the English People: “Should history tell about the good things of good people, the solicitous listener is encouraged to imitate what is good; should it record the evil doings of wicked people, no less effectually, the devout and pious reader or listener is encouraged to avoid all that is sinful and perverse” (Colgrave and Mynors, 1).

15 of England, they would have acquired powerful exemplary force in the minds of later

readers. Given the extremely wide circulation of the Chronicle after its initial compilation

in the late ninth century, these readers would have been many.

My purpose in discussing the exemplary force present in both Asser’s Life and the

Chronicle is to make the necessary point that, like most historical narratives, these late

ninth-century texts preserve for future generations not literal accounts of what happened in

the ninth century, but rather agreed-upon versions of the present and recent past that were

meant to function as exemplars for future generations. Given that both Asser and the

compilers of the ninth-century Chronicle annals were writing under the patronage of

Alfred, it is not surprising that part of what seems to have been agreed upon was to present

ninth-century Wessex and the Alfredian court in the best possible light. In short, as

scholars have long noted, both Asser’s Life and the ninth-century Chronicle annals display a strong West Saxon bias and strive as far as possible to idealize the reign of Alfred.^

The fact that both Asser’s Life and the ninth-century Chronicle annals seek to idealize Alfred’s reign and also carry powerful exemplary force has significant ramifications for understanding the construction of queenship in these texts. Both texts, as

I will argue, present ninth century Wessex as a time and place in which queens had very little status and extremely limited political power. Moreover, both texts suggest that ninth- century Wessex queens were considered important mainly for their abilities to create dynastic connections through marriage and to produce heirs for the Wessex throne. By idealizing the Alfredian court, both Asser’s Life and the Chronicle ultimately function as a means to legitimize ninth-century Wessex queens’ lack of political power, by presenting it as one component of a successful political reign. Moreover, the exemplary force of both

^On the West Saxon bias of both Asser’s Life and the Chronicle, see Smyth, King Alfred the Great, esp. 477-90, but also the book as a whole, which argues throughout that the Life seeks to glorify the reign of Alfred.

16 texts works to suggest that ninth-century Wessex queens’ lack of political power was not merely a historical fact, but also a model of English queenship to be emulated by future generations. While Asser’s Life and the ninth-century Chronicle annals cannot serve as a reliable index of how the whole of the Wessex populace viewed queenship, these texts can provide a kind of barometer of how Alfred’s court wanted their contemporaries and future generations to understand the roles, functions, and ideological significance of queens in ninth-century Wessex.

I. Queenship in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

To discuss any topic in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is to enter a tangled web of textual variation, paleographic and linguistic uncertainty, indeterminacy in dating, and cultural complexity. There is a substantial body of critical writing on the Chronicle, and scholarly dissent ranges across virtually every aspect of this text: its composition, circulation, emendation, preservation, and sources. A host of conflicting arguments have also been raised over the actual content of the Chronicle, its political and cultural biases, and its ostensible purposes.® Indeed, the very idea of “the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’’ has itself long been a scholarly convenience for referring not to a single text but rather to a entire group of manuscript versions of a text that was first compiled in the latter half of the ninth century and then continued and re-edited at different locales up to the mid-twelfth century. The

Chronicle survives in seven different recensions (one of which was largely destroyed in the

1731 Cotton fire) and two fragments. The Chronicle annals record the history of England, beginning with the record of Caesar’s invasion of Britain in 60 BC and continuing to 1155

^For a general overview and bibliography on the Chronicle, see English Historical Documents: Volume I. c. 500-1042. ed. Dorothy Whitelock, 2nd ed. (London: Eyre and Methuen, 1979) 109-125, 139-140; for an overview of Chronicle scholarship, see Smyth, King Alfred the Great. 455-526.

17 AD. Given the weight of past scholarship on the Chronicle, as well as the formidable

textual difficulties inherent in any aspect of its study, it is perhaps not surprising that many

of the Chronicle’s thematic issues remain insufficiently examined. One of these issues that

has received scant critical attention is the Chronicle’s treatment of queens. In tables 1 and

2 ,1 provide a rough index of the development of cultural attitudes toward queenship, as

reflected by the number and type of references to queens and other royal women (i.e.,

king’s daughters and sisters) in the A, B, C, D, and E recensions of the Chronicle from

60BC-1042 AD.7 Table 1 lists all of the Chronicle references to these royal women by

annal, indicating in which of the five examined recensions the particular referenc e appears.

Table 2 provides numerical tallies of these references in one-hundred year increments up to

1000 AD, with a tally of only the first forty-two years of the eleventh century, and also

provides totals (broken down by century) for the number of references that describe the

royal woman by name, as well as the particular titles by which the queen is called.^

Following Dorothy Whitelock’s practice in EHD, I have listed the annals under the dates in

which the events actually occurred; where the date in any manuscript differs from the date

^References to A and E refer to the editions of these recensions in Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. Charles Plummer on the basis of an edition by John Earle, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892-99; rev. Dorothy Whitelock, 1952). References to B and D are to the new collaborative edition of the Chronicle under the general editorship of David Dumville and Simon Keynes. For MS B, see vol. 4, ed. Simon Taylor (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983); for MS D, see vol. 6, ed. G. P. Cubbin (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1996). References to C are to EHD.

^Although the Chronicle continues through 1155,1 have concluded my study at the year 1042 because my main goal in this dissertation is to provide a further understanding of cultural shifts occurring in the ninth and tenth centuries. There are many additional references to queens in eleventh-century annals after 1042, including references to Edith (wife of King Edward the Confessor) and Margaret of Scotland (wife of King Malcolm). However, the relatively large number of times queens are referenced in the Chronicle between 1000 and 1042 AD is, I believe, sufficient to show that the status queens had gained during the tenth century continued through much of the eleventh.

18 of the events described, the manuscript date is placed in brackets.9 Again, following

Whitelock, I have limited my investigation to MSS A-E, ignoring G, which is a late copy of A, and omitting the readings given in F which is a bilingual post-Conquest copy. 10 The following abbreviations are used in these tables: q=queen; k=king; kd=king’s daughter, ks=king's sister; a=abbess; d=daughter; bi^brother; m=mother; b=bishop; w=wife.

9Whitelock, EHD, 145-46.

l^Whitelock, EHD. 145. After some consideration, I have not included in the main tables the so-called “Mercian Register”—a series of consecutive annals from 902-924 contained in B, C, and D, which deal mainly with Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, and most likely once existed as a separate document. While the Mercian Register offers much in the way of understanding Mercian queenship, I felt that there was enough about the text to mark it as a separate narrative—its physical separation in B and C from the main body of the narrative, the fact that it most likely derives from a separate Latin source—and thus to justify omitting the Mercian Register from my study of the Chronicle. Moreover, the many references to Æthelflæd in the early tenth-century Chronicle annals must be acknowledged as reflecting the high status of Mercian queens throughout Mercian history, not as a phenomenon particular to this century. For further discussion of Æthelflæd and the Mercian Register, see Paul Szarmach, “Æthelflæd of Mercia: Mise en page.” Words and Works: Studies in Medieval English Language and Literature in Honour of Fred C. Robinson, ed. Peter S. Baker and Nicholas Howe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998) 105-126; and F. T. Wainwright, “Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians,” New Readings on Women in Old English Literature, ed. Helen Damico and Alexandra Hennessey Olsen, 44-56.

19 Armai Descriptian of Annal A B c D E 604 Ricule’s, k. Æthelberht I s sister’s, son succeeds x* X X 616 Æthelberht (k. of Kent) marries father’s widow X 626 Eanflæd, K. Edwin’s d., baptized x X X X 633 B. Paulinus protects widowed q. Æthelburfa X 640(39) Merits of Eormengota (kd.) & m., q.& a. Seaxburfa X 658 Concerning the desertion of Penda’s sister (q) x X X X 672 K. Cenwealh dies; q. Seaxburfa^ rules Wessex x XX X 697 Mercian q. Osthryth, wife of Ethelred, slain X X 718 Q Cuthburfa founds Wimbome; rs. Cwenburfa x X X X X 722 Wessex q. Æthelburfa destroys Taunton x X X X X 737 Wessex q. Frithogyth and B. Forthhere to Rome x X X X X 782 Mercian q. WerbuA dies. X X 789(87) Wessex k. Beorfatric marries Offa’s d. Eadburfa x X X X X 792 Northumbria k. Ethelred marries Offa’s d. ÆlfOæd X X 839(36) Beorfatric helped Offa because he married O’s d. x X X 853(54C) Wessex kd. given to Mercian k. Burgred x X X X X 855-58(55 A, D, E; 56 C) Frankish k. Charles gives x X X X X d. to Æthelwulf 885(86C) Reference to Charles’ d., wife of Æthelwulf x X X X X 888(89C) Mercian q., Alfred’s sister, Æthelswith dies x X X X X 901(02A; 033, C, D) Æthelwulf, br. of Eahlswith, x^ X X X K. Edward’s m. 918(921 A) Æthelflæd dies; “E” has “Lady of the Mercians” x X 926(25D) Æthelstan’s s. given to Northumbrian k. Sihtric X 946 Æthelflæd of Damerfaam, late K. Edmund’s q. X 955 list of sons of k. Edmund and Saint Ælfgifu X 957(580) Ælfgifu and husband, k. Eadwig, separated X 965 K. Edgar takes Ælfthryth., d. of Ordgar, as q. X 1002 The lady, Richard’s d., comes to England X X X 1003 Exeter destroyed because of the Lady’s reeve X X X 1013 The lady (q. Emma) takes refuge in Normandy X X X 1017 Cnut takes Æthelred’s w., Richard’s d. as wife^ X X X 1023 Emma “the Lady” & child Harthacnut to Rochester X

^This annal was added to A at Canterbury, replacing the original annal, which makes no mention of Ricule. ^ h is is a different Seaxburfa from the Seaxburh listed in annal 640, who was the wife of King Eorcenberht of Kent and then the abbess of Ely. ^A omits “King Edward’s mother.” has “to wife”; D has “to wife”; E has “to cwene.”

Table 1. References to Queens and Royal Women in the Chronicle: 60 BC-1042 AD (condnned on following page)

20 Tabic 1 (ccatmned)

Annal Deacripdcxi o f Annal A B C D E 1035 Lady Ælfgifu deprived of treasure; other Ælfgifu® x x 1036 Alfred, son of K. Æthelred II, wants to be with m. x x 1037 ÆlfgifuS driven from England, seeks refuge in Flanders x x x 1039 Harthacnut comes to Bruges, where his m. is x 1041(40E) Edward, half-brother to Harthacnut through m. Ælfgifu^ x x x

®C has “Imme" [Emma] written above “Ælfgyfu seo hlaefdige.” The “other Ælfgifu” is Cnut’s first wife, Ælfgifu of Northampton. % differs significantly from C and D. E expands the reference to Ælfgifu of Northampton, referring to her as “the daughter of Ealdorman Ælfhelm,” unlike C and D, which refer to her only as “the other Ælfgifu.” E refeis to Ælfgifu-Emma as “Harthacnut's mother,” whereas C and D refer to her as “the Lady.” E omits the discussion of Harold’s depriving Ælfgifu-Emma of treasure (contained in C and D), and states only as do C and D that it was decided she should stay in Winchester. 8C and D have “his modor Ælfgife da cwene” [his (Harthacnut's) mother Ælfgifu the queen]; E has “Ælfgife Cnutes cynges lafe seo wæs Hardacnutes modor” [Ælfgifu, King Cnut’s widow, who was Harthacnut’s mother]. and D have “Eadweard his broder on medren”; D has “meddren” [Edward, his (Harthacnut’s) brother on the mother’s side]; E has “Se wæs Hardacnutes cynges brodor, hi wæron begen Ælfgiues sunu seo wæs Ricardes dohtor eories” [He was brother of King Harthacnut. They were both sons of Ælfgifu who was Earl Richard’s daughter].

A: Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 173, fois. I v-32r (Parker Chronicle); the oldest version of the Chronicle: written up to near the end of 891 AD in a late ninth- or early tenth-century hand; originated somewhere in Wessex; Parkes argues Winchester; removed to Canterbury c. 1070 and revised there.

B: BL Cotton Tiberius A.vi; extends to 977; most likely written before 978; Plummer argues both B and C are derived from a common Abingdon exemplar, Whitelock argues against an Abingdon origin.

C: BL Cotton Tiberius B.i; continues to 1056, with annals for 1065 and 1066 added on a new folio; written in hands of the mid eleventh century; Whitelock argues that it was a product of Abingdon.

D: BL Cotton Tiberius B.iv; composed in the second half of the eleventh century, extends to 1079; Whitelock argues that D derives from a northern recension originating in York.

E: Bodleian MS Laud Misc. 636 (Peterborough Chronicle); composed in early to mid twelfth century; generally accepted as deriving from the same northern archetype as D; continues to 1155.

21 Yean Queen Q. Named KD/KS KD/S Named “Cwoi** ‘TBcfiiige’' 600-99 6 3 3 2 2 0 700-99 6 5 1 1 3 0 800-99 5 1 0 NA 1 0 900-99 7 6 0 NA 1 1 1000-42 11 5^ 0 NA lb 5

% and D do not list the queen’s name; E has the name ’’Ælfgifu.” and D have “cwen” as Ælfgifu’s title; E does not.

Table 2. Total Chronicle References to Qneens and Royal Womea By Centniy; Naming and Titling Practices

Queens are cited 35 times in the Chronicle between the years 60 BC-1042 AD.l^

Of the total 35, there are six queens cited in the seventh century and six in the eighth c e n t u r y . There is then a slight dip with only five queens listed in the ninth century; then a slight increase with seven queens listed in the tenth century; and then a distinct increase in the eleventh century, with eleven references to queens in only the first 42 years of the century.

These totals, with slightly higher numbers of queens noted in the centuries preceding and following the ninth century, are consistent vâth what we know about roles for queens in pre-Conquest England. The slightly higher number of references to queens

^ ^ There are thirteen additional references to women in the Chronicle during these years, most of which are either notices of the death of an abbess or general references to women, such as 893 (894C, D), which notes that the Danes had “placed their women and ships and property in safety in East Anglia,” or 975D, which laments the plundering of widows.

Annals 673 and 679 discuss Æthelthryth, the founding abbess of Ely and former wife of King Ecgfrith of Northumbria. I have not included her in the total for references to queens in the seventh century because although Æthelthryth was indeed married to King Ecgfrith of Northumbria, the Chronicle references discuss Æthelthryth's life only after she had left her husband and founded the monastery at Ely. Thus the Chronicle is interested in Æthelthryth mainly as an abbess rather than as a queen or even a former queen.

22 in the seventh and eighth centuries is partly due to the fact that, during these formative

years of England’s conversion, royal women played important roles as both proselytizers

of the faith in their own households and benefactors in newly-founded monastic

communities. It is thus not surprising that the Chronicle annals for the seventh and eighth

centuries also include several references to daughters and sisters of kings who founded

monastic communities or were otherwise seen as playing a part in the conversion, i.e., an

account of Eanflæd’s baptism (626A, B, C, E), and a note on the holy virgin Eormengota

(640 A, B, C; 6 3 9 E ) . ^ 3 The slight dip in the number of queens listed in the ninth century

Chronicle annals, almost all of which are concerned with the royal house of Wessex,

supports the view that the ninth century was a period during which Wessex queens appear

to have lost power and status. The slight increase in the number of queens cited in the

annals for the tenth century partly reflects the strong personality of Emma, who was both

Æthelred’s and Cnut’s wife, but is also due to the fact that during this century queens

gained a great deal of formal status and power, partly through their participation in the late

tenth-century monastic reforms. The more significant increase in the annals for the early

half of the eleventh century is due to the continuing participation of queens in the reforms,

as well as in the political and religious life of the court.

But if the ninth century was truly a period during which queens possessed very

little power and status, we might expect that the total number of times the Chronicle

mentions queens during this century would be significantly, not merely slightly, lower than

in previous and later centuries. In order to explain this numerically slight dip, we must turn away from a quantitative to a more qualitative analysis and consider the types of references to queens we find in the ninth-century Chronicle annals.

l^There are no references to royal daughters or sisters in the Chronicle after 718, unless the daughter or sister ultimately married a king.

23 One of the ways to gauge the changing status of queens throughout the centuries is to examine patterns of naming in the annals. Of the five references to queens in the ninth- century annals, only one of these annals (888; 889C) actually provides the name of the queen; the other four refer to the queen as the daughter of a particular king. By contrast, almost all of the annals for the seventh, eighth, tenth, and eleventh centuries refer to the queen either by her name and/or by the title “cwen” or “hlæfdige,” with “cwen” as the preferred term in the seventh and eighth centuries and “hlæfdige” becoming more common after 900.^'^ Only one of the ninth-century annals refers to the queen by the title “cwen”

(888; 889C); this is the same annal that gives the queen’s proper name. Significantly, the queen under discussion is not a queen of Wessex but rather a queen of Mercia, where queens were given significant political power and social status. The high status of Mercian queens is further indicated by the fact that the Chronicle records the deaths of only five queens—Osthryth, Werburh, Æthelswith, Æthelflæd, and Emma—four of whom were

Mercian.

An examination of what the actual annals tell us about particular queens is also instmctive for understanding the development of cultural attitudes toward queenship. Four of the five references to queens in the ninth-century annals occur either in accounts of royal marriages that created dynastic alliances between Wessex and another royal house or in discussions of the dynastic ramifications of the woman’s marriage. For example, annal

839 (836A, C) refers to an alliance between Beorhtric of Wessex and Offa of Mercia that resulted from Beorhtric’s marriage to Offa’s daughter; annal 853 (854C; 852E) records the marriage of the Wessex King Æthelwulf s daughter to Burgred of Mercia; 855-58 (855 A,

D, E; 856C); and annal 885 notes the marriage of the Frankish King Charles' daughter to

^^For a discussion of the distinctions between “cwen” and “hlæfdige,” see my chapter 2, “Queenship in Cynewulf s Elene.” 84-87 and also my chapter 3, “Figuring Jezebel: Queenship and Royal Counsel,” 142-43.

24 Æthelwulf of Wessex. The fact that the ninth-century annals are heavily engaged with the dynastic possibilities created through the queen is not surprising, for there are many annals in both earlier and later centuries that are concerned with dynastic alliances created through the marriages of royal women. What is different about the ninth century is that during this period we see we see only one annal that discusses a queen in a context other than marriage and dynastic alliance: 888 (889C), which notes the death of Queen Æthelswith and the burial of her body in Pavia. Significantly, Queen Æthelswith was not Queen of Wessex, but rather the Queen of Mercia, where queens were traditionally granted high status. By contrast, there are multiple annals in the seventh, eighth, tenth and eleventh century that discuss aspects of queenship other than marriage: annal 672 recounts that Queen Seaxburh reigned the year after her husband died; annal 722 states that Queen Æthelburh demolished

Taunton; annal 918E notes the death of Æthelflæd; and annal 1003C, D, E states that

Exeter was destroyed on account of the French ceorl Hugh, whom the Lady (Ælfgifu) had appointed as her reeve.

Oiu survey of queenship in the ninth-century annals of the Chronicle suggests that ninth-century Wessex queens were valued mainly for their ability to create dynastic connections through marriage. This is evidenced mainly by the facts that ninth-century

Wessex queens are not given titles in the Chronicle, are not referenced by their personal names, and are not noted as doing anything other than marrying. Given the terse nature of the Chronicle annals as a whole, however, it is indeed somewhat difficult to do extensive qualitative analysis. For the remainder of the chapter, we shall thus turn to an examination of queenship as depicted in Asser’s Life, which contains lengthier discussions of ninth- century Wessex queenship.

25 n. Low Times for Wessex Queens

In 855, Æthelwulf, king of Wessex, made a pilgrimage to Rome with his young son

Alfred. On their way back to England, the two spent the summer and fall of 856 at the court of Charles the Bald, King of the Franks. That same fall Æthelwulf returned to

Wessex with Charles’ daughter Judith, having taken the twelve- (or perhaps thirteen-) year- old Frankish princess as his new bride. But before leaving the Frankish court, Æthelwulf had Judith consecrated as his queen, the first known formal coronation of an English king’s wife. The Annals of St-Bertin report that after the coronation Æthelwulf ‘Tormally conferred on Judith the title of ‘queen’” and Asser’s Life further remarks that the king ordered that she should sit beside him on the royal throne until the end of his life (Life of

Alfred, ch. 13, p. 71) The king’s actions prompted Asser to offer what is the most extensive contemporary discussion of ninth-century Wessex queenship. Asser’s remarks provide valuable evidence suggesting that ninth-century Wessex was a time during which queens had relatively low social status:

luthitham, Karoli regis filiam, quam a patre suo acceperat, iuxta se in regali solio [suo,] sine aliqua suorum nobilium controversia et odio, usque ad obitum vitae suae, contra perversam illius gentis consuetudinem, sedere imperavit. Gens namque Occidentalium Saxonum reginam iuxta regem sedere non partitur, nec etiam regin am apellari, sed regis coniugem, permittit. Quam controversiam, immo infamiam, de quadem pertinaci et malevola eiusdem gentis regina ortam fuisse, maiores illius terrae perhibent; quae omnia contraria seniori suo et oumi populo ita peregit, ut non solum suum proprium odium mereretur, ut a reginali solio proiceretiir, sed etiam omnibus suis susequutricibus eandem pestiferam tabem post se submitteret. Pro nimia namque illius reginae malitia omnes accolae illius terrae coniuraverunt, ut nullum unquam regem super se in vita sua regnare permitterent, qui reginam in regali solio iuxta se sedere imperare veUet. Et quia, ut opinor, multis habetur incognitum unde haec perversa et detestabilis consuetudo in Saxonia, ultra morem omnium Theotiscorum, primitus orat sit, paulo latius mihi videtur intimandum. (Asser’s Life, ch. 13, p. 11-12)

[... and without any controversy or dissatisfaction on the part of his nobles, he ordered that Judith, the daughter of Charles, should sit beside him on the royal throne until the end of his life, though this was contrary to the wrongful custom of

26 that people. For the people of the West Saxons did not allow the queen to sit beside the king, nor indeed did they allow her to be called ‘queen,’ but rather ‘king’s wife.’ The elders of the land maintain that this controversial, indeed infamous, custom originated on account of a certain obstinate and wicked queen of the same people, who did everything she could against her lord and the whole people, so that not only did she earn hatred for herself, leading to her expulsion from the queen’s throne, but she also brought the same foul stigma on all the queens who came after her. For as a result of her very great wickedness, all the inhabitants of the land swore that they would never permit any king to reign over them who during his lifetime wanted the queen to sit beside him on the royal throne. And because many do not know (I suspect) how this perverse and detestable custom, contrary to the practice of all Germanic peoples, originally arose in the Saxon land, I think that I should explain it a little more fully.]

Although the particular queen with whom Asser is concerned—Eadburh, daughter of Offa, and wife to King Beorhtric—lived almost one hundred years before he began the Life of

King Alfred (893), he writes as if popular opposition to the formal recognition of queens was still current in late ninth-century Wessex. For Æthelwulf to have conferred such formal status on his wife was thus, according to Asser, a defiance of clearly-established cultural norms, behavior that was “contrary to the custom of that people.’’ Moreover,

Asser’s claim that Æthelwulf s defiance of established royal practices was carried out

“without any disagreement or dissatisfaction on the part of his nobles,” suggests that dissatisfaction and disagreement among the nobility were in fact the very outcomes the king should have expected from his defiance of these norms.

Asser’s portrait of the low status awarded to queens in ninth-century Wessex is supported, as we have seen, by the ninth-century Chronicle annals; it is also supported by evidence from contemporary land-grant charters. While a thorough study of women’s signatures on pre-Conquest charters has yet to be undertaken, preliminary studies have shown that, while queens frequently served as charter witnesses in the eighth, tenth, and

l^The bulk of the translation is from Alfred the Great. 71, with a few of my own emendations.

27 eleventh centuries, they did so far less often during the ninth century. The only queens

who appear to have witnessed charters during this time are an unknown “Wulfthryth

regina,” who appears in S 340 (868), and Judith, who appears in several (albeit dubious)

charters, confirming her exceptional status as a queen during this time.'^

Asser’s remarks on queenship are most likely a fairly accurate indication of the

actual status (or rather lack thereof) of queens in late ninth-century W e s s e x . However,

Asser’s discussion of queenship in the Life also suggests that—regardless of the actual

status of queens during this time—popular attitudes toward queenship in late ninth-century

Wessex appear to have been far more complicated than a simple wholesale public

opposition to queens being granted recognition or social status. While Asser characterizes

the early ninth century as a period of popular consensus, with “omnes accolae illius terrae”

[all of the inhabitants of the land] united in opposition to queens inhabiting the throne or

possessing the title “queen,” he suggests that by the time that he was writing in the 890s,

popular opinion on the social status of queens had become far more fragmented and diverse. Asser refers to public opposition to Wessex queens’ inhabiting the throne as an

“infamia” [disgrace, scandal, infamous practice] and also as a “controversia” [controversy].

And his use of the term “controversia” to describe late ninth-century popular opinion toward queenship is all the more striking in that it echoes his claim just a few lines earlier that when Æthelwulf placed Judith on the English throne, it is precisely a “controversia” that the nobles did not raise. The effect of that verbal echo is to suggest both that late ninth- century attitudes in Wessex toward the public status of their queens were indeed divided

^^My discussion of the charters in this paragraph is based on Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred the Great. 235-36 n 28. For a study of the titles queens used when signing charters see Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith. 55-64.

1 ^Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred the Great. 235-36 n 28.

28 and that some of the higher echelons of Wessex society had come down on the side of that

divide that favored granting queens more status than had formerly been customary.

Moreover, Asser distances himself from popular opposition to the queen’s having social

status, referring to such customs twice as a “perversa illius gentis consuetudo” [perverse

custom of that people] and once as a “detestabilis consuetudo in Saxonia” [detestable

custom in the Saxon land]. Where, we might ask, does Asser’s disgust at the West

Saxons’ customs of queenship come from? Why would Asser, a foreigner living in

Wessex, have so strongly opposed century-old native customs with respect to the social

status and public recognition of Wessex queens? The answer to this question, I believe,

lies precisely in Asser’s outsider status—more specifically, in the fact that Asser was not a

native Englishman but rather a Welsh bishop, who had been summoned to Wessex in the

mid 880s by Alfred as part of the king’s plan to enrich the intellectual and ecclesiastical life

of England through the recruitment of foreign scholars. In order to understand how

Asser’s Welshness might have affected his attitudes toward Wessex queenship, we will

now turn to a discussion of the status of queens in early medieval Wales. This will include

an examination of mid tenth-century Welsh law codes, which provide much evidence on queenship in Wales.

While the lack of contemporary sources renders it somewhat difficult to ascertain

precisely the status of queens in late ninth-century Wales, we do have a comparative

abundance of information on the status of queens approximately half a century later. The

Laws of Hywel Dda, formulated circa 943, include a lengthy section entitled “The Laws of the Court,” that contains many detailed articles describing queens’ roles within the court and its environs. While it is indeed somewhat risky to use mid tenth-century sources to generalize about cultural conditions half a century earlier, there are some grounds for believing that the Laws of Hywel Dda reflect the status of Welsh queens in the late ninth century as well as in the mid tenth century. The Laws of Hywel Dda were compiled by a

29 group of Welshmen summoned by King Hywel—two thirds of whom were laymen and one third clerics—to examine the ancient Welsh laws. The preface to the laws states that

“the wise men there assembled examined the ancient laws, some of which they suffered to continue unaltered, some they amended, others they entirely abrogated, and some new laws they e n a c t e d . " ^8 Thus, at least some of the laws contained in the codes of Hywel Dda were part of an earlier Welsh tradition. Moreover, queens figure very prominently in these codes, and almost all of the articles describing queens suggest that they enjoyed significant status, power, and responsibility. 19 While some of the articles describing queens are very likely to have been new laws enacted by the assembled counsel, it is improbable that all of the laws on queenship were newly composed. Thus, I want to suggest that the Laws of

Hywel Dda may be used to understand the roles of queens in late ninth-century Wales as well as the period during which the laws were actually compiled.^

The codes repeatedly suggest that the queen had, after the king, the most status in the court. A discussion of the honor due to the “edling” (heir-apparent) states that “he is to be the most honorable in the palace after the king and queen” ( Ancient Laws. 9).

Moreover, the queen was the only member of the court besides the king to be given royal officers; she had eight, including a steward, priest, chief groom, page of the chamber.

^ 8 Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales, ed. and trans. Aneurin Owen (London: Record Commissioners, 1841) 2. The codes are preserved in three main versions, commonly known as the “Venedotian,” “Dimetian,” and “Gwentian” Codes. References to the laws are, unless otherwise noted, to tlie Venedotian Code (the oldest version) and wiU be cited parenthetically by page number.

^^Interestingly, queens are never mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon law codes.

am stiU uneasy about using mid tenth-century sources as a basis for drawing conclusions on the late ninth century. An additional complication in the case of the Laws of Hywel Dda is that the earliest manuscript is dated to the early twelfth century. If there are more contemporary sources that may provide information on the status of queens in late ninth-century Wales, 1 would welcome having to have them brought to my attention.

30 handmaid, door-ward, cook, and candle-bearer f Ancient Laws. 5)21 while all of the royal officers had the power to grant “protection,” that is, temporary security or asylum for an individual, the queen is the only member of the court besides the king who seems to have had the authority to safely convey an offender beyond Wales: “The protection of the queen is, to conduct beyond the bounds of the country, without pursuit and without obstruction” (Gwentian Code, Ancient Laws. 629).22 The queen’s protection was so powerful that two of the highest-ranking officers in the court were given “unto her protection”—the chief falconer, who ranked fourth out of the twenty-four officers, and the judge of the court, who ranked sixth (Ancient Laws. 25; 29).23 Moreover, the violation of the queen’s ability to give protection was considered “saraad,” and brought with it heavy penalties, namely, one third of the fine (without gold or silver) due for the violation of the king. The amount due for violating the queen’s protection was the same as that due for violating or injuring the “edling,” the king’s son, and the chief of the household C Ancient

Laws. 237).24

^^There are twenty-four royal officers total: eight for the queen and sixteen for the court. While eight of the officers are specifically designated as the queen’s, the understanding is that all of the officers (including the queen’s) are to be in attendance to the king (Ancient Laws. 9).

22The codes do not specify the king’s ability to provide protection, but they do discuss penalties for breaches of this protection, suggesting that the king’s protection was the same or greater than the queen’s. The “edling’s” protection is somewhat unclear; the codes merely state that “the protection of the ‘edling’ is to convey a person offending to a place of security” (Ancient Laws. 11 ).

While the codes indeed state that the protection of the chief falconer is “unto the queen” there seems to have been some debate over the matter, as the codes also claim that the falconer’s protection extends “unto the farthest place where he shall fly his hawk at a bird” (Ancient Laws. 25).

24 “Saraad” literally means “injury,” but is often used to mean “compensation for injury.” The codes state that “In three ways saraad is done to the queen: one is, by violating the protection she may give; another is, by striking her with anything [Titus D. H, a West

31 The codes also indicate that the queen possessed significant wealth and, more importantly, that she had the authority to dispose of this wealth. The codes state that “the king is to give the queen a third of the produce of his landed property, and in like manner the servants of the king are to give a third to the servants of the queen” f Ancient Laws. 7).

The queen was entitled to her daughter’s “gobyr,” a fee normally paid to the king on a woman’s marriage (Gwentian Code, Ancient I^ws. 747). The duties of the queen’s male page entailed keeping the keys to her coffer, suggesting that she had a personal cache of money or goods f Ancient Laws. 55). When the king and his army had taken their requisite yearly journey beyond the Welsh borders, the queen was given a “progress,” a ceremonial journey given for different classes of men, women, and animals during which goods, land, and money were bestowed on the processors (Gwentian Code, Ancient Laws. 771).

Similarly, the queen’s horses (along with the king’s) were honored and provided for by an annual progress every winter (Dimetian Code, Ancient Laws. 486). The queen was permitted to give away without the king’s permission a third of the domestic goods that come into his possession (Ancient Laws. 95). Moreover, she is repeatedly charged with distributing gold rings, horses, liquor, and other gifts to the royal officers (Ancient Laws.

15,27, 31, 35). Her robe was worth one pound, the same amount as that of the king’s; and indeed her clothes and other belongings were so valuable that the codes repeatedly stipulate which officers are to have the old caps, gowns, and tack which she had dispensed with (Ancient Laws. 55).^ Even the queen’s pets were a sign of her status and wealth,

Wales MS, has “by striking her with the fist”); the third is, by snatching anything out of her hand: and the “saraad” paid to her is one third of the saraad of the king; and that without gold or silver (Ancient Laws. 7).

^^The queen’s priest was entitled to the garment in which she did penance during Lent (Dimetian Code, Ancient Laws. 365); the queen’s male page of the chamber was to receive her old cap (Ancient Laws. 55); her female maid of the chamber was to have her old shifts, bed linen, bands, bridles, shoes, and saddles (Ancient Laws. 57).

32 and it is worth noting that the queen’s spaniel was estimated at a worth of one pound, the same amount designated for a spaniel belonging to the king (Gwentian Code, Ancient

Laws. 732).

The queen also appears to have had significant responsibility at court, particularly with respect to overseeing the production of the court’s clothing. Three times per year—at

Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide—the queen is charged with providing the court officers with linen garments; on these same occasions they receive woolen garments from the king.

The judge of the court was also entitled to have his bed linen regularly from the queen

(Dimetian Code, Ancient Laws. 369).^6 The codes further state that:

There are three legal needles: the sewing needle of the queen^^; the needle of the mediciner o f the palace for sewing of wounds; and the needle of the chief huntsman for sewing the tom dogs: the worth of each of these is four legal pence: the needle of a seamstress in general is a legal penny in value. (Dimetian Code, Ancient Laws. 451)

Given that fighting and hunting were two of the court’s chief occupations, the fact that the queen’s needle is estimated at the same worth as the mediciner’s and chief huntsman's needles suggests that her role in providing for the court’s clothing was viewed as extremely import ant.28

2^The Gwentian Code is less specific as to the kind of linen and more generous in the amount of linen the queen is to give, stating that “the judge of the court has linen from the queen at all times’’ (Ancient Laws. 647).

2^The Gwentian Code specifies this as “the needle of a seamstress to the queen” (Ancient Laws. 783).

28judith Elaine Abbott, “Queens and Queenship in Anglo-Saxon England, 954-1066: Holy and Unholy Alliances,” diss.. University of Connecticut, 1989, 543.

33 One final indication of the queen’s status is suggested in the codes by her role as

counsellor to the king. The queen is one of three people with whom the king is allowed to

have private discussions without the presence of his judge; the other two are the king’s

priest and his mediciner (Dimetian Code, Ancient Laws. 449).

While the codes do suggest that early medieval Welsh queens enjoyed significant

status, authority, and responsibility in their courts, it is perhaps best not to overstate the

extent of the queen’s status. The codes clearly stipulate the queen’s officers sit “last at

table,’’ after the other sixteen officers of the court (Ancient Laws. 5). Similarly, the queen

herself is not one of the fourteen people allotted a formal seating place or chair in the palace

hall. Indeed, the queen’s realm appears not to have been the hall but rather her chamber.

Although this is never expressly stated in the codes, this sense of space is implied by the

fact that the main duty of the queen’s page is to convey her messages between the hall and

the chamber f Ancient Laws. 55). Also, the codes suggest that the queen's chamber was

very close to the hall, as they stipulate that “If the queen desire a song, let the bard of the household go to sing to her without limitation, in a low voice, so that the hall may not be disturbed by him” CAncient Laws. 35).29 It is also important to note that the laws pertaining to the queen are, in many ways, exactly the same as those applying to women of lesser rank. For example, the queen’s “galanas” and her “saraad” may seem quite high, being equivalent to one third of the king’s and the same “galanas” and “saraad” estimated for the “edling,” the king’s son, his nephew, and his chief of household CAncient Laws.

235, 237).30 However, the amount of the queen’s “galanas” and “saraad,” while indeed

2^The Gwentian Code specifies that when the queen wants to hear a song, the bard should sing about Camlan, the battle in which Arthur fell CAncient Laws. 679).

The literal meaning of “galanas” is “murder” with the secondary sense of “compensation for murder.” “Galanas” is the Welsh equivalent of the Anglo-Saxon “wergild.”

34 substantial, were in fact no greater proportionally that the “galanas” or “saraad” for any lesser-class woman, that is, one third of her husband’s. We know that Welsh women, in general, had very low status, few rights of possession, and were strictly controlled, and the fact that the queen is estimated at the same proportional worth as these women must serve as a cautionary note against overstating the status and authority of Welsh queen that the codes otherwise seem to convey.

This rather lengthy excursion into the Welsh law codes may seem to have taken us far away from Asser’s Life. But in fact these codes actually bring us closer to the legal and political culture in which Asser spent his youth and much of his adult years and it is that culture’s understanding of queenship, I want to suggest, that gave rise to Asser’s horror at the status of ninth-century Wessex queens. If the relatively high status and public authority granted to queens in these mid tenth-century Welsh codes is in fact illustrative of the role of

Welsh queens half a century earlier when Asser was living in Wales, then the bishop would have been accustomed for much of his life to living in a court where queens were both publicly recognized as queens and expected to exercise significant responsibility. The low status and restricted political power of late ninth-century Wessex queens would have thus seemed radically different from queenship in the culture in which Asser was raised, tonsured, and ordained. And it is this difference, I am suggesting, that instigated the flurry of adjectival contempt that constitutes Asser’s response to the treatment of queens in the late ninth-century Wessex court. The response of the Welshman was indeed a specifically

Welsh response.

Jack George Thompson, Women in Celtic Law and Culture. (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellon Press, 1996) 112, 238-39.

35 in. The Wicked Queen of Wessex

After discussing the “perverse and detestable custom” of denying status to queens in ninth-

century Wessex, Asser promises to “explain a little more fully” to his readers how this

custom “originally arose in the Saxon land.” Thus ensues Asser’s account of the late

eighth-century queen Eadburh:

There was in Mercia in fairly recent times a certain vigorous king called Offa, who terrified all the neighboring kings and provinces around him... Beorhtric, King of the West Saxons received in marriage his daughter, called Eadburh. As soon as she had won the king’s friendship, and power throughout almost the entire kingdom, she began to behave like a tyrant after the manner of her father—to loathe every man whom Beorhtric liked, to do all things hateful to God and men, to denounce all those whom she could before the king, and thus by trickery to deprive them of either life or power; and if she could not achieve that end with the king’s compliance, she killed them with poison. (Alfred the Great, ch. 13, p. 71)

The story continues with Eadburh attempting to poison one of the king’s dear male friends,

the king accidentally taking some of that poison, both the king and his retainer dying,

Eadburh leaving England to spend a decade of sexual debauchery in Francia, and her dying

a beggar in Pavia.

The marriage of Offa’s daughter Eadburh to the Wessex King Beorhtric in 789 is

usually viewed as a political marriage instigated by both kings to cement a pact of mutual

support against Egbert, Alfred’s grandfather, who ultimately succeeded Beorhtric in 802 as

king of the West Saxons. If the marital alliance between Eadburh and Beorhtric was indeed

formed for this purpose, it seems to have worked, for the 839 (36AC) Chronicle annal

reports that, before Egbert became king, Offa and Beorhtric had driven him into exile in

Francia for three years and that “Beorhtric had helped Offa because he had married his daughter.” That the marriage led to the short-term exile of Alfi’ed’s grandfather by Offa and

Beorhtric has also given rise to the theory that Asser’s Eadburh narrative is evidence of

36 anti-Mercian sentiment in the Wessex court, a story offered by Asser “to denigrate the

memory of Offa and his hostile M ercians.”^^ % is anti-Mercian theory has been adhered to

for quite some time, having been proposed by Joseph Heinsch in 1875, seconded by

Stevenson in 1904, and revived in 1996 by Alfred Smyth, who argues that “exaggerated

tales about the wickedness of a late-eighth and early ninth-century Mercian queen would

have gone down well at the court of Alfred or of any of his successors .... "33 But short

of viewing Asser’s tale of Eadburh as evidence for either a political alliance between Mercia

and Wessex or an example of anti-Mercian sentiment, historians have been somewhat

dismissive of this story, limiting their discussions of Eadburh to a few footnotes or

dispensing with her altogether. The most extensive consideration of Eadburh is Alfred

Smyth’s discussion which, ironically, examines the story only to dismiss it. Pointing to

the folkloric nature of this text as a “transformation tale” of a famous queen reduced to ruin,

Smyth claims that the tale is a “lengthy and totally irrelevant digression” invented by Asser

as fiUer for a section on Alfred’s childhood about which the bishop knew almost

nothing.34 Smyth argues further that Asser’s claim to having heard the story about

Eadburh from “many who saw her” in Pavia is temporally impossible.35 And throughout

his discussion, Smyth repeatedly denies the narrative’s “historicity,” asserting that “the tale of Eadburh as narrated in the Life of Alfred is apocryphal and does not lend itself to serious historical analysis”; that “even the notion of Eadburh s reduction to beggary has nothing to

^^Smvth. King Alfred the Great. 179,

^^Joseph Heinsch, Die Reiche der Angelsachsen zur Zeit Karles des CJrossen (Breslau, 1875) 102 (cited in Stevenson, Asser’s Life. 205); Stevenson, Asser’s Life. 205; Smyth, King Alfred the Great. 179

^^Smvth. King Alfred the Great. 177.

^^Smvth. King Alfred the Great. 176.

37 recommend its historicity”; and that while the folkloric transformation motif is applied to an otherwise historical person, this does not in any way make the tale itself historical.

Whether or not the story is true, I want to suggest that it is in fact deeply historical; that is, if subjected to serious historical analysis. Asset's “irrelevant digression” can yield insights, and indeed “historical” insights, that help us to further understand eighth- and ninth-century queenship in both Wessex and Mercia.

Rrst, the anti-Mercian theory. It is indeed probable that the three-year exile of

Alfred’s grandfather by Offa and Beorhtric gave rise to anti-Mercian sentiment in the

Alfredian court. However, given that Alfred’s wife was descended from royal Mercian stock and that his mother-in-law had the same name—Eadburh—as the wicked Mercian queen in his narrative, one wonders if Asser would have risked antagonizing the actual inhabitants of the court on which his livelihood depended by telling stories about wicked queens for the specific purpose of denigrating the Mercians. However, if the point of the story was indeed to cater to anti-Mercian sentiment in the Alfredian court, then we might reach one of two conclusions: either we must surmise that Asser expected his readers to make a distinction between Mercians living in different historical periods, that is, to honor the ancient royal stock of the Mercians, who were the ancestors of Alfred’s queen, and to disparage the more contemporary Mercians who had exiled Alfred’s grandfather; or we must assume that the status of queens in Alfred’s court was so low that Asser felt no qualms about presenting stories about wicked Mercian queens that could have been easily interpreted as slurs on Alfred’s own wife and her family. But the problem with the anti-

Mercian theory is that it dismisses Asser’s account of Eadburh as a fiction when, in fact, much of the story seems highly probable, given what we know about the differences between Mercian and Wessex queenship. 1 suggest that Asser’s discussion of Eadburh

^^Smvth. King Alfred the Great. 176-77.

38 might be better understood by considering her not merely as the wicked queen of Wessex,

but by thinking of her as the daughter of a Mercian king.

We have seen in our study of the Chronicle that queens in ninth-century Mercia had

significantly higher status than queens in Wessex during this time and, more generally, that

Mercian queens are given significant status throughout the Chronicle, in spite of the West

Saxon bias of the ninth- and early tenth-century annals. Other historical documents provide

further evidence that eighth- and ninth-century Mercia had a tradition of granting high social

status and public authority to the wives of their rulers.37 Queens’ signatures appear

frequently in eighth- and ninth-century Mercian charters, suggesting that these women were

present and actively involved in meetings of the royal Mercian council. It seems as if

Mercian queens received some type of formal coronation ceremony, as S 214 gives

Æthelswith, wife of Burgred of Mercia, the title “coronata stemma regali Anglorum re g in a .”38 This tradition of granting Mercian queens high status and political power continued throughout the tenth century. The famous Æthelflæd Lady of the Mercians, ruled Mercia for eight years after her husband’s death (911-918) and may very well have served as the practical ruler before that time due to her husband’s illness. Similarly, when

Æthelflæd died in 918, the Mercian people seem to have been ready to accept her daughter

Ælfwynn as their next ruler, and it is likely that she would have succeeded to the Mercian throne, had not Edward seized control of Mercia. The status and political power awarded to Mercian queens seems to have been particularly high during the reign of Offa. Offa’s wife Cynethryth is the only Enghsh queen to have had coins issued in her name; she

37pauUne Stafford, “Charles the Bald, Judith and England,” Charles the Bald: Court and Kingdom, ed. Margaret Gibson and Janet Nelson (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1981), 142-43.

Stafford, “Charles the Bald,” 150, n. 65.

39 witnessed charters regularly; and from 770, she is given the formal title of “regina” in the charters. Moreover, as Pauline Stafford has noted, Mercian kings gave prominence not only to their wives, but also to other members of the royal family, including their daughters, whose names appear on several witness lists.^9 As the daughter of both Offa and Cynethryth, the Eadburh who figures in Asser’s narrative would thus have been accustomed to having some authority in court herself. More importantly, Eadburh would have spent her youth watching her mother. Queen Cynethryth, enjoy extremely high status and practical authority within the Mercian court, status that she would have come to expect were the rights due to a queen. While the status of queens in late eighth-century Wessex was certainly higher than a century later, it does not seem likely to have matched the status and power granted to Mercian queens. When Eadburh married the Wessex king Beorhtric and became queen of Wessex, she was thus very likely sorely disappointed and angry.

Asser attributes Eadburh’s wickedness to the fact that she “began to behave like a tyrant after the manner of her father." I, too, would suggest that Eadburii’s wicked behavior was due to the fact that she was her father’s daughter, but in a different sense: not that Eadbuih took after her father in having a penchant for tyranny, but that she had become accustomed to seeing her father grant her mother high status and significant political power and expected this same status and power for herself as the queen of Wessex.

The only type of power Asser attributes to Eadburh is that gained through intercession with her husband. Asser’s claim that “the queen won power throughout the kingdom” immediately follows the phrase “as soon as she had won the king’s friendship,” suggesting that the queen’s power was intercessory in nature. Moreover, Asser repeatedly calls attention to the intercessory nature of Eadburh’s power: he states that the queen would

“denounce all those whom she could before the king,” and that she resorted to poison only

^^Stafford, “Charles the Bald,” 142-43.

40 when she could not achieve her ends “with the king’s compliance.” The effect of Asser’s references to Eadburh’s intercession is to suggest that this was the only type of power available to Eadburh and that this power was variable to the extent that its effectiveness depended on the moods of the king. As the daughter of Offa and Cynethryth, Eadburh would have been accustomed to having far more than the power of intercession at her disposal. If this was the only means to power she had, it is no wonder, I would suggest, that she resorted to what Asser and indeed most readers would think of as wicked behavior.

In the cases of Asser and Eadburh, then, we have seen that contemporary attitudes toward Wessex queenship were shaped not only by the Wessex court, but by comparisons between Wessex queenship and queenship in other kingdoms with which Wessex had contact. Just as Asser’s views on Wessex queenship were most likely shaped by his understanding of Welsh queenship, so too, Eadburh’s views on Wessex queenship were shaped by her experiences of queenship in Mercia. This is perhaps just another way of saying that origins are powerful ideological forces. But Asser and Eadburh were outsiders in the Wessex court and thus are arguably not representative of either the Wessex public or even the Wessex nobility. In the following section, I will turn to Asser’s discussions of

Alfred’s mother Osburh and his wife Eahlswith, which provide valuable evidence for what

Asser thought would appeal to his readers on the subject of queenship.

IV. Female Genealogies and Authorial Fictions

In a section of the Life entitled “De genealogia matris eius” [About the genealogy of his mother], Asser discusses Osburh, whom he claims is Alfred’s mother:

Mater quoque eiusdem Osburh nominabatur, religiosa nimium femina, nobilis ingenio, nobilis et genere; quae erat filia Oslac famosi pincemae Æthelwulf regis. Qui Oslac Go thus erat natione; ortus enim erat de Gothis et lutis, de semine scilicet

41 s tuf et Wihtgar, duorum fratrum et etiam comitum, qui, acccepta potestate Uuectae insulae ab avunculo suo Cerdic rege et Cynric filio suo, consobrino eorum, paucos Britones eiusdem insulae accolas, quos in ea invenire potuerunt, in loco, qui dicitur Guuihtgaraburhg, occiderunt. (Asser’s Life, ch. 2, p. 4)

[Concerning his mother’s family, Alfred’s mother was called Osburh, a most religious woman, noble in character and noble by birth, who was the daughter of Oslac, King AethelwulTs famous butler. Oslac was a Goth by race, for he was descended from the Goths and Jutes and in particular from the line of Stuf and Wihtgar, two brothers—indeed chieftains—who, having received authority over the Isle of Wight from their maternal uncle King Cerdic and from Cyiuic his son (their maternal cousin), killed the few British inhabitants of the island whom they could find on it.] (Alfred the Great, ch. 2, p. 68)

What is interesting about this passage is the extent to which Asser dwells on the nobility of

Alfred’s mother. Twice, Osburh is referred to as “nobilis,” and while Asser does not

provide specifics regarding her noble character, he does elaborate on the queen’s noble

lineage. This lineage shows the queen—and by extension Alfred—to be descended from

Cerdic and Cynric, the first kings of Wessex. Moreover, Asser’s use of the term

“avunculus” [maternal uncle] to describe Cerdic’s relationship to Stuf and Wihtgar and his

terming of Cynric as the “consobrinus” [first cousin, more specifically, son of a mother’s sister] of the two brothers further locates Alfred’s genealogical connections to the founding

fathers of the house of Wessex in a female line.'^

Asser’s rendition of Alfred’s illustrious maternal lineage is in no way verifiable.

There are no discussions of Osburh in any other contemporary source, and although a

^^^^What Asser seems to be trying to do through his use of the Latin terms “avunculus” and “consobrinus” is to render a more specific translation of the 534 Chronicle entry, which describes Stuf and Wihtgar as the “nefan” of Cerdic and Cynric. In Old English, the term “nefan” could mean either “grandson” or “sister’s son” and, as Stevenson and Whitelock have suggested, Stuf and Wihtgar were most likely the grandsons of Cerdic and sons of Cerdic’s daughter, Cynric’s sister. Stevenson, Asser’s Life. 171; Whitelock, BHD. 155 n. 11.

42 magnate named Oslac does attest an 858 charter of King Æthelberht’s, there is no way of knowing whether this is the same Oslac who was supposedly Alfred’s maternal grandfather.'*^ The latter half of the passage dealing v/ith the line of Stuf and Wihtgar and their accession to the kingdom of Wessex has long been recognized by scholars as a somewhat mangled version of the 530 and 534 entries in the Chronicle, which recount the

West Saxons’ conquest of the Isle of Wight.'*^ Smyth argues that the account of Alfred’s maternal ancestry is “rigmarole,” a manipulation of the Chronicle intended to increase

Alfred’s prestige through the creation of a genealogy that would show him to be ultimately descended from Cerdic and Cynric, two of the founding fathers of the kingdom of

Wessex.'*^ I want to suggest that whether or not Alfred’s mother was indeed descended from these originary Wessex kings is to some extent irrelevant. As Paul Strohm has argued, “fictionality should not be considered an embarrassment to a text’s ultimate historicity” for, because fictional texts are composed within history, they “offer irreplaceable historical evidence in their own right.”'*'* What is important is thus not whether Asser’s account of Alfred’s maternal genealogy is either tme or fictional, but rather that Asser thought enough of the ideological force of maternal genealogy to use (or to create) an illustrious maternal ancestry for Alfred as part of a wholesale attempt in the Life

"^^William of Malmesbury, in both his Gesta Regum (c. 121; vol. i. p. 125) and his Gesta Pontificum (c. 130; p. 269), notes that Alfred’s mother was with him when St. Cuthbert allegedly appeared before him in Athelney in 878; cited in Asser’s Life of King Alfred, ed. Stevenson, 224-25 n. 4. However, William never names Alfred’s mother as Osburh or provides any other information about her.

'*2Asser’s Life of King Alfred, ed. Stevenson, 171.

^^Smvth. King Alfred the Great. 174.

^ H o ch o n ’s Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Centurv Texts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1992) 4.

43 to glorify the king and legitimate his accession to the throne of Wessex. If the account of

Osburh’s noble descent is indeed an authorial fiction that Asser took the trouble to create,

that only provides stronger evidence that the lineage of a prince’s mother was indeed

considered a crucial qualification in constituting his worthiness to rule—even during a

period when the king’s wife seems to have been awarded little public authority or social status.

Asser’s emphasis on female lineage is echoed several times throughout the Life.

Indeed, Asser tells us very little about Alfired’s wife, and it is only because of an Anglo-

Saxon Chronicle entry recording the death of Ealdorman Æthelwulf, the brother of

Ealhswith, King Edward’s mother, in 901A (903BCD) that we know her name was in fact

Ealhswith.'^^ However, Asser does discuss the noble lineage of Alfred’s wife—her descent from the royal stock of Mercia:

Anno Dominicae Incamationis DCCCLXVm, nativitas autem Ælffedi regis vigesimo, idem ipse praefatus, ac venerabilis Ælffed rex, secundarii tamen tunc ordine fretus, uxorem de Mercia, nobilem scilicet genere, fiham Æthelredi, Gainorum comitis, qui cognominabatur Mucill, subarravit et duxit. Cuis feminae mater Eadburh nominabatur, de regali genere Merciorum regis . . . venerabilis scilicet femina per multos annos post obitum viri sui castissima vidua leto tenus permansit. fAsser’s Life, ch. 29,23-24)

[In the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 868 (the twentieth of King Alfred’s life), that same venerable King Alfred, at that time having been awarded the status of heir- apparent^, was betrothed to and married a wife from Mercia, of noble family.

^^Whitelock notes that A omits to mention that Eahlswith was King Edward’s mother; EHG, 207, n. 13.

^^^The term “secundarius” is otherwise unknown in English sources. I have chosen to follow Keynes and Lapidge (Alfred the Great. 240 n. 56), who argue that the term is equivalent to the Old Welsh “eil’, meaning “second,” as applied to the heir to the throne. This argument is based on the sensible explanation that Asser was applying to Alfred a term that he was familiar with fi-om his own culture because Alfred was in fact designated as “heir-apparent” in England during his brother Æthelred’s reign and, at that time, no English word existed to explain the concept of “heir-apparent.” Another tenable argument, put

44 namely the daughter of Æthelred (who was known as Mucil), ealdorman of the Gaini. The woman’s mother was called Eadburh, from the royal stock of the king of the Mercians .. .She was a venerable woman, who remained for many years after the death of her husband a chaste widow.] f Alfred the Great, ch. 29, p. 77)

And lest the reader forget the illustrious lineage of Alfred’s wife, the next time Asser mentions her, she is invoked as a “venerable wife” [venerabilis coniunx] (Asser’s Life, ch.

73,54) who is “from the stock of the noble Mercians” [de Merciorum nobilium genere]

(Asser’s Life, ch. 73, 54). Asser’s use of the term “venerabilis” to describe Alfred, his wife, and his wife’s mother, may seem trivial or easily dismissed as a convention of contemporary royal biography that seeks to glorify the king thorough hyperbolic praise of the ruler and his relations. However, the effect of the verbal repetition is far from trivial in that it creates a mnemonic chain that links the attributes of Alfred’s wife to those of her mother. These links, I will argue, are very much invested for Asser in questions of rightful paternity and of ensuring the smooth succession of a true son of his lord Alfred to the

Wessex throne. Immediately after Asser names Eadburh, the mother of Alfred’s wife

Ealhswith, as “venerabilis,” he glosses the adjective with a statement regarding Eadburh’s observance of marital fidelity—even after the death of her husband. No doubt this reference to Eadburh’s chastity is intended in part to differentiate her from “the other

Eadburh,” wife of Beorhtric who, after the death of her husband, was reported to have spent her life in sexual indulgence. However, the gloss also clearly defines a “venerabilis femina” as one whose fidelity was beyond question. By referring to Alfred’s wife

Eahlswith as “venerabilis” and then reminding the reader of Eahlswith’s descent from the noble Mercians, Asser invokes his earlier gloss on “venerabilis” as referring to female

forth by Stevenson (Asser’s Life. 227), is that “secundarius” may have been intended to mean “viceroy” or “joint-king,” given the prominent role Alfred played in the governance of England during Æthelred’s reign.

45 chastity, thus suggesting that, like her “venerabilis” mother, Alfred’s newly-married

“venerabilis coniunx” came from a line of faithful wives. Such a heritage boded well for the rightful paternity of Alfred’s children and the succession of an actual son of the king.

While Asser’s use of the term “venerabilis” creates an mnemonic association between Eahlswith and her mother, so too it serves to establish a link between Alfred and his wife. Throughout the Life. Alfred is described as “venerabilis,” a term that is used with respect to the king to refer either to his infancy and boyhood or to his noble genealogy.

The term is never used to describe anyone else in the text, except for Alfred, his mother, and his wife. By describing Alfred’s wife as “venerabilis” in the same passage as he describes her noble birth and by describing her mother as “venerabilis” as well, the term establishes that the king’s wife is worthy of him in that her genealogy can match his own.

Why, we might ask, does Asser dwell so much on Alfred’s maternal genealogy and furthermore why is the lineage of Alfred’s wife the sole fact about her that he conveys to his readers? Historians have long recognized that, at least in theory, recognition of an

Anglo-Saxon prince’s throne-worthinesss depended on his possession of a genealogy that traced his ancestors back to a remote common royal ancestor and ultimately to the tribal gods.^^7 But Asser had already established Alfred’s throne-worthiness in the very first chapter of the Life by tracing the king’s ancestry back through his father and claiming

Alfred to be descended not only from Cerdic, but from both the Germanic war-god Woden and Adam. Yet Asser obviously felt the need to recount (or to create) an illustrious lineage through Alfred’s maternal line as well. The question before us is thus: to what extent, in late ninth-century England, did the lineage of a queen constitute a viable support for arguing the throne-worthiness of one son over another? To answer this question based

’^^See David N. Dumville, “Kingship, Genealogies and Regnal Lists, ” Early Medieval Kingship, ed. P. H. Sawyer and Ian Wood (Leeds, 1977) 72-104.

46 solely on English sources is difficult, for there are no contemporary records clearly stating the extent to which noble maternal lineage in England was regarded as constitutive of kingship. Frankish sources, however, provide some information on this topic that may help.

Barring the occasional marriage to a Visogothic princess, Merovingian kings tended to marry within their own comital families or to take wives of low birth. This royal practice became common in the late sixth century, first in Burgundy and then in Austrasia and

Neustria, and represented a sharp departure from the mid sixth century, during which it was unusual for a king to marry a woman of humble origins.'^ The practice of kings marrying women of lowly birth was perhaps designed to prevent foreign kingdoms or powerful Merovingian families from gaining influence and power through their daughters that could potentially threaten the royal family’s control of the throne. Seventh-century

Frankish history offers numerous examples of queens who were bom to low-class families, but whose lowly birth proved no obstacle to their sons’ accession to the throne.

Fredegund, wife of King Chilperic, is said by her daughter Rigunth to have had the original rank of “serving-woman”; however, the son of Fredegund and Chilperic, Lothar n, succeeded to the Frankish throne in 584.The former slave Nanthild bore to Dagobert I a son, Clovis II, who succeeded to the thrones of Neustria and Burgundy. Clovis II also married a slave, the Englishwoman Balthild, who was brought to Gaul in the early 630s.

Balthild was the mother of three kings: Clothar IE (Neustria, 657-673), Childeric II

(Austrasia, 662-75), and Theuderic III (Neustria, 673-79; sole king 679-690/91). Ingund,

Janet Nelson, “Queens as Jezebels: Brunhild and Balthild in Merovingian History,” Politics and Ritual in Earlv Medieval Europe, ed. Janet Nelson, 4-5. See also E. Ewig, “Studien zur merowingischen Dynastie,” Friihmittelalterliche Studien 8 (1974) 1-59 and Suzanne Fonay Wemple, Women in Frankish Society: Marriage and the Cloister. 500-900 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981) 55-59.

47 one of Lothar I’s many wives, referred to herself as his “handmaiden,” and requested that

the king might find a wealthy husband for her sister Aregund so that the queen might not be

ashamed of her, both of which suggest that Ingund and her sister were firom less-than-

noble f a m i l i e s Yet the sons of both women eventually became kings: Ingund’s sons

Charibert, Guntram, and Aregund’s son Charibert all eventually succeeded to the Frankish throne. Although Dagobert never married his slave Ragnetrude—the continental law codes prohibited marriage between free and unfree—their son Sigibert was designated as

Dagobert’s heir.50 King Charibert is said to have repudiated his wife Ingoberg after falling violently in love with two of her female servants, Marcovefa and Merofled, who were the daughters of a poor woolworker. After dismissing Ingoberg, the king married first

Merofled and later Marcovefa, adding the two wool workers’ dau^ters to a harem that already consisted of Theudechild, the daughter of a shepherd who looked after his flocks

(Gregory, 219). The king died without having any sons. Likewise, Gimtram repeatedly married or formed liaisons with women of extremely low social status, including the servant girl Veneranda and his third wife Austrechild, who was the slave of his well-to-do subject Magnachar. Guntram seems to have preferred the sons from his low-born wife

Austrechild over the sons from his second marriage to the more well-to-do Marcatrude, having the sons of Marcatrude killed when they “made hateful and abominable remarks about Queen Austrechild and her children” (Gregory, 274).

Not all Merovingian kings subscribed to the practice of marrying lowly-born women. When Ingobert discovered her husband’s desire for the woolworker’s daughters.

^^Gregory of Tours, The Historv of the Franks, trans. Lewis Thorpe (London: Penguin, 1994) 198. Herafter cited parenthetically by page number.

^Ojulie Ann Smith, Queen-Making and Queenship in Earlv Medieval England and Francia.” diss.. University of York, 1993, 53.

48 she is said to have set their father to preparing wool in the hopes that seeing his lowly

station would cause her husband to despise the wool workers' daughters (Gregory, 219).

Ingobert’s behavior suggests that she believed some kings might have been put off from

marrying a woman on account of her lowly birth. Likewise, King Sigibert is said to have chosen the Visogothic princess Brunhild primarily because he “observed that his brothers

were taking wives who were completely unworthy of them and were so far degrading themselves as to marry their own servants” (Gregory, 221). Soon after this marriage,

Sigibert’s half-brother Chilperic sent to ask for the hand of Brunhild’s sister, the princess

Galswinth, promising to dismiss all of his other wives “if only he were considered worthy of marrying a King’s daughter of a rank equal to his own” (Gregory, 222).

But whether a Merovingian king chose to marry a high or low-born woman, it is clear that the woman’s lineage in no way affected the succession rights of her sons.

Perhaps the strongest evidence for this claim comes from Gregory’s account of the sixth- century Bishop Sagittarius. According to Gregory, Sagittarius greatly angered King

Guntrum one day by claiming that “Guntram’s sons could never succeed to the throne because when their mother married him she had been one of Magnachar’s servants” (286).

Gregory is insistent on conveying to his readers that Sagittarius’ remarks were utter nonsense, “silly tales,” motivated purely out of spite for the king’s refusal to intervene in the bishop’s defense with respect to criminal charges brought against Sagittarius for beating up quite a few members of his own congregation with wooden clubs. Gregory denounces the bishop, calling him “fatuous, empty-headed, and much given to garrulous talk.” And in what is perhaps the clearest statement in early medieval literature regarding the inconsequential role played by the birth or status of the mother in affecting her son’s status or succession rights, Gregory states that “Sagittarius was overlooking the fact that families of wives are now disregarded and they are called the sons of a king who have been begotten by a king” (286).

49 By the tenth century, however, the Frankish situation had changed to the point

where a woman’s bloodline was considered a factor worthy of some consideration in determining the course of succession. The supporters of Hugh Capet argued that Charles of Lorraine (his competitor) should be disqualified horn succeeding to the throne of France because he had married a woman significantly beneath his station, the daughter of a mere knight. How, they asked, could the powerful Duke Hugh suffer a woman, coming from the family of one of his vassals, to become queen and rule over him? How could he walk behind one whose equals and even whose superiors bend the knee to him?^^ We thus see that a mother’s lineage was considered of variable importance for constituting her son’s throne-worthiness during various times in Frankish history.

We know that in mid tenth-century Wessex the maternal lineage of potential claimants to the throne was considered important enough to merit frequent invocations in succession disputes.^^ we have noted, there are no discussions in ninth-century sources of whether or not maternal lineage played a role in determining a son’s throne- worthiness. However, that Asser took the trouble in his Life to discuss the lineage of both

Alfred’s mother and his wife suggests that the lineage of the king’s female relations may have been considered important in determining the rightful successor, even during the ninth century when queens were granted little status.53 Thus, we see in Asser’s discussion of

Richer. Histoire de France 4. ed. R. Latouche (Paris, 1936) 9-11; cited in Jo Ann McNamara and Suzanne Wemple, “The Power of Women Through the Family in Medieval Europe, 500-1100, Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1988) 88-89.

52stafford, “The King’s Wife,’’ 67, 71.

^^Asser’s Life includes a rather oblique reference to Alfred’s noble birth: “From the cradle onw ards,. . . it has been the desire for wisdom more than anything else together with the nobility of his birth that have characterized the nature of his noble mind” (Alfred the Great, c. 22, p. 74-75). Given Asser’s discussions of the noble birth of both Alfred’s mother and his wife, we might well suspect that this reference to the “nobility of Asser’s

50 Alfred’s mother and wife further evidence that ninth-century Wessex queens were valued mainly for their ability to advance dynastic interests—in this case, to legitimate Alfred as the rightful successor to the Wessex throne.

V. The Marriage of a Twelve-Year-Old Frankish Princess

Earlier in this chapter we dealt briefly with the marriage in 856 of the Frankish princess

Judith to Alfred’s father. King Æthelwulf of Wessex, noting that ÆthelwulTs unusual granting of status to his new wife led to Asser’s lengthy remarks on the traditionally low status of queens in ninth-century Wessex. In this section, I deal more fully with the marriage of Judith and Æthelwulf, which, I will argue, suggests that ninth-century Wessex queens played important dynastic and political functions at court.

Asser rather straightforwardly remarks that after spending a year in Rome, “he

[Æthelwulf] returned to his homeland, bringing with him Judith, daughter of Charles, king of the Franks’’ (Alfred the Great, ch. 11, p. 70). According to Asser, Æthelwulf returned to a Wessex that had become seriously factionalized during his pilgrimage to Rome. In the course of his absence, the king’s son Æthelbald, along with “all of his counsellors,” was purportedly plotting to expel his father from the kingdom. On, or before, ÆthelwulTs return to Wessex—the Life is slightly unclear on the timing—Æthelwulf agreed to a division of the kingdom, with the eastern districts going to Æthelwulf and the western portions to his son Æthelbald (Alfred the Great, ch. 12, p. 70). Asser claims that

Æthelwulf still had the strong support of the Wessex nobles, who “would have been willing to eject his grasping son Æthelbald from his share of the whole kingdom along with all his counsellors,” but that this was contrary to ÆthelwulTs wishes (Alfred the Great, ch.

birth” was meant to include not only Alfred’s paternal lineage, but his maternal lineage as well.

51 13, p. 70-71). Asser then immediately launches into a discussion of ÆthelwulTs marriage to Judith:

But displaying great forbearance and wise counsel (as I have said) so that no danger should befall the kingdom, Æthelwulf did not wish this to be done; and without any disagreement or dissatisfaction on the part of his nobles, he ordered that Judith, the daughter of King Charles, whom he had received from her father, should sit beside him on the royal throne until the end of his life, though this was contrary to the wrongful custom of that people, f Alfred the Great, ch. 13, p. 71)

Æthelwulf s marriage in 856 to the Frankish princess Judith, as well as the relationship between that marriage and the rebellion of Æthelbald, have received significant attention from historians. For many years, scholars such as Frank Stenton, J. M. Wallace-Hadrill,

D. J. V. Fisher, and Pauline Stafford, have argued that the marriage was a dynastic and political one, motivated out of a desire on the part of both Æthelwulf and Charles to forge an Anglo-Frankish military alliance against the Danes Given that the summer of 856 began what were to be the six worst years of Viking attacks on northern France, it is indeed possible that Charles might have sought military support from the English, who had recently proved their ability to withstand Danish forces in the 851 Battle of Aclea; this battle was a smashing success for the English and one that established Æthelwulfs pre-eminence among English kings.

While the Anglo-Danish military alliance theory is indeed possible, there are serious problems with using it to fuUy explain Æthelwulfs motives for marrying Judith. These problems have been most convincingly presented by Michael Enright, who argues that, during the mid ninth century, neither the Frankish nor English forces were inclined to

^^For a brief overview of past scholarship on the marriage, see Michael Enright, “Charles the Bald and Aethelwulf of Wessex: The Alliance of 856 and Strategies of Royal Succession,” Journal of Medieval Historv 5 (1979): 291-92.

52 undertake war outside their respective kingdoms; the English lacked a navy and thus could not engage in overseas fighting; both kings appear to have been too engaged with their own internal problems—namely, civil factions within their respective kingdoms—to seriously consider carrying out a plan so logistically complicated as to coordinate a joint offensive against the Danes; and, most importantly, there is absolutely no evidence for joint West

action against the Danes. Enright offers an interesting alternative, suggesting that the marriage was not an attempt to forge an Anglo-Frankish anti-Danish alliance, but to forge an Anglo-Frankish alliance against Æthelwulfs son Æthelbald.^^ Enright’s position differs from the position held by Keynes, Lapidge, and Stafford, for whereas these scholars suggest that Æthelbald’s rebellion was, in part, a response to the marriage which

Æthelbald saw as a threat to his own interests, Enright maintains that the marriage was a response to the revolt.56 By marrying the Frankish princess, Enright argues, Æthelwulf put himself in a position to have another son and thus disinherit his rebellious eldest son

Æthelbald.57 The Frankish King Charles, Enright plausibly suggests, would have readily agreed to the union as Æthelwulf was over fifty and could thus be expected to die reasonably soon, which would leave Charles as the grandfather of the king of England.

Such a position would have entailed much power since Judith’s son would have been too young to rule in anything but name and his mother Judith, herself a young girl—she was

^^Enright, “Charles the Bald,’’ 291-93.

^^Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred the Great. 234-25 n. 26; Stafford, “Charles the Bald,’ 151 n. 78; Enright, “Charles the Bald,” 292-93.

^^Enright, “Charles the Bald,” 291.

53 only twelve or thirteen years old at the time of the marriage^*—would have been a regent likely to be swayed by her father’s influence.59

The most convincing aspect of Enright’s argument is his theory as to Charles’ motivations for betrothing his daughter to Æthelwulf. Enright posits that Charles gave his daughter to Æthelwulf in the hopes of repeating his own personal history: to have Judith, the second wife of Æthelwulf, produce a son who would disinherit his rebellious elder half-brother and become the future king of England, just as he himself, the son of Louis the

Pious’ second wife Judith, had displaced his own hostile half-brothers and inherited the

West Frankish throne.60 However, Enright’s argument against viewing the marriage of

Judith and Æthelwulf as an Anglo-Frankish alliance has two major problems. First,

Enright too narrowly conceptualizes the idea of an Anglo-Frankish anti-Danish alliance, viewing alliance only as the physical presence of Frankish troops on English soil or vice versa. Although Enright himself notes that “the Vikings were more interested in plunder and booty than in actual territorial conquest,’’ he fails to acknowledge the possibility of either side hoping for financial assistance in the raising of tribute.61 And the raising of tribute would have certainly have been on Charles’ mind, given that Charles’ coffers must have been severely depleted by the necessity of paying off not only the Vikings but also his own insurgent nobles, who were increasingly demanding remuneration in exchange for their loyalty. Moreover, Enright neglects the idea of preventive alliance, in this case, an

^^According to medieval canon law, twelve was the youngest age at which a girl was permitted to marry; boys were not permitted to marry until age fourteen.

59Enright, “Charles the Bald,” 293.

^Enright, “Charles the Bald,” 293-95.

Enright, “Charles the Bald,” 292.

54 Anglo-Frankish alliance that may very well have been designed to prevent either party from

entering into an alliance with the Danes. Viking access to the Channel bases garnered

through such an alliance would have posed a serious threat to both the English and the

Franks, and an Anglo-Frankish alliance might have seemed an easy way for both parties to

ensure that this did not happen. A second and more serious problem with Enright’s

argument is his suggestion that the marriage was part of a bargain between the two kings

by the terms of which Æthelwulf would disinherit his eldest son Æthelbald if Judith should

bear a son. Julie Ann Smith reminds us that the terms of Æthelwulfs will clearly stipulate that, on his death, both the Wessex kingship as well as the royal estates should pass to his eldest surviving son.^2 Upon the death of that son, the kingdom and royal demesne would go to the next son and so on down the line. At the time of his marriage, Æthelwulf had three surviving sons: Æthelbald, Æthelberht, and Alfred. It seems, as Smith argues, very unlikely that Æthelwulf would have made such careful provisions for his sons’ inheritance of the kingdom if his real intent was to ultimately disinherit them in favor of a son by his new queen.If the terms of Æthelwulfs will clearly show that disinheriting his son was not in any way a part of the king’s plan, the question still remains: what, if any, effect did

Æthelwulf believe his marriage would have on an English public that was contemplating wholesale rebellion against both father and son as a response to strife within the royal family?

First, and most simply, the marriage between Judith and Æthelwulf was most likely arranged by Charles and Æthelwulf to provide support for one another against the rebels with which each king was struggling at home. However, I want to suggest that there were other reasons motivating Æthelwulf s decision to marry Judith, which may be brought to

^^Smith, “Queen-Making and Queenship,” 105.

Smith, “Queen-Making and Queenship,” 105.

55 light by considering the theoretical effects of royal marriage on the Anglo-Saxon populace and, more specifically, the ideological role Æthelwulf might have expected his new queen to play in shoring up a support base amongst his subjects. It has often been noted that the power of the male sovereign depends, to a large extent, on his subjects’ willingness to recognize, believe in, and love him as king.64 These sentiments toward the sovereign depended heavily on constructing and maintaining the public belief that the king had been chosen by the people.^5 This belief was created in part though the rhetoric of the ruler’s inauguration or coronation ceremony, which repeatedly acknowledges the presence of the people, elicits their responses, and firmly states that they themselves have chosen the king as their earthly leader. The king is said to have been “et ab episcopis et a plebe electis”

[elected by both the bishops and the people], and also to be “populorum débita subiectione fiiltus condigno amore glorificatus” [underpropped by due obedience and honored by the deserved love of his people].^ If recognition of the king as king was largely contingent on the public illusion that he was king by popular choice, recognition of the queen was constructed not as a choice of the people, but rather as a choice of the king. Unlike the king’s coronation ceremony, the rituals for queenmaking do not acknowledge the people’s presence, nor do they solicit the people’s acceptance. Likewise, ninth-century historical writings—both English and Frankish—clearly depict recognition of the queen as a choice

^^See Fradenburg, Citv. Marriage. Tournament, introduction, xiii.

^^It is unclear to what extent the people were actually involved in the choosing of their king in ninth-century England. Ælfric’s famous remarks in his Homily for Palm Sunday that “No man may make himself a king, for the people have the option to choose him for king who is agreeable to them” (Catholic Homilies 1,213) are too late to be regarded as direct evidence for ninth-century cultural practices.

^Leopold G. Wickham Legg, ed., English Coronation Records (Westminster, 1901), 15, 16.

56 of the king. Asser’s Life states that it was Æthelwulf who “ordered that Judith should sit

beside him on the royal throne until the end of his life” (Alfred the Great, ch. 13, p. 71);

the Annals of St. Bertin state that “Aethelwulf formally conferred on her [Judith] the title of

queen”; and the 866 coronation ceremony for Innintrude, Charles’ wife, states that “the

king demands that there be extended the episcopal blessing to his wife.”^^ To say that

recognition of the queen was the choice of the sovereign rather than the choice of the people

is not to claim that the Anglo-Saxon populace were powerless to determine the queen’s

actual and imaginative social status; indeed Asser’s discussion of Eadburh clearly shows

that the people of Wessex had significant influence in determining the roles that queens

would play in their own culture. Rather, I am suggesting that because Anglo-Saxon queens

were presented to the people not as their own choice, but as a choice that their king had

made, the people’s acceptance of the queen constituted a public acknowledgement of their

faith in the choices of the reigning king. The queen thus served as a physical embodiment

of the English people’s faith and trust in their king’s decisions—one of many choices that

he would make throughout his lifetime and that they would accept as in their best interest.

When Æthelwulf returned from Rome, his people were presented with a choice:

they could choose to follow him or to follow the small but strong faction consisting of

Æthelbald and his counsellors. The choice seems to have been a rather obvious one for the

English populace, as Asser tells us that the entire nation was so delighted at the arrival of

their lord that they would have been willing to eject Æthelbald from the western kingdom

(Alfred the Great, ch. 13, p. 70-71). But for Just a fleeting moment when Æthelwulf

entered his homeland, he was presented as the people’s choice, a position that left the king temporarily vulnerable to the whims of his people. I want to suggest that by appearing

with his new wife, Æthelwulf staged a scenario that prevented his people from dwelling on

^^Cited in Enright, “Charles the Bald,” 299.

57 the question of which king they should choose by diverting their attention onto another question, namely, whether or not they would accept his choice of a wife. In short, the question presented to the people by Æthelwulf upon his return was not whether he was their choice, but whether they would accept his choice. Moreover, because the Anglo-

Saxons were accustomed to viewing the queen not as their own choice, but rather as a choice rightfully entrusted to the king, when Æthelwulf arrived in England with his queen, he was in fact behaving just like a king; that is, he was publicly enacting the sovereign right to choose a queen for the kingdom. The immediate dramatization of the king’s ability to choose a queen thus would have served to reinstate Æthelwulfs royal authority, overturning the temporarily fragile position he inhabited upon his return as one of two potential mlers, with the choice in the hands of the people, a moment in which class positions seem to have been momentarily inverted and Æthelwulfs subjects were in fact

“sovereign.”

One final effect the king’s new young wife might have had upon his subjects was to shore up the people’s faith in the masculinity and vigor of their king. As we have noted, when Æthelwulf returned to his homeland, he was in his mid-fifties, which was rather old by early medieval standards. Moreover, while Æthelwulf had indeed distinguished himself in warfare against the Vikings, he never commanded a reputation for military prowess, but rather was known for his religious fervor.^ If Æthelwulf had any doubts as to his subjects preferring his adult son, a man who had distinguished himself in warfare and who shared none of his father’s religious enthusiasm, what better way to put these fears to rest than by committing the ultimate act signifying youth, physical virility, and secular masculinity: taking a young wife? At the same time, the marriage also enhanced the king’s

^^Sir Frank Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England. 3rd. ed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971; rpt. 1989) 245; Enright, “Charles the Bald,” 295-96.

58 public image, for it offered the people the idea of the court as a stable familial base, an

image that Æthelbald was lacking, as he was not married. After his father’s death in 858,

Æthelbald appears to have recognized that having a queen—regardless of the power or

status she possessed—could be advantageous to one’s royal image, for in that year he

married his father’s widow, his stepmother Judith.69

We see, then, that Anglo-Saxonists have raised a host of possibilities in attempting

to explain both why Æthelwulf returned to the Wessex court in the fall of 856 with a

twelve-year-old bride in hand, and how this marriage was related to Æthelbald’s rebellion

and Æthelwulf’s response to that rebellion. Indeed, it is perhaps ironic that we have spent

so much time and energy trying to explain a marriage that in fact lasted only a very short

^^The marriage of Judith to Æthelbald is recounted in both Asser’s Life and the Annals of St-Bertin. Asser claims that “Once King Æthelwulf was dead, Æthelbald, his son, against God’s prohibition and Christian dignity, and also contrary to the practice of all pagans, took over his father’s marriage-bed and married Judith, daughter of Charles, King of the Franks, incurring great disgrace from all those who heard of it” (Alfred the Great. ch. 17, p. 73). The Annals of St-Bertin merely report that “Æthelwulf, king of the West Saxons died. His son Æthelbald married his widow Judith” (86), and do not suggest in any way that the marriage was ungodly or disgraceful. Asser’s account of the Christian prohibition against marrying one’s stepmother is correct, for this prohibition was one of the restrictions imposed on Germanic culture by Christianity in the seventh century (Stevenson, ed., Asser’s Life. 214). Bede’s Ecclesiastical Historv states that Christian law considered marriage to one’s stepmother as a “grave sin”: the rationale is that because marriage entailed husband and wife becoming one flesh, a son who married his stepmother would be joined in a too close union with his father; he would, in Bede’s words (from Matthew 19:5) be “uncovering the nakedness of his father” (Colgrave and Mynors, 85; cited in Asser’s Life , 238, n. 39). However, Asser is wrong to suggest that marrying one’s stepmother was “contrary to the practice of all pagans,” for there are several examples of such marriages in pre-Christian Germanic culture as well as other non- Christian cultures. See Stafford, “Charles the Bald,” 151, n. 74; Stevenson, Asser’s Life of King Alfred. 214-15; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred the Great. 238, n 39. Smyth (Alfred the Great. 193) has suggested that Asser’s harsh remarks on Æthelbald’s marriage to Judith were designed to blacken Æthelbald’s reputation as part of a wholesale attempt in the Life to glorify Alfred through denigrating his brothers and thus to suggest that of the brothers it was Alfred alone who was worthy of kingship.

59 while. A little more than a year after the marriage, Æthelwulf lay dead in a grave in Sussex with his son married to his widow Judith; and within two years (860) Æthelbald was himself dead and Judith back in Francia under the watchful eyes of her father until 862 when she eloped with Baldwin, Count of Flanders. We may never fully understand either the motivations underlying the very short-lived marriage of Æthelwulf and Judith or the relationship between that marriage and Æthelbald’s paternal rebellion. However, we do know that the union of the Frankish princess and the aged English king represented a sharp departure firom contemporary marital practices among both the West Frankish and Anglo-

Saxon royal families.70 Given the civil strife and factionalism brewing in both Charles’ and Æthelwulfs kingdoms, the stakes of the marriage must have been very high for both kings to disregard established cultural norms so blatantly and risk stirring up further discontent among already-discontented subjects. That these stakes were most likely dynastic and political in nature is further suggested by the ceremony used for Judith’s coronation.

VI. Judith’s Coronation

The marriage of Judith and Æthelwulf has interested historians, in part because it is the first known ritual inauguration of an Anglo-Saxon king’s wife. While Asser’s statement that

“he [Æthelwulf] ordered that Judith should sit beside him on the royal throne until the end of his life’’ only alludes to an inauguration ceremony having taken place, the 856 Annals of

St-Bertin confirm that Judith did in fact receive a formal ceremony before leaving Francia:

^®As Pauline Stafford has noted, “In the Carolingian dynasty marriage to a foreigner, and the marriage of a princess to anvone were still uncommon in the mid-ninth century. Louis the German and Lothar placed most of their daughters in nunneries, and this was the normal fate of Charles’ own daughters’’ (“Charles the Bald,” 140). Charles’ decision to betroth his daughter to a foreign king—while certainly not unheard-of in ninth-century Francia—was nonetheless a deviation from royal Carolingian norms.

60 In July, Aethelwulf, king of the western English, on his way back from Rome, was betrothed to King Charles’ daughter Judith. On 1 October, in the palace of Verberie, he received her in marriage. After Hincmar, bishop of Rheims, had consecrated her and placed the diadem on her head, Aethelwulf formally conferred on her the title of queen, which was something not customary before then to him or his people.^ ^

Indeed it is not surprising to hear that it was Hincmar who consecrated Judith, for throughout his life, the bishop was strongly invested in Frankish royal politics and, particularly, in analyzing the relationships between Christian rulership, political and ecclesiastical legislation, and public obedience. That Hincmar’s interest in sovereignty extended to queenship is clearly illustrated by his inclusion of a fairly lengthy discussion of queens’ roles in his De Ordine Palatii (882), a selective remembering of the ideal

Carolingian court of the past designed as an exemplar of rule for the young king Carloman, son of Louis HI. Hincmar’s discussion of queenship in this text is one of the most substantive accounts of the role queens played or, to be more precise, the role Hincmar believed queens should play, in the early medieval Frankish court.

As to the running of the palace in competent and suitably splendid fashion, especially in regard to the king’s movable resources and the annual gifts for the king’s milites (apart from their food, drink, or horses): all this was the queen’s responsibility and under her the chamberlain’s. It was their job to check supplies of everything and make provision in good time for future requirements so that nothing should ever be lacking the moment it was needed. Gifts to the various foreign embassies were the concern of the chamberlain, but sometimes the king gave special orders that something was better dealt with by the queen and himself. The queen and the chamberlain took care of all these arrangements so that the lord king should be free of all household or palace worries in so far as he reasonably and

^^The Annals of St-Bertin. Trans. Janet L. Nelson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991) 83.

61 honorably could be and ... could always keep his mind free ready to deal with the government of the reign as a whole72

In addition to his remarks in De Ordine Palatii. Hincmar’s interest in queenship is attested by his having composed two different royal ordines for the respective consecrations of the

Frankish queens Judith and Ermentrude. Hincmar’s ordo for the coronation of Judith, commonly known as the “Judith Ordo." is the earliest securely dated royal ordo as well as the earliest extant ordo that includes rites for the inauguration of a queen. As such, it has received significant attention from historians. So, too, there is a substantial body of literature that examines Hincmar’s role in constructing theoretical ideals of Frankish sovereignty and his engagement with contemporary Frankish politics.

I want only to draw attention to a few aspects of Hincmar’s coronation ordines and

Asser’s remarks on Judith’s coronation that may be helpful for advancing our understanding of queenship in late ninth-century Wessex. First, the language of both the

Judith and Ermentrude ordines engage heavily in what might be called a “rhetoric of reproduction.” Many times in these ordines. Hincmar emphasizes the queen’s reproductive function, calling upon God to bless the queen’s fecundity and to make the queen a fruitful wife. In addition, the ordines also dwell on the queen’s chastity, stressing the gravity and permanence of the conjugal union. Part of Hincmar’s use of this “rhetoric of reproduction” is due to the fact that the formulas he employs are borrowed and somewhat refashioned versions of blessing formulas for women that appear in earlier pontificals and sacramentaries and, specifically, in the blessings used for bridal couples. But if the rhetoric of the “Judith” ordo is in any way indicative of the role planned for Judith as the

^^Hincmar of Rheims, De Ordine Palatii. ed. A. Boretius and V. Krause, MGH. Capitularia Regum Francorum H, 525. The passage cited is from Jane Hyam, “Ermentrude and Richildis.” Charles the Bald: Court and Kingdom. 157.

62 future queen of England, it seems sensible to conclude that Judith was being prepared for an office in which her primary role was as a wife and childbearer. That the ihetoric of queens’ coronation ordines may be in some way indicative of the roles she was being prepared to assume are suggested by the developments that take place in later ordines.

Tenth- and eleventh-century post-Hincmarian ordines for queens’ consecrations (both

Anglo-Saxon and continental) contain no references to the queen’s chastity or to her fertility. Moreover, these ordines contain several new references to queens’ roles within the court. These developments in queens’ consecration ordines suggest that tenth- and eleventh-century ordines were composed in such a way as to reflect the increased political power, social status, and public roles that English queens assumed during these centuries.

Similarly, Hincmar’s focus on the queens’ marital chastity and fertility in his Judith ordo for the coronation of the new Wessex queen might be plausibly interpreted as evidence that, in Wessex, Judith would be expected to assume a largely dynastic role.^3

Examining queenship in both the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Asser’s Life of

Alfred has provided much evidence suggesting that ninth-century Wessex queens had low social status and political power, and that these queens were considered important mainly for their ability to create dynastic connections between kingdoms, to produce heirs, and to shore up a king’s (or prince’s) claim to the throne. However, we have also seen that public attitudes toward ninth-century Wessex queens cannot be characterized as a wholesale condoning of their low status. Asser’s discussions of Eadburh, his remarks on Alfred’s

^^It is important to note that Anglo-Saxon queens’ ordines show far more development in the tenth and eleventh centuries than do continental ones, which remain largely the same throughout this period. That the English ordines change a great deal in the tenth and early eleventh centuries—and here it is instructive to recall that the ordo is a highly conservative text that is generally resistant to change—suggests that these periods were ones during which the cultiu^al roles of queens were being significantly renegotiated. For further discussion of the ordines’ development, see Smith, “Queen-Making and Queenship, ” esp. 129-166, 193-200.

63 noblemen, and his own self-presentation suggest that—regardless of the actual status of ninth-century Wessex queens—opinions on Wessex queenship were complex and varied.

In the remaining chapters of this dissertation, I shall examine queenship as represented in the writings of tenth-century Wessex. Many of the issues raised in ninth-century Wessex writings—public concern about queens’ lineage, queens’ production of heirs; royal marriage as a means to create dynastic connections—also appear in tenth-century narratives and will thus figure in later chapters. However, as we move out of the ninth century, we begin to see queens assuming new responsibilities and acquiring additional power, status, and prestige in arenas that were not strictly limited to bearing heirs or facilitating dynastic links. The following chapter will examine some of these new roles for queens by examining how the late antique Christian empress Helena figured in the imaginations of late

Anglo-Saxon writers, with particular emphasis on Cynewulfs tenth-century alliterative poem Elene.

64 CHAPTER 2

QUEENSHIP IN CYNEWULFS ELENE

After the Virgin Mary as Queen of Heaven, the best-known queen in Anglo-Saxon

England was Helena, the late antique Christian empress and mother of Constantine, whose

voyage to Jerusalem (326x27) was believed to have resulted in the discovery of the lost

Cross as well as the recovery of the obscure history of the Crucifixion.^ Helena’s discovery, or Inventio. of the Cross was celebrated in Anglo-Saxon England with an annual festival on 3 May, at which one or more versions of the Inventio legend were read.

The four extant vernacular versions of the Inventio legend are Cynewulf’s alliterative poem

Elene: Ælfric’s homily entitled Inventio Sanctae Crucis (992); an anonymous mid to late eleventh-century homily contained in the Classbook of Saint Dunstan: and a very brief account of the Inventio in the anonymous Old English Martvrologv. a Mercian compilation most likely written in the early to mid ninth century.^ Elene was also invoked at the annual

1 Allan Phillipson Robb (“The History of the Holy Rood-Tree: Four Anglo-Saxon Homilies,” diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1975,6) notes that the association of Helena with the finding of the Cross appears to have first been made by Ambrose, in his Oratio de Obitu Theodosii. and was generally accepted by the end of the fourth century. Throughout this chapter, “Helena” is used to designate the late antique queen when she is referenced in both Latin and Old English texts and “Elene” is used to refer to the heroine of Cynewulf’s poem.

^See respectively: P.G.E. Gradon, ed.. CvnewulFs ‘Elene’ 11958: rvd. and rpt. Exeter; Exeter UP, 1977); Ælfric, Catholic Homilies 0, 303-07; Mary Catherine Bodden, ed. and trans.. The Old English Finding of the True Cross (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1987); An Old English Martyrology. ed., Georg Herzfeld, Early English Text Society, o.s. 116

65 Exaltation of the Cross festival (14 September), which was somewhat less popular in the

West than the Inventio festival.^ The only surviving homily for the day is Ælfric's

Exaltatio Sancte Crucis. which briefly discusses Helena’s finding of the Cross but is mainly concerned with the emperor Heraclius’ return of the Cross to Jerusalem in 628 A.D. after it was stolen in 614 by conquering Persian invadersAn additional legend, commonly referred to as The Historv of the Holv Rood and dated to the eleventh century, does not indicate a specific occasion for its use but was most likely read aloud at either festival.5 The History is mainly concerned with the origin of the wood from which the

Cross was made, but briefly recounts Helena’s recovery of the Cross and nails.

Helena’s name appears seven times in the Anglo-Saxon litanies of the saints, which were recited at church dedications; during monastic and baptismal offices; at the ordination of monks; as part of the service for the visitation of the sick or dying; in private devotions; and in penitential processions such as those which occurred on Rogation Day, on the three days before Ascension, and perhaps on other major feast days as well.^ Helena is listed in

(London: Kegan Paul, 1900) 72-73. The account of the Inventio in the Martvrologv does not mention Elene.

^Robb, “The History of the Holy Rood-Tree: Four Anglo-Saxon Homilies,” 7.

^Ælfric, Lives of Saints II, 144-58.

^Robb, “The History of the Holy Rood-Tree: Four Anglo-Saxon Homilies,” 14-110.

^Michael Lapidge, ed., Anglo-Saxon Litanies of the Saints. Henry Bradshaw Society 106 (London: Boydell Press, 1991) 118, 130, 200, 238, 242, 294, 298. Seven is a fairly average number of times for a saint to be referenced, whether male or female. The most popular female saints tended to be virgin martyrs such as Agatha, who is listed forty-seven times, Agnes (forty-three times), Lucy (forty times), and Juliana (twenty-six times). English queens and noblewomen (most of whom became abbesses later in life) who were worshipped as saints after their deaths tend to occur less frequently. For example, Eormenhild (queen of Wulfhere of Mercia) is listed eight times, Seaxburh (queen of Ecgbyrht of Kent) is listed eleven times, and Cuthburg (queen of Ealdfrith of Northumbria) is listed once. However, there are many saints who pose exceptions to these

66 two English calendars dated before 1100 ^ and she is briefly invoiced in the Old English poem commonly known as the Menologium. a 231-line Old English metrical calendar designed to provide a brief chronology of twenty-eight annual liturgical feasts for a layperson, quite possibly a king: “And {mes embe twa niht t>ætte tæhte god / Elene eadigre æ[îelust beama / on J>am ^rowode Jjeoden engla” [And two nights after this,

God showed to the blessed Helena the noblest of beams on which the Prince of Angels suffered]*. The seventh-century nunnery at Abingdon was built on the site of the parish church of Saint Helena and dedicated to her, and at least four Anglo-Saxon churches were named after her.^ A gold coin circulating in early seventh-century England bears Helena’s portrait and the inscription “Helena” on one side. 10 Ælfffc’s Hrst Old English Letter for generalizations, including Æthelthryth (a former Anglo-Saxon queen who was never martyred but supposedly lived in two spiritual marriages), who is listed twenty-six times, and Scholastica (sister of Benedict, who was also never martyred), who is listed forty-five times. References to saints in the litanies often follow traditional patterns: for example, women and men are always listed in groups separate from one another, and certain female saints tend to be listed together, i.e., Lucy, Agnes, and Agatha; and Æthelthryth and one or more of her sisters. The only patterns I have been able to discern from the seven references to Helena in the litanies are that Helena tends to be listed toward the middle or end of each list and that she occurs twice next to Bridget and twice next to Margaret. Helena is never listed with former English queens, who tend to be grouped together.

^Francis Wormald, ed., English Kalendars Before A. D. 1100. Henry Bradshaw Society 72 (London, 1934; Wolfeboro, New Hampshire: Boydell and Brewer, 1988) 37, 361.

^ASPR VI, 50,11. 83-85. Michael Lapidge (“The Saintly Life in Anglo-Saxon England,” The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature. 262 n. 12) provides a useful word of caution on the poem’s title, noting that “this poem normally passes imder the utterly inappropriate title ‘Menologium,’: a menologium is a Greek liturgical book containing lives of saints, corresponding to the Western church’s martyrologium or martyrology.”

^Susan Grace Larkin, “Transitions in the Medieval Legends of Saint Helena,” diss., Indiana University, 1995,61. Larkin notes that it is unclear whether the dedication of the nunnery occurred before or after the Germanic invasions (61).

^ ( ^ e coin is a solidus, a Byzantine coin weighing over four grams. Until approximately the second half of the seventh century, foreign gold coins were the only type of currency in

67 Wulfstan. a series of instructions intended for Wulfstan to read aloud before the piests of his diocese, invokes Elene in a section recounting highlights of Christian history: “He waes forma casere ^ on Crist gelyfde, sancte Elenan sunu t)ære eadigan cwene” [He

(Constantine) was the first emperor who believed in Christ, son of Saint Helena the blessed queen]. The multiplicity of references to Helena in such a wide variety of pre-Conquest texts and sites suggests that this late antique Christian queen and some version of her legend were familiar to a broad cross-section of both lay and clerical cultures, including people who had direct access to written texts as well as those who did not. That Helena was practically an Anglo-Saxon household name, even among the laity, is nicely illustrated by Ælfric’s offhand reference to her in a text entitled Alia Sententia Ouam Scripsit

Terrentianus [Another Story Which Terentianus Wrote], which is appended to his Life of

Saint Agnes and contained in his Lives of Saints: this collection of vernacular vitae was written at the request of his noble patrons Æthelweard and Ælthelmær explicitly for the purposes of fortifying the faith of “læwedan men” [laypeople] who were unable to read these vitae in Latin. In Alia Sententia. Ælfric merely notes that the holy Helena rejoiced with a group of recently converted maidens:

England. The two denominations were the solidus and its third, the tremissis (in English, the thrvmsasV After the early seventh century, the solidus was rarely seen, having been replaced by smaller gold coins and, by the late seventh century, gold coinage had been replaced by silver. Because of their extremely high value, foreign gold coins had limited monetary functions and were prized for use as jewelry and for other decorative purposes fThe Anglo-Saxons, ed. James Campbell, Eric John, and Patrick Wormald [London: Penguin Books, 1982] 62). The solidus bearing Helena’s portrait appears to have been a presentation piece (Leslie Webster and Janet Backhouse eds.. The Making of England: Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture. AD 600-900 [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991] 37).

11 Councils and Svnods. 272. The cited translation is a slightly emended version of that which appears in Councils and Svnods. 272.

68 eoden hi to healle and sec halige Helena com mid dam fore-sædum mædenum micclum blyssigende hi ^uih-wimodon on mægd-hade mærlice drohtniende od ^æt hi gewiton of worulde to criste. (LS I, 192, II. 377-380)

[They went then into the hall and the holy Helena came with the aforesaid maidens, greatly rejoicing. They continued in virginity living gloriously, until they departed from the world to Christ.]

The offhand nature of the reference suggests that Ælfiric expected his lay readers would know who Helena was with no further explanation.

The most extensive Old English account o f Elene is Cynewulfs 1321-line alliterative poem Elene. which recounts the legend of the late antique queen’s recovery of the Cross; the conversions of Constantine, Judas, and the poet; and Constantine’s military campaigns to extend the Roman E m p ire.12 Because Elene is one of the longest poems in the extant corpus of Old English writing and because it deals with a host of themes central to Anglo-Saxon literature and culture—cross worship, conversion, and conquest—the text has received a significant amount of critical attention. 13 Yet the poem’s main female character, Elene, has received surprisingly little in-depth analysis. Elene has most often been interpreted by critics as a typological figuration of the Church, a militant “Mater

^ ^References to Elene will be made by line number, and will refer to P.O.E. Gradon, ed., Cynewulfs ‘Elene’ (1958; rvd. and rpt. Exeter; Exeter UP, 1977).

l^For a comprehensive bibliography of work on Elene up to the mid-1970s, see P.O.E. Gradon, ed., Cynewulfs ‘Elene’. 76-80; for a list of the major pieces of Elene literary criticism since the late 1960s, see Gordon Whatley, “The Figure of Constantine the Great in Cynewulfs ‘Elene,”’ Traditio 37 (1981) 162-63, n. 7. To these should be added: Antonia Harbus, “Text as Revelation: Constantine’s Dream in Elene.” Neophilologus 78 (1994): 645-53; Dorothy Patricia Wallace “Religious Women and Their Men: Images of the Feminine in Anglo-Saxon Literature,” diss., Cornell University, 1994, 89-108; Cvnewulf: Basic Readings, ed. Robert E. Bjork (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1996); Susan Grace Larkin, “Transitions”; Thomas Tipton, “Inventing the Cross, A Study of Medieval Inventio Crucis Legends,” diss., Northwestern University, 1997.

69 Ecclesia” battling the Synagogue, a type of the New Law struggling against the Old.^^

These figurai readings of the queen have tended to be somewhat dismissive, for once critics

establish that Elene functions in the poem merely as a symbol they have relatively little left

to say about her. Typological readings of Elene as “Ecclesia” have, moreover, powerfully

influenced even recent readings of the poem’s heroine. In the past fifteen years, scholars

such as E. Gordon Whatley, Clare Lees, and Thomas Tipton have begun to examine

Cynewulfs profound belief in the inseparability of the earthly and the divine and, by

extension, the complicated ways in which his characters concomitantly allude to Old

Testament figures and also reflect and help to shape contemporary Anglo-Saxon cultural

practices. Yet even Whatley, who so convincingly argues for the poem’s insistent interest

in historicity and earthly matters and so brilliantly reads Cynewulfs Constantine as a

product of early Anglo-Saxon cultural sensibilities, interprets Elene simply as a type o f the

Church.

A few feminist scholars have tried to rethink the idea of Elene as “Ecclesia.”

Dorothy Wallace, for example, examines Cynewulfs representations of Elene’s sea-

voyage in the context of Bede’s discussion of the “mulier fortis” in his Commentarv on

P ro v e rb s. 15 Clare Lees complicates previous interpretations of Elene as “Ecclesia” by

pointing to the ways in which Cynewulfs heroine challenges Anglo-Saxon generic conventions and noting the interpretive acrobatics past critics have had to engage in to read

I'kZritics who view Elene as a typological representation of Ecclesia or the New Law include: Thomas Hill, “Sapiential Structure and Figurai Narrative in the Old English ‘Elene,’” Traditio 27 (1971) 165-67; Catherine Regan, “Evangelism as the Informing Principle of Cynewulfs ‘Elene,’” Traditio 29 (1973) 30; and Gordon Whatley, “The Figure of Constantine the Great,” 163,200.

l^Dorothy Wallace “Religious Women and Their Men,” 89-99.

70 Elene through straightforward allegoresis.^^ Similarly, both Helen Damico and Alexandra

Hennessey Olsen criticize narrow typological readings of women in Old English literature

as limiting, and they read Elene in the context of the assertive, highly verbal women

commonly found in Old Norse literature and, to a lesser extent, in Anglo-Saxon heroic

poetry. Damico views Elene as sharing traits with the Old Norse valkyries and also briefly

considers her in relation to the Old English Judith, Juliana, and W ealhtheow.17 oisen

examines Elene’s speech alongside depictions of female speech in Mombritius’ Sanctae

Crucis Inventio as well as Old Norse sagas.Yet these attempts to deepen or challenge

narrowly typological readings of Elene are for the most part fairly brief, and no one to my

knowledge has explored Cynewulfs representation of the queen Elene in the cultural context of late Anglo-Saxon q u e e n s h i p .

l^Clare Lees, “At a Crossroads: Old English and Feminist Criticism,” Reading Old English Texts, ed. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) 159-67.

^ ^Helen Damico, Beowulf s Wealhtheow and the Valkvrie Tradition (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984) 25-32, 35-39, 49-50.

Alexandra Hennessey Olsen, “Cynewulfs Autonomous Women: A Reconsideration of Elene and Juliana,” New Readings on Women in Old English Literature, ed. Helen Damico and Alexandra Hennessey Olsen (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1990) 222-227.

l^The one study, to my knowledge, that attempts to read Elene within the context of Anglo-Saxon queenship is Susan Grace Larkin’s “Transitions.” I had the benefit of reading Larkin’s dissertation after this chapter was largely complete, and we reach some of the same conclusions, specifically, that Cynewulf emphasizes Elene’s royalty and that missionary queens were a familiar topos in Anglo-Saxon writings. However, Larkin focuses mainly on the ways in which Elene fits into typical portrayals of Anglo-Saxon royal saints, and she reads Elene in the context of seventh- through ninth-century Anglo- Saxon culture. Moreover, because her purpose is to study changes made to the Helena legend from late antiquity through the early Renaissance, her study of Cynewulfs Elene is only fourteen pages long. My study differs from Larkin’s in that I attempt to situate Cynewulf s representation of Elene within the new ideologies of queenship that were developing in the mid to late tenth century.

71 This chapter begins by assessing contemporary evidence for Anglo-Saxons’ interpreting holy women, and particularly mothers, as figures of the Church. While the trope of Mater-Ecclesia was certainly a common one in pre-Conquest Anglo-Latin clerical writings, it is less clear whether there existed an Old English vernacular tradition of viewing mothers as types of the Church. My purpose is to determine the extent to which such a tradition may have existed in pre-Conquest England, in order to more accurately assess whether Elene would have been likely to have been interpreted by Anglo-Saxon laypeople as a type of the Church. I then examine how Elene might have concomitantly functioned on a literal level as well, situating Cynewulfs depiction of the queen in the context of late tenth-century queenship. My goal is not to argue that literal approaches to

Elene should replace typological ones, but rather to supplement former typological analyses by exploring a level of reading that was acknowledged by medieval audiences as central to allegorical interpretation and that has been largely overlooked by contemporary critics.20 I argue that Cynewulfs depiction of Elene was not influenced solely by the typological resonances suggested by the figure of the queen, but also by the religious, political, and social roles available to English queens in his own time—in short, that Cynewulfs Elene reflects not only the queens of an imagined Roman past, but also the queens of his own

Anglo-Saxon present.

Cynewulf s “present” has long been taken to be early ninth-century Mercia.

However, in the past several decades, more than one critic has challenged that assumption, presenting a variety of evidence which suggests that the poem—and indeed the entire

2®For further discussion of the centrality of literal interpretation in the Middle Ages and the relationship between literal and figurai reading, see Erich Auerbach, “Figura,” Scenes from the Drama of European Literature (New York: Meridian, 1959; rpt. Minneapolis, 1984) 11-76.

72 Cynewulfian corpus—was more likely composed in the late tenth century.21 The strongest

argument for dating Elene to the late tenth century is Patrick Conner’s article “On Dating

Cynewulf’ (I996).22 Conner reexamines the evidence that has led scholars to view

Cynewulfs writings as early ninth-century Mercian compositions, and he convincingly

argues that Cynewulfs poetry is far more likely to have been written at approximately the

same time as the manuscripts in which it appears: the Vercelli Book and the Exeter Book,

both of which are dated to the late tenth century. One of the arguments that has been raised

for dating the Cynewulfian corpus to the mid ninth century is the fact that Cynewulf spells

his name in his runic signature both with and without an “e”: in Juliana and Elene. he spells

it “Cynewulf,” and in Christ II and Fates of the Apostles, he spells it “Cynwulf.”

Although the syncopated form of “Cyniwulf ’ (i.e., “Cynwulf’) was used before the ninth century, the form “Cynewulf’ was not used until the shift from medial “i” to “e ” occurred; this shift began sometime between the mid eighth and mid ninth centuries. The fact that

Cynewulf uses the form “Cynewulf’ has thus led to the argument that Cynewulf may have been writing in either the eighth or ninth centuries. However, Conner reminds us that it is quite possible that the two spellings of the unstressed vowel could have coexisted for a broad span of time and that Cynewulfs use of the form “Cynewulf’ does no more than

^^Lenore MacGaffey Abraham (“Cynewulfs Juliana; A Case at Law,” Allegorica 3 (1978): 172-89; rpt. Cynewulf: Basic Readings. 171-205) argues that the changes Cynewulf makes to his Latin source for Juliana correspond to Anglo-Saxon legal conditions that did not exist until the late tenth century. Abraham’s assessment of the changes Cynewulf makes to his source and her analysis of these changes in terms of Anglo-Saxon laws is forceful. But the article fails to adequately show that the legal practices to which the poem conforms indeed arose in the late tenth century.

22patrick W. Conner, “On Dating Cynewulf,” Cvnewulf: Basic Readings. 23-55.

73 establish a terminus ad quo for the Cynewulfian corpus in either the mid eighth or ninth century.23

Another argument traditionally used to locate Cynewulfs writings in ninth-century

Mercia is that the late West Saxon near-rhymes in the rhyming section of Elene (lines 1236-

1251) are scribal alterations of what were once perfect rhymes in the original Anglian dialect. However, Conner points out that even if the dialect of Elene is changed from late

West Saxon to Anglian, more than one-third of the remaining rhymes still remain near- rhymes. Examining rhyming patterns in Judith. The Battle of Maldon. and “The Death of

Alfred,” Conner further argues that both perfect and near-rhyme were part of the Old

English poetic tradition through the mid eleventh century and suggests that the late West-

Saxon near-rhymes in Elene may not be the work of a tenth-century scribe but rather the original forms.24 in addition to the dates of the manuscripts, further support for dating

Cynewulf s works to the tenth-century, Conner argues, is found in a probable source for

Fates of the Apostles—an augmented version of the Martvrologium of Usuardus, which was most likely brought to England during the tenth-century Benedictine Reforms.25

Conner’s argument for situating the entire Cynewulfian corpus in mid to late tenth century

Wessex is particularly suggestive for my own interpretation of queenship in Elene for, as

Pauline Stafford has shown, this period witnessed significant increases in the social and symbolic power of English queens.26 Following Conner’s redating and relocation of

Elene. I will examine the poem alongside the Inventio Sanctae Crucis—which most

23conner, “On Dating Cynewulf,” 24-26.

24conner, “On Dating Cynewulf,” 24-35.

25conner, “On Dating Cynewulf,” 35-46.

26pauline Stafford, “The King’s Wife in Wessex.’

74 scholars agree is the closest approximation of the source on which Elene is based—and

then situate the changes Cynewulf makes to his source in the context of the increasing social and symbolic power granted to queens in tenth-century Wessex.^

I. Figuring Elene

As the mother of the first Christian emperor, Helena was strongly associated with motherhood. Typological figurations of the church as mother occur frequently in Old

English texts, particularly in the prose writings of Ælfiric and Wulfstan. The anonymous author of the Life of Machutus uses the idea of Mater Ecclesia as an explanation for why monastics should abandon their blood families and view their religious communities as new families: “We abandon our kin so that we might choose the church of God as a mother for ourselves here on earth and that we might merit to obtain God as a father for ourselves in the heavenly kingdom” [Ure magas we forlaetaj) fjæt we godes circean us to meder hér on eorjjan geceosan 7 ^æt we geeamigan to gemetanne god us fader on hfonlicum ricum].28 The so-called Law Grid uses the idea of the church as mother to emphasize

^^References to the Inventio Sanctae Crucis will be made by page number, and will refer to Alfired Holder, ed., Inventio Sanctae Crucis (Leipzig, 1889), specifically, to Holder’s transcription of MS St. Gall 225 (recommended by Gradon, CvnewulFs ‘Elene.’ 18-19 and called to my attention by Whatley, “The Figure of Constantine the Great,” 159 n. 2). A version of the Inventio is also contained in Joanne Camandet, ed. Acta Sanctomm May, vol. 14 (Paris and Rome: Victor Palme, 1866) 450-52. A translation of this version of the Inventio. although taken from the old edition of Acta Sanctorum, ed. G. Henschen and E. Papebroche (Antwerp: 1680) 445-48, is contained in Sources and Analogues of Old English Poetry, ed. Michael J. B. Allen and Daniel Calder (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer; Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1976) 59-68. This version of the Inventio is not very reliable because it is a conflation of five different manuscripts.

28 David Yerkes, ed.. The Old English Life of Machutus (Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 1984) 35,11. 19-22. The brackets around “eo” in “heofonlice” are used by Yerkes to indicate text that is missing or illegible in the manuscript.

75 brotherhood among the English as a means of promoting civil peace: “We all have a

heavenly father and a spiritual mother, who is called Ecclesia. that is, God’s church and by

which we are brothers” [Ealle we habbaô ænne heofonlicne fæder & ane gastlice moder,

seo is ecclesia genamod, Jiæt is Godes cyrice, & ^y we syn gebrodra].^^ Wulfstan, in his

Institutes of Politv. claims: “We all have a heavenly father and a spiritual mother, who is

called Ecclesia, that is, God’s church, whom we should ever love and worship” [Ealle we

habbaô ænne heofonlicne fæder and ane gastlice modor, seo is ecclesia genamod, [)æt is

Godes cirice, and [)a we sculon ælfire lufian and wurôian].30 Similarly, in his homily entitled “Her Ongynô Be Cristendome” [Here Begins About Christendom], Wulfstan writes: “We all have a heavenly father and a spiritual mother who is called Ecclesia. that is,

God’s church, and whom we should ever love and honor and never harm her with words or works, but protect her always and keep her undefiled and without blemish” [Ealle we habbaô ænne heofonlicne fæder and ane gastlice modor, seo is ecclesia genamod, [)æt is

Godes cyrice, and [>a we sculon æfre lufian 7 weorôian 7 næfire hyre derian wordes ne weorces, ac griôian hy symle 7 healdan unwemme 7 a butan glemmej.31 This metaphor of the church as a pure mother is also found in Ælfric’s homily “On the Nativity of Holy

Virgins,” in which he provides an explanation for why the church is considered to be a typological figuration of motherhood: “The congregation is our mother and clean pure maiden because in her we are reborn to God’s hands through belief and baptism” [Seo

29Law_Griô 30; cited in A Microfiche Concordance to Old English, ed. Antonette diPaolo Healey and Richard L. Venezky (Toronto, 1980).

^Qpie Institutes of Politv. Civil and Ecclesiastical, ed. Karl lost, Swiss Studies in English, vol. 37 (Bern, 1959) 138. Citation is to Corpus Christi College Cambridge 201 (c. 1070).

Dorothy Whitelock, The Homilies of Wulfstan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957) 201, 11. 41-45.

76 gelaf)ung is ure modor and clæne maeden, forôam we beod on hire ge-edcynnende to

Godes banda, f)urh geleafan and ftilluht] (CH II, 44, pg. 566-67). Ælfric provides a similar but slightly fuller explanation for interpreting the church as mother in his second

Old English letter to Wulfstan: “According to spiritual understanding, God is our father and his holy congregation, that is, the believing people, our spiritual mother, in which we are bom in holy baptism as children of God and we should thus always honor God our father and his spiritual bride the holy church” [Æfter gastlicum andgite God is ure fæder and his halige gelajjuncg, {læt is geleaffuU folc, ure gastlice modor, on ôære we beoô accennede on

|)am halige fuUuhte, Gode to beamum, and we for^ig sceolon God, ume fæder and his gastlice bride, ^am haligan cyrican, simble wurÔian] (Ælfric, Letter 3, Wulfstan 2, 130).

In addition to being a mother, Elene was also a queen. References to queens as types of the church are much less common than mothers, occurring only in Ælfric’s homily

“On the Dedication of a Church,” in which he refers several times to the Queen of Sheba as a figurai type of God’s congregation: “The queen was a type of the holy church of all

Christian folk ... The spiritual queen, God’s congregation, is adorned with precious ornaments and manifold color of good habits and virtues” [Seo cwen getacnunge [>ære halgan geladunge ealles cristenes folces .... Seo gastlice cwen. Godes gelaôung, is geglencged mid deorwurôre frætewunge and menigfealdum bleo godra drohtnunga and mihta.” fCH 11, XLV, 586; trans. 587). The Virgin Mary was commonly referred to as the

Queen as Heaven and while Ælfric’s Homily on John does not specifically mention Mary as Queen, it does discuss Mary as a type of Christ’s congregation: “That woman is here called in spiritual understanding all the congregation of Christ, that is, his own bride, just as it often says clearly in books that she is our mother and a maiden” [Pæt wif is her

77 gecweden call Cristes gela^ung on gastlicum andgite, ^ is his agen bryd, swa swa hit oft

sægeô swutollice on bocum, ^æt heo is ure modor and m æ d e n ] . 3 2

Anglo-Saxon homilists frequently interpreted holy women as types of the church,

even women who were not mothers or queens. Blickling Homily VI, for Palm Sunday,

glosses both Martha and her sister Mary as types of the church. Martha is said to signify

the church on earth: “What does she signify except the holy church, that is, believing men

who prepare a clean habitation in their hearts for Christ himself?” [... hwaet tacnad heo

buton ^a halgan cyricean, ]pæt synd geleaffulle menn {>a gearwiad clæne wununga on heora

heortan Criste sylfum ].23 Mary is thought to signify the future church in heaven: “Mary,

she who sat at the Saviour’s feet to hear his words and his teachings, signifies the holy church in the future world, which shall be freed from all labors” [Maria seo Ipe sæt be

Hælendes fotum [)æt heo wolde geheran his word & his lara, heo tacnaj) [>a halgan cyricean on {jære toweardan worlde, seo bif) gefreolsod fram ealle gew innum ].^^ Similarly, Ælfric interprets Judith as a type of the church in his alliterative prose translation of the Old

Testament Judith narrative: “She (was) humble and chaste and overcame the proud one, little and not strong, and she conquered the great one; therefore, she undoubtedly symbolized in all her deeds the holy church which now believes in God, that is, Christ’s church in all Christian people, his only pure bride” [Heo eadmod and clæne and ofercom

[x)ne modigan, lytel and unstrang and alede [x)ne micclan, fordan heo getacnode untweolice

^^“Ælfric’s Homilie iiber loh. VI, 16-22,” ed. Bruno Assmann. Angelsachsische Homilien und Heiligenleben. Bibliothek der angelsachsischen Prosa HI (1889); rpt. with a supplementary introduction by Peter Clemoes (Darmstadt, 1964) 76,11. 93-96.

^^The Blickling Homilies, ed. R. Morris, EETS, o.s. 58, 63, and 73 (London: Oxford University Press, rpt. as one volume 1967) 73.

34rhe Blickling Homilies. 73.

78 mid weorcum halgan geladunge {le gelyfd nu on god, {wet is Cristes cyrce on eallum

cristenum folce, his an clæne b r y d ] .35

The multiplicity of references to women—and particularly mothers—as types of

Ecclesia in Old English texts suggests that such readings were fairly common among the

Anglo-Saxons, and that Cynewulf could very well have intended his audience to interpret

Elene in this manner. However, we know that typological readings of characters in Old

English texts did not preclude other kinds of interpretation as well. Perhaps the most well-

known example of a single Anglo-Saxon text that was clearly intended to function on several different interpretive levels is Ælfric’s homily on Judith, in which he encourages his audience of female religious to interpret Judith both as a typological figuration of

Christ’s church and as a tropological exemplum of female chastity, and encourages his male lay readers to interpret Judith literally, as an historical exemplar of military prowess.36 There are two crucial points to be made here: the first is that, for the Anglo-

Saxons, a single text or textual personage could be expected to concomitantly function on several interpretive levels for a single audience; the second and simpler point is that Anglo-

Saxon writers expected a single text to mean different things to different groups of people.

That Helena was indeed interpreted differently by at least two different audiences is nicely illustrated by two pre-llOO English calendars. The eleventh-century Wessex calendar, contained in British Museum Cotton MS. Nero A. 11, lists Elene (along with the male Roman martyr Magnus) in an entry for 19 August: “Magni martiris et Helene

^^“Ælfric’s Homilie iiber das Buch Judith,” ed. Bmno Assmann, Angelsachsische Homilien und Heiligenleben. 114,11. 410-415a.

3^See Mary Clayton, “Ælfric’s Judith: Manipulative or Manipulated,” Anglo-Saxon England 23 (1994): 215-227.

79 uirginis.”37 The mid-eleventh century calendar from Croyland in Lincolnshire, contained

in Bodleian Library, Douce MS. 296, lists Helena (along with the male martyr Agapitus, in

a 18 August entry that focuses not on Helena as a virgin but rather on Helena as a queen:

“Sancti Agapitus martiris. Et Sanctae Helene r e g i n e . ” 3 8

Cynewulf does not provide any explicit guidance in his poem for interpreting Elene.

In lieu of explicit authorial guidance, intratextual representations of reading and

interpretation can sometimes provide suggestions on how contemporary audiences were

encouraged to interpret a text or character. None of the characters in Elene ever refer to

^^Francis Wormald, ed., English Kalendars Before A. D. 1100. 37. It should be noted that there is some precedent for associating Helena and virginity. Ambrose, in his De Obitu Theodosii. depicts Helena comparing herself to the Virgin Mary; when she is searching for the Cross, she confronts the devil and asks “Why did you labor to hide the wood, O devil, unless that you may be vanquished a second time? You were vanquished by Mary, who gave the Conqueror birth. She, without detriment to her virginity, brought forth Him to conquer you by his crucifixion, and to subjugate you by His death. Today also you shall be conquered when a woman discovers your snares. As that holy one bore the Lord, I shall search for His Cross. She showed Him created; I (showed him) raised from the dead. She caused God to be seen among men. I shall raise from the ruins the divine standard as a remedy for our sins” (Sister Mary Dolorosa Mannix, Sancti Ambrosii Oratio: De Obitu Theodosii. diss.. Catholic University of America, Catholic University of America Patristic Studies 9 [Washington D. C.: Catholic University of America, 1925] 79). A later association between Helena and virginity occurs in Ælfric’s “Alia Terentianus,” in which Helena is depicted with a group of virgins.

^^Francis Wormald, ed., English Kalendars Before A. D. 1100. 261. It should be noted that queenship and virginity were not wholly incompatible. While Helena, as the mother of Constantine, was not technically a virgin according to modem understandings of virginity, Anglo-Saxon queens who renounced worldly life and entered nunneries repeatedly appear in Anglo-Saxon litanies intermingled with virgin martyrs and are sometimes listed in Anglo-Saxon calendars as virgins. That the concept of virginity was a fairly fluid one in Anglo-Saxon England is further illustrated: (1) by Ælfnc’s discussions of a “geleafan mægôhad” [a maidenhood of faith], which refers to the common Anglo-Saxon belief that all members of Christ’s church, both male and female, were considered maidens; and (2) by patristic and early medieval homilies that commonly refer to virginity as a symbol for the renunciation of worldly goods. See Joseph Wittig, “Figurai Narrative in Cynewulfs Juliana.” Cynewulf: Basic Readings. 149-50, 164 n. 15, 164-64 n. 16.

80 Elene as a type of Ecclesia. However, Elene cornes close to doing so, in that she clearly

views herself as an agent for Christian advancement and divine justice. Throughout the

poem, she repeatedly disparages the Jews for having rejected the true law and forebodingly

pronounces that their heresy will result in everlasting torment. The Jews, however, always

read Elene literally—as a real queen whom they have somehow personally offended and in

so doing also offended her family. When she accuses them of multiple transgressions

against God, they innocently ask: .. we don’t know clearly, lady, why you thus have

become so severely angry with us. We don’t know the transgression which we have

committed against this people, of evils against you ever”[...ne we eare cunnon / [)urh

hwæt du dus hearde, hlæfdige, us / eorre wurde; we {>aet æbylgd nyton I [)e we geffemedon

on [jysse folcscere, / [jeodenbeala wid [)ec æffe] (399b-403). Similarly, when the Jews

withdraw to hold counsel, they read Elene as representing a people rather than a divine

force: “They, sorry-minded, considered eagerly, sought with wisdom what could be the

sins which they had committed against that people, against the emperor, of which the queen

accused them” [geormormode geome smeadon, / sohton searo[)ancum hwæt sio syn wære /

[je hie on [)am folc gefremed hæfdon / wid [)am casere p e him sio cwen wite] (413-416).

Given that the Jews are depicted throughout the poem as blind, obstinate, and misguided,

their strictly literal understanding of Elene as a real queen from a powerful family can

hardly have been intended as an interpretive model for Anglo-Saxon readers. Rather, these

literal Jewish readings are more likely intended as counter-models, as exemplars of failed or mis-reading. As Thomas Hill has noted, one of the central themes of patristic and early

medieval literature on the unregenerate Jew was that “the Jews rejected Christ because they were bound to the letter of the law and were unable to go beyond purely literal interpretations of the Old Testament.”^9 Moreover, the literal-minded Jews in Elene present

^^Hill, “Sapiential Structure and Figurai Narrative in the Old English ‘Elene,’” 167.

81 a stark contrast to the poem’s heroine, who frequently demonstrates an ability to read both literally and figuratively, interpreting the Crucifixion as both a historical event and a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies.^ The problem with the Jews’ understanding of

Elene, Cynewulf seems to be suggesting, is not that they view her as a queen, but rather that they see her only as a queen and fail to recognize her typological significance as well.

n. Elene as an Exemplar for Empresses and Queens

While Anglo-Saxon audiences were indeed likely to have viewed Cynewulfs Elene as a type of the Church, most of the discussions of Helena in late antique, Carolingian, and

Anglo-Saxon writings tend to interpret Helena as an historical personage who might serve as an exemplar for contemporary empresses and queens. Theodoret, in his Church Historv

(440s), commemorates the fourth-century empress Aelia Flaccilla, wife of Theodosius the

Great, in terms that bear striking resemblance to Rufinus’ discussion of Elene in his

Church Historv (c. 402).'^^ The fifth-century empress Aelia Eudocia, wife of Theodosius n, made a pilgrimage through the Holy Land to search for relics in imitation of Helena.'^^

Aelia Pulcheria, the sister of Theodosius II, and her husband Marcianus were praised at the

451 Council of Chalcedon as “the New Helena” and “the new C onstantine.”'^^ The

Byzantine emperor Justinus II (565-578) and his wife Sophia were compared with

'^OHUI, “Sapiential Structure and Figurai Narrative in the Old English ‘Elene,’” 166.

G. Holum, Theodosian Empresses: Women and Imperial Dominian in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1982) 26, ff. 77. It should be noted that Gelasius was the source for both Rufinus and and Theodoret.

^^Drijvers, 182.

^^Drijvers, 182. The actual citation is in E. Schwartz, Concilium universale Chalcedonense II, 2, 1936,101. See also Holum, Theodosian Empresses. 214-16.

82 Constantine and Helena.^ In 785 Pope Hadrian wrote to the widowed Empress Irene, urging her to denounce iconoclasm and restore the Eastern church’s former practice of image veneration so that she and her son, Constantine VI, would be like a “new

Constantine and Helena.’’45 Gregory of Tours, in his Glorv of the Martvrs (585-95), claims that the sixth century Frankish Queen Radegund—the former wife of Frankish King

Lothar I who, after her husband’s death, founded a convent in Poitiers—“is comparable to

Helena in both merit and faith.’’46 Baudonivia’s sixth-century Vita Radegundi relates that

Radegund sent envoys to Jerusalem and the entire Eastern Empire and was rewarded with relics of the True Cross for her convent from the Byzantine emperor Justin II, claiming that

“what Helena did in the Eastern parts, blessed Radegund did in Gaul.’’47 While late antique and Carolingian interpretations of Helena as an exemplar of queenship provide some guidance for understanding how she might have been read by Anglo-Saxon audiences, the strongest evidence that Helena was used as an exemplar for Anglo-Saxon queens is

Gregory the Great’s 601 letter to Bertha, Queen of Kent. In this letter, Gregory urges

Bertha to take Helena as a role model and to convert her still-pagan husband Ethelbert as well as the entire race of the English.

^D rijvers, 183.

^^Thomas Tipton, “Inventing the Cross, A Study of Medieval Inventio Cnicis Legends,’ 178. For a brief but lucid discussion of the eighth-century debates over the veneration of images, see William Stevens, “The Cross in the Life and Literature of the Anglo-Saxons,’’ Yale Studies in English 23 (1908): 91-97.

^Gregory of Tours, Glorv of the Martvrs. trans. Raymond Van Dam (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 1988) 22.

^^Baudonivia, Vita Radegundis 16, ed. B. Krusch, Monumenta Germania Historica. Scriptores rerum merovingicamm 2 (Berlin: Hannover and Leipszig, 1888) 387-89. Cited in Drijvers, 183.

83 Nam sicut per recordandae memoria Helenam matrem piissimi Constantini imperatoris ad Christianam fldem corda accendit, ita et per gloriae vestrae studium in Anglorum gentem ejus misericordiam confidimus operari. Et quidem iamdudum gloriosi filii nostri coniugis vestri animos prudentiae vestrae bono, sicut revera Christianae, debuistis inflectere, ut pro regni et animae suae salute fidem, quam colitis sequeretur.'*^

[For as He (God) kindled the hearts of the Romans towards the Christian faith by means of the ever-memorable Helena, mother of the most pious emperor Constantine, so we tmst that His mercy is working through your earnestness, O glorious one, upon the race of the English. And indeed it was your duty this long time past, by the excellence of your prudence, like a true Christian, to have influenced the mind of our illustrious son, your consort, so that he might follow the faith which you cherish, for the salvation of his kingdom and of his soul.]49 in. Naming Elene

One striking indication of CynewuITs interest in queenship is his practice of naming Elene throughout the poem. For ease of reference, I have listed below the terms used to name

Elene in both the Inventio and Elene.

Inventio (28 total references) mater (2x): Ix as “sua mater Helena” and Ix as “beatissima mater Constantini Imperatoris” regina (3x): 2x as title alone and Ix as “regina fidelissima” domina (4x): always title alone Helena (20x): 4x as name alone, Ix as “sua mater Helena,” 2x as “beatissima Helena,” and 13 X as “beata Helena”

Cynewulfs Elene (79 total references) modor (Ix): as “his modor”

^^Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, vol. HI, ed. Arthur West Haddan and William Stubbs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1871, rpt. 1964) 17.

^^This translation is a slightly emended version of that which appears in The Mission of Saint Augustine to England According to the Original Documents. Being a Handbook for the Thirteenth Century, ed. Arthur James Mason (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1897) 59.

84 caseres mæg (2x) wif (3x): 2x alone, 1 x as “leoflic w if’ hlæfdige (2x): Ix as title alone, Ix as “min hlæfdige” idese (3x) seo ædele (2x) beadurofre (Ix) sio J)ær hæleôum scead (Ix) seo eadige (Ix) Elene (I6x): 15x as name alone, Ix as “eadhredige Elene” heo (18x) cwen (28x): 17x as title alone, 2x as “sigecwen,” 2x as ‘‘æôele cwen,” Ix as guôcwen, Ix as “tireadig cwen,” Ix as “arwyrôe cwen,” Ix as “Cristenra cwen,” Ix as “deodcwen,” Ix as “cwen selest,” Ix as “rice cwen”

The most common title for a king’s wife in tenth- and eleventh-century vernacular documents such as wills and land-grant charters was “seo hlæfdige.”50 “Hlæfdige” was the standard translation for “domina,” and Cynewulf conforms to this norm in his poem, translating one of the four source occurrences of “domina” as “hlæfdige” and another as

“min hlæfdige” and simply omitting the other two references.^l “Cwen” was the standard translation for “regina” and was the preferred term (as opposed to “hlæfdige”) in literary and historical writings, including Old Testament translations, saints’ lives, and the Anglo-

Saxon Chronicle. It is thus not especially notable that Cynewulf translates two of the three source occurrences of “regina” as “cwen”; the third reference occurs in an episode which he omits. What is notable is that Cynewulf refers to Elene as “cwen” not three but rather twenty-nine times in his poem, a considerable increase from the Inventio. even allowing for the fact that Elene is approximately twice as long as this source. The Inventio refers to

Elene most often by name. Cynewulf, however, almost always replaces the name

“Helena” with the title “cwen,” and also frequently embellishes this title, referring to Elene

50pauline Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith. 56.

^^Ælfrics Grammatik und Glossar. ed. Julius Zupitza, 2nd ed., H. Gneuss (Berlin, 1966) 301.

85 2x as “sigecwen,” 2x as “æôele cwen,” Ix as “guôcwen,” ix as “tireadig cwen,” Ix as

“Cristenra cwen,” Ix as “ôeodcwen,” Ix as “cwen selest,” Ix as “arwyrÔe cwen,” and Ix

as “rice cwen.”

One explanation for Cynewulfs repeated practice of naming Elene either as “cwen”

or by a compounded form of this title may be his interest in using the poem to construct

royal exemplars—both male and female—for contemporary readers. Inventio references to

Constantine by name are often rendered in Elene as “cyning,” “casere,” or “hlaford,” and

Cynewulfs elaborations of the Constantinian prologue and references to the emperor in his

source employ a variety of terms commonly used for Anglo-Saxon kings, including

“æ^Iing,” “hildfmma,” “beaggifa,” and a host of others. However, Cynewulfs repeated

references to Elene as “cwen” also read as his attempt to heighten her nobility or secular

status, as the term carried very particular implications in light of new titling practices

developing in tenth-century England for queens and queen-mothers. As Asser notes in his

Life of King Alfred, ninth-century Wessex queens possessed very little power, partially

reflected by the fact that they were not permitted to be called “regina” but were referred to

instead as “coniunx regis” (consort of the king).^^ However, by the mid tenth century,

queens had gained a great deal more official status and power, one indication of which was

increasing usage of the term “cwen” as a title for queens and queen-mothers. The term

“cwen” appears to have carried a greater sense of official status and power than the more

generic “hlæfdige,” which was commonly used to denote the female head of any landed

household that contained servants.53 Contemporary writings suggest that consecration

^^Asset's Life of King Alfred, ch 13, p. 11. For further discussion of public opposition in late ninth-century Wessex to the king’s wife receiving the formal title “regina” and also a consideration of the circumstances that gave rise to that opposition, see my chapter 1, “Queenship Remembered,” 27-31, 37-42.

53stafford,Queen Emma and Queen Edith. 58-59.

86 may have been the distinguishing factor between the two titles: the 1051 entry in manuscript E of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that Edith was a “hlæfdige” who had been consecrated as “cwen,” and witness lists to Anglo-Saxon charters reveal that

Ælfthryth, the first English queen who was certainly consecrated (c. 973), was the first to witness charters as “cwen.” Although this distinction between “cwen” and “hlaefdige” was often ignored—consecrated and non-consecrated Anglo-Saxon queens were commonly referred to by both titles—the term “cwen” does seem to have been a way for Anglo-Saxon writers to stress the queen’s official status and the power deriving from her regal position.

That Cynewulf is indeed employing the term “cwen” in his poem as a means to increase Elene’s secular status is further indicated by the various adjectives which he uses to describe her. The Inventio seems most interested in modifying references to Helena with adjectives denoting the queen’s religiosity: of the twenty-eight references to Helena, one describes her as “fidelissima,” and sixteen refer to her by some form of the adjective

“beata” (13 x as “beata” and 3x as “beatissima”). Cynewulf, however, seems more interested in using adjectives that convey a sense of the queen’s nobility: he omits the

“fidelissima” reference and likewise all but two of the sixteen Latin references to Helena as

“beata,” referring to her instead four times by the adjective or substantive “æ ^ le ” [noble], once by “geatolic” [“adorned” or “magnificent ”], once as “tireadig” [glorious], and once as

“rice” [“powerful,” “high-ranking,” or “great ”].

Cynewulf does occasionally refer to Elene by terms that were commonly used in

Anglo-Saxon culture to denote women of non-noble status. O f the seventy-nine references to Elene in the poem, “idese” [woman] appears three times and “w if ’ [wife] occurs twice.

However, these generic terms tend to be reserved for episodes in which Cynewulf seems intent on emphasizing Elene’s gender rather than her class status, such as the sea-voyage episode, in which he marvels at hearing of a woman leading such a fair host across the sea- steams. In any case, these terms occur rarely in the poem, and the majority of the epithets

87 used to describe Elene are focused squarely on her as a queen and, to be more precise, as a noble queen.

Cynewulf further enhances the queen’s nobility and secular social status by surrounding her in his poem with all of the trappings of Anglo-Saxon royalty. Unlike the

Inventio-author. who never refers to Elene’s clothing, Cynewulf claims that when three thousand of the Jewish wise men approach Elene, they find the “geatolic guôcwen golde gehyrsted” [magnificent battle-queen adorned with gold] (331). And when the queen receives the nails with which Christ was crucified, she bursts into tears which fall “ofer wira gespon ” [over a web of wires] (1134), a phrase suggesting that Elene wears some type of gold-embroidered garment or, as Gradon has suggested, a pendant ornamented with gold filigree.54 Moreover, the Old English Elene has both a hall [salor] (382) and a throne [cynestole] (330)—in the Inventio she has neither—and Cynewulf clearly depicts the queen receiving visitors from a seated position on the throne:“... [>ær on [irymme bad

/ in cynestole caseres mæg, / geatolic guôcwen” [... there the kinswoman of the emperor waited on the throne in glory, the magnificent battle-queen] (329b-331a). Cynewulf only refers overtly to Elene’s throne once. However, he suggests that Elene frequently addresses the Jews from her throne by claiming that the next time the Jews are brought into

Elene’s hall she “wlat ofer ealle” [looked over everybody] (385b). This detail does not appear in the Inventio and suggests that Elene is seated above everyone, thus enabling her to see over them.

That Cynewulf adds to his poem these details regarding the queen’s throne is significant when considered in the context of tenth-century changes in public attitudes toward the queen’s sitting on the throne. In his late ninth-century Life of King Alfred.

Asser writes that “the people of the West Saxons did not allow the queen to sit beside the

5'^P.O.E. Gradon, ed., Cynewulfs ’Elene’. 67.

88 king” [Gens namque Occidentalium Saxonum reginam iuxta regem sedere non paititur].55

Such was not always the case, Asser contends, but arose because of the queen Eadburh,

Offa’s daughter, who allegedly poisoned her husband King Beorhtric. This, explains

Asser, led to her “being expelled from the queen’s throne” [a reginali solio proiceretur] and

the West Saxons swearing “that they would never permit any king to reign over them who

invited the queen to sit beside him on the royal throne” [ut nullum unquam regem super se

in vita sua regnare permitterent, qui reginam in regali solio iuxta se sedere imperare

vellet.56 Although Eadburh’s dethronement took place shortly after her husband’s death in

802, Asser writes as if the practice of denying West Saxon queens the throne was still

observed in the 890s .57 But a little over a century later. West Saxon queens appear to have

recovered their right to sit on the throne, although there was no ritual for the enthronement

of the queen during the coronation ceremony as there was for the king. The frontispiece of

the Encomium Emmae (1040-41 ) depicts Emma seated on the throne, with the Flemish

monk who wrote the text presenting it to her and two of her sons, Edward and Harthacnut, watching.

^^Asser’s Life of King Alfred, ch. 13, p. 11.

^^Asser’s Life of King Alfred. 235, n. 28.

89 FIGURE 1. The frontispiece of the Encomium Emmae depicting Queen Emma, her sons, and the author of the Encomium. London, British Library, Additional MS 33241, fol. Iv. Reproduced by permission of the British Library.

90 Similarly, the anonymous author of the mid eleventh-century Life of King Edward who

Rests at Winchester states that both custom and law decreed that a throne at the king’s side

should always be ready for the queen Edith. However, in extolling Edith’s (his patron’s)

many virtues, the author also approvingly notes that Edith usually rejected the throne except

on very public occasions, suggesting that even by this late date, the queen’s sitting on the

throne was still not completely acceptable.58 ft is difficult to ascertain precisely when

cultural attitudes towards the queen’s sitting on the throne began to change. The sources

that attest to legal sanction of this formerly prohibited cultural practice date from the early to

mid eleventh century, fifty to one hundred years after Elene was written. However, public

acceptance of the queen’s throne was very likely another aspect of the increasing social

stams granted to tenth-century queens, along with new titles, charter-witnessing, and

formally documented responsibilities over nunneries. Cynewulfs depiction in his poem of

Elene’s receiving guests from her throne was very likely a reflection of actual royal practice

in his own culture as well as a means for him to grant increased social status to Elene.

Cynewulf s emphasis on Elene’s nobility and his efforts to endow the Roman empress with aU of the accoutrements of Anglo-Saxon royalty are most likely in part explained as an attempt to make Elene more closely resemble the regally-titled, nobly-bred,

and elaborately-adorned queens to whom his tenth-century English audiences would have been accustomed. His painstaking construction of Elene as a noble queen, however, may have been given additional impetus by information circulating in England at this time

^^“Cui cum ex more et iure regia sedes assidue pararetur a regis latere, preter ecclesiam et regalem mensam malebat ad pedes ipsius sedere, nisi forte manum illi porrigeret, uel nutu dextere iuxta se ad sedendum inuitaret siue cogeret.” [Although by custom and law a royal throne was always prepared for her at the king’s side, she preferred, except in church and at the royal table, to sit at his feet, unless by chance he should reach out his hand to her, or with a gesture of his hand invite or command her to sit near him.] The Life of King Edward Who Rests at Winchester, ed. and trans. Frank Barlow (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd, 1962) 42.

91 regarding Helena's actual social status and, by extension, Constantine’s dubious descent.

According to late antique pagan and Christian historians, Helena was bom into an

extremely lower-class family and was most likely never legally married to Constantine’s

father Constantins Chlorus, but rather served as his concubine for approximately nineteen

years (c. 270-289). The fourth-century pagan writer Eutropius, in his Breviarium

Historiae Romanae. claims that Constantine was bom “ex obscuriore matrimonio’’ [out of

an obscure m arriage].^9 Likewise, Ambrose twice calls attention to Helena’s low social

status in his funeral oration for Theodosius I, claiming that “Christ raised her [Helena]

from dung to power’’ and referring to her as a “stabularia,” a term suggesting that Helena

worked in a stable or, because in late antiquity stables were often associated with inns, that

she was a female innkeeper or servant at an inn.^O During this time, such positions very

possibly entailed enforced prostitution and certainly brought with them very low social

prestige.61 Overt references to Helena as a concubine include Ambrose’s early fifth-

century Origo Constantini. in which he refers to Helena as “vilissima” [“cheapest” or “most common” of women]; the mid fifth-century writer Philostorgius who claims that

Constantine “had emanated from Helena, a common woman not different from strumpets”;

59qtd. in Jan Willem Drijvers, Helena Augusta: The Mother of Constantine the Great and the Legend of Her Finding of the True Cross (Leiden, The Netherlands: EJ. Brill, 1992) 15.

^Drijvers, Helena Augusta. 15. The multiplicity of references to Helena’s low birth in late antique writings suggest that she was indeed some type of servant. However, Ambrose’s reference to Helena as a “stabularia” may, as Susan Grace Larkin has argued, have been intended as an allusion to the place of Christ’s birth; see Larkin, “Transitions,” 35.

61 Drijvers, Helena Augusta. 15.

92 and the late fifth-century Zosimus who refers to Constantine as “the son of the illegal

intercourse of a low woman with the Emperor Constantins” and “the son of a harlot.”62

Precisely which of these late antique sources were the means by which Anglo-

Saxon writers learned of Helena’s low birth and of the fact that she was a concubine is

difficult to ascertain.However, the fact that Helena was a concubine appears to have

been fairly common knowledge among Anglo-Saxon writers. Aldhelm’s prose De

Virginitate refers to “Constantine—the son of Constantins, bom in Britain of the concubine

Helena.”^ Bede states in his Ecclesiastical History that “Hie Constantinum filium ex

concubina Helena creatum imperatorem Galliarum reliquit” [He (Constantins Chlorus) left a

son Constantine, who was made the emperor of Gaul, being the son of his concubine

H e le n a].65 Similarly, in his De tempomm ratione. Bede again refers to Constantine as

“Constantii ex concubina Helena filius” [son of Constantins from the concubine H elen a] .66

Likewise, the Old English Orosius claims that “On [)æm dagum Constantins, se mildest

monn, for on Brettanie 7 [jaer gefor, 7 gesealde his sunu [jæt rice Constanti[n]use, [»ne he

^^Drijvers. Helena Augusta. 16.

^^Eutropius’ Breviarium Historiae Romanae circulated in Anglo-Saxon England and was an important source for Bede’s Ecclesiastical Historv of the English People. Although many of Ambrose’s works were known to the Anglo-Saxons, there is no concrete evidence that either De Obitu Theodosii or Origo Constantini were among these known texts.

^Aldhelm: The Prose Works, trans. Michael Lapidge and Michael Herren (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer; Rowman and Littlefield: Totowa, NJ, 1979) 115.

^^Bede, Ecclesiastical Historv of the English People, ed. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969) 36; the translation cited is from the same edition, p. 37.

^^Bede, De temporum ratione. £L90, col. 556.

93 hæfde be Elenan his ciefese”^^ [In those days, Constantins, the mildest man, traveled to

Britain and died there and gave that kingdom to his son Constantine, whom he had by his

concubine Helena]. Apparently, neither Bede nor ± e Anglo-Saxon translators of the Old

English Orosius viewed Constantine’s descent from a concubine and subsequent

inheritance of his father’s Western empire as, in any way, problem atic. 68 Both texts

describe Constantine by terms commonly used to designate legitimate male offspring,

“filius” or “sunu,” as opposed to terms used to refer to illegitimate male offspring, such as

“nothus” (bom out of wedlock but of a known father), “spurius” (bora of an unknown

father), “horaungsunu” (illegitimate son), and “horaungbrothor” (illegitimate brother).69

Moreover, both writers matter-of-factly relate Constantine’s regnal inheritance in the same

^^The Old English Orosius. ed. Janet Bately, EETS, s.s. 6 (London: Oxford UP, 1980) 148.

^®That Bede openly acknowledges and neither attempts to hide or to comment upon the fact that Helena was a concubine and that her son Constantine inherited both Gaul and Britain is a complicated issue. In both late antiquity and early Anglo-Saxon England, kings frequently took concubines and the children of such unions had formal rights of inheritance. Thus Bede’s lack of comment on Constantine’s birth may simply be a realistic acknowledgment of both Roman and early Anglo-Saxon sexual mores. However, Bede’s generally strict stance on sexual morality makes it highly probable that he was one of the early ecclesiasts who attempted to eradicate the practice of royal concubinage, and we might thus expect the Ecclesiastical History not to so openly acknowledge concubinage and the smooth succession of a concubine’s son. Another possible explanation for Bede’s frank reference to Helena as a concubine is that Bede is attempting to downplay Constantine’s heroism by invoking his lowly birth. Thomas Tipton (“Inventing the Cross,” 95-101) has argued that Bede’s Ecclesiastical History reflects a general desire to dismiss Constantine’s achievements, indicated, as Tipton argues, by Bede’s failure to even mention Constantine’s well-known role in putting down Arianism and his suggestion that it was under Constantine’s rule that Arianism in fact arose. Bede’s reference to Constantine’s mother as a concubine may thus be a further attempt to downplay the achievements of the Roman king.

^^For further discussion of these terms, see Margaret Clunies Ross, “Concubinage in Anglo-Saxon England,” Past and Present 108 (1985): 16-17.

94 line as they describe his mother as a concubine. Bede’s and the Orosius translator’s

apparent lack of concern over Constantine’s descent from a concubine is perhaps explained

as faithfulness to their source texts as well as a recognition of the fact that concubinage was

a common practice among Roman emperors.^O Bede’s lack of comment on Constantine’s

descent may have also been a tacit acknowledgment of the frequency with which royal

concubinage was practiced in early Anglo-Saxon culture and the hereditary rights

commonly granted to the children of such unions.

By the ninth century, however, Constantine’s descent from a concubine appears to have become a less acceptable part of the Helena legends, most likely as a result of changing cultural attitudes toward concubines and their children. Beginning in the eighth- century, Anglo-Saxon ecclesiasts began to launch increasingly strong attacks against concubinage, and particularly royal concubinage, attempting to redefine this traditional

Anglo-Saxon practice as both illegal and immoral and to bar concubines’ children from their previous rights of inheritance.^! in 786, a legafine commission visited England from

Rome, drawing up a series of injunctions to the Anglo-Saxons, the twelfth chapter of which prohibits the children of concubines from acceding to the throne, stating that “kings are ... not to be those begotten in adultery or incest’’ and “neither can he who was not bom of a legitimate marriage be the Lord’s anointed and king of the whole kingdom and inheritor of the land."72 The increasing unacceptability in late Anglo-Saxon England of a concubine’s child succeeding to the throne appears to have influenced the choices

Although concubinage was considered an acceptable practice for Roman emperors, the hereditary rights of their children were not automatic and the fact that Constantine’s parents were never legally married was cause for controversy in the early fourth century. See Drijvers, Helena Augusta. 18-19

^^See Clunies Ross, “Concubinage in Anglo-Saxon England.”

^^EHD 837-38; qtd. in Clunies Ross “Concubinage in Anglo-Saxon England,” 27.

95 contemporary English translators made when recounting information about both

Constantine and EleneJ^ The late ninth-century translators of Bede’s Ecclesiastical

Historv. for example, translate the Latin EÜ reference to Elene as “concubina” with

“w if’—a term that was commonly employed in Anglo-Saxon England to designate a man’s

lawful wife—thus transforming Constantine from the king’s bastard into his legitimate son and rightful heir. The translators further attempt to legitimize Constantine’s claims to both

Gaul and Britain by asserting that he was a “god casere” [good emperor], a phrase that is not present in the Latin, and that “Constantinus se casere waere on Breotone accened,” a phrase that can only mean “the emperor Constantine was bom in Britain” as opposed to the

^^Later medieval writers also constructed fictional accounts of Helena’s descent to suit their purposes. Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his Historia Regum Brittaniae. claims that Helena was the daughter of King Coel, Duke of Colchester and later King of the Britons, most likely, as Thomas Tipton has convincingly argued, to establish a genealogical link between Rome and Britain as an argument for British imperialism; see Tipton, “Inventing the Cross,” 105-107. Geoffrey also claims that Helena was Coel’s only child and that the king thus labored to prepare her to rule the kingdom, another fiction which Geoffrey most likely constructed as a means of further stressing Helena’s noble character and upbringing. Tipton, following an English translation of the Historia. claims that Geoffrey presents Helena as Constantine’s legal wife rather than his concubine. However, it should be noted that the Latin is less clear on the issue. Geoffrey claims that Constantius “duxit filiam coel” [took Coel’s daughter] (338); the phrase suggesting marriage is usually rendered in Latin as “duxit uxor.” Geoffrey also states that “Cum igitur illam in societatem thori recepisset constantius genera vit ex ea filium” [when Constantius had received her into the company of his bed, she bore from herself a son] (338). Indeed, medieval queens were sometimes referred to by titles that openly invoke their role as bedmates of the king (see Judith Elaine Abbott, “Queens and Queenship in Anglo-Saxon England, 954-1066: Holy and Unholy Alliances,” diss.. University of Connecticut, 1989, 583 n. 7), but Geoffrey’s reference to Constantius receiving Helena into the company of his bed cannot be read as a clear indication of whether or not he is suggesting that the two were ever legally married. References to the Historia Regum are to the edition contained in Griscom and Robert Ellis Jones, TTie Historia Regum Brittaniae of Geoffrev of Monmouth (London, New York, and Toronto: Longmans, Green and Co., 1929).

96 rather ambiguous Latin, “Constantinus in Brittania creatus imperator,” which could mean

either that Constantine was bom in Britain or that he was elected as emperor in Britain.^'^

Late Anglo-Saxon attempts to hide the fact that Constantine was descended from a

concubine were no doubt also occasioned by a series of debated successions in the tenth

century during which the status of a prince’s mother appears to have played a significant

role in defining a particular son as the rightful heir. Edward the Elder married three times:

to Ecgwynna, Ælfflæd, and Eadgifu. However, William of Malmesbury claims that

Ecgwynna was not Edward’s wife but rather his lowly-bred concubine, and Hrotsvitha of

Gandersheim unfavorably contrasts Edward’s union with Ecgwynna to his second

marriage to Ælfflæd, suggesting that Ælfflæd had greater status than Ecgwynna.75

Æthelstan, the eldest son of Ecgwynna, appears to have been recognized in a public

ceremony conducted by King Alfred as the rightful h e ir.76 However, it was Ælfweard,

Edward’s eldest son by his certainly lawful wife Ælfflæd who ultimately succeeded to the throne. Although Ælfweard died some sixteen days after his father and Æthelstan ultimately became king, the fact that his coronation was delayed over a year suggests that there was opposition to his succession and that the preferred candidate was Edwin, the surviving son of Edward and his lawful wife Ælfflæd.77 William of Malmesbury clearly

^^ e Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical Historv of the English People, ed. and trans. Thomas Miller, Early English Text Society o.s. 95-96 (London: Oxford, 1890) 42; translation on page 43.

75 Barbara Yorke, “Æthelwold and the Politics of the Tenth Century,” Bishop Æthelwold: His Career and Influence, ed. Barbara Yorke (Woodbridge: Suffolk, 1988) 69- 70. Yorke (70) also notes that Hrotsvitha seems to be suggesting that Ecgwynna’s lesser status may also be due to the fact that she married Edward while he was an “ætheling” as opposed to after he was already king.

76Yorke, “Æthelwold and the Politics of the Tenth Century,” 70-71.

77Yorke, “Æthelwold and the Politics of the Tenth Century,” 71.

97 States that “the reason for this opposition was, as they say, because Æthelstan was bom of a concubine."?* Another example in which the social status of a prince’s mother figured centrally in disputes over the rightful heir is the heated debates that took place over the status of Edgar’s first and third wives, Æthelflæd Eneda and Ælfthryth. When Edgar married Ælfthryth (c. 965), he already had a son, Edward, who was most likely the son of his first marriage to Æthelflæd Eneda (“the duck”). According to later sources, however,

Edward’s legitimacy appears to have been a debatable matter: the eleventh-century Osbeam suggests that Edward was the son of Edward’s affair with a Wilton nun (Wulfthryth), and the twelfth-century Eadmer in his Vita Dunstani claims to have conducted a special inquiry into the matter of Edward’s legitimacySo, too, there were questions about Edgar’s third wife Ælfthryth which affected her sons’ claims to the throne. Dunstan, who supported Edward’s succession, is said to have refused to recognize Ælfthryth as Edgar’s legal wife, declaring the marriage adulterous.*® It is most likely to refute these slurs on the legitimacy of her marriage and by so doing to confirm her son’s succession claims that

Ælfthryth, after bearing her first son, signed several charters as “légitima coniunx,’’*^ and

78e HD, 303.

Yorke, “Æthelwold and the Politics of the Tenth Century,” 81.

^^Yorke, “Æthelwold and the Politics of the Tenth Century,” 85 n. 168. Dunstan considered the marriage adulterous because Edgar had repudiated his second wife to marry Ælfthryth, which was only permitted under very particular circumstances in tenth-century England. For further discussion of the conditions under which wifely repudiation was permitted, see my chapter 4, “Beauty and the Banquet: Queenship and Social Reform in Ælfric’s Esther-Transiation.” 184-89.

81 Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith. 60.

98 that Æthelwold—in Edgar’s grant of privileges for New Minster, Winchester—refers to

her as “legitimus prefati regis coniuncx” [legitimate spouse of the aforementioned king] .82

There are no references to Helena’s low social status or to Constantine’s

illegitimacy in any of the Latin texts that most likely served as immediate sources for

CynewulTs Elene. However, this information would have been available to Cynewulf

through both late antique and earlier Anglo-Saxon writings and it is highly likely that

Cynewulf was at least aware of Constantine’s precarious parentage. Moreover, the

popularity of the Helena legend suggests that Cynewulf could have reasonably expected that at least some of his readers would have also been aware of both Elene’s low social status and Constantine’s illegitimacy. Given the increasingly conflicted public attitudes toward concubinage in tenth-century England, Cynewulf may have had some anxiety about presenting a concubine and her illegitimate son as exemplars for English rule. One way to control or to prevent questions about the suitability of these figures for edification would have been to elevate Elene’s social status, thereby raising Constantine’s as well. And this is precisely what Cynewulf does throughout the poem, by painstakingly constructing Elene as a noble queen surrounded by all of the royal props that late Anglo-Saxon readers would have considered appropriate not for a king’s concubine, but rather for a legally-recognized widow of a deceased ruler and the honored mother of a legitimate king.83

^^Councils and Synods With Other Documents Relating to the English Church. Part I. 871-1066 ed. D. Whitelock, M. Brett, and C. N. L. Brooke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981) 131. Cited in Yorke, “Æthelwold and the Politics of the Tenth Century,” 83.

^^That Cynewulf had some anxiety about Constantine being perceived by his readers as the rightful heir is suggested by the fact that in Elene Constantine is referred to once as “riht cyning” (14) and four times as “ætheling.” Anglo-Saxons often used the term “ætheling” to refer to any son of a king. However, the term appears to have been increasingly used during the tenth century as a means of underscoring a candidate’s suitability for succession. (Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith. 82-86). For further discussion of the term

99 rV. Queenship and Christian Community

Several critics have argued that Elene plays a considerably lesser role in Cynewulfs poem

than does her counterpart in the In v en tio *4 Most of these arguments focus on the

Cynewulfian additions to the Latin source that magnify Elene’s reliance on Constantine for

guidance and points in the poem where Cynewulf stresses the close relationship between

Elene and her son. For example, Earl Anderson argues that Elene’s imperial mission is

presented as an extension of Constantine’s will, pointing to the fact that Cynewulf

describes one of Constantine’s commands to Elene as “willgifan word”; that Elene is

referred to as “wif on willsiô”; that she is said to be “gemyndig” of the “{)eodnes willan”;

and that her journey is twice referred to as a “willspeU.” Ultimately, contends Anderson,

“it is as the emperor’s surrogate that Elene undertakes the physical journey to

Je ru sa le m .” 85 Similarly, Gordon Whatley notes that “as Cynewulf has it Constantine alone conceives of the search for the cross ... in the Inventio the search is awkwardly initiated by both him and Elene.” Whatley then demonstrates that in Cynewulfs poem the emperor’s name is invoked and his physical presence sought after more often than in the

Inventio. all of which, he contends, serves to “re-emphasize Elene’s dependence on her imperial son for direction,” in short, to enhance Constantine’s role in the integration of the

Holy Land into the Christian empire and to diminish E le n e ’s.^6

“ætheling,” see David N. Dumville, “The Ætheling: a Study in Anglo-Saxon Constitutional History,” Anglo-Saxon England 8 (1979): 1-33.

^“^Earl Anderson, “Cynewulfs ‘Elene’: Manuscript Division and Structural Symmetry,’ Modem Philology 72 (1974) 118-19; Gordon Whatley, “The Figure of Constantine the Great,” 175-76.

^^Earl Anderson, “Cynewulfs ‘Elene,’” 113.

^^Gordon Whatley, “The Figure of Constantine the Great,” 176.

100 Both Anderson’s and Whatley’s arguments are, to a large extent, sound. The Old

English Elene is indeed subservient to her son’s will, and Cynewulf does in fact emphasize

the queen’s close contact with Constantine throughout her mission to Jerusalem. What has

not been considered, however, is that Cynewulf also significantly increases the queen’s

power during the mission—both over the military retinue which accompanies her to

Jerusalem and within the Jewish community that she has been sent to convert. Nor has

Elene’s “dépendance” on Constantine been situated within the poem’s insistent focus on the

idea of Christianity as community. In the following section, I will examine Cynewulfs depiction of Elene during her mission in Jerusalem. My intent is not to deduce whether

Elene does or does not have power, but rather to p>rovide a fuller sense of the kinds of power Cynewulf ascribes to her in this part of the poem.

In the Inventio. there is no sense that Helena has any control over the army that accompanies her to Jerusalem; in fact their presence seems like an afterthought, as the text simply states that “And on the twenty-eighth day of the second month, Helena entered the holy city of Jerusalem with a mighty army” [Inuenit autem iUud hoc XX et Vm diae secundi mensis introibit in in sanctam ciuitatem in Iherusalem cum exercitum maximo]

(Holder 3,11. 65-68). Cynewulf, however, repeatedly emphasizes that the queen is surrounded throughout the mission by a vast group of armed warriors: when the vessels land on the eastern shores, the ships are left until the queen should seek them again

“gumena [jreate” [with a band of men] (254); the warriors are said to be “ymb sigecwen sijjes gefysde ” [around the queen ready for the journey ] (260); the poet states that Elene embarks toward Jerusalem “heape gecoste, / lindwigendra” [with an excellent band of shieldbearers] (269b-270a) and again, with a “secga [>reate” [with a band of men] (271); and when the group finally arrives in the city they are described as “corôre mæste / eorlas

æscrôfe mid [ja æôelan cwen” [a great company, illustrious eorls, with the noble queen]

(274-75). Cynewulf also manages to make these men appear completely subservient to

101 Elene, depicting the soldiers as ever-ready and eager to jump at the queen’s orders. When

Elene tells her retainers to push Judas into a pit, Cynewulf claims that “scealcas ne gældon”

[the retainers did not delay] (692b), and when she commands that he be released from the

pit, it is again reported that “Hie ôæt ofstlice efnedon sona” [They (the retainers) performed

that inunediately without delay] (713). Moreover, Elene’s power to control both the Jews

and her men is explicitly stated at several points in the poem. Cynewulf describes the

queen as “sio [>aer hæleôum scead’’ [she who ruled over warriors there] (709), an epithet

which can be interpreted as referring to Elene’s control over her own men, the Jews, or

both, and in any case has no equivalent in the Inventio. Likewise, when Elene threatens

Judas with death if he will not reveal the cross, the poet adds to his source, claiming: “ne

meahte he [)a gehôu / bebugan / oncyrran geniôlan, he wæs in pæ re cwene / gewealdum”

[he (Judas) could not avoid anxiety, avert torment; he was in the power of the queen]

(608b-610).

Cynewulf further magnifies the queen’s power in Jerusalem by stressing her ability

both to control how an individual man will be perceived by his own community and to

control access to community. In the Inventio. Elene simply threatens Judas that she will

kill him with hunger. In the Old English, she threatens him with public embarrassment, claiming that if he does not reveal the cross he will be killed by hunger “for cneomagum”

[before his kinsmen] (688). Ultimately, however, the punishment the Old English Elene decides on for Judas is a combination of starvation and solitude, and Cynewulf repeatedly emphasizes Elene’s ability to deprive Judas of community. In the Inventio. Judas is left in a pit to starve and he is guarded by jailors. However, the Old English Elene leaves Judas in the pit completely alone, without even guards for company, and Cynewulf enhances the sense that Elene has exiled Judas by claiming that she commanded her men to lead Judas

“corôre” [away from the company] (691 ) and explaining his sorrowful state of mind as in part due to his “duguôa leas” [lacking a retinue] (693). If Elene is depicted as having the

102 ability to deprive Judas of access to community, so, too, the queen is figured as having the power to grant him community. The Inventio's description of CynewulTs release from the pit is figured as a private matter between Judas and Elene: after enduring seven nights of starvation, Judas promises to show Elene the Cross and he then gets out of the pit and hurries off to Calvary. In Cynewulfs version, the release is depicted as a public ceremony of communal reintegration, all of which is clearly presented as orchestrated by the queen:

Elene orders a group of retainers to release Judas; he is led up “with honor” [mid arum]

(714); and a troop of people then follows him to Calvary. Twice in this scene Cynewulf claims that action is initiated by the queen’s commands; these claims have no precedent in the Inventio.

Pa ôæt gehyrde sio [?ær hæleôum scead, beomes gebæro hie bebead hraôe [)3Bt hine man of nearwe 7 of nydcleofan, fram [)am éngan hofe up forlete. Hie ôæt ofstlice efnedon sona 7 hine mid arum up gelæddon of carceme swa him seo cwen bebead. (709-715, my emphasis)

[When she who ruled over warriors there heard that, the behavior of the man, she commanded quickly that someone should release him from confinement and from the prison, from that narrow enclosure. They immediately did that hastily and led him up ceremoniously from the prison, as the queen had commanded them.l

Another way in which Cynewulf suggests that Elene wields significant power is through her ability to establish Christian community and to do so through institutionalized social channels. One of Elene’s final acts before she leaves Jerusalem is to found a bishopric in Jerusalem and to appoint Judas-Cyriacus as the bishop. Cynewulfs account of the establishment of the bishopric differs significantly from that found in his Latin source. The Inventio briefly relates that after Judas has converted, Elene commends him to the bishop of Jerusalem, who then baptizes him and dies. At this point in the Latin text,

103 Elene summons Eusebius, Bishop of Rome, who then confers the bishopric on Judas and

changes his name to Cyriacus. However, in CynewulTs poem, there is no bishop of

Jerusalem, and thus when Elene appoints Judas-Cyiacus to the bishojHic, she is depicted

not as replacing the head of an already-established bishopric, but rather as creating a

bishopric where one did not previously exist.

CynewulTs depiction of the queen Elene conferring the bishopric on Judas-

Cyriacus would most likely not have been at all surprising to his Anglo-Saxon readers.

Late Anglo-Saxon saints' lives, charters, and ecclesiastical records testify to the fact that contemporary queens had the power to participate in making ecclesiastical appointments.

In both Abbot Ælfric’s and Wulfstan of Winchester’s Life of Saint Æthelwold (both written in the late tenth century), we leam that Queen Eadgifu (940-46), the third wife of

Edward the Elder, convinced her husband to give Æthelwold a small monastery at

Abingham, where he served as abbot for approximately eight years (c. 955-963).*7

Indeed, it makes sense to expect that queens participated in making ecclesiastical appointments because such appointments were frequently conferred on former members of the royal household. That late Anglo-Saxon queens played a significant role in appointing ecclesiasts from members of the royal household is further indicated by the fact that the careers of particular royal servants appear to have been affected by changes in the queen’s status. Ealdulf, the first abbot of the monastery at Peterborough, which was built on the queen’s lands, was a member of the royal household and when Ælfthryth re-emerged in political affairs of the court in the early 990s (she is absent from charters dating 985-990),

^^“Ælfric’s ‘Life of Saint Æthelwold,”’ EHD. 905. Wulfstan of Winchester, The Life of Saint Æthelwold. ed. Michael Lapidge and Michael Winterbottom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991) 19. It should be noted that both texts clearly state that Æthelwold “was ordained abbot at the king’s orders,’’ and do not mention Eadgifu as having a part in the actual decision to ordain Æthelwold, only in convincing the king to grant him Abingdon.

104 Ealdulf was soon thereafter made bishop of Worcester and then bishop of York.88

Similarly, the career of Emma’s servant Stigand, who may have been her chaplain or some

other type of high-ranking servant, appears to have been closely connected with the

changes in Emma’s status.89 In April 1043, soon after Edward the Confessor’s

coronation at which point Emma was still in good graces with her son, Stigand was

appointed bishop of Elmham. In the following months, Emma seems to have fallen out of

favor with Edward, and in November she was deprived of land and treasure, and Stigand

was removed from his position. By the mid 1040s Enuna was back in favor and had

control of Winchester, her dower borough, of which Stigand was appointed bishop in

1047.90 Likewise, in 1060, Edith’s chaplain Walter was given the bishopric of Hereford,

and Edith also appears to have played a role in the appointments of bishops Hermann of

Sherborne and Giso of Wells .91

While personal favoritism brought about by familial cormections and service to the

royal family indeed played a significant role in late Anglo-Saxon queens’ decisions regarding ecclesiastical appointments, Cynewulf is careful to construct the exemplary queen

Elene not as one who simply chooses a bishop according to personal whim, but rather one who makes a choice that is based on formal consultation with others. The Inventio simply states that Helena summons Eusebius, Bishop of Rome, to Jerusalem where he then consecrates Judas as the bishop of Jerusalem. The Latin legend portrays the appointment as a private matter between Elene and Eusebius, a closed deal in which, when Elene

88staffbrd. Queen Emma and Queen Edith. 136.

89Stafford. Queen Emma and Queen Edith. 112-13, 322.

90stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith. 113.

91 Stafford. Queen Emma and Queen Edith. 112, 316, 147.

105 summons Eusebius, she appears to have already decided to confer the bishopric on Judas-

Cyriacus. Cynewulf, however, depicts the preferment not as a private matter between

Elene and the bishop of Rome, but as a communal affair that takes place only after much counsel: .. Jjæt gecyôed wearô / siôôan Elene Eusebium / on rædgej)eaht, Rome bisceop

/ gefetian on fultum, forôsnoteme, / hæleda gerædum to {jære halgan byrig” [That was revealed when Elene commanded Eusebius, bishop of Rome, the very wise one, to be brought to the council in the holy city, as an aid in the deliberations of warriors] (1049b-

1053). The idea that much deliberation took place before Judas received the bishopric is again suggested when Cynewulf states that Judas was given the name Cyriacus “{xirh snyttro gefieaht” [through wise counsel/knowledge] (1059a), and the preferment is further justified through CynewulTs explanation that Judas was “[)urh gastes gife to Godes temple, / cræftum gecorene” [chosen for God’s temple on account of his knowledge through the grace of the Spirit] (1057-59b). By depicting Elene’s appointment of the bishop as a public affair undertaken through formal chaimels of negotiation (i.e. the royal council), Cynewulf endorses the queen’s power to make ecclesiastical appointments, suggesting that this power is part of the normal functioning of an institutionalized social structure. In so doing, Cynewulf also enhances Elene’s status among her people by creating a royal counsel in which the queen’s participation is fully expected and her opinions hold significant weight.

If Cynewulf depicts Elene as having the power to establish Christian community through creating a new bishopric, so too, the bishopric she ultimately creates stresses community as a fundamental aspect of Christianity. After founding the bishopric, Elene teaches its members to live in harmony, as she instmcts the converted Jews not only to love

God but also to keep friendship and peace among themselves:

106 ^ seo cwen ongan læran leofra heap {)aet hie lufan dryhtnes 7 sybbe swa same sylfra betweonum, fireondraedennne fæste gelaestan, leahtorlease in hira lifes tid. ( 1204b-l 208)

[Then the queen began to teach the beloved group, sinless in the time of their lives, that they should keep firmly the love of God and likewise peace, fnendship between themselves.]

CynewulTs depiction of the queen working with the “leofira heap” to establish communal harmony diverges sharply from this episode in the Inventio. in which the queen is presented as a startlingly militant figure who briefly encourages the converted Jews but then persecutes the nonbelievers and ultimately drives them out of Jerusalem.

Beata autem Helena, qui in Jesu Christo fide sunt confirmans in Hierosolymis, et omnia perficiens, persecutionem Judæis immisit, quia increduli facti sunt, et minavit eos a Judæa. (Holder 13,11. 373-376)

[Moreover, after blessed Helena had encouraged all those in Jerusalem who had the faith of Jesus Christ and had completed everything, she incited persecution against the Jews because they were disbelieving and frightened/threatened them out of Judea.]

Cynewuirs depiction of a queen significantly contributing to the establishment of lay Christian community would have been a historical scene familiar to Anglo-Saxon audiences, invoking both memories of the role queens played in England’s early conversion as well as recognition of the role of contemporary queens who, in the late tenth century, were officially charged with the duty of converting the Scandinavian invaders.

Papal letters to the seventh-century kings and queens of Kent and Northumbria testify to the fact that English and Roman ecclesiasts considered Christian queens an effective means of introducing the faith to their pagan husbands, which was thought to be the first step to converting the entire race of the English. Gregory’s letter to Bertha (601) and Pope

107 Boniface V’s letters to King Edwin of Northumbria and his wife Æthelberg (c. 624), both

of which were reproduced in Bede’s Ecclesiastical Historv. specifically charge the queen

with the duty of converting their pagan husbands.92 The Life of Saint Mildrith similarly

links the conversion of Mercia under the reign of Wulfhere to the king’s marriage to

Eormenhild.93 Likewise, many of the abbesses who accompanied Boniface on the eighth-

century missions to convert the Continent were themselves either former queens or the

offspring of royal families. By the time that Cynewulf was writing Elene. the English were

largely converted. However, Scandinavian invasions and settlements in England

throughout the tenth century rendered conversion a pressing issue during the period when

Cynewulf was composing Elene and, at this time, it was once again queens who were charged with the responsibility of converting the heathens. The coronation rite known as the “Ordo of Saint Dunstan” or the “Edgar Ordo”—dated between 960 and 973 and perhaps written for Ælfthryth’s coronation (c. 973)—explicitly conveys the sense that, by the late tenth century, conversion of the barbarians was considered a formal duty accompanying the office of queenship:

^^The Mission of Saint Augustine to England. 57-60; Bede, Ecclesiastical Historv. 168 (trans. 169), 172, 174 (trans. 173,175). It should be noted that in the past few years critics such as Stephanie Hollis (Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church. 208-43) and Dorsey Armstrong (“Holy (Queens as Agents of Christianization in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History: A Reconsideration,” unpublished paper delivered May 1996 at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo) have begun to call attention to Bede’s reluctance to recognize the role of queens in England’s conversion. I think that these critics are correct.

^^“Eormenhild, daughter of Eorcenbeiht and, was given to Wulfhere, son of Penda, king of the Mercians, for his queen; and in their days the people of Mercia received baptism.” Thomas Oswald Cockayne, ed. and trans., “S. Mildryth,” Leechdoms. Wortcunning and Starcraft of Earlv England, vol. 3 (London, 1866) 430. Qtd. in Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church. 225 n. 100.

108 Accipe anulum fidei signaculum sanctae trinitatis quo possis omnes haereticas pravitatis devitare & barbaras gentes viitute tibi praestitere ad agnitionem veritatis advocare.^'^

[Accept this ring of faith, the sign of the Holy Trinity, that you may be able to avoid all heretical depravity and, through your virtue, compel barbarous peoples and bring them to a recognition of the truth.]

Moreover, queens were associated not only with the establishment of Christian community,

but with community in general. The names of former queens frequently appear,

compounded with the elements “burh,” “tun,” “ham,” “wic,” or “worth,” in Anglo-Saxon

place-names, and the tenth-century vitae of royal women often end by noting that the female saint established a town or city.^^

CynewulTs depiction of Elene as having the power to control access to community, to create community, and to function within a community is perhaps better contextualized if we consider the fact that all power in Anglo-Saxon culture—whether exercised by men or women—derives from having status within and the ability to control a particular community. Moreover, Cynewulfs portrayal of Elene’s ability to control, create, and function within various communities takes on heightened importance when examined alongside Cynewulfs intratextual representations of community in Elene. Throughout the poem, Cynewulf consistently suggests that belonging to a community is a defining characteristic of being a Christian. Every time that someone in the poem converts or that any portion of Christian history is brought to light is an occasion for communal celebrating, public rejoicing, and spending time with others. When Constantine learns that the cross

^^Paul Ward, “Notes and Documents: An Early Version of the Anglo-Saxon Coronation Ceremony,” The English Historical Review 57 (1942): 358.

9^0n women and place-names, see Frank Stenton, “The Historical Bearing of Place- Name Studies: The Place of Women in Anglo-Saxon Society,” New Readings on Women. 79-88.

109 revealed to him in his vision is a sign from God, Cynewulf adds that the Christians rejoice and are happy. As soon as the Old English Constantine receives baptism, he begins to publicly proclaim the word of God day and night, unlike the Latin Constantine who heads to his books for solitary study. Cynewulf stresses that it is a group of bold warriors who rush off to Calvary to search for the cross [Stopon ^a to J>ære stowe stiôhycgende] (716), and that when Judas finally unearths three crosses, he rejoices and then lifts them up

“before the host” [mid weorode] (843b). In the following episode, the Inventio simply states that the crosses are brought from Calvary into the center of the city. In Cynewulfs version the finding of the crosses is, by contrast, an occasion for a communal procession, as a large group marches into the city to present the crosses at Elene’s knees. After the

Cross is brought into the city, the Inventio. once again, portrays a rather dull state of affairs: the people simply sit and wait for the glory of Christ. However, in Cynewulfs text, the wait is portrayed as another occasion for communal celebration: the people sit around, raise song, and rejoice in their new-found glories, and Cynewulf explicitly states that “many came there, not a few folk” [J)a [)ær menigo cwom, folc unlytel] (870b-871a).

Similarly, when a young dead boy is then brought into the city so the people might distinguish which of the three crosses has life-giving power and is thus the true cross of

Christ, Cynewulf twice states that the bier is carried by a group of men [gefærenne man brohton on bier beoma [)reate] (87lb-872).

Moreover, throughout her stay in Jerusalem, the Old English Elene is consistently defined as belonging to a community. Cynewulf refers to her twice during the mission as the “caseres mæg” (330,669), an epithet which defines Elene not only in relation to the emperor but also as part of a larger community, as the term “mæg” carries with it the sense of belonging to a kingroup. Cynewulfs Elene is always accompanied by a large group of her own people, and her close ties with Rome are evident when, upon receiving the Cross, she commands messengers to travel immediately to Rome and report the discovery to the

110 emperor who, when told, immediately sends back greetings. She is presented in the poem

as a significant member of the “witan” gathered to choose the new bishop. And when her

mission is completed, Cynewulf depicts the queen happily returning to her “eôel”

[homeland] (1219). That Cynewulf repeatedly emphasizes Elene’s role within a larger community is particularly significant in that it represents a sharp departure from the

Inventio. which rarely mentions Elene’s ties to her Roman people. In fact, the Elene of the

Inventio is so infrequently depicted within a community that she appears to have been abandoned in Jerusalem: although we are told that Elene enters Jerusalem with a mighty army, this army is rarely mentioned thereafter, and the end of the Inventio depicts Elene not as returning to her homeland but rather as dying in Jerusalem.

CynewulTs depiction of Christianity as a kind of ongoing communal celebration enacted by members of a tightly-knit community that functions harmoniously and is filled with peace and friendship presents a sharp contrast to his depiction of Judaism, which is characterized by solitude, dissent, and communal anxiety. Until Judas converts, he is cast in a pit alone. Indeed, the Jewish elders do frequently come together for counsel, but these conununal gatherings are not presented as occasions for rejoicing but rather as gatherings filled with discord, confusion, and anxiety over the fall of the Jews.

By constructing community as an intrinsic aspect of Christianity and depicting

Elene as having the ability to create, control, and function within a community, Cynewulf indeed grants Elene a significant amount of power in the poem. Ultimately however the queen’s exercise of this power is clearly depicted as obedience to her son’s will. And far from challenging this notion of subservience to a higher authority, Elene herself propagates it. The last thing that Elene teaches the people of Jerusalem is that they should be obedient to the bishop:

|ja seo cwen ongan læran leofra heap ...

Ill ond [jæs latteowes larum hyrdon cristenum {jeawum f)e him Cyriacus bude, boca gleaw; wæs se bissceophad fægere befæsted. (1204b-1205b, 1209-1212a)

[Then the queen began to teach the beloved group, [that] they should be obedient to the instructions/preachings of the leader, the Christian customs, which Cyriacus, wise in books proclaimed to them. The bishopric was fairly established.]^^

Cynewulfs final comment that “the bishopric was fairly established,” placed as it is after

Elene’s teaching the people to obey authority, serves to further emphasize obedience as a defining characteristic of harmonious Christian community. The queen’s teachings are part of a rigid chain of command in Elene. in which Constantine obeys God, Elene obeys

Constantine, the retainers obey Elene, the newly-converted Christians obey the bishop, and the Jews are utterly excluded. Ultimately, the poem is a deeply conservative one, in which harmonious community is always contingent on hierarchy, on knowing and staying in one’s place.

^^CynewulTs emphasis on the queen’s supporting the people’s obedience to the bishop is one of two instances in the poem in which Elene grants increased authority to the bishop. The second instance occurs when, before leaving Jerusalem, Elene is said to have left many gifts with Bishop Cyriacus. In the Inventio. these gifts are specifically designated for ministering to the poor [Beata autem Helena multa dona derelinquens sancto episcopo Cyriaco ad ministerium pauperum]. In Cynewulfs version, the queen also gives treasures to Cyriacus; what is different from the source is that the queen never designates how they are to be disposed of; “Da gen him Elene forgeaf sincweordunga” [then Elene gave him treasures] (1217b-1218a). While tenth-century wills, charters, and saints’ lives attest that queens frequently conferred significant amounts of wealth on particular ecclesiastical establishments, it was more usual than not for the queen to designate how that wealth was to be disposed of. Given that Cynewulf makes several changes to his source that grant the bishop increased power as well as the fact that he portrays the relationship between Elene and the bishop as one of perfect accord and mutual tmst, it would not be at all surprising if some day more conclusive evidence came to light showing that Cynewulf was a bishop or perhaps a secular ecclesiast of slightly lower status.

112 V. 'Elene' and the Ethics of Destruction

If Cynewulf depicts harmonious Christian community as dependent on hierarchy, so too,

the establishment and maintenance of such community is portrayed as contingent on war.

As is well known, Cynewulfs most extensive amplification in Elene is the two-hundred

line opening detailing the invasion of the Roman empire by the heathen Huns, Goths, and

Franks, and Constantine’s triumphant defense of his empire. Replete with extensive

variation, these lines are also filled with all of the stock Old English poetic tropes for

describing warfare—birds of prey screech; wolves howl; spears shine; swords crash; the

losers mn; and the winners exult in their plunder. Yet for all its apparent revelry in the fervor of warfare, the poem’s militarism is in fact extremely controlled, exhibiting firm adherence to a set of Germanic codes—derived in part from both Roman and early

Christian treatises on war—prescribing the ethics of destruction. The following section examines how these codes operate in the poem. While 1 am mainly concerned with how they apply to Elene, some attention to Constantine helps us to determine if Cynewulf views these codes as being in any way gender-specific.

Immediately after Constantine is baptized, the author of the Inventio claims that “he ordered churches of Christ to be built everywhere and instructed the idols’ temples to be destroyed’’ [lussit aedificari ubique ecclesias Christi templa autem idolorum destrui praecipit] (Holder 2,11. 45-47). In Cynewulfs version, Constantine does tell Elene— toward the end of the poem—to build a church in Calvary, but he never instructs her to destroy any tem p les .97 Cynewulfs refusal to depict the king ordering the destruction of

^^It should be noted that the Inventio and Cynewulfs Elene differ slightly with respect to Constantine’s churchbuilding campaign. In the Inventio. Constantine is baptized, and then immediately orders churches to be built in Rome and tells Elene to build a church on the site of the Lord’s Cross. In Elene. Cynewulf doesn’t say anything about Constantine building churches in Rome, and his orders that Elene build a church in Calvary come toward the end of the poem, after she has sent him word about having discovered the Cross.

113 heathen temples may be explained as an attempt to bring Constantine’s behavior more closely in line with Anglo-Saxon attitudes regarding the efficacy of gradual conversion and the toleration of certain heathen practices. Such attitudes toward conversion are clearly exhibited in Anglo-Saxon missionary writings such as Gregory’s letter to Mellitus (601

A.D.)—a Roman abbot who had recently embarked on the Augustinian mission—in which

Gregory instructs Mellitus to pass along information to Augustine regarding the proper treatment of temples found among the English people.

... [W]e wish you [Mellitus] to inform him [Augustine] that we have been giving careful thought to the affairs of the English, and have come to the conclusion that the temples of the idols among that people should on no account be destroyed. The idols are to be destroyed, but the temples themselves are to be aspersed with holy water and, altars set up in them, and relics deposited there. For if the temples are well-built, they must be purified from the worship of demons and dedicated to the service of the true God. In this way, we hope that the people, seeing that their temples are not destroyed, may abandon their error and, flocking more readily to their accustomed resorts, may come to know and adore the true God. (Bede, Ecclesiastical History. 1. 31)

That a very careful ethics of destruction is at work in Elene is further indicated by

Cynewulfs omission of a passage toward the end of the Inventio describing the queen’s persecution of the non-con verted Jews:

Beata autem Helena quae in Diesu Christum fide confirmans in Hierosolimis et omnia perficiens persecutionem ludaeis misit qui increduli facta sunt et minauit eos a ludaea. (Holder 13,11. 373-377)

[After blessed Helena had encouraged those in Jerusalem who had the faith of Jesus Christ and had completed everything, she brought persecution on the Jews who had not believed and frightened them out of Judaea.]

Cynewulf erases this image of a vengeful queen persecuting nonbelievers, replacing it instead with a portrait of a loving Christian queen who teaches a receptive Jewish audience

114 to love God, to keep peace and friendship among themselves, and to unquestioningly obey

their superior, the bishop Cyriacus. Cynewulf suggests that the Jews whom Elene teaches

represent only a small fraction of their populace, claiming that she called together ..pa

heo seleste / mid ludeum gumena wiste” [those whom she whom she knew were the best

of men among the Jews] (1201b-1202). He thus tacitly acknowledges the many non

converts outside the queen’s immediate audience. Yet Elene does not exhibit even the

slightest hint of aggression toward these non-believers. If the poem begins with lengthy

descriptions of Constantine's fierce military campaigns against heathen tribes, it ultimately

moves to an image of Elene that is noteworthy for its absence of violence against non

believers. Why, we might ask, is Cynewulfs treatment of the Germanic and the Jewish

non-believers so very different? Why does Cynewulf wholeheartedly endorse

Constantine’s leading his men in the bloody slaughter of heathen Huns, Goths, and

Franks, yet refuse to depict Elene initiating any violence toward the remaining, non converted Jews. The answer, I think, lies not in Cynewulfs attempting to distinguish between violence initiated by men versus that initiated by women, but precisely in his not distinguishing between male and female adherence to Germanic codes concerning ethical warfare.

A belief central to Anglo-Saxon culture—and derived frrom both Roman and early

Christian writings—was that all wars needed to be justified. According to the Romans living under the Empire, the best reason for going to war was defense of the frontiers and pacification of the barbarians living beyond the frontiers .98 Early patristic writers such as

Ambrose and Augustine, as well as early medieval ecclesiasts such as Gregory and Bede modified Roman attitudes toward ethical warfare, attempting to harness martial energies for

^®J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, “War and Peace in the Earlier Middle Ages,” Transactions of the Roval Historical Societv. 5th series, vol. 25 (1975) 157.

115 the spread of Christianity: in their eyes just wars were religious campaigns undertaken for

spreading the faith.^ Late Anglo-Saxon attitudes toward ethical war exhibited strands of

Roman, patristic, and early medieval thought. Ælfric’s comment on ethical war in his

conclusion to his synopsis of I Maccabees ix 1-22 (992-1002), the only Old English

vernacular text that categorizes types of warfare, provides a neat summary of late Anglo-

Saxon attitudes toward the ethics of war. 190

Secgaô swa-{)eah lareowas {wet synd feower cyima gefeoht iustum J)æt is rihtlic iniustum unrihtlic ciuile betwux ceaster-gewarum Plusquam ciuile betwux siblingum Iustum bellum is rightlic gefeoht wid da redan flot-menn o^^x wid odre peoda pe eard wUlad fordon Unrihtlic gefeoht is pe of yrre cymde pæt pridde gefeoht pe geflite cymd betwux ceaster-gewarum is swyde pleolic and pæt feorde gefeoht pe betwux freondum bid is swide earmlic and endeleas sorti. (Ælffic, LS n, 112, 114,11. 705-14)

[Nevertheless teachers say that there are four kinds of war: justum. that is, just; injustum. that is, unjust; civile, between citizens; plusquam civile, between relatives. Justum bellum is righteous battle against the cruel seamen, or against other people who wish to destroy the land. Unrighteous war is that which comes of anger. The third war, which comes of contention between citizens, is very dangerous; and the fourth war, that is between friends, is very miserable and endless sorrow.] (Ælfric, II, 113, 115,11. 705-14)

Ælfric’s brief discussion of warfare is a fairly close rendition of that found in Isidore of

Seville’s Etvmologiae. 191 Yet, Ælfric’s comments on just war differ from Isidore’s in

^^Wallace-Hadrill, “War and Peace in the Earlier Middle Ages,” 158-59,168-69.

lOOSee J. E. Cross, “The Ethic of War in Old English,” England Before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources Presented to Dorothv Whitelock. ed. Peter Clemoes and Kathleen Hughes (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1971) 273.

Justum bellum est, quod ex praedicto geritur de rebus repetitis aut propulsandorum hostium causa. ” [Just war is that which is waged about demanding satisfaction from an agreement or for the sake of repelling enemies]. Isidore, Etvmologiarum Libri XX, xvii.2; qtd. in J. E. Cross,“The Ethic of War in Old English,” 272 n. 3.

116 their emphasis on national defense, for if Isidore provides two different justifications for war (to demand satisfaction from an agreement and to repel enemies), Ælfric provides only one: national defense and particularly defense against the "redan flot-menn” [cruel sea-men, i.e.. Vikings], who resumed their invasions in 980 and were thus, during the time when

Ælfnc composed his synopsis of Maccabees (992-1002), inflicting crushing blows on the

English. The most easily defensible war, according to the Anglo-Saxons, was thus one waged for defensive purposes. This is precisely the type of war Constantine fights throughout Elene—war for the sake of defending Rome against invading Germanic forces.

Moreover, Constantine’s wars are further justified in being Christian-heathen conflicts, and thus defensible as attempts to ensure the survival and expansion of Christian culture. Yet the non-converted Jews, for all of their recalcitrance, can by no stretch of the imagination be characterized as military threats to the Christian empire. For while they refuse to accept

Christianity and attempt to obstruct the recovery of Christian history, they never raise arms or in any way present a physical menace to the empire. Thus for Elene to initiate violence against them as she does in the Inventio would, according to Anglo-Saxon ethics of warfare, be a form of unjust war. For Cynewulf to include this episode in his poem would, accordingly, be to sanction unjust warfare. It is no wonder that he decided to omit it.

Cynewulf also emphasizes Elene’s adherence to Anglo-Saxon ethics of war by portraying the queen teaching the people to keep peace and friendship among themselves.

These teachings are clearly meant to instill enduring civil peace among the members of

Jerusalem, and thus to prevent the civile and plusquam civile types of warfare that Ælfric characterizes, respectively, as “very dangerous” [swyde pleolic] and “very miserable and endless sorrow” [swide earmlic and endeleas sorti]. As Elene works to establish civil peace in Jerusalem, so too, her mission in Jerusalem promises to contribute to a different kind of peace, namely, the national security of Rome. After Judas brings Elene the nails used in

117 Christ’s Crucifixion, she seeks counsel about their use and finally decides to have them

sent to Rome and placed on the bridle of Constantine’s war-horse as a kind of Christian

talisman to ensure victory in future military campaigns. Before sending the nails to Rome,

an unnamed wise man promises Elene that

He ah set wigge sped, sigor set sæcce 7 sybbe gehwær, æt gefeohte friô se de fo[r]an lædeô bridels on blancan ^onne beadurofe æt gar^ræce, guman gecoste beraô bord 7 ord. (1181b-1186a)

[He will have success at the battle, victory at the strife and peace everywhere, security at the fight, he who leads forth battle on the horse when the battle-brave ones, the excellent men, bear spears and shields at battle.]

The close juxtaposition of aggression and serenity in this passage, in which noims of hostility alliterate with those of amity, with “sæcce” [strife] and “sybbe” [peace],

“gefeohte” [battle] and “friô “ [peace] resting easily alongside one another, is a formal testament to the complicated dialectic between war and peace that existed in Anglo-Saxon culture. Wallace-Hadrill has examined this dialectic, finding similar attitudes toward war and peace in Roman and Anglo-Saxon cultures. He convincingly shows that, for the

Romans and Anglo-Saxons, war and peace were not different entities but rather “two poles of a single c o n c e p t . ” ' 02 “Peace,” he suggests, “was not merely absence of war; it was a condition that in practice resulted from war, and which would always demand a warlike stance.”'03 Pointing to the existence of a specific social class dedicated to the preparation for and practice of war (the bellatorest and to marriage outside the family as a means of

lO^Wallace-Hadrill, “War and Peace in the Earlier Middle Ages,” 157.

Wallace-Hadrill, “War and Peace in the Earlier Middle Ages,” 158.

118 making peace among a group that one would otherwise automatically assume to be hostile, he claims, “war was a natural condition for the Anglo-Saxons.”!*^ Yet, a “natural condition” that was strictly regulated by an ethics that demanded just cause and right intent, by mles that applied to both men and women.

V. Cults of Queens and Crosses

Indeed it is perhaps not surprising that Cynewulfs Elene exhibits such a strong interest in queenship. Susan Ridyard has identified the tenth century as a period that witnessed the growth of numerous saintly cults of former royal figures, and it is quite possible that Elene was intended to function in a manner similar to that of the many vernacular and Latin vitae of royal men and women composed during this time.^O^ That is, Elene may have been written to encourage queens and their husbands to patronize ecclesiastical foundations associated with either Elene or with relics of the Cross or nails. Ridyard has extensively examined several royal cults of Wessex and East Anglia, arguing that “educated churchmen had more than a passing interest in the theory of rulership” and demonstrating that these men employed vitae of royal saints “to make known their views on the private virtues and public duties of kings and their consorts.”*0^

! (^^Wallace-Hadrill, “War and Peace in the Earlier Middle Ages,” 165.

!05susan Ridyard, The Roval Saints of Anglo-Saxon England: A Study of West Saxon and East Anglian Roval Cults (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988). Anglo-Saxon royal women venerated as saints include: Æthelthryth (queen of Ecgfrith of Northumbria), Seaxburh (sister of Æthelthryth and queen of Eorcenbert of Kent), Withburga (sister of Æthelthryth), Edburga (daughter of Edward the Elder), Ælfgifu (wife of Edmund), Wulfthryth (the wife or concubine of Edgar), and Edith (daughter of Edgar and Wulfthryth).

lO^Ridyard, The Roval Saints of Anglo-Saxon England. 78-79.

119 Yet Cynewulfs Elene. in spite of the fact that it details the exploits of a saintly

queen, exhibits strikingly different characteristics from conventional vitae of royal women.

First, these vitae usually emphasize the queen’s renunciation of royal status and her desire

to relinquish the earthly glories associated with queenship.^07 ^s we have seen,

Cynewulf makes no efforts to suggest that Elene ever renounced her queenly status—and

he had ample precedent for doing so given the stress on Elene’s virginity, humility, and

rejection of rank that are present in Ambrose’s DeObitu—but rather takes every

opportunity to emphasize her royal status. Moreover, because vitae of royal women were

primarily intended to increase devotion to the saint, they generally take the life of the saint

as their main subject. Yet Elene is not the only or even main subject of Cynewulfs text;

vying for sanctity and veneration in the legend are Elene, Cyriacus, and the Cross. And,

while cults of royal figiues were common in tenth-century England, so too, were cults of

the Cross. It is thus not surprising to find a tenth-century narrative that explicitly associates

itself with the 3 May Invention festival. As Cynewulf claims towards the end of the

legend: “May there be to every man the door of hell closed and heaven opened, the

kingdom of the angels forever opened, eternal joy, and a portion of them be assigned with

Mary, those who keep in mind the festival of the most precious cross under heaven’’

(1228b-1234a). The subject of veneration in Cynewulfs poem is thus arguably not Elene or even a subject, but rather an object: the Cross. But veneration of the Cross was almost always accompanied by veneration of Elene, and thus while Cynewulf s Elene does not strictly conform to conventions of Anglo-Saxon royal hagiography, its clear interest in queenship suggests that, like more conventional royal vitae, it was a means for Cynewulf to express his views on contemporary royal life.

lO^Ridyard, The Roval Saints of Anglo-Saxon England. 82-92.

120 The poem’s portrayal of queenship is thus a deeply historical one, in which making known the meaning of the Cross is depicted as profoundly dependent on the actions of individual queens. As the poem celebrates the late antique Christian queen who recovered both the actual relics and history of the Cross, it concomitantly dramatizes the importance of queens in upholding Christian life—alluding both to the centrality of queens in the early conversion of England as well as the increasingly powerful religious roles granted to tenth- century queens as part of the Benedictine Reforms. We cannot know if Cynewulfs poem ever guided the actions of any individual Anglo-Saxon queens. However, we know that some version o f the legend influenced the actions of Æthelflæd, mler of Mercia from 911-

918, as the 912 entry in the Mercian Register states: “In this year Æthelflæd, Lady of the

Mercians, came on the holy eve of the Invention of the Cross to Scergeat and built the borough there, and in the same year that at B r i d g e w o r t h . 08

108£Hd,211.

121 CHAPTERS

HGURING JEZEBEL: QUEENSHIP AND ROYAL COUNSEL

Writing in 1881 about Ælfric’s version of the biblical narrative Kings, Walter Skeat stated, “This is a mere epitome of passages from the Book of Kings; the extracts relate to

Saul, David, Ahab, Jehu, Hezekiah, Manasses, and Josiah.’’^ However, what Skeat did not see, perhaps because of his nineteenth-century masculinist bias, was the extent to which Ælfric’s Kings (992-1002 A.D.) deals not only with biblical kings, but also with the female figure Jezebel, C^ueen of Israel.^ At a mere four hundred and eighty-one lines long,

Ælfric’s Kings is an extremely condensed rendition of the biblical narrative, which runs, in both the Vulgate and Old Latin versions, to well over several thousand lines.3 In short.

^Walter W. Skeat, ed., Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, vol. I, Early English Text Society o.s. 76, 82 (London: 1881-1900); rpt. as one volume (London: Oxford University Press, 1966) 551. References are to the reprint. Hereafter cited parenthetically as LS with volume, item, page, and line numbers.

^Throughout this chapter, I underline Ælfric’s Kings as a means of distinguishing it from the biblical versions of the narrative. However, the underlining is also used to indicate that Ælfric’s Kings, although heavily based on biblical sources, differs enough from these sources that it may be considered a narrative in its own right. Likewise, in the following chapter, I underline Ælfric’s Esther-translation, but not the biblical versions of the text.

^Ælfric’s Kings is so highly condensed that it is difficult to tell which version(s) of the Latin he worked from. Richard Marsden has argued that the portions of the Old English Heptateuch which can be attributed to Ælfric are essentially faithful to the Latin of the Vulgate, although he notes the possibility of Old Latin influence, most likely transmitted through patristic commentaries; see Marsden, The Text of the Old Testament in Anglo- Saxon England (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995) 395-449. My comparison of Ælfric’s Kings with both the Latin Vulgate and one Old Latin version arrives at a conclusion similar

122 Ælfric cut a text which was over one hundred pages long down to a narrative of

approximately fifteen pages. Throughout Kings. Ælfric exhibits a keen interest in Jezebel,

maintaining all of her speeches, all of the references other characters make to her, and all of

her interactions with kings, prophets, and counsellors. At times, he even expands upon his

biblical source-texts, adding a word or phrase to describe Jezebel which is not present in

the Latin. Ælfric’s treatment of Jezebel represents a marked departure from his treatment of

all other characters in the biblical narrative, whose actions and speeches are either cut or extremely condensed. Yet, Ælfric’s discussion of Jezebel has received surprisingly little critical attention, especially in light of the interest his other female characters have recently elicited from feminist and revisionist Anglo-Saxonists. A review of the literature on

Ælfric’s Kings unearths no full-length discussions of this text, but merely Skeat’s terse remark quoted at the start, Milton McC. Gatch’s succinct overview of the dates and setting in which Kings might have been read, and Joyce Hill’s brief consideration of the text’s manuscript history.*^

The absence of Kings in discussions of Ælfric’s work is no doubt partly due to its generic status as an Old English translation from Latin biblical source-texts, for it is only to Marsden’s: that Ælfric, in translating Kings, worked mainly from some version of the Vulgate text. References to the Vulgate and the Old Latin will be to the following editions: Monachorum abbatiae pontificiae sancti Hieronymi in urbe ordinis sancti Benedicti, eds., Biblia sacra iuxta latinam vulgatam versionem. vol. VI (Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanus, 1951); Pierre Sabatier. Bibliorum sacrorum Latinae versiones antiquae. seu Vetus Italica. vol. I (Rheims, 1743-49, rpt., Tumholt, Belgium: Brepols, 1976). Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically with volume and page numbers.

^See Milton McC. Gatch, “The Office in Late Anglo-Saxon Monasticism,” Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Michael Lapidge and Helmut Gneuss (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985) 353-354. Hereafter cited parenthetically. See also Joyce Hill, “The Dissemination of Ælfric’s Lives of Saints.’’ Holv Men and Holv Women: Old English Prose Saints’ Lives and Their Contexts, ed. Paul E. Szarmach (Albany: State U of New York P, 1996) 235-259.

123 recently that such translations have begun to be valued as contemporary cultural artifacts

and not dismissed as “unoriginal,” “non-literary,” or “non-English” writings. Perhaps

also, this absence is a product of the context in which Kings is usually read: Skeat’s two

volumes of Ælfric’s Lives of Saints (992-1002), edited and translated from Cotton Julius

E. VÜ.5 Embedded within a collection of approximately forty-three didactic narratives and

saints’ lives. Kings appears, in Joyce Hill’s words, as “an anomaly” which “seems

somewhat out of place in the Julius collection.”^ Seeming to be neither homily nor

hagiography, Ælfiic’s Old Testament narrative has been generally ignored by both literary

critics and historians as an uninteresting text. Yet Ælfiic’s Kings becomes increasingly

interesting as we inquire into its Latin sources and the culture within which it was

produced. It is striking that Ælfric should choose to focus a large portion of his Kings-

translation on the queen Jezebel. It is even more striking that this protracted depiction of

abhorrent queenship, with its dual emphases on the queen as active political agent and

advisor to the king, should occur in a collection intended for two of King Æthelred U’s

closest advisors.

As a queen, Ælfric’s Jezebel inhabited the highest and most public office available

to women in early medieval culture. Yet Anglo-Saxon queenship was neither a well-

defined nor static institution, but a constantly shifting display of female status—status that

varied depending on the individual queen, the king to whom she was married, and the

particular kingdom in which she lived. Ælfric’s representation of Jezebel-as-queen is

particularly interesting in that it was composed in Wessex during the cultural redefinition of

^Walter W. Skeat, ed., Ælfric’s Lives of Saints. 2 volumes in 4 parts. Early English Text Society, o.s. 76, 82, 94, 114 (London, 1881-1900); rpt. as 2 volumes (London: Oxford University Press, 1966).

^Hill, “The Dissemination of Ælfric’s Lives of Saints.” 251.

124 Wessex queenship that began in the mid tenth century.^ This chapter will argue that Ælfiric uses the figure Jezebel to create a portrait of queenship which both reflects ecclesiastical anxiety regarding the queen’s changing role in Anglo-Saxon culture and also seeks to influence popular views on the role of the queen in late tenth-century Wessex. Yet, the biblical queen functions for Ælfiric as more than an exemplar of abhorrent queenship. As

Claude Lévi-Strauss has suggested, many male intellectuals have believed that women are

“bonnes à penser,’’ (good/goods to think through), that is, that women have diverse and opposed meanings inscribed on them and lend themselves to multiple interpretations.* It was perhaps such a belief that led Bede, in his Explanatio Apocalvpsis. to claim that

Jezebel was a “figura” who could be found “per orbem” [throughout the world].^ It is thus, I will argue, that Ælfric viewed Jezebel as a complex figure through which he could discuss not only queenship, but also several additional cultural issues which were very real problems for King Æthelred U in late tenth-century Wessex, that is, kingly counsel and the royal theft of property.

I will begin with a discussion of the cultural context for Ælfiic’s Kings—the audience for the text, patristic and early medieval ideas about its female protagonist, and its immediate manuscript context—and then proceed to a close reading of Ælfric’s translation.

?See Stafford, “The King’s Wife,” 56-78.

^Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropologv. trans. C. Jacobsen and B. Grundfest Shoepf (Harmondsworth: Peregrine, 1977) 61-62. Qtd. in Janet L. Nelson, “Women and the Word in the Earlier Middle Ages,” Women in the Church: Papers Read at the 1989 Summer Meeting and the 1990 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical Historical Societv. ed. W J. Shiels and Diana Wood (Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1990) 58; also discussed in Peter Brown, The Bodv and Societv (New York: Columbia UP, 1988) 153-159.

^J.P. Migne, ed., Patrologiae cursus complétas. Series Latina, vol. 93 (Paris, 1844- 1891) 139A. Hereafter, cited as PL with volume and column number. On the idea of figura in the Middle Ages, see Auerbach, “Figura.”

125 examining its deviation from his biblical source-texts and the cultural concerns these

deviations suggest. While some Anglo-Saxonists, in the current race to catch up with our

own (perhaps quite rightly) perceived theoretical shortcomings, have begun to view source-

study as a somewhat dated critical methodology, I believe that Ælfric’s transformation of

the biblical queen offers fresh insight into two insufficiently understood facets of late

Anglo-Saxon culture, that is, public attitudes toward the changing role of Wessex queens

and the idea of royal counsel imder Æthelred’s reign. Moreover, Ælffic’s depiction of

Jezebel attests once again to the highly complex relationship Anglo-Saxon monastics

maintained to the Old Testament: their belief that Old Testament characters were not to be

narrowly allegorized as merely the old prefiguring the new, but to be viewed as complex

figures who could help a culture to understand its own past and to envision its potential

futures.

1. The Audience for Kings

Cotton Julius E. vii, the earliest extant manuscript containing Ælfric’s Kings-translation. opens with both Latin and Old English prefaces that are not contained in any other

manuscript of the Lives. Both prefaces state that the English Lives were translated from the

Latin at the express request of the ealdorman Æthelweard and his son Ælthelmær, who were intimate friends and chief advisors to King Ælthelred II. Æthelweard, ealdorman of the Western Provinces and kinsman to Æthelred, served as senior ealdorman from 993 until his death c. 998 and was responsible for the military defense of the south-west against the Vikings. 10 His son Æthelmær, described in the vernacular version of charter S 914 as

l^ ^ ere is some controversy over the actual date of Æthelweard’s death. Simon Keynes suggests c. 998, for it is in this year that Æthelweard ceases to witness charters. See Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘The Unready’: 978-1016 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1980) 192 n. 139. Peter Clemoes suggests a later date, c. 1002, although he acknowledges the uncertainty of his claim and the fact that Kenneth Sisam worked on

126 “mines hlafordes discôen” [my lord’s thegn], actually lived in the king’s household, and

used the lands he governed for the sites of both Ceme Abbey (in which Ælfric wrote the

Lives of Saints') and the abbey of Eynsham, of which Ælfiric was appointed abbot in

1(X)5.^ 1 Both Æthelweard and his son consistently appear in prominent positions on

witness lists to late tenth-century charters; such lists, as Simon Keynes has argued, “serve

as an invaluable guide to the composition of a group of laymen who would have been in

frequent and intimate attendance on the king, and who as his personal officials may have exerted considerable influence on his d e c i s i o n s . ’’ *2 Ælfiric offers the Lives to these

noblemen, with the accompanying remark that these texts should edify “quibus cumque

placuerit huic operi operam dare, siue legendo, seu audiendo” [as many, namely, as are

pleased to study this work, either by reading or hearing it read] fLS I, 1.3-4), thus suggesting that he expected these texts to reach a wider audience than simply his noble patrons. Both prefaces clearly state that the Lives was compiled for the “laicis” [the laity] fLS I. Preface, 1,13) or “læwedan men” [lay people] fLS I. Preface, 4, 48) who had never before had access to these narratives because they were unable to understand Latin.

However, these “læwedan men” cannot be Ælfric’s immediate patrons, for we know that at least one of them, Æthelweard, could in fact understand Latin because he composed a Latin version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for his cousin Matilda I of Essen. These the basis of 998. See Clemoes, “The Chronology of Ælfric’s Works,” The Anglo-Saxons: Studies in Some Aspects of their Historv and Culture Presented to Bruce Dickins. ed. Peter Clemoes (London: Bowes, 1959) 33. The date of Æthelweard’s death is important, for it establishes a terminus for the production of Lives of Saints, and thus for Kings as well.

^ 1 Keynes notes that S 914 is spurious but that its witness list must derive from a genuine source (The Diplomas of King Æthelred. 161).

^ ^Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred. 161. See also 190-193 and table six.

^^For discussions of the Latin Chronicle and its Anglo-Saxon sources, see E. E. Barker, “The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Used by Æthelweard,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical

127 “læwedan men” for whom Ælfric writes would, therefore, most likely be laymen other than his named patrons, a further indication that Ælfric expected the Lives to circulate beyond their immediately intended audience.

It is difficult to know whether Ælfrric’s Kings was ever delivered aloud in church before the laity. Peter Clemoes has argued that the items contained in Æ lfnc’s Lives were not intended for liturgical reading but rather for private reading, their varied lengths and lack of oral markers suggesting that they were never intended to be delivered aloud as part of the liturgy.*'^ However, we know that what actually happened to the items contained in

Ælfnc’s Lives was far different than what he might have intended. In spite of his vehement protestations against dividing up, miscopying, and adding to, his collections,

Ælfric's works were taken out of their original contexts, miscopied, and inserted into new and diverse collections of ecclesiastical materials—even during his own lifetime. It is highly probable that at some time Kings was inserted into a collection intended for liturgical use before a lay audience. In a departure from Clemoes’ assertion that Ælfric’s Lives was intended for strictly non-liturgical purposes, Milton McC. Gatch has suggested the Night

Office—part of the daily round of non-sacramental, monastic services to be celebrated or recited at intervals during the day or night—as a likely setting for the public reading of Old

Testament narratives. Gatch cites Kings as a “sununer history” which would have been

Research 40 (1967): 74-91, and also Elisabeth van Houts, “Women and the Writing of History in the Early Middle Ages: the Case of Abbess Matilda of Essen and Æthelweard,’ Early Medieval Europe 1 (1992): 53-68.

^Clemoes, “The Chronology of Ælfric’s Works,” 9-10.

^^For references to Ælfric’s protestations against dividing up or changing his original collections, and also for a discussion of what ultimately happened to Ælfric’s texts, see Hill, 235-261.

128 read at church between the second Sunday after Pentecost and the beginning of August.

The reading of Old Testament narratives during the Night Office, Gatch argues, was part of

the general monastic goal of reading the entire Bible aloud during the course of one year.^7

Those readings which could not be completed during the Office were then continued in the

refectory, Although removal to the refectory would have certainly eliminated a lay

audience, Gatch asserts that it is possible laypeople were present to hear the Night

Office. This is certainly possible given that monastic churches often served the local

community in addition to the monks, although one wonders whether the late night hours

diuing which the Night Office took place might not have deterred most of the laity from

attending. Gatch further argues that Æ lfnc’s vernacular Old Testament translations “ought

to be understood... as an adaptation of materials from the monastic devotional life to the

devotional life of laymen and non-monastic clergy” (362). Modeling their private

devotional practices on the customs of cloistered monastics, Ælfric’s pious lay patrons

might very well have employed Old Testament narratives in the same way monks did—for

reading aloud on Sundays or at mealtime. If Ælfric’s Kings was indeed employed in this

manner, it would thus have been known to a wider lay audience than his immediate

patrons.

If Ælfric’s Kings was read aloud, either at church or by his lay patrons, it seems

likely that women as well as men would have been exposed to this Old Testament narrative.

There is also a slight possibility that Ælfric’s lay patron Æthelweard might have sent a copy

l^Gatch, “The Office in Late Anglo-Saxon Monasticism,” 353-55.

^^Gatch, “The Office in Late Anglo-Saxon Monasticism,” 355.

l^Gatch, “The Office in Late Anglo-Saxon Monasticism,” 353-55.

^^Gatch, “The Office in Late Anglo-Saxon Monasticism,” 355.

129 of the Lives to his female cousin Matilda I of Essen. We know that Ælthelweard composed

a Latin version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for Matilda. Given her English descent,

Matilda was extremely interested in royal English genealogy and thus might have requested

from Æthelweard a copy of the Lives, which contains the vitae of English saints such as

Æthelthryth, Edmund, Swithun, and Oswald. However, we do not know whether Matilda

was able to read Old English—the fact that Æthelweard translated the Chronicle into Latin

for her suggests that she could not—and all of the extant copies of Ælfiic’s Lives are

currently housed in English libraries and show no signs of ever having reached the

Continent.20 The most convincing evidence for a female readership of Ælfric’s Lives is a

comment contained in his Admonitio ad filium spiritualem [Admonition to a Spiritual Son!.

In spite of the masculine reference in its title, the Admonitio is an Old English work of

moral instruction addressed to both monks and nuns living under the Benedictine Rule. In

the prologue, Ælfric alludes to “Basilius se eadiga be dam we ær awriton” [Basil the

blessed about whom we have written before].2l If the text to which Ælfric is referring is

the vita of Saint Basil which is contained in his Lives of Saints, he must then be assuming

that his monastic audiences, both male and female, had read the Lives of Saints.22 That

both texts were written in English suggests that these were monastics untrained in Latin,

whom Ælfric would have considered a suitable audience for the Lives.

20van Houts, 60-62.

21 Henry W. Norman, ed.. The Anglo-Saxon Remains of the Hexameron of St. Basil. . . and the Saxon Remains of St. Basil ’s Admonitio ad Filium Spiritualem (London and Oxford, 1848) 33-34.

22gee Jonathan Wilcox, ed., Ælfric’s Prefaces (Durham: Durham Medieval Texts, 1994) 52.

130 n. Jezebel’s Past

Ælfric’s Kings and his brief reference to Jezebel in his homily on the beheading of Saint

John the Baptist (CH I. XXXII) are the only extant Old English treatments of Jezebel.23

However, references to the biblical queen were quite common in both patristic writings as

well as early insular and continental works. Together, these writings created a variety of cultural traditions concerning the biblical queen which would have helped to shape Ælfric’s depiction of Jezebel in his Kings-translation.^^

Drawing on both the Old and New Testament representations of Jezebel, that is, the

Book of Kings and the Apocalypse, Ambrose (c. 340-397) interpreted Jezebel as a type of

Synagoga, a figure of false belief and heretical practice. This heretical practice was particularly evident, Ambrose argued, in Jezebel’s willful misunderstanding of texts. As he asks in Epistula 14: “Who is Jezebel when engaged in persecution, if not Synagoga, flowing vainly, abounding vainly in the Scriptures, which she neither tends not understands?’’^^ On account of her gender, Jezebel also symbolized for Ambrose the

2^For this information, I have relied on A Microfiche Concordance to Old English, ed. Antonette diPaolo Healey and Richard L. Venezky (Toronto, 1980).

have not included here all of the references to Jezebel which occur in patristic writings or early medieval literature, only those writers whom Ælfric might have read or who might have helped to establish early medieval insular views on Jezebel. For a fuller account of Jezebel references, see Jan M. Ziolkowski, Jezebel: A Norman Latin Poem of the Early Eleventh Century (New York: Peter Lang, 1989) 1-23; Janet Nelson, “Queens as Jezebels: Brunhild and Balthild in Merovingian History,” Politics and Ritual in Earlv Medieval Europe (London and Ronceverte: Hambleton Press, 1986) 1-48; and Pauline Stafford, Queens. Concubines, and Dowagers: The King’s Wife in the Early Middle Ages Athens, Georgia; U of Georgia P, 1983) 13, 15, 19-20,24-25. Ziolkowski is the only one of these historians who mentions Ælfric’s Jezebel.

Ambrose, Epistola extra collectionem 1.14. ed. Michaela Zelzer, Corpus Scriptomm Ecclesiasticomm Latinorum. vol. 82 (Vienna, 1982) 277. Hereafter, cited as CSEL with volume and page numbers. Qtd. in Ziolkowski, 14.

131 temptations of the world, and he viewed the prophet Elijah’s flight from Jezebel not as indicative of his fear of a woman, but as evidence o f his resistance of worldly tem ptation.26

Most importantly, Ambrose drew parallels between the religious persecutor Jezebel and the

Arian tormenters of his own time, invoking the biblical queen to speak about contemporary cultural crises, and thus helping to construct the idea of Jezebel as a multifarious but enduring cultural s y m b o l . 2 7 As he claimed in De Nabuthae: “haec est lezabel non un a, sed multiplex, non unius temporis, sed temporum plurimonim” [this Jezebel is not single but multiple; she is not restricted to one time but belongs to many eras].2*

Writing in England during the late seventh and early eighth centuries, Aldhelm seems to have been most interested in both Jezebel and her husband King Ahab as exemplars of avarice which was ultimately punished by heinous torment. References to

Jezebel and Ahab occur towards the end of Aldhelm’s poetic De Virginitate. in a section detailing the allegorical confrontation of vices and virtues which does not appear in the prose work. Specifically, Ahab and Jezebel appear as exemplars of Avarice, which is allegorically gendered as female and depicted as a monstrous leader of combat.

Next, a third Vice, Avarice, foments a battle, a Vice which is, perhaps, best explained as ‘greed.’ A dense army surrounds this leader of combat; she does not walk as a lone pedestrian through public roads.... Hear also of the greedy king of the Hebrew nation, Ahab, by whom the blooming vineyard belonging to Naboth was taken by fraud, when Ahab’s cruel wife [i.e. Jezebel] forged a heinous document (in Ahab’s name). The Avenger, looking down from the high heavens, punished this crime brought about by their fraudulent sins. For dogs licked up the flowing blood of the tyrant, where Naboth, the innocent leader who had harmed

26ziolkowski, 7-8.

^^Ambrose, Epistola 76.18, ed. Michaela Zelzer, CSEL. vol. 82,118. Cited in Ziolkowski, 15.

De Nabuthae. ed. Carolus Schenkl, CSEL. vol. 32,491. Qtd. in Ziolkowski, 15.

132 no-one with weapons, lay buried under a shower of rocks. The savage dogs, however, fiercely tore Jezebel to pieces with their teeth and crushed her limbs, drenched with purple gore, into the ground—Jezebel who had written the letter to the town and had cruelly punished the righteous followers of the Lord.29

Aldhelm’s tale of avenged avarice is striking in that it quickly bypasses the sufferings of

Ahab which appear in all biblical versions of Kings, and focuses instead on the punishing of the female figure Jezebel. In the Latin biblical narratives, Ahab is struck painfully by an arrow between the lungs and the stomach, and the wounded king is forced to spend almost an entire day watching the remainder of the battle, as his blood seeps from his injured body onto the floor of the chariot in which he lies. Yet Aldhelm glosses over this suffering, merely noting that “dogs licked up the flowing blood of the tyrant.” Jezebel’s deserved torment is, however, fiilly recounted, and even slightly magnified in comparison to the biblical accounts. That Aldhelm depicts Jezebel’s torment in far greater detail than her husband’s suggests a tradition in early medieval England of viewing her as the instigator and more serious party in their mutually-enacted crimes. Jezebel’s most heinous crime,

Aldhelm suggests, is not her killing of right-minded prophets, but rather her role in instigating the fraudulent acquisition of property through the use of written documents.^

Unlike Aldhelm’s discussion of Jezebel, which is drawn from the Old Testament, most of Bede’s references to Jezebel are taken from the New Testament. In his Explanatio

Apocalvpsis. Bede explores the etymology of the name “Jezebel,” stating that “Nomen

Jezabel, quod fluxum sanguinis sonat, convenit hereticis” [The name Jezebel, which means

Aldhelm: the Poetic Works, trans. Michael Lapidge and James L. Rosier (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1985) 160.

^^Note that Aldhelm mentions Jezebel’s writing of documents two times, whereas he only once refers to her role as a murderess of right-minded prophets.

133 ‘flow of blood,’ is fitting for heretics].Like Ambrose, Bede emphasizes the

pervasiveness o f Jezebel as a “figura” [figure] who could be found “per orbem”

[throughout the w o r l d ] . 3 2 Bede does not, however, mention the biblical queen in his commentary on the Old Testament K i n g s . 3 3 His single reference to the Old Testament

Jezebel occurs in his homily on Saint John the Baptist, in which the biblical queen and her husband appear as examples of wicked people who torment true believers.34

This Old Testament representation of Jezebel as a persecutor of righteous ecclesiasts was particularly appealing to historical writers such as the seventh-century Italian hagiographer Jonas of Bobbio and the eighth-century English hagiographer Eddius

Stephanus. Both writers invoked the name Jezebel as a means of describing wicked queens who exhibited hatred for righteous ecclesiasts.33 Writing of the queen Brunhild who had the bishop Desiderius stoned to death, Jonas of Bobbio stated, “mentem

Brunechildis . . . secundae ut erat Zezebelis” [Brunhild’s mind became like that of a second

Jezebel].36 Similarly, Eddius Stephanus invoked the name Jezebel in order to describe

Queen Balthild, who had nine bishops put to death:

31 PL 93, 139C. Qtd. in Ziolkowski.

32£L93, 139a .

33[n Regum Librum: XXX Ouaestiones. ed. D. Hurst, Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina, vol. 119 (Tumholt: Brepols, 1962)294-322.

3^Homelia23: In Decollatione Sancti Tohannis Baptistae. ed.D. Hurst, Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina, vol.122 (Tumholt: Brepols,1955) 350.

35ziolkowski,15-17.

36vita Columbani I, chapter 18, MGH SSRM 4, page 86. Qtd. in Nelson, “Queens as Jezebels,” 29, n. 150.

134 Nam illo tempore malevola regina nomine Balthild ecclesiam Dei persécuta est; sicut olim pessima regina lezabel, quae propetas Dei occidit, ita ista, exceptis sacerdotibus ac diaconibus, novem episcopos occidere iussit, ex quibus unus est iste Dalflnus episcopus.^^

[For at that time there was an evil-hearted queen named Balthild who persecuted the church of God. Even as once the wicked Queen Jezebel slew nine prophets of God, so she, though sparing the priests and deacons, gave commands to slay nine bishops, one of whom was Bishop Dalflnus.]

However, to Eddius Stephanus, Jezebel stood not only for royal women who persecuted righteous ecclesiasts but, more specifically, for Anglo-Saxon queens who plotted and turned their husbands against holy men. As this English hagiographer wrote:

lamiamque de faretra sua venenatas sagittas veneflca in cor regis, quasi impiissima Gezebel prophetas Dei occidens et Heliam persequens, per auditum verborum emisit, enumerans ei eloquenter sancti Wilftithi episcopi omnem gloriam eius secularem et divitias necnon coenobiorum multitudinem et aediflciorum magnitudinem innumemmque exercitum sodalium regalibus vestimentis et armis omatum. Talibus itaque iaculis cor regis vulneratum, ambo callide quaerentes sanctum caput ecclesiae in suum iteritum contempnere.^*

[Forthwith this sorceress (Queen lurminburg) shot poisoned arrows of speech from her quiver into the heart of the king, as the wicked Jezebel did when she slew the prophets of the Lord and persecuted Elijah. She eloquently described to him all of the temporal glories of Saint Wilfrid, his riches, the number of his monasteries, the greatness of his buildings, his countless army of followers arrayed in royal vestments and arms. With such shafts as these, the king’s heart was wounded, and they both sought skillfully to humiliate the holy head of the Church.]

^^Bertram Colgrave, ed. and trans. The Life of Bishop Wilfrid bv Eddius Stephanus (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985) chapter 6, page 14.

^^Colgrave, The Life of Bishop Wilfrid, chapter 24, page 48. For translation, see facing page.

135 By Ælfric’s time, then, the name “Jezebel” connoted a host of different meanings: it was a word used to refer generally to heretics; it was a term invoked to suggest the misuse of written language, either the misreading of Scripture or the creation of fraudulent documents; and it was a shorthand way of referring to strife between queens and ecclesiasts, and particularly strife which involved a queen’s turning her husband against a man of God. Yet, whichever specific meaning(s) captured the imagination of patristic and early medieval writers, each of their discussions of Jezebel suggests a tradition of viewing the biblical queen as a variegated but culturally enduring figure, a malleable character who could be dressed in many guises to address contemporary cultural concerns. ni. Manuscript Evidence

Ælfnc’s Kings is contained in two manuscripts: British Museum, Cotton Julius E. vii, dated by Ker to the beginning of the eleventh century, but by Skeat to the second half of the century; and Bodleian Hatton 115, what Skeat calls Junius 23, dated by Ker from the third quarter of the eleventh century to the middle of the twelfth.39 The Julius manuscript is written mainly in one hand and contains Latin and Old English prefaces and a contemporary

Latin table of contents in which the scribe lists Kings as “XVU . . . De libro regnum,” the seventeenth out of a total of thirty-nine items. These items consist mainly of Ælffician saints’ lives, in addition to four non-Ælfrician lives and seven of what Hill, following

Patrick Zettel, has termed “non-hagiographical” pieces.*^ Kings. Maccabees, and a self- contained item (which uses the story of Absolom and Achitophel and is tacked on to the

^^Neil R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1957). For British Museum, Cotton Julius E. vii, see Ker, item 162; for Bodleian Hatton 115, see Ker, item 332. Hereafter, references to Ker are cited parenthetically in the text.

'^^^Hill, “The Dissemination of Ælfric’s Lives of Saints." 237.

136 Passion of Saint Alban) are the only Old Testament paraphrases in the collection; Kings is

the only one of these three items which is not assigned to a particular day for reading. In

the Julius manuscript, Kings appears between De Auguriis (On Auguries), which is a

sermon railing against belief in prophecy and witchcraft, and the Passion of Saint Alban.

The other manuscript, Hatton 115, is a more eclectic collection of ecclesiastical materials,

containing homilies, saints’ lives, hortatory sermons, and a number of other Old Testament

pieces, including a homily on Exodus and Numbers, a translation of Judges, and material

from G en esis.In Hatton 115, Kings appears close to the end of the manuscript, between

Genesis and a sermon containing descriptions of hell.

What the manuscript context for Ælfric’s Kings suggests, very simply, is that this

text was meant to be interpreted, like its companion saints’ lives, didactic homilies, and

hortatory sermons, as an exemplary narrative, that is, a text which was specifically

designed to prescribe and enforce the internalization of spiritual and behavioral ideals in its

readers. As many Anglo-Saxonists have noted, Ælfric tended to transform Old Testament

characters into figures who more closely approximated hagiographie types.42 The purpose

in doing so was to present uncomplicated exemplars to Anglo-Saxon audiences so that they

might either emulate or eschew the character traits of these exemplars. This is readily

apparent in Ælfric’s Kings, which transforms complicated biblical characters into wholly

unambiguous types of either good or evil. The text does so by excising any occasions where a good fate comes to evil characters, such as when the wicked king Ahab wins two

^^Hill, “The Dissemination of Ælfric’s Lives of Saints.’’ 251.

^2see Rosemary Woolf, “Saints’ Lives.” Continuations and Beginnings: Studies in Old English Literature, ed. E.G. Stanley (London: Nelson, 1966) 37-66; A. A. Prins, “Some Remarks on Ælfric’s Lives of Saints and his Translations from the Old Testament,” Neophilologus 25 (1940): 112-122; and M. R. Godden, “Ælfric’s Saints’ Lives and the Problem of Miracles,” Leeds Studies in English 16 (1985): 83-100.

137 battles against the Syrian army (3 Kings 20), and by employing straightforward epithets, such as “se arleasa” [the evil one] or “se æ[iele cyning” [the noble king] in order to present

Anglo-Saxon audiences with clear moral choices for emulation. The interpretative guidance

Ælfric provides in the closing lines of Kings provides further evidence that he intended the characters in his Old Testament translation to function very much like the figures in his hagiographie narratives:

Ne mage we awritan ôa mænig-fealdan gerecednyssa ealra iudeiscra cyninga on disum lytlan cwyde od d eisrahela deode hu hi ealle leofodon ac we cwedad to sodum se [% synnura gehyrsumad and godes beboda forsyhd nu on dæs godspelles timan [)aet he bid [>am cynincgum gelic de gecuron deofolgild and heora scyppend forsawon. (LS I. XVIII, 413.473-479)

[We are not able to write the manifold narratives/histories of all of the Jewish kings in this little speech/treatise or how the people of Israel all lived; but we say in truth that he who obeys sins and despises God’s bidding now in the time of the gospel is like the kings who chose idolatry and despised their Creator.]

The idea that historical writing, both biblical and near-contemporary, could function as exemplary narrative was not at all foreign to Anglo-Saxon England. As Bede states in his frequently quoted preface to the Ecclesiastical Historv of the English People:

Siue enim historia de bonis bona referat, ad imitandum bonum auditor sollicitus instigatur; sue mala commemoret de prauis, nihilominus religiosus ac plus auditor siue lector deuitando quod noxium est ac peruersum .^3

[Should history tell about the good things of good people, the solicitous listener is encouraged to imitate what is good; should it record the evil doings of wicked

Bertram Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors, eds., Bede’s Ecclesiastical Historv of the English People (Oxford: Clarendon ftess, 1969) 1.

138 people, no less effectually, the devout and pious reader or listener is encouraged to avoid all that is sinful and perverse.]

Yet, for history to effectively prescribe and instill cultural ideals, the historical narrative had

to bear some resemblance to the culture within which its readers lived. With its numerous

accounts of communal loyalty, fierce battles, and memorable kings, the Old Testament bore

much resemblance to the culture of pre-Conquest England, and was thus a likely historical

text for Anglo-Saxon writers to use in writing about their own culture. In an important

essay on the cultural functions of Old Testament literature in Anglo-Saxon England,

Malcolm Godden has argued:

For the Anglo-Saxons the Old Testament was a veiled way of talking about their own situation. Sometimes it was a matter of explaining how things came to be as they are in the world. Sometimes it provided a figurative firamework for analyzing the church and the clergy. But most often the Old Testament offered them a means of considering and articulating the ways in which kingship, politics, and warfare related to the rule of God.^

Yet, the fact remained that the characters contained in the Old Testament inhabited a world far removed in both time and place from late tenth-century England. To render the characters in his Kings-translation easier for Anglo-Saxon readers to identify with, Ælfric transformed these characters into familiar hagiographie types which lay audiences would have easily recognized from their experiences of reading or hearing saints’ lives. He also went to great lengths to dislocate these characters from their ancient historical contexts, thus bringing them culturally closer to his English audience. For example, unlike the biblical

Kings, which is filled with complicated genealogies, Ælfric’s Kings contains almost no

^M alcolm Godden, “Biblical Literature: the Old Testament,” The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, ed. Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991) 225.

139 genealogies, merely the occasional reference to a particular king’s mother or father.

Similarly, Ælfric often refers to characters by either their proper names or as simply “se cyning” [the king] or “se [)egn” [the thane] rather than as “son of whomever,” making it easier for these characters to be read as generic figures that could be found anywhere in

Christendom. The biblical characters are further dislocated from their ancient historical context through the excision of almost all place-names: while Ælfnc does locate the text in

Israel, all of the complicated descriptions of Middle-Eastern brooks, rivers, and territories, are removed, and a rather hazy sense of place is created through the frequent use of such generic phrases as “his ear de” [his country] (LS I. XVm, 388.73), “dam lande” [that land]

(LS 1. XVm, 386.58), or “anre dune” [a hill] (LS I XVm, 392.142). Finally, foreign cultural practices which appear in the Latin versions of Kings, such as the use of eunuchs for royal advisors, or judges such as Samuel who rule under theocracy (as opposed to monarchy), simply are not translated into Ælfric’s Kings.

IV. Kings: Ælfric’s Version of Oueenship

With its extended discussion of the relationship between the Israelite king Ahab and his wife Jezebel, the Old Testament Kings provided Ælfric with a veiled way to voice his anxieties about the cultural redefinitions of queenship which were taking place during his own lifetime. That Ælfric is in fact interested in Jezebel as a portrait of queenship is apparent from his introduction to her: before we even know Jezebel’s name, we know that she is a queen. In Ælfric’s words, “[)yses cyninges cwen wæs forcuJxDst wifa / Gezabel gehaten hetelice gemodod” [This king’s queen was the most infamous of women, called

Jezebel, fiercely minded] (LS I. XVm, 386.49-50).Ælfric’s introduction of Jezebel as a

“cwen” constitutes a significant departure from both the Vulgate and Old Latin versions of

Kings, which refer to her either by name or as the “regis uxor” [wife of the king], as opposed to “regina.” Only once does the Vulgate refer to Jezebel as “regina”: long after she

140 is dead, men of Judah come looking for the Israelite “sons of the king and sons of the queen,” whom we can assume is Jezebel (4 Kings 10.13)45

It is possible that Ælfric used the term “cwen” as a synonym for “wif,” for the word “cwen” in late Anglo-Saxon England was used interchangeably to refer either to a king’s wife or simply to any man’s wife. However, when Ælfric wants to speak of the queen as a wife to her husband Ahab, he generally uses the phrase “his wife” (LS I XVm,

392.154 and 394.182). Furthermore, Ælfric consistently uses the term “cwen” in other works, such as his Esther-translation. his homily on the invention of the cross, and his lives of Saint Æthelthryth and Saint Thomas (LS I- XX; LS H. XXXVI), in order to distinguish both queens and queen-mothers from other wives.4^ Finally, Ælfric’s

Grammar, a text used for teaching Latin to young monastics, draws a clear distinction between the Old English terms “cwen” and “wif,” offering “cwen” as a translation for the

Latin “regina” and “w if’ as a translation for the Latin “femina.” These distinctions suggest that Ælfric thought of the term “cwen” as a means of denoting a woman who was more than simply a wife.47

45h is possible that Ælfric used the term cwen in the line “fjyses cyninges cwen was forcufxDst wifa” for alliterative purposes. However, since it is impossible to know which of the words in this line—cvninges. cwen. or fbrcu(x)st—was the primary word guiding Ælfric’s choices for alliteration, I will not pursue this line of inquiry any further.

^ F o r Ælfric’s Esther, see Bruno Assmann, ed., Angelsachsiche Homilien und Heiligenleben. Bibliothek der angelsachsichen Prosa 3 (Kassel: Wigand, 1889; rpt. with a supplementary introduction by Peter Clemoes, Darmstadt, 1964) 92-101. For his homily on the invention of the cross, see Malcolm Godden, ed., Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The Second Series. Early English Text Society s.s. 5 (London: Oxford UP, 1979) 174-76.

^^Julius Zupitza, ed., Ælfric’s Granunatik und Glossar (Berlin, 1880; rpt. with a preface by Helmut Gneuss, Berlin, 1966) 24, 36,48. These words are contained in the body of the Grammar.

141 It is also possible that Ælfric termed Jezebel “cwen” in order to make her seem the

king’s only wife, a significant departure from the Vulgate, which clearly represents Jezebel

as only one of Ahab’s many wives (3 Kings 20.7). Given Ælfric’s fear that the polygamy

in his Old Testament translations might be understood by lay readers as a license to engage

in similar marital practices, Ælfric could have used the term “cwen” as a means of

establishing Jezebel’s status as the king’s only w ife.^ For although Ælfric clearly

presents both Ahab and Jezebel as negative exemplars whose behavior is to be eschewed

rather than emulated, he must have still feared presenting a polygamous king without a

great deal of further explanation in order to ensure that this practice would not be taken

literally and thus as a biblical sanction for having several wives.

Ælfric’s use of the word “cwen” in his introduction of Jezebel must also be viewed

in light of the changes which were taking place during Ælfric’s lifetime regarding the use of

the Latin title “regina” and the Old English title “cwen.”'*^ As Asser’s Life of Alfred states,

throughout the eighth and ninth centuries, the wife of the king of Wessex was not permitted

to be called “regina,” but merely “regis coniunx” [wife of the king].50 This state of affairs

^^Ælfnc’s fears about his Old Testament translations providing lay readers with a precedent for polygamy are most clearly seen in his Preface to Genesis. See Wilcox, Ælfric’s Prefaces. 116-119.

^^For discussions of these changes, see Alistair Campbell, ed. and trans.. Encomium Emmae reginae. Camden Third Series (London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society, 1949) 55-65; W.H. Stevenson, ed. Asser’s Life of King Alfred (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1904; rpt. 1959) 200-202; E. William Robertson, Historical Essavs in Connection with the Land, the Church, etc. (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1872) 166-171; and Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge trans., Alfred the Great (London: Penguin Books, 1983) 235-236. Although some of these sources are now dated, the information contained in them regarding primary documents such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Regularis Concordia, and Asser’s Life of King Alfred is sound.

5®See Stevenson, Asser’s Life. 11.

142 was idiosyncratic to Wessex, for in kingdoms such as Mercia, Northumbria, and Kent, the queen both attested charters and was referred to in contemporary writings either by the

Latin title “regina” or by the Old English epithet “seo hlaefdige” [the Lady]—the female equivalent of the king’s title “se hlaford” [the Lordj.^l However, the Wessex queen

Ælfthryth (965-C.1002), wife to Edgar and mother to Æthelred II—and thus the queen who would have played an important role in shaping Ælfric’s views on queenship—witnessed and perhaps helped to bring about significant changes regarding the naming of the king’s wife during her lifetime. Beginning c. 9 6 8 , Ælfthryth consistently signs charters as

“regina”; in Anglo-Saxon charters she signs as “seo hlaefdige”; in the Regularis Concordia

( 9 6 5 - 7 5 ) her most common title is “regina”; and in the 9 6 5 entry to the D version of the

Chronicle, she is referred to as “cwen.” The queen’s new titles continued after Ælfthryth’s death (c. 1 0 0 2 ) , and Æthelred’s second wife Emma almost always signed Latin documents as “regina.”52 These new titles were part of an overall cultural trend in which increased power and status were granted to late tenth-century Wessex queens, and Ælfric’s use of the word “cwen” in reference to Jezebel signals his awareness of the connection between these new titling practices and the increased authority of Wessex q u e e n s . ^ 3

Ælfric’s use of the term “cwen” in reference to Jezebel is only one of many ways in which he transforms the biblical figure into a far more dangerous and powerful character than she seems in any of his Latin sources. Furthermore, Ælfric chooses not only to increase the queen’s power and status, but also to decrease the king’s authority and control over royal affairs. For example, the Vulgate’s first mention of Jezebel reads as follows:

^^See Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred the Great. 235-236.

^^For the few exceptions, see Alistair Campbell, Encomium Emmae reginae. 58-61.

^^See my chapter 1, “Queenship Remembered,” 24,27.

143 Nec suffecit ei ut ambularet in peccatis Hieroboam filii Nabath insuper duxit uxorem Hiezabel filiam Ethbaal regis Sidoniorum et abiit et servavit Baal et adorit eum. (Biblia Sacra VI, 171)

[Nor did it suffice to him (Ahab) that he should walk in the sins of Jeroboam, son of Nabat; in addition, he led to wife Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal, King of the Sidonians, and he went and served Baal and adored him.]

The Vulgate presents Ahab as an independent sinner, one capable of making his own choices, both in his desire to augment the sins of his forefathers and in his ability to actively lead a woman into marriage. For the Vulgate Ahab, Jezebel is merely one in a line of many sins, and it is only later in the biblical narrative that the text notes Jezebel’s role in his crimes, stating that she “incitavit” [urged] the king to sin (Biblia Sacra VI, 199). The

Vulgate clearly states that King Ahab “duxit uxorem Hiezabel” [led Jezebel to wife], an act guided by his own volition; the king thus retains his independence and authority, even if he does use these powers to the wrong ends. However, the corresponding passage in

Ælfric’s text presents Ahab as a much weaker character, glossing over his active choosing of a wife and depicting Jezebel not merely as an accomplice to his sin, but rather as the instigator of sin and the king’s chief partner-in-crime. It reads:

[>yses cyninges cwen wæs forcu[x)st wifa Gezabel gehaten hetelice gemodod Seo tihte hyre wer to ælcere wælhreownysse and hi tyrgdon god mid gramlicum weorcum. (LS 1. XVm, 386.49-50)

[This king’s queen was the most infamous of women, called Jezebel, fiercely minded. She incited her husband to every cruelty and they provoked God with cruel works.]

Jezebel’s authority and power to control the king’s behavior is immediately established by the statement “Seo tihte hyre wer to ælcere wælhreownysse” [She incited her husband to every cmelty], which is echoed later in the text when the prophet Elijah, recounting the

144 words of God, condemns Ahab for having wearied God and “min folc mis-tihtest” [misled

my (God’s) people] (LS XVm . 396.212). The repeated use of the verb “teon” suggests a

chain of conunand through which Jezebel incites the king to sin, who then incites the

people, and the plural pronoun “hi” in the subsequent phrase “hi tyrgdon god” [they

provoked God], found only in Ælfnc’s version, clearly establishes that Ahab does not

function independently, but rather as part of a two-person team. The king’s subservience

to Jezebel’s wishes is further suggested by his reduction to “hire wer” [her husband], an

epithet which is never applied to the Israelite king in any Latin version.

Throughout the course of his translation, Ælfric increases Jezebel’s authority and

agency, repeatedly suggesting, far more than the Latin sources ever do, that this queen

poses a grave and ever-present danger—and a danger which is truly threatening in that it is

directed specifically against her own people. This sense of Jezebel as a national threat is

clearly evident in the scene in which the prophet Elijah meets one of Ahab’s few righteous

thanes, the God-fearing Abdias, who tells Elijah how he saved righteous prophets from

Jezebel’s attempts to murder them:

Næs ôe leof gecyd t>aet ic cuce behydde hund-teonig witegan and hi mid wistum afedde da da gezebel acwealde ealle godes witegan J>e heo ofaxian mihte on ealre dvsre leode. (LS IXVIII, 388. 81-84)

[Was it not told to you, friend, that I hid one hundred prophets alive and fed them with food when Jezebel killed all of God’s prophets whom she could find out about in all this nation.]

The underscored parts of the above passage are additions made by Ælfric to his Latin sources. By adding the word “cuce” [alive], Ælfiric reminds the audience of the alternative fate which the righteous prophets have narrowly escaped; in short, that Jezebel is a murderess. Similarly, Ælfric’s addition of the word “ealle” further intensifies the scope of

145 the queen’s killing. Yet it is Ælfric’s longest addition to this passage, the line heo ofaxian mihte on ealre ôysre leode” [whom she could find out about in all this nation], which most clearly suggests that Ælfiric viewed the biblical queen not merely as a general threat to righteous men, but as a woman whose malice was directed specifically against those prophets of her own nation. This sense of Jezebel as a national threat is further evident in Ælfric’s use of the verb “ofaxian” [to find out about by asking], which reminds the reader that Jezebel had contacts throughout the nation, male worshippers of heathen gods whom she usefully employed in her plan to eliminate devout Jews.

Moreover, Ælfric’s focus on the punishment of Jezebel, rather than on her husband

Ahab, suggests that he viewed the biblical queen as the more powerful and responsible party in their mutually-enacted crimes and thus as the figiu’e more deserving of retribution.

At one point in Kings, he simply bursts in with the lines:

and his modor gezabel manfullice leofode on fulum forligere and on ælcere firacodnysse o[)[)æt godes wracu hire wælhreownysse geendode. fLS 1XVHI, 400.269-272)

[And his mother Jezebel lived wickedly in foul fornication and in every wickedness until God’s vengeance ended her cruelty.]

These lines forecasting Jezebel’s punishment do not appear in any of Æ lfnc’s Latin sources. They constitute a significant addition in a text marked far more for its tendency to abbreviate than to expand Latin sources, and suggest Ælfric’s concern that his readers should not forget that the queen’s cruel and dangerous actions would not, in fact, go unpunished.

Similarly, Æ lfnc’s full description of God’s vengeance upon the house of Ahab dwells specifically on the punishing of the Israelite Queen Jezebel, a significant deviation firom the Vulgate passage which reads as follows:

146 et percuties domum Ahab domini tui ut ulciscar samgninem servorom meorum prophetarum et sanguinem omnium servorum Domini de manu Hiezabel perdamque omnem domum Ahab et interficiam de Ahab mineentem ad parietem et clausum et novissimum in Israhel et dabo domum Ahab sicut domum Hieroboam filii Nabath et sicut domum Baasa filii Ahia Hiezabel quoque comedent canes in aero Hiezrahel nec erit qui sepeliat earn apeniit ostium. fBiblia Sacra VI, 250-251)

[And you (the newly anointed king Jehu) shall cut off the house of Ahab your masISE and I will revenge the blood of mv servants the prophets and the blood of all of the servants of the Lord at the hand of Jezebel. And I will destroy all the house of Ahab and I will cut off from Ahab him that pisseth against a wall and him that is shut UP and the meanest in Israel. And I will make the house of Ahab like the house of Jeroboam the son o f Nabat and like the house of Baasa the son of Ahias. And the dogs shall eat Jezebel in the field of Jezrael and there shall be no one to bury her.]

The underscored parts of this Latin passage constitute text not contained in Ælfnc’s corresponding Old English translation, which reads as follows:

God ælmihtig cwæô be [je ic ôe to cynincge gesmyrode ofer israhela folc [>æt [xi eall adilegie achabes ofsprincg ôæs arleasan cvninges [>aet ic beo gewrecan on [>ære awvrigendan (sic) gezabel Heo bid hundum to mete na bebyrged on eorôan. (LS IXVHI, 404.321-325)

[God almighty has said about you, “I have anointed you as king over the people of Israel so that you may exterminate the offspring of the wicked king Ahab so that I might be avenged on the accursed Jezebel. She should be as meat for hounds, not at aU buried in the earth.”] ^

Ælfric's text is, characteristically, much shorter and focuses far less on the house of Ahab than on the punishing of Jezebel. This focus on retribution against Jezebel is also apparent in the grammatical construction Ælfric uses to convey the sense that all actions against the house of Ahab are done specifically for the purpose of punishing Jezebel. In the Latin text.

^^The underscored parts of this passage are additions made by Ælfric to his Latin sources.

147 God lists a series of deeds which the newly-anointed king Jehu will commit, including:

avenging the death of the righteous prophets, socially isolating the house of Ahab, killing

all of Ahab’s offspring, and punishing Jezebel. Since these deeds are linked by the

repeated use of the conjunction “et,” each action appears equally important. In Ælfric’s

text, by contrast, God only prophesies two deeds for Jehu—killing Ahab’s offspring and

avenging Jezebel—and these deeds are linked by the repeated use of the conjunction “{)aet”

[so that], with the resulting lines being: “ic ôe to cynincge gesmyrode ofer israhela folc {pæt

[)u eall adilegie achabes ofsprincg ôæs arleasan cyninges |)æt ic beo gewrecan on pær&

awyrigendan (sic) gezabel” [I have anointed you as king over the people of Israel so that

you may exterminate the offspring of the wicked king Ahab so that I might be avenged on

the accursed Jezebel] (my emphasis). The use of “f)æt” rather than “ond” as the conjunction linking these clauses results in a meaning very different from the Latin. In

Ælfric’s version, Jehu’s deeds are not equally important, but rather his first deed- exterminating Ahab’s offspring—becomes subordinate to his second—avenging Jezebel, suggesting that Ælfric’s main concern is not the entire house of Ahab, but rather Jezebel and her righteous punishment.

There is only one point in the entire biblical narrative relating to Jezebel that Ælfric chooses not to carry over into his Old English translation, and the omission of these lines is easily explained. Towards the end of the biblical text, the newly-hallowed Israelite king

Jehu comes with a troop of soldiers to kill the still-living king of Israel, Joram, son of

Ahab and Jezebel. After successfully killing the king with an arrow, Jehu approaches a window which the queen-mother Jezebel is leaning out of and she calls to him, “Can there be peace for Zambri that has killed his master?” alluding to the servant Zambri, who killed his master Ela, king of Israel, and then seized the throne (3 Kings 16). Ælfric wants to paint Jehu as an unambiguously good king; yet, like Zambri, he too has conunitted what to an Anglo-Saxon audience would have been a heinous crime. To kill a king or even to plot

148 unsuccessfully against a king’s life was a serious transgression of Anglo-Saxon law-codes, which proscribed death and confiscation of property for anyone who was even suspected to have been involved in such an a f f a i r . 55 Ælfric’s discomfort with Jehu’s killing of the king is further evident in his addition of a reminder that Jehu “ferde mid fultume to geffenunenne

{)a ^incg / ôe him god gebaed” [fared with a troop to commit those things which God had commanded him] ILS IXVIII, 404.329-330), an attempt to soften Jehu’s guilt by depicting his actions as a direct response to God’s conunands. Jezebel’s righteous allegation against Jehu, in the accusatory challenge “Can there be peace for Zambri that has killed his master?’’ would have reminded Anglo-Saxon readers that Jehu had just killed his own king and complicated Ælfric’s attempts to portray the biblical king as a positive exemplar. Thus, in spite of Ælfric’s consistent interest in translating and sometimes even expanding upon Jezebel’s role in his Kings-translation. he simply eliminated this line.

As we have seen, Ælfric’s Kings insistently articulates a link between the wicked and dangerous queen and her unchecked authority over the royal sovereign. Yet there is little reason to suspect that this portrait of abhorrent queenship was occasioned by any particular Wessex queen. It is unclear exactly who served as queen or if there even was a queen during the time when Ælfric wrote Kings. As Joyce Hill has noted, the collection in which Kings is contained was worked on over a period of time—between 992 and 1002.56

Over the course of this decade, Ælfric would have witnessed three royal women serving in close connection to Æthelred H: Ælfthryth, wife to Edgar and mother to Æthelred (965-c.

1002); Ælfgifu, Æthelred’s first wife (985-c. 1000); and Ælfgifu-Enuna, Æthelred’s second wife and the daughter of Richard, Duke of Normandy (1002-1052). Little is

See Dorothy Whitelock, English Historical Documents: c. 500-1042.2nd edition (London: Eyre Methuen, 1979) 408 (Alfred 4) and 446 (V Ethelred 30).

5 ^ H i l l , “The Dissemination of Ælfric’s Lives of Saints.” 236.

149 known about Æthelred’s first queen Ælfgifu except that she bore ten children and that she

most likely did not witness charters. This silence concerning Ælfgifu as well as her failure

to witness charters suggests that she was not considered a significant political {H'esence in

Æthelred’s public affairs. The queen-mother, Ælfthryth, by contrast, exercised significant

influence over her son’s public and private affairs: she acted as regent for the young king

Æthelred who was only ten when he acceded to the throne; she raised Æthelred’s son

Æthelstan, whose will refers to Ælfthryth as “my grandmother who brought me up’’ [minre

ealdor modor 5e me a f e d d e ] she frequently witnessed royal charters and thus was

present at the king’s council; and she founded female monasteries at Winchester, Wiltshire,

and R a m s e y . 5 8 Indeed, toward the beginning of the period when Ælfric most likely began

his l^iflgg-translation, Ælfthryth seems to have regained a certain amount of public

authority: after a brief hiatus during which she appears not to have witnessed charters (984-

993), Ælfthryth apparently renewed her attendance at the king’s council and once again

witnessed charters until c. 999, at which point she may have either become iU or died.^^

Yet Ælfthryth does not appear to have ever used her authority against ecclesiastical causes;

rather, the queen-mother staunchly supported the principles and goals of the reformed

monasticism which Ælfric so strongly propounded. Circa 970, Ælfthryth was appointed

the “protectress and fearless guardian of the communities of nuns”; she was a close friend

^^Dorothy Whitelock, ed. and trans., Anglo-Saxon Wills (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930) XX.

^^For a discussion of Ælfthryth’s role in the monastic reform, see Marc Meyer, “Women and the Tenth-Century English Monastic Reform,” Revue Bénédictine 87 (1977): 51-61.

59see Campbell, Encomium Emmae. 55-65 and also Keynes, The Diplomas of Æthelred. 187 n. 118. There is some uncertainty over the date of Ælfthryth’s death. Keynes suggests that she died on 17 November 999, the year that she ceases to witness charters, or on that day in 1000 or 1001. See Keynes, 210 n. 203.

150 of Æthelwold, reformist bishop of Winchester and teacher of Ælfiic; and she was a strong supporter of the Winchester monastery in which Ælfric spent approximately fifteen years of his life.^ Why, then, would Ælfric have constmcted, in his Kings-translation. a portrait of queenship that so insistently dwelt on the link between the aMiorrent and the authoritative queen? What particular social climate led to his desire to voice such anxiety regarding the power of the royal consort?

Ælfric’s portrait of the dangerously powerful queen Jezebel in his Kings-translation is perhaps best understand not by looking narrowly to any particular Wessex queen as a motivating factor, but rather by broadening our gaze and considering changing ideals of queenship over the course of Ælfric’s lifetime (c. 955-c. 1010) As we have seen, it was during this period that formal queenly anointing became common; that queens were frequently enlisted to sign charters and thus to appear at royal councils; that a queen was appointed in writing as the patron of female monasteries; and that queens were regularly titled “regina” [queen] rather than “regis coniunx” [wife of the king]. What all of these changes point to is a formal instimtionalization of queens’ power—power that was recorded in writing and, in the case of anointing, power that was sanctioned by God.

Ælfnc’s portrait of queenship in his Kings-translation most likely attests not to his anxiety over the power any individual Wessex queen was currently wielding, but rather to his fear that the power of the queen was becoming formally institutionalized, and thus that any woman who married the king would automatically assume this power. If Æthelred’s first wife died in approximately the year 1000, and the king did not marry Emma until 1002, this would have left a period of approximately two years during which there was no queen.

^ ^ o r Ælfthryth as the protectress of nunneries, see Thomas Symons, ed., Regularis Concordia Anglicae nationis monachorum sanctimonialque (New York: Oxford UP, 1953) 2. For a discussion of Ælfthryth’s role in ecclesiastical affairs, see Stafford, “The King’s Wife,” 66-67.

151 Moreover, during this same period, the queen-mother Ælfthryth, who had so strongly

supported the ecclesiastical reforms, may have died and, in any case, had withdrawn ft-om

her formerly active position in court. Given that Ælfric’s Kings may very well have been

written during this interim period between Æthelred’s two marriages, a time when the

future queen was an unknown quantity and the queen-mother was no longer a powerful

presence in court, Ælfric had good reason to voice anxiety about institutional changes that

would automatically grant queens an extreme amount of authority over ecclesiastical affairs.

V. Oueenlv Counsel and the Theft of a Vinevard

Yet, if Ælfric’s Kings attests to his anxieties over the public institutionalization o f queens’

power, the text concomitantly treats one of the least institutionalized and most private

aspects of queenly authority—the queen’s personal influence over her husband and her role

as the king’s informal advisor. Nowhere in Ælfric’s Kings is Jezebel’s authority more

obvious than in her role as Ahab’s chief advisor. Unlike Ælfric’s version of Kings, both

the Vulgate and the Old Latin versions depict Jezebel’s husband Ahab, King of Israel, as a

king who seeks counsel on numerous occasions from both Jewish and pagan prophets and

also from the ancients of his city. This counsel has diverse results—sometimes good,

sometimes disastrous. On one occasion, following the advice of the ancients of his land

leads to King Ahab’s army triumphantly defeating the Syrian army in two different battles

(3 Kings 20). On another occasion, following the advice of his false prophets leads to the

king being stabbed and dying a slow and painful death (3 Kings 22). Ælfric’s Latin

source-texts depict Ahab not as a uncounselled king, but rather as a king who is simply unable to distinguish between good and bad counsel, a king who is willing to follow almost anyone’s advice. Ælfric’s version of Kings, by contrast, carefully excises all of these scenes in which the king seeks counsel from various prophets, translating only those scenes in which the king seeks counsel from his wife Jezebel. Privy to the king’s most

152 secret thoughts and desires, Jezebel functions not merely as a repository of royal knowledge, but as the king’s chief advisor and as a political agent who acts publicly on his behalf. And each time the king seeks out his wife Jezebel for counsel, the results are disastrous: the first time, she leaves swearing to kill Elijah, the righteous prophet of God

(LS I. XVm, 392. 156-159); and on the second occasion, she tricks the king into stealing property from one of his own thanes (LS I XVIII, 394.184-186). The changes Ælfric made to his Latin source-texts in his translation of Kings result in a depiction o f Jezebel as a dangerous replacement for the king’s counsellors and, more generally, highlight the problem of bad counsel as one of Ælfric’s main concerns when he undertook the translation of this biblical narrative.

Ælfric further establishes Jezebel’s role as royal counsellor by giving her interiority. Royal counsellors were those people who knew and thought a great deal, and whose job it was to influence the thinking of the king. Ælfric transforms Jezebel into a royal counsellor by depicting the biblical queen as one who actively thinks about her own actions and also one who attempts to influence the mental state of the king. Throughout

Kings. Ælfric adds phrases referring to Jezebel’s mental state, stating that: Jezebel was

“hetelice gemodod” [violently minded] (LS I. XVIII, 386.50); that she “swor [xirh hire godas mid syrigendum mode” [swore through her gods with a plotting mind] (LS I. XVIII,

392.156-159); and that she went “mid blysse” [with bliss] to meet her husband (LS I.

XVm, 396.200). Ælfric also adds several lines which make Jezebel appear directly involved with influencing the mind of the king, just as a counsellor might do. When the king confesses to Jezebel his desire to acquire the lands of one of his thanes, she encourages him, reminding him that the lands are ones “ôe Ôu gewilnodest” [which you desired] (LS I. XVIII, 394.186), and when their conversation comes to an end, she tells him to go forth “mid rædfastum mod” [with a mind made resolute by counsel] (LS I.

XVm, 394.185). Unlike Ælfric’s references to Jezebel’s interiority, none of which are

153 present in his Latin sources, the phrase “mid rædfastum mod,” which refers to Ahab’s internal state, may seem to have a corresponding Latin phrase: “aequo animo” [with a calm spirit] (3 Kings 21.7). Yet, this Latin phrase connotes merely a calm or fair state of mind, unlike Ælfric’s phrase “mid rædfastum mod,” [with a mind made resolute by counsel], which places emphasis on the queen’s role as counsellor and on her ability to control the mental state of her husband.

The notion that women, particularly noblewomen, might function as counsellors to their husbands was not at all imcommon in late Anglo-Saxon culture. As Maxims I. a collection of gnomic poetry most likely written in the early tenth century and collected in

The Exeter Book circa 1000, states:

Guô sceal in eorle, wig geweaxan, ond wif ge[>eon leof mid hyre leodum, leohtmod wesan, rune healdan. rumheort beon meamm ond majimum, meodorædenne for gesiômægen symle æghwær eodor æ^linga ærest gegretan, forman fiille to ffean hond ricene geræcan, ond him ræd witan boldagendum bæm ætsomne.^1

[Battle, warfare, shall be strong in the earl, and the wife shall thrive, beloved by her people, be cheerful, keep counsel/secrets, be generous with horses and treasure, everywhere at aU times before the band of warriors greet first the prince of the nobles with mead and offer promptly the first cup to the hand of the ruler and know counsel for them both together. 1 (my emphasis)

Yet these lines from Maxims I. containing verbs such as healdan and witan. suggest that a noble wife’s designated role may have been more as a keeper of counsel, rather than an

George Phillip Krapp and Elliot Van Kirk Dobbie, eds., Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3 (New York: Columbia UP, 1936) 159; 11. 83b-92. Hereafter cited parenthetically.

154 active provider of advice, a repository of knowledge rather than an engineer of political change as is Jezebel.

Ælfric’s discomfort with women whose advice led directly to political action is evident in his terming Jezebel a “hætse” [a witch] (LS I XVUI, 404.350).^2 por Ælfric, a witch was quite possibly the epitome of a dangerous female advisor, a woman whose speech, in the form of spells, charms, and incantations, led to dangerous actions. Ælfric’s anxieties about women serving as royal counsellors are also evident in his erasure of the prophetess and judge Deborah in the fourth chapter of his translation of Judges, a text which, like Kings. Ælfric also sent to lay male readersW hereas the biblical sources present Deborah as a powerful advisor to the Israelite Barak, one who commissions and counsels him on how to deliver Israel from the Chaanans, Ælfric completely excises

Deborah from his version of Judges. Ælfric’s omission of the prophetess-advisor Deborah from his Judges-translation and his negative treatment of Jezebel as a counsellor to King

Ahab suggests that Ælfric was uncomfortable with powerful female figures functioning in an advisory capacity, particularly when this role was formally institutionalized as in the case of Deborah.

However, Ælfric uses the female figure Jezebel not only as a means to discuss anxieties about kingly counsel, but also as a means to discuss the possible results of bad counsel, that is, that bad counsel could lead to the king’s unknowing theft of property from

^-Interestingly, Ælfiic (or possibly a scribe) appears to have been uncomfortable with denoting Jezebel a “hætse.” In Cotton Julius E vii (s. xi), the phrase “vel sceande” [or shameful one] appears next to the word “hætse,” suggesting that either Ælfiic or the scribe was uncertain whether or not it was appropriate to call Jezebel a witch. The phrase vel sceande appears only in Cotton Julius E. vii and is omitted from Junius 23 (s. xi^, xii med.), suggesting that the later scribe had no qualms about calling Jezebel a hætse.

63s J. Crawford, ed.. The Old English Version of the Heptateuch. Early English Text Society o.s. 160 (London: Oxford UP, 1922) 403-406. Hereafter cited parenthetically.

155 his own people. Ælfric’s anxieties about the possibility of bad counsellors engaging in property theft without the king’s knowledge or deceiving the king into stealing property are particularly evident in his various accounts of the theft of Naboth’s vineyard. In Kings.

Ælfric describes Naboth as “sum ^ g n “ [a certain thane] who had a vineyard near the king’s palace. On account of the proximity of this vineyard to his own lands. King Ahab offers his thane Naboth money or another vineyard in exchange for the one he wants.

When Naboth refuses to give away his vineyard, protesting that he could never allow his ancestors’ inheritance to pass so lightly into the hands of another, the king becomes enraged and retires to his bedchamber. Shortly after, Jezebel enters the bedroom and, upon learning the cause of her husband’s distress, promises to obtain the vineyard. Rigging a trial for Naboth, Jezebel has the thane set up, falsely accused of betraying his lord, and finally stoned to death. She then proudly presents the stolen vineyard to the king.

Ælfiic was both fascinated and horrified by the Naboth scene, writing about it three times: once in his homily on the beheading of Saint John the Baptist (CH I, XXXII), again in his letter to a group of monks and nuns entitled Admonitio ad Filium Spiritualem. and finally in his Kings-translation. In his homily on the beheading of Saint John the Baptist, which is contained in his first volume of Catholic Homilies. Ælfiric writes:

Witodlice lohannes on westene wunade betwux eallum deorcynne ungederod, and betwux dracum, and aspidum, and eallum wyrmcynne, and hi hine ondredon. Sod lice seo awyrigede Herodias mid beheafdunge hine acwealde, and swa mæres mannes dead to gife hire dehter hleapunge underfeng. Danihel se witega læg seofan niht betwux seofan leonum on anum seade ungewemmed, ac J)æt awyrigede wif Gezabel beswac done rihtwisan Nabod to his feore, Jjurii lease gewitnysse. Se witega lonas wæs gehealden unformolten on dæs hwæles innode dreo niht, and seo swicole Dalila fone strangan Samson mid olæcunge bepæhte, and besceorenum

156 fexe his feondum belæwde. Eomostlice nis nan wyrmcynne ne wilddeora cynn on yfelnysse gelic yfelum wife.^

[Now John had dwelt in the waste unhurt among all the beast-kind, and among serpents, and asps, and all the worm-kind, and they dreaded him. But the accursed Herodias slew him by beheading, and received the death of so great a man as a gift for her daughter’s dancing. Daniel the prophet lay seven nights in one den uninjured, but the accursed woman Jezebel betrayed the righteous Naboth to his death by false wimess. The prophet Jonah was preserved unconsumed in the belly of a whale for three nights, and the treacherous Dalilah deceived the strong Samson with flattery and, his locks being shorn, betrayed him to his foes. Verily there is no worm-kind nor wild beast-kind like in evilness to an evil woman.]

As this homily establishes, Jezebel could at times function for Ælfric as the epitome of evil

anti-feminist stereotypes about women. Here, Jezebel joins the ranks of women such as

Delilah (Samson’s downfall) and Herodias (John the Baptist’s nemesis)—women who,

Ælfric points out, brought about heinous crimes through their influence over powerful

men. Ælfric never mentions Jezebel’s influence over her husband Ahab, presenting the

biblical queen as solely responsible for the vineyard theft and subsequent death of Naboth.

Yet, by placing Jezebel in the company of women whose crimes were made possible

through their intimacy with highly-placed men, Ælfric suggests that it is partly Jezebel’s

position as a king’s wife which has enabled her crime and put her in a position to endanger

both the lands and the lives of righteous men

In his Admonitio ad Filium Spiritualem. Ælfric does not mention Jezebel, although he strongly suggests that the king was not solely responsible for his criminal actions, but rather that he was deceived into stealing the thane Naboth’s property:

^Benjamin Thorpe, ed.. The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church: The First Part. Containing the Sermones Catholic!, or Homilies of Ælfric 2 vols. (London: Ælfric Society, 1844-46) 487-489.

157 Ahab eac se kining vfele wearô beswicen for Naboôes winearde 3e he wolice genam and he for dam hrade feoU on gefeohte ofslagen dæt swa wurde on him gewreken (sic) Nabod de ær wæs ofslagen for his agenum winearde.^^

[The king Ahab also was evillv deceived on account of Naboth’s vineyard, which he wrongfully took, and on account of this he quickly fell, being killed in the fight so that Naboth, who was formerly killed for the vineyard he possessed, was avenged.]

The underlined words in the above passage are additions Ælfric made to his Latin source.^

By adding the words “yfele” [evilly] and “wolice” [wrongfully], Ælfiic sharpens the sense

that the king’s theft of his thane’s property was both unjust and immoral. However, by

adding the word “beswican” [deceived], Ælfiic also suggests that the king was tricked into

stealing this property. Unlike Catholic Homilies I. which was written for laypeople,

Ælfric’s Admonitio ad Filium Spiritualem was written for monks and nuns who would

have known the biblical story of Kings very well. It is not surprising, then, that Ælfiic

varied his treatment of Jezebel in order to suit these two very different audiences; whereas

in Catholic Homilies I he felt the need to clearly spell out Jezebel’s role in the theft of

Naboth’s vineyard, in Admonitio ad Filium Spiritualem he only needed to suggest that the

king was deceived and could safely expect his monastic audience to infer that Jezebel was responsible for the deception.

The sense that Jezebel is responsible for deceiving the king into stealing property from his thane Naboth is most evident in Ælfric’s treatment of the vineyard theft in his

Kings-translation. In this scene, Ælfric highlights Jezebel’s dangerous authority by depicting the queen as more fully in control of literacy than she appears in any of his Latin

65Norman, ed.. The Anglo-Saxon Remains of the Hexameron of St. Basil... and the Saxon Remains of St. Basil’s Admonitio ad Filium Spiritualem. 54-55.

^^Ælfric’s Latin source is the Hexameron of Saint Basil.

158 sources. In the scene where Jezebel undertakes to have Naboth falsely tried, the Vulgate reads as follows:

Scripsit itaque lltteras ex nomine Ahab et signavit eas annulo eius et misit ad maiores natu et ad optimates qui erant in civitate eius et habitabant cum Naboth. (Biblia Sacra VI, 196)

[So she wrote letters in Ahab’s name and sealed them with his ring and sent them to the ancients and the chief men that were in his city and that dwelt with Naboth.]

The Vulgate clearly establishes that in order to have the thane Naboth set up and wrongfully accused Jezebel must borrow her husband’s letter-writing equipment and write multiple letters to legal authorities in the name of the king, sealing the letters with his ring.

Although the men to whom Jezebel writes are clearly aware that she is composing the letters—they always write back to her rather than to her husband—the pretense continues, conveying the sense that Jezebel is only able to give orders with the approval of her husband. Ælfric dispenses with this pretense, depicting the queen as acting completely in her own right without needing to use her husband’s name. Furthermore, whereas the Latin clearly states that Jezebel sent multiple documents before her orders were carried out, in

Ælfric’s version, the queen’s orders are followed after she has dispensed a single letter:

])a sende gezabel sona anne pistol to naboôes neh-burum mid [lisum ge-banne ... [)a dydon [>a heafod-menn swa swa [)æt hetelice wif him on gewrite behead. (LS 1. XVlll, 394.187-188; 396. 194-95)

[Then Jezebel immediately sent a letter to Naboth’s neighbors with this message. Then the chief men did just as that hateful woman had commanded them in the letter.]

159 Ælfric closes the vineyard scene with a final depiction of the queen’s complete control over her husband which suggests not only that Jezebel leads the king to evil action but also that she endangers his soul. In the Latin text, after the king finds out that Jezebel has stolen the vineyard for him, he ultimately repents, complete with hairshirt, fasting, and cast-down head, in spite of his wife’s prodding that he claim the stolen property. In Ælfiic’s version, by contrast, Ahab never repents, and thus never challenges Jezebel’s plans for their acquisition of stolen property, suggesting that the king is unable to act against his wife’s wishes and, as a result, that he has lost any chance of spiritual salvation.

VI. Kings: A Testament to Æthelred’s Decline

Jezebel’s role in the Naboth scene and, more generally, her role throughout Kings suggest that the biblical queen functioned not only as a means for Ælfiric to display his anxieties about the changing role of the Wessex queen, but also as a way for him to safely discuss two subjects that caused him a great deal of concern throughout his life. These subjects were the king’s failure to seek out good counsel and also the king’s theft of property firom his own people, the very people whose property he was supposed to protect. It was a widespread belief in Anglo-Saxon England that both good counsel and the protection of property were crucial components of just and effective kingship; failure to do either constituted a serious breach of the king’s responsibilities to his people. The king’s obligation to seek good counsel and to protect property would have been public knowledge, as it was clearly spelled out by the bishop during the king’s coronation ceremony, and was one of the few parts of the ceremony conducted in the vernacular. The bishop’s address was as follows:

Gehalgodes cynges riht is, thæt he nænig ne man ne fordeme, and thæt he wuduwan and steopcild, and aeltheodige werige and amundige, and stala forbeode.

160 .. and ealde and wise and syfre him to getheaterum hæbbe, and rightwis mæn him to wicnerum sette.^7

[The duty of a hallowed king is that he judge no man unrighteously, and that he defend and protect widows and orphans and strangers, that he forbid thefts ... and have old and wise men for counsellors, and set righteous men for stewards.]

Several lines from Maxims I echo the bishop’s address regarding the king’s duty to protect property as opposed to stealing it:

Cyning bid anwealdes geom; lad se londes monad, leof se [)e mare beodad. (ASPR 3:158; 11. 58b-59)

[A king is eager for territory. Hateful is he who claims lands; beloved is he who gives more.]

However, Ælfric’s use of the female figure Jezebel to discuss the twin issues of kingly counsel and property theft should be read as more than his attempt to set forth general ideals of royalty suitable for kings from any period. For problematic counsel and the theft of property were not hypothetical, but rather very real problems for King Æthelred U just a few years before Ælfric decided to translate the biblical narrative Kings (992-1002).

Simon Keynes has argued that the early part of King Æthelred U’s reign was a period during which the king was misled and manipulated by a series of corrupt counsellors who stole property from the church in order to benefit themselves. Keynes terms the period 984-c. 993 as the period of King Æthelred's “youthful indiscretions,” a time when bad counsellors took advantage of the king’s youth, and deceived him into ignorantly authorizing the appropriation of property from a large number of monastic

67william Stubbs, ed.. The Memorials of Saint Dunstan: Archbishop of Canterbury (Rolls Series, 1874; rept. Kraus Reprint Ltd. 1965) 356-357. Qtd and translated in Nelson, Politics and Ritual. 337.

161 landholdings.^® The idea that a king could be duped by bad counsellors into stealing

church lands would have made any monastic uneasy. However, the king’s bad counsel

and subsequent property theft of monastic landholdings may have been especially likely to

provoke anxiety in Ælftic given that some of the stolen properties were taken from his own

monastery—the Old Minster Winchester where he spent approximately fifteen years of his

life.^9 It should come as no surprise then that bad counsel and property theft were two

major issues with which Ælfric dealt in his Kings-translation. a text that was most likely

completed just a short time after and perhaps even slightly overlapping with Æthelred’s

“period of youthful indiscretions.”

Several years after completing his Kings-translation. Ælfric sent a letter to his

friend Sigeweard, an educated layman with whom he had stayed on several occasions.

This letter, which Peter Clemoes dates 1005-06, suggests that Ælfric was very interested in

royal counsel and believed in the efficacy of counsel to amend royal problems; in it, Ælfric

writes:

Witan sceoldan smeagan mid wislicum ge{)eahte {x>nne on mancinne to micel yfel bid hwilc ^æra stelenna ^æs cinestoles wære tobrocen and betan Jx>ne sona. fHeptateuch. 72; 11. 1204-1207)

[Counsellors ought to consider with wise thought, in times when there is too much evil against mankind, which pillar of the royal throne is broken and amend it immediately.j^O

^^Kevnes. The Diplomas of King Æthelred. 176-186.

^^Kevnes. The Diplomas of King Æthelred. 180.

^ ^ o r a discussion of this letter’s dating, see Clemoes, “The Chronology of Ælffic’s Works,” 31-35.

162 Ælfric’s lay readers, living under the onslaught of Danish forces and forced to hand over

ever-increasing sums of money to raise tribute for paying off these armies, would have

certainly considered the time in which they lived to be, as Ælfric wrote, “a time of too

much evil against mankind.” Ælfric's interest in the protection of his country is further

evident in this same letter in a few lines of commentary on the biblical Kings:

On disum bocum us segd Jjæt Saul waes gecoren aerest to cyninge on Israhela {)eode, for f)an (x hig woldon sunme weriend habban, {le hi geheolde wid Jwet hæ^jene folc 7 cyddon heora willan {>a, witegan Samuele, p æt hig heora cynne cining habban woldon, swa swa odre leodscipas on eallum lande hæfdon. Hwæt â Samuel sæde ^æt Gode 7 God him geâfode ^æt hig setton him to kining Saul, cises sunu, 7 he siddon rixode feowertig geara fæc 7 f)æt folc bewerode wid â hædenan leoda heardlice mid wæmnum, {leah he misferde on manegum odmm fjingum. (Heptateuch. 34-35; 11. 455-463)

[In these books, it tells us how Saul was first chosen king o f the Israelite people so that they might have some protector who could defend them against the heathen people; so they made known their desire to the prophet Samuel, that they would have a king of their own people as other people in all lands had. Then Samuel told that to God, and God granted that they should make Saul, the son of Cis, their king, and he reigned after that the space of forty years and defended that folk resolutely with weapons against the heathen people although he transgressed in many other things.]

Ælfric’s discussion of Saul is striking for several reasons. First, Ælfric clearly states that

the reason the Israelite people wanted a king was so that they might have someone to

protect them from heathen attacks, a rather skewed reading of the Latin text which

repeatedly states that the reason the Israelites wanted a king was so that they might have

someone to judge them (1 Kings 8.5; 1 Kings 8.6; 1 Kings 8.20). Another striking aspect of this passage is Ælfric’s uncharacteristic willingness to view Saul as a good king given that he transgressed in many ways. This reading of Saul is far more generous than

Ælfric’s view of the king several years earlier in his Kings-translation. in which he focuses on Saul’s spiritual transgressions and God’s subsequent rejection of the king. Most likely,

163 in the ensuing years between Ælfric’s Kines-translation (992-1002) and the letter in which he describes Saul (1005-06), England’s decline was severe enough and the country in such dire need of protection that Ælfric was willing to overlook a king’s spiritual transgressions so long as he provided adequate protection for his own people.

With his deep concern for the protection of England and, more specifically, his concern over the king’s apparent lack of counsel, it is not surprising that Ælfric sent his

Kings-translation. with its discussions of bad counsel and property theft, to two men who had a great deal to do with the king’s counsel and the prevention of property theft, that is, two of the king’s chief counsellors—Æthelweard, ealdorman of the Western provinces, and his son Æthelmær. Using a female figure such as Jezebel to discuss these issues provided Ælfric a way to display his anxieties about kingly counsel in a manner which would not offend the two male counsellors for whom he was writing. In short, using a woman to represent bad counsel allowed Ælfric to safely distance the notion of bad counsel from these men.

Writing circa 540 about the fall of Roman Britain to Germanic invaders, the monk

Gildas remarked, “I gazed on these things and many others in the Old Testament as though on a mirror reflecting our life.”7l Like Gildas, Ælfric also turned to the Old Testament in a time of cultural crisis as a means of explaining and attempting to find models for mending a culture which he perceived to be in need of serious reform. However, unlike Gildas,

Ælfric did not view the Old Testament as a clear reflection of Anglo-Saxon life, but rather as a group of stories which, if carefully molded and shaped, could provide valuable counsel on contemporary cultural problems that needed immediate attention. Ælfric’s depiction of Jezebel in his translation of the biblical Kings suggests that he believed the changing role of the Wessex queen, the king’s lack of good counsel, and the king’s theft of

Michael Winterbottom, ed. and trans., Gildas: The Ruin of Britain and Other Works (London and Chichester: Phillimore, 1978) 14.

164 property from his own people to be such problems. As the Israelite King Ahab’s tortuous death and the fail of his people demonstrated, to leave such problems unresolved would have disastrous consequences. That Ælfric translated and sent this version of Kings to two of Æthelred’s chief counsellors suggests that he believed England did not need to suffer a similar fate.

165 CHAPTER 4

BEAUTY AND THE BANQUET: QUEENSHIP IN ÆLFRIC’S ESTHER-

TRANSLATION

It begins to dawn on us that the many fairy tales which begin ‘Once upon a time

there were a King and Queen’ only mean to say that there were once a father and a

mother.

— Sigmund Freud, Lecture X, “Symbolism in Dreams” (1915-16)

The queen (of Sheba) was a type of the holy church of all Christian folk .... Of

this church the prophet said to God: “The queen stands at thy right, in gilded

raiment, clothed in manifold variety.”

—Ælfric, “On the Dedication of a Church,” Catholic Homilies II (992)

These quotations from Freud and Ælfric lucidly illustrate two of the most culturally enduring metaphors of queenship: that of the queen as mother, whether mother of the nation or the punishing maternal figure of childhood nightmares; and that of the queen as the believing church united to Christ through marriage. Yet even as Freud and Ælfric attempt to denote and fix the metaphorical meaning of the queen, each concomitantly calls attention to the imaginative potential of this royal female figure: for Freud, the queen is the illusory matter of fairy tales; for Ælfric, she is (both literally and metaphorically) “clothed

1 6 6 in manifold variety.” Perhaps nowhere was the imaginative potential of the queen more

easily mined than in late Anglo-Saxon biblical translations. Set in an archaic past and hovering in an kind of uncertain generic limbo, somewhere between history and hagiography, the Old Testament narrative offered the Anglo-Saxon translator a safe means of exploring ideals of royalty without risking accusations of treachery. Indeed, the genre

itself demanded a reimagining of royal figures, for the actual biblical characters—with their multiple wives, eunuchs for counsellors, uncontrolled drinking, female beautification regimens, and open seductions—were publicly acknowledged as unfit exemplars for

Anglo-Saxon audiences, whether lay or monastic. 1

This chapter examines how Ælfric reimagines the figures of the two queens Vashti and Esther in his Old English translation of the biblical Esther-narrative (1002-1005

A.D.).2 I intend to show that Ælfric uses these biblical figures as a means of constructing a theoretical portrait of exemplary queenship during a historical moment which witnessed significant changes in the role of the Anglo-Saxon queen.3 Yet because of the queen’s metaphorical richness—her ability to figure as mother, wife, subject, united nation, and

^The most well-known of these acknowledgements is Ælfric’s Preface to Genesis. Jonathan Wilcox, ed., Ælfric’s Prefaces (Durham: Durham Medieval Texts, 1994) 116- 119.

^Clemoes, 34.

^The only extended treatment of Ælfric’s Esther-translation is Timothy Alan Gustafson, ‘‘Ælfric Reads Esther: The Cultural Limits of Translation,” diss., U of Iowa, 1995. This dissertation is a fascinating full-length study of Ælfric’s Old English Esther, with particular attention to his omission of the Jewish-enacted slaughter near the book’s end, comprehensive accounts of Esther’s reception in both Jewish and Christian traditions, and an examination of both classical and early medieval theories of translation. The present chapter, 1 believe, adds significantly to Gustafson’s work by focusing solely on Ælfric’s depictions of the two queens Vashti and Esther within the context of late Anglo-Saxon ideologies of queenship and familial relations.

167 believing church—the textual personages of Vashti and Esther permit Ælfric to construct discourses far more powerful and culturally comprehensive than the mere prescription of appropriate roles for the sovereign’s wife. Reimagining the two biblical queens in a manner suitable for his Anglo-Saxon audiences initiates for Ælfric a series of uneasy tensions around the subjects of religion, marriage, divorce, female beauty, and royal counsel, tensions which become readily apparent by examining points in Ælfric’s translation where he clearly departs from and adds to his Latin source-texts.^ These additions are particularly noteworthy simply as additions, given Ælfric’s tendency as a translator to abbreviate his source-texts rather than to expand on them. By examining these changes, I seek to show how Ælfric uses biblical queens to shape late Anglo-Saxon ideologies of religion, marriage, and gender. It was the nation’s adherence to such social systems that Ælfric believed might deliver England from the onslaught of Danish invasions, as the Danes were commonly thought to have been sent by God as a punishment for the national proliferation of moral sloth.^ As we examine how Ælfric uses Esther and

Vashti both to construct a vision of exemplary queenship as well as to shape broader cultural ideals, we will thus see that the figure of the queen also functions as a vehicle for

Ælfric to fantasize a unified and peaceful England, one nation united in a common belief and triumphant over its foreign enemies. However, before turning to a cultural analysis of

Ælffic’s Esther-translation. it is essential to deal first with the somewhat shaky manuscript evidence which exists for this text. The following section will thus offer a brief discussion

^References to the Vulgate and to one Old Latin version of Esther will be made by chapter and verse numbers and will refer to Pierre Sabatier, Bibliorum sacromm Latinae versiones antiquae. seu Vetus Italica. vol. 1 (Rheims, 1743-49, rpt., Tumhout; Belgium: Brepols, 1976) 796-825. This version prints the Vulgate Esther alongside one Old Latin version. Unless indicated otherwise, Latin references are to the Vulgate.

^For a more detailed examination of this belief, see Ian Pringle, “‘Judith’: the Homily and the Poem,” Traditio 3 (1975): 85-97.

168 of the sole extant manuscript of Ælfric’s Esther-translation. and argue that this manuscript

is indeed a reliable enough copy of Ælfric’s text on which to stake interpretative claims

about pre-Conquest culture.

I. Manuscript Evidence

The only surviving copy of Ælfric’s Esther-translation is a transcription by the antiquarian

William L isle (1569?-1637).6 This transcription, along with L isle’s seventeenth-century

English translation, appears in what is now Bodleian Laud Misc. 381, fols. 140v-147v

(Ker no. 410).7 L’Isle’s Old English transcription occupies the left hand pages, his

translation the right.8 In addition to Ælfric’s Esther, the manuscript contains several other

transcriptions and accompanying translations of Ælfrician works, in the following order: an

incomplete version of the Heptateuch and Job, transcribed from British Museum Cotton

^For further discussion of L isle, see Sidney Lee, ed., Dictionarv of National Biography, vol. XI (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1967) 1224-25; Eleanor N. Adams, Old English Scholarship in England From 1566-18(X) (New Haven: Yale UP, 1917; rpt. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1970) 45-46 and 140-145; Allen I. Franzten, Desire For Origins: New Language. Old English, and Teaching the Tradition (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990) 154, 161-63. For a broader view of antiquarian interest in Anglo- Saxon culture, see Carl T. Berkhout and Milton McC. Gatch, eds., Anglo-Saxon Scholarship: The First Three Centuries (Boston: O.K. Hall & Co., 1982); Frantzen, Desire For Origins, chapters 2 and 5; and Fred C. Robinson, “The Afterlife of Old English: A Brief History of Composition in Old English after the Close of the Anglo-Saxon Period,’’ The Tomb of Beowulf and Other Essavs on Old English (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1993) 275-304.

^In the eighteenth century, the manuscript was known as Laud E 33. See Humphrey Wanley, Libromm Vett. Septentrionalium. qui in Angliae Bibliothecis extant. . . Catalogus Historico-Criticus .... vol. 2 of George Hickes, Linguarum Vett. Septentrionalium Thesaurus Grammatico-Criticus et Archaeologus. 2 vols. (Oxford, 1703-05) 99. Hereafter referred to as Wanley’s Catalogus.

^Minnie Cate Morrell, A Manual of Old English Biblical Materials (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1965) 14.

169 Claudius B. iv (Ker no. 142); parts of the Catholic Homilies containing Old Testament

materials; Ælfric’s Esther-translation: lines 10-15 of CH H XLV fOn the Dedication of a

Church), which L’Isle entitled “De Templo Hierosolymitano”; a fairly complete version of

Ælfric’s homily on Job; and lines 127-129 of CH H % (The Nativity of the Lordl. which

L’Isle entitled “Prophetiae per Homilistam Saxonicum ad Christum applicatae.’’^ These

texts were transcribed and translated, in Humphrey Wanley’s weighty phrase, “Omnia

manu propria Gulielmi L ’isle” [All by the very own hands of William L’Isle]. ^0

The fact that Ælfric’s Esther-translation survives only in L’Isle’s seventeenth-

century transcription presents considerable challenges to any serious study of Esther’s

participation in the construction of pre-Conquest cultural values. Begirming in the late

nineteenth century and continuing up through the present, L’isle has been repeatedly

accused of producing inaccurate transcriptions and translations of early medieval texts. The

addendum to this chapter deals in considerable detail with L’Isle’s habits of textual transmission, and demonstrates that his reputation as an inaccurate transmitter of texts is largely unfounded. In summary—with my argument based on the work of Fred Robinson,

Arthur Napier, W. W. Skeat, Neil Ker, Timothy Gustafson, and myself—I show that

L’isle frequently broke up Old English words in the wrong places, added titles, and archaized the language of early Middle English texts. He also occasionally corrected granunatical constructions, excised homiletic and interpretive conunents, and collated texts when he possessed more than one copy and/or one of his exemplars was incomplete. Yet

^For further description of the manuscript, see Wanley, Catalogus. 99. Identification of the particular homilies from which the extracts in Bodleian Laud Misc. 381 have been drawn has been assisted by Antonette diPaolo Healey and Richard L. Venezky, A Microfiche Concordance to Old English (Toronto, 1980). Line numbers for CH H refer to Malcolm Godden, ed., Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The Second Series Text. Early English Text Society ss 5 (London: Oxford UP, 1985), which has superseded Thorpe’s edition.

^(^Wanley, Catalogus. 99.

170 L’isle very rarely rearranged phrases or inserted additional words, particularly when

transcribing Old Testament material. He did not change any of the phrasing or insert any

additional words into his transcription of Ælfric’s Old English homily In Mense Septembri.

quando leeitur Job [The First Sunday in September, when Job is Read] (CH 11XXXV).

Similarly, he made only three small changes in his entire transcription of Ælfric’s On the

Old and New Testament, a text which is over forty manuscript pages long: the alteration of

“hiwum” [family] to the gender-specific “wifurn” [women], a change no doubt intended to

more accurately describe Lot’s wife and two daughters; the insertion of the phrase “7 eac se

|)ridda” [and also the third], an addition most likely intended to increase the specificity of

the description of Seth as Adam’s third son; and the reordering of the list of apostles with

the addition of Matthew and Simon the Canaanite, changes which were most likely

intended to make Ælfric’s list of apostles more complete and to conform to traditional

seventeenth-century order. Of particular note are these facts: that L’isle did not add any

additional material to On the Old and New Testament, most likely because he was working

with a complete exemplar; that he did not excise a single word of the original manuscript;

and that he maintained the original manuscript format as well as many of the Old English

abbreviations. Although L’isle has often been condemned as an inaccurate transcriber, he

was, as further research reveals, a fairly accurate transcriber, whose habits of textual

transmission do not present significant barriers to our interpretation of Anglo-Saxon

literature—in this case, Ælfric’s Esther-translation.

n. Esther. Religious Practice, and Lay Belief

The biblical queen Esther was frequently held out before early medieval queens as an exemplar of religious practice and a model of how the earthly queen might draw both her husband and her people to a stronger faith. Hrabanus Maurus, Bishop of Fulda, dedicated his commentaries on Judith (834) and Esther (836) to Empress Judith, the second wife of

171 Louis the Pious, urging the empress to “always place Esther, a queen like you, before the eyes of your heart, as someone to be imitated in every act of piety and chastity.”^ ' Less than a decade later (841-851), Hrabanus sent both commentaries to the Empress

Ermengard, wife of Louis’ son Lothar I. 876, Pope John V ni sent a letter to the

Empress Richildis, wife of Charles the Bald, begging her to act as an advocate of the

Christian church, claiming that “you will be for the Church of Christ near [your] pious husband in the way of that holy Esther who was near her husband on behalf of the Israelite people” [eritis pro Ecclesia Christi apud pium conjugem more sanctae illius Esther pro

Israelitica plebe apud maritumj.13 similarly, the 856 coronation ordines for the marriage of Charles the Bald’s daughter Judith to Æthelwulf, Alfred’s father, twice invokes the figure of Esther as a model for the new queen. She is included once in a list along with several other Old Testament women: “I pledge you, a chaste and modest virgin, to one man, as a future wife, just as these holy women were to their husbands: Sarah, Rebecca,

Rachel, Esther, Judith, Arma, Naomi” [Despondeo te uni viro virginem castam atque pudicam, futuram coniugem, ut sanctae mulieres fiiere viris suis, Sarra, Rebecca, Rachel,

Hester, ludith, Anna, Noemi]. And she is invoked a second time, after her anointing, in a description of her effects upon the king: “That you [God], by means of her [Esther’s] prayers, inclined the savage heart of the king toward mercy and salvation for those

^ ^That Hrabanus Maurus dedicated these texts to the Empress Judith was first noted by Stafford, Queens. Concubines, and Dowagers. 25-26. The Latin dedication is printed, translated, and further discussed in Gustafson, 92-95, 336-337. The dates cited above are the dates of the commentaries’ dedications as opposed to their dates of composition.

^^Stafford, Queens. Concubines, and Dowagers. 26. For fuller discussion, see Gustafson, 96-97.

l^The existence of the letter is mentioned in Stafford, Queens. Concubines, and Dowagers. 26 and can be found in £L 126,698-99. The quotation is from 698.

172 believing in you.” [ut efferatum cor regis ad misericordiam et salvationem in te credentium ipsius precibus inclinares].^^

Yet Ælfric did not offer his Esther-translation to any particular queen, but rather to the nobleman Sigeweard of Eastheolon, with an accompanying letter revealing his awareness that texts were frequently received by audiences far broader than an author’s immediate patron. That Ælfric composed his Esther-translation for lay audiences suggests that the text was not intended to directly influence the behavior of any particular

Anglo-Saxon queen but rather to construct a series of public expectations around the queen, to encourage laypeople to define her according to the parameters set out in his narrative.

That Ælfric was in fact interested in the biblical figure Esther as a exemplar of queenship is clearly illustrated through his repeated use of the term “cwen” throughout his translation.

Unlike his Latin source-texts, which most often refer to Esther by name, Ælfric hardly ever uses the proper name Esther, referring to the biblical queen eighteen times in his translation simply as “cwen.”16 And one of the central roles of both the queen and his translation,

Ælfric suggests, is to encourage lay piety.

^ ^ ^ a t Esther was invoked in the coronation of the early medieval queen was called to my attention by Lois Huneycutt’s important article on the Esther-topos in early post- Conquest England. See Lois L. Huneycutt, “Intercession and the High Medieval Queen: The Esther Topos,” Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women, ed. Jennifer Carpenter and SaUy-Beth McLean (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995) 129. Hincmar’s ordines for Judith is printed in Alfredus Boretius and Victor Krause, eds., Capitularia Regum Francomm H, Monumenta Germania Historica, Legum Sectio II (Hannover, 1897) 425-27. The quotes are from 426.

l^In the opening of the Letter Ælfric writes: “EMs gewrit waes to anum men gediht ac hit maeg swa [«ah manegum fremian” [This writ was composed for one man although it may nevertheless profit many] (Heptateuch. 15).

^^The exact figures are as follows: The Vulgate refers to Esther sixteen times by name, four times as Esther regina. and four times as simply regina. Ælfric’s Old English text almost exactly reverses these figures, referring to Esther three times by name, twice as Hester, seo cwen. and eighteen times as seo cwen. Ælfric’s tendency to refer to biblical

173 Yet the Book of Esther presented Ælfric with a number of barriers to constructing both the Book as well as its queenly protagonist as proponents of the faith. Ælfnc clearly wanted to offer his translation as an example of the successful workings of God’s love through a royal woman. As he claims in the sole interpretive comment on his Esther- translation:

Hester seo cwen, {)e hire kynn ahredde, hæfd eac ane boc on ^isum getele, for dan t>e Godes lof ys gelogod [jæron; ^a ic awende on Englisc on ure wisan sceortlice. (Letter to Sigeweard, Heptateuch. 48,11. 766-771)

[Queen Esther, who delivered her people, also has one book in this number because the praise of God is contained therein, which I have briefly translated into English in our way.]

But the problem with offering a translation of the Book of Esther “because the praise of

God is contained therein” is the simple fact that the Hebrew version of Esther contains not a single reference to God, let alone praise for him. Moreover, Esther has long been considered one of, if not the least, religious book in the Bible. The text contains no references to the basic institutions of Judaism (e.g. covenant, sacred history, the Torah, election, prayer, temple, kashrûf): fasting is the only religious practice mentioned; and

Esther is not mentioned once in the New Testament. It is in part this lack of overt queens by the generic cwen rather than by name is further evident in his references to the wicked queen Vashti, although the tendency is less obvious since there are fewer examples. The exact figures are as follows: the Vulgate refers to Vashti four times by name, five times as Vasthi regina. and once as simply regina. Once again, Ælfric prefers the generic cwen. referring only three times to Vashti by name, three times to her as seo cwen Vasthi. as four times as seo cwen.

^^It is perhaps this dubious canonical history of the biblical Esther which led Ælfric to claim, in a phrase that has no correlate in the Vulgate, that he writes “swa swa us secgad boc” [just as the book (Bible) tells us] (Assmann Vm , 7). However, it should also be acknowledged that this phrase is fairly commonly used by medieval translators.

174 religiosity which led to extreme controversy among both early Jews and Christians

regarding the text’s inspiration and canonical status. Rabbinic debate over Esther continued well into the third century A.D., and the text (with additions drawn from the

Greek Septuagint) was not given a secure place in Christian Scripture until the Council of

Carthage in 397. Even when finally awarded canonical status, the text was extremely unpopular among Christian conunentators, receiving no extended treatment until Hrabanus

Maurus’ Expositio in librum Esther (836). Antagonistic responses to Esther continued well into the Reformation, the most well-known of which is Martin Luther’s famous condemnation of the book (along with II Maccabees): “I am so hostile to this book

[Maccabees II] and to Esther that I wish they did not exist at all, for they Judaize too much and have much heathen perverseness.” Even in our own century, learned Christians harbored deep suspicions regarding the secular nature of the text as well as its suitability for religious edification. Writing in the early 1940s, the biblical scholar R. H. Pfeiffer contended: “Such a secular book hardly deserves a place in the canons o f Sacred Scripture, even when provided with the pious additions of the Septuagint and theT arg u m s.”20

Similarly, Bernhard Anderson, a professor of biblical literature at the University of North

Carolina, noted in 1950, “if the leader of a church-school class shows any discernment, he will not waste time trying to show that the heroes of the book [of Esther] are models of character, integrity, and piety.”2l How, then, given Esther’s longstanding critical history

l^Carey Moore, ed. Studies in the Book of Esther (New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1982) xix.

l^Bemhard Anderson, “The Place of the Book of Esther in the Christian Bible,” 131.

20Qtd. in Anderson, 132.

21 Anderson, 140

175 as one of the most secular books of the Bible, might we imderstand Ælfric’s assertion that

he chose to translate Esther “because the praise of God is contained therein”?

The most straightforward solution to the problem may seem to lie in an examination

of the various source-texts from which Ælfric constructed his Esther-translation. Ælfric

was not working with the Hebrew Esther, which avoids any mention of God, but rather

with Jerome’s Latin translation of the Hebrew and also one or more versions of the Old

Latin B i b l e . 2 2 Jerome’s translation is indeed a more pious text, containing over thirty

references to God, all of which are taken from the Greek version of the Book of E s t h e r . ^3

Yet the religiosity of Ælfric’s sources provides at best a poor explanation for his assertion

that he included Esther among his translations “because the praise of God is contained

therein,” for Ælfric’s Esther-translation ends at what is roughly chapter nine of the Vulgate

^^Gustafson, 21-26.

^^This Greek text, commonly referred to as the Septuagint version of Esther, is far more overtly religious than the Hebrew, containing over fifty references to God as well as six extended passages (107 verses total) that have no counterpart in the Hebrew text. These passages, commonly referred to as the A-F additions, include: (A) Mordecai’s dream; (B) the royal edict dictated by Haman; (C) the prayers of Mordecai and Esther; (D) Esther’s appearance before the king, identified by the Greek name Artaxerxes rather than the Hebrew Ahasuerus; (E) the royal edict dictated by Mordecai; and (F) Mordecai’s interpretation of his dream and a brief colophon to the translation explaining the book’s textual history. When read as a whole, the A-F additions accomplish two broad purposes: they increase the text’s overt religiosity through multiple references to God as well as the characters’ frequent recourse to prayer, and they heighten the text’s historical specificity by providing documentation of particular royal edicts as well as an authentic textual history. Jerome cut, reordered and, most notably, took pains to mark these additions as distinct passages which were not to be found in the received Hebrew text—frequently remarking that they were “scripta reperi in editione Vulgata, quae Graecomm lingua & litteris continentur” [found written in the common edition, which contains Greek language and letters] (821) or prefacing his Latin translation of a Greek addition with the cautionary phrase that what follows is “nec in Hebraeo, nec apud uUum fertur Interpretum” [not found in the Hebrew nor in any of the commentaries] (822). Yet Jerome ultimately translated the bulk of these additions into Latin, thus providing Ælfiric with a Latin source-text of Esther far more overtly religious than the Hebrew version alone.

176 and the pious Greek additions to the Vulgate do not begin until chapter ten.2^ Thus

whatever of “Godes lof’ is contained in Ælfric’s Rsther-translation is not a function of his

Latin sources but rather a result of his own pious additions. These pious additions focus

squarely on Esther as (to borrow Susan Groag Bell’s term) an “arbiter of lay piety.’’25

Ælfric’s most significant attempt to construct the ideal queen as a proponent of lay

faith occurs in the conclusion to his Esther-translation. a series of original claims regarding

Esther’s ability to increase the faith of her people:

bis weard pa gefortxxi. and hi on fribe wunedon fjurh p æ re cwene {jingunge. {je him |ja geheolp and fram deabe ahredde [)urh hire drihtnes fulmm. |)e heo on gelvfde on Abrahames wisan. [)a ludeiscan eac wundorlice blissodon, bæt hi swilcne forespræcan him afunden hæfdon. and heoldan jja godes ae [?æs {je glaedlicor æfter Movses wissunge. |)æs mæran heretogan. (Assmann VTII, 312-19)26

rrhis was then carried out and they lived in peace through the intercession of the queen who helped them and saved them from death through the help of her Lord. whom she believed in according to the wavs of Abraham. Moreover, the Jews

2^^ere are a few references to God scattered throughout Jerome’s text; however, the bulk of the pious additions are at the end.

25susan Groag Bell, “Medieval Women Book Owners: Arbiters o f Lay Rety and Ambassadors of Culture,” Signs 7 (1982): 742-68, rpt. in Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1988) 149-87.

^^Ælfric’s Esther-translation is printed in Bruno Assmann, “Abt Ælfrics’s angelsachsiche Beirbeitung des Bûches Esther,” Anglia 9 (1886): 25-38 and also in Bruno Assmann, ed., Angelsachsiche Homilien und Heiligenleben. Bibliothek der angelsachsichen Prosa IE (Kassel, 1889), rpt. with a supplementary intro, by Peter Clemoes (Darmstadt, 1964). References will be to Clemoes’ reprint and will be cited parenthetically by item and line number. Throughout this chapter underlining is used to indicate those parts of the Old English text which are Ælfric’s additions to his Latin source- texts.

177 rejoiced wonderfully that they had found such an intercessor for themselves and held the law of God the more gladlv according to the wavs of Moses, the great conunander.1

If the queen was able to generate a smoother acceptance of the laws of God among her

people, so too, Ælfric states, was she able to turn her own husband to righteous belief.

Drawing on the familiar Anglo-Saxon trope of the converted heathen receiving a new

name,27 Ælfric claims that the queen turned her husband to a proper worship of God at

which point he was thus given the new name Artaxerxes (the Greek version of Ahasuerus):

And se cvning weard gerihtlæht ^urh (laere cwene geleafan gode to wurdmvnte. \>e ealle bins gewvlt. And he herode god, be hine geuferode and to cvning geceas ofer swilcne anweald. And he waes rihtwis and rædfast on weorcum. And he hæfde o()eme naman Artarxerses. (Assmann VIII, 325-328)

(And the king was put in order through the belief of the queen to worship God who controls all things. And he praised God who honored him and chose him as a king over such a realm. And he was righteous and resolute in works. And he had another name. Artaxerxes.1

While Ælfric’s conclusion to his Esther-translation is indeed the clearest testament

to his belief in the ideal queen as an arbiter of lay piety, the text is also filled with smaller

pious additions, all of which construct a theoretical model of the ideal queen as one of

impeccable faith. Ælfric stresses that the queen was raised according to proper habits of

worship, claiming:

^^The most well-known example in Anglo-Saxon literature of the religious convert receiving a new name is Judas in Cynew ulfs Elene. who is given the name “Cyriacus” after his baptism; this name, Cynewulf explains, means “æ hælendes” [law of the Saviour] (Elene. 1062).

178 And he hi gefordode on fægerum [jeawum æfter godes æ and his eee svmle. (Assmann Vm , 83-84)

[And he (her uncle Mordecai) raised her in fair customs always according to the law of God and his fear (of God).1

Ælfric further emphasizes Esther’s religious upbringing through repeated references to her

surrogate parent Mordecai’s staunch belief, all of which are additions to his source-texts.^

At the most basic level, then, Ælfric’s pious additions to his Esther-translation construct a

portrait of the ideal queen as one who was both raised in the proper faith and, more

importantly, one who labored to perpetuate this faith both within her home and among her

people.

But, for Ælfric, the biblical queen Esther functions not only as a means of constructing an exemplar of the ideal queen as one who worked to uphold lay faith.

According to a long patristic tradition that surfaces repeatedly in Ælfric’s homilies and hagiographies, the queen was the faith, or rather, she was a symbol of lay belief, a metaphor for the believing Church united to Christ through marriage. For Ælfric, it was the lack of such belief, both among the laity and monastic orders, that was responsible for

England’s current state of political crisis: its rapid decline at the hands of Danish forces. As he claims in his Homily on the Prayer of Moses:

^^These additions are as follows: “Se gelyfde sodlice on |x)ne lifigendan god æfter godes æ’’ IHe believed trulv in the living God according to God’s law] (79-80a); “nolde him abugan ne gebigan his cneowu to t>am Amane for his upahæfenvsse. ^)vlæs [je he gegremode god mid t?ære dæde. if he eordlicne mann ofer his mæde wurdode.” [he (Mordecai) would not bow down to him nor bend his knee to Haman on account of his (Haman’s) great arrogance lest he might anger God by that deed if he honored an earthlv man over his rankl (132-137); “and he hæfde ofaxod æt odmm mannum ær, [)æt he (Mordecai) was ludeisca, wurdodon svmle [»ne heofonlican god” [And he (Haman) had learned from other men that he (Mordecai) who always worshipped the heavenlv God was Jewish] (139-141a); “godes thegn’’ (god’s thane (Mordecai)l (195b).

179 Wei we magon ge^ncan hu wel hit ferde mid us t>ada ^is igland wæs wunigende on sibbe and munuc-lif wæron mid wurôscipe gehealdene and da woruld-menn wæron wære wid heora fynd swa {)æt ure word sprang wide geond J)as eordan Hu wæs hit da siddan da pa man towearp munuc-lif and godes biggengas to bysmore hæfde buton Jjæt us com to cwealm and hunger and siddan hæden here hæfde to bysmore. (LS1, 294)

[Well may we think how well it fared with us when this island was dwelling in peace and the monastic life was held in honor and the laity were ready against their enemies so that our fame spread widely throughout the earth. How was it then afterwards when men rejected monastic life and held God’s worship in contempt, but that pestilence and hunger came to us and afterwards the heathen army held us in contempt?]

Believing as he did that the failure of faith was responsible for the decline of the English

nation, it is significant, then, that his Esther-translation repeatedly portrays the queen

Esther as turning to her faith, and encouraging her people to do likewise, during moments

of intense national crisis. For example, immediately after Esther has learned of the plot to

destroy her people, Ælfric writes:

[)a behead seo cwen, [)æt hire cynn eall sceolde fæstan |)reo dagas on an and godes fultum biddan. And heo sylf eall swa eac swylce fæste, biddende æt gode, jjæt he geburge {jam folce and eallum ])am mancvnne on swa micelre firecednvsse. (Assmann VUI, 173-177)

[Then the queen proclaimed that all of her people should fast for three days continually and prav for God’s help. And likewise she herself would also fast, praying to God that he might save the people and all of mankind in such great danger.]

This passage is particularly noteworthy in that Ælfric increases Esther’s piety by claiming that she commanded her people to put their faith in God and pray to Him, unlike the Latin

180 source-texts which clearly state that Esther commanded her people not to pray to God but

rather to “pray for me” [orate pro me] (4.16). Similarly, in the scene during which the

queen begs her husband to prepare an edict ensuring peace for the Israelites, Ælfric adds

that her request for national salvation was “inspired with the fear of God” [mid godes ege

onbryrd] (296).

The parallels between the Israelites and the English, between Ælfric’s construction

of the believing queen and his vision of a faithful Anglo-Saxon populace, are thus all too

clear: just as the queen brought about the salvation of her people through increased faith, so

too, Ælfric suggests, could a more faithful populace bring about England’s salvation, a

united and victorious nation free from the grasp of the diabolical Danes who, at that time,

posed a serious military threat to England. In Ælfric’s translation, then, the queen

functions as a metaphor for an impeccably faithful English people and, by extension, an

indivisibly united English nation. Given Ælfric’s reformist belief in the rapidly splintering

faith of the English people as well as the material realities of Danish invasions, the figure of

the royal woman acts as a vehicle for Ælfric to envision a wholeness of people and place

very much other than what actually existed in early eleventh-century England. Indeed, it is

perhaps not at all surprising that woman, or rather an idea of a woman, permits for Ælfric the fantasy of national integration and wholeness. As Jacques Lacan has argued, it is precisely the fantasy of woman as radically other from man that permits the psychic wholeness upon which masculine identity is grounded:

As negative to the man, woman becomes a total object of fantasy (or an object of total fantasy), elevated into the place of the Other and made to stand for its truth... . The absolute Otherness of the woman, therefore, serves to secure for the man his own self-knowledge and truth.

^^Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the ecole freudienne, eds. Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose, trans. Jacqueline Rose (New York: Norton, 1982) 50. The use of Lacan as a theoretical matrix through which to better understand Ælfric’s fantasy of a united.

181 In short, what Lacan argues is that masculine identity is never more than a fragile construct,

that a man’s fantasy of himself as a powerful, unified, self-knowing being is always in

danger of being exposed as merely a fantasy. According to the Lacanian scheme of identity

construction, the idea of woman as wholly different from man—powerless, emotionally

fragmented, and lacking in self-knowledge—functions as a means for man to construct a

fantasy of himself as everything that she is not. Woman thus becomes the defining

opposite upon which masculine identity is grounded.

If for Lacan the figure of woman allows man the fantasy of individual psychic

wholeness, I want to suggest that for Ælfric the royal female figure permits the fantasy of

national wholeness, both religious and political: as a symbol of the believing church, the

queen represents one nation united through adherence to a common set of religious beliefs,

which would subsequently ensure the nation’s freedom from the dangerously divisive forces of foreign enemies and thus ensure its political wholeness. I want to be absolutely clear, however, that in arguing that Ælfric draws on the queen’s metaphorical potential to represent the believing church that would lead to national wholeness, I am not dismissing the queen as a woman. Typological readings of biblical women have long been used in medieval studies as a means of dismissing powerful female figures: by claiming that the woman stands for a non-gendered universal, such as the Church of Christ or lay belief, she is ignored as a woman and gender thus drops out of consideration. I argue, rather, that

Ælfric’s use of the royal female figure Esther to envision a believing nation united against the Danes is not to dismiss gender but rather to locate it as central to late Anglo-Saxon believing England is indebted to Sylvia Federico’s “A Fourteenth-Century Erotics of Politics: London as a Feminine New Troy,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 19 (1997): 121- 155, in which she convincingly argues that the idea of woman permits both Gower and Maidstone the fantasy of London as a united whole.

182 ecclesiastical ideologies of national reform. Indeed, the idea of woman was particularly suited to ecclesiastical visions of national reform, for one of the key goals of such reform was centered around the gendered social ideal of chastity, more specifically, increased observance of monastic chastity and the extension of this ideal to the secular church— namely, the observance of approved marital practice.30 And it is the ways in which Ælfric uses the biblical queens Esther and Vashti to construct marital ideals for the laity which the following section takes up.

in. The End of the Roval Marriage

In his De rectoribus christianis (On Christian Rulers)—the only extended theoretical portrait of queenship in early medieval culture—the ninth-century Irishman Sedulius Scottus claimed:

As Christ united the Church to him with a chaste love, so a wife should cleave to her husband; in her heart gentle simplicity üke the beauty of a dove should always abound. Piety, prudence and sacred authority should adorn her just as gracious Esther shone. A king and queen should cherish the bonds of peace; in both there should be agreement and concord .... if a ruler and his wife are to rule the people justly, let them first rule their own family.31

^®While chastity was urged on both Anglo-Saxon monks and nuns as well as both Anglo-Saxon laymen and women, the idea of various gradations of chastity as a social ideal was usually more closely linked to women than to men, both in patristic and Anglo-Saxon texts.

Sedulius Scottus: On Christian Rulers and the Poems, trans. Edward Gerard Doyle, Medieval and Renaissance Studies 17 (Binghamton, NY: SUNY Binghamton, 1983) 61.

183 Scottus’ brief poetic configuration of the ideal queen lucidly illustrates the symbolic complexity of the royal marriage in early Germanic culture.32 Figured as the loving bond between Christ and the church, husband and wife, sovereign and subject—the relationship between the queen and her husband was central to constructing early medieval ideals of

Christian piety, domestic harmony, and sovereign loyalty. Scottus offers Esther as the exemplary royal wife, and indeed, the very idea of the royal marriage as a public exemplar is central to the biblical Esther-narrative. The king’s sole motive for leaving his first wife

Vashti (and subsequently marrying Esther) is the fact that his male counsellors fear that the queen Vashti’s refusal to follow her husband’s orders to appear at his banquet crowned will set a public example of disobedience for their own wives, believing that marital insurrection within the palace would necessarily usher in social anarchy within their own homes (Esther 1.15-1.21). Such fears prove convincing to the king, who follows the advice of his counsellors and thus leaves his wife.

Yet to leave one’s wife in late Anglo-Saxon England was an act which was strictly regulated by both secular and ecclesiastical law-codes, and an act which became increasingly difficult as tenth-century reformers such as Ælfiric strove to ensure that

England’s lay public both understood and rigidly adhered to proper marital practice.33 But

32scottus wrote for the Carolingian court and his political writings were influential in constructing Anglo-Saxon ideals of rulership. For further discussion of the relationship between Carolingian and Anglo-Saxon ideals of rulership, see Robert Deshman, “Benedictus Monarcha et Monachus: Early Medieval Ruler Theology and the Anglo-Saxon Reform,” Friihmittelalterliche Studien 22 (1988): 204-240.

^^Both Icelandic sagas and early Anglo-Saxon secular law-codes suggest that native Germanic culture was not strongly opposed to divorce. Roberta Frank has pointed out that the saga-authors show no disapproval of the native custom of divorce by one spouse simply making a declaration in front of witnesses, and she also draws attention to the fascinating fact that in the family sagas divorce is most often initiated by women; see “Marriage in Twelfth and Thirteenth-Century Iceland,” Viator 4 (1973): 473-484. Anglo- Saxon secular codes on divorce include Æthelberfit, ch. 31 (602-603?), which states that a male adulterer could either provide the offended husband with wergild (it is unclear whose

184 under exactly what circumstances was divorce permitted in late Anglo-Saxon England and to what extent did Ælfric condone such divorces? I want now to compare various rulings on divorce in several late tenth-century vernacular penitentials with Ælfnc’s discussions of divorce in his Latin and Old English pastoral letters. My intent is to locate Ælfric’s views on divorce in relation to the ideologies of contemporary ecclesiastical culture in order to establish a framework for addressing the complicated problem of how he deals with the divorce of Vashti and King Ahasuerus in his Esther-translation.

The late tenth-century vernacular penitentials commonly referred to as “The

Confessional or Scrift boc of Pseudo-Egbert,” “The Penitential of Pseudo-Egbert,” and “A

Late Old English Handbook for the Use of a Confessor” provide detailed discussions of the conditions under which divorce was permitted in late Anglo-Saxon England.^ The “Scrift wergild is meant) or simply replace the adulterous wife with a new one ÆHD. 392); for further discussion of Æthelberht 31, see Theodore John Rivers, “Adultery in Early Anglo- Saxon Society: Æthelberht 31 in Comparison with Continental Germanic Law,” Anglo- Saxon England 20 (1991): 19-25. See also Æthelberht, chs. 79 and 80 (EHD. 393), although it is essential to note Carole A. Hough’s recent argument that these chapters do not deal with divorce but rather the position of an Anglo-Saxon widow: “The Early Kentish Divorce Laws: a Reconsideration of Æthelberht, chs. 79 and 80,” Anglo-Saxon England 23 (1994): 19-35. In “A Seventh-Century Insular Latin Debate Poem on Divorce,” Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 10 (Winter 1985): 1-23, Michael Lapidge argues that Christian teachings on divorce came into conflict with various Germanic divorce customs; this article deals mainly with Bede’s views on divorce and also with the so-called “Penitential of Theodore,” and also provides extensive references for patristic and early medieval concepts of divorce. Ste^^anie Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church, ch. 2, provides a more detailed examination of Theodore’s rulings on divorce, convincingly arguing that early ecclesiastical codes were not monolithic attempts to impose a new marital orthodoxy, but rather tried to accommodate already-existing Germanic customs by providing a variety of provisions for divorcing one’s spouse.

^“^References to “The Confessional or Scrift boc of Pseudo-Egbert,” “The Penitential of Pseudo-Egbert,” and “A Late Old English Handbook for the Use of a Confessor” will be to the following editions: Robert Spindler, Das altenglische Bussbuch (sog. Confessionale Pseudo-Egberti’> (Leipzig, 1934); Josef Raith, ed.. Die altenglishche Version des Halitear’schen Bussbuches rsog. Poenitentiale Pseudo-Egberti). Bibliothek der angelsachsichen Prosa XIII (Hamburg, 1933); and Roger Fowler, “A Late Old English

185 boc” offers a wide range of provisions permitting married couples to separate: a heathen man is under no obligation to return to his wife after both are baptized (179, II. 160-161); a heathen is free to depart from a baptized spouse (179,11. 162-63); either spouse might permit the other to join a monastery and then remarry, so long as it is only the second marriage (180-81,11. 193-197);^5 although a wife is not permitted to leave an adulterous husband (185,11. 293-94), a first-time husband is allowed to leave an adulterous wife and remarry (181,11. 206-210) while the adulterous wife is free to remarry after five years of penance (185,11. 293-294); an adulterous wife, so long as her husband does not want to continue living with her, is free to enter a monastery or to leave with a quarter of the inheritance (185,11. 308-310); widows are permitted to remarry after twelve months (181,

11. 210-211); upon mutual consent, the sickness of one spouse serves as a valid reason for separation (182,11. 230-233); if a wife drives her husband away from her [forswiô hyre wer hyre fram] and refuses to be reconciled, he might with the bishop’s permission remarry after five years (182, 11. 235-237); the captivity of either spouse is a valid reason for remarriage after five years (182,11.237-42 and 183,11. 263-65); and a wife may remarry if she is able to prove her husband’s impotence (182-83,11.245-248). With regard to divorce and remarriage, the “Penitential” is somewhat stricter, differing from the

“Scrift boc” in the following ways: adultery is not viewed as an acceptable reason for

Handbook for the Use of a Confessor,” Anglia 83 (1965): 1-34. References to the “Scrift boc” and “Handbook” will be by page and line numbers; those to the “Penitential” will be by page and item numbers. The dates of these texts are tenuous. For further discussion, see Allen J. Frantzen, The Literature of Penance in Anglo-Saxon England (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1983) 133-141. Hereafter I will refer to the “Confessional” as “Scrift boc.”

^^It is noteworthy that the “Scrift boc” further states that such practice is not acceptable among the Greeks. Ecclesiastical references to “the Greeks” are sometimes intended as a signal of the author’s own discomfort with a particular practice or as a means of warding off potential disagreement from other churchmen. See Hollis, 57, n. 43; and 60, n. 59.

186 separation (19, item 7); mutually consensual separation on account of one spouse’s illness

or desire to enter a monastery is permitted only with the bishop’s consent and the remaining

party is not permitted to remarry (65, item 52); the only valid reason for remarriage is the

death of one’s first spouse and it is suggested that a woman might not want to remarry (27,

item 20); and the same harsh penalties are prescribed for both men and women who

abandon marriages—no Eucharist, no Christian burial, none of the rights befitting a

Christian person (20, item 8). The “Handbook,” which is focused on lay (as opposed to clerical) penance more than either of the other two, contains the same penalties as the

“Penitential” for those who abandon their spouses and offers the confessor no guidance for advising laypeople who wish to remarry (22,11. 171-186).

Ælfric’s pastoral letters reveal that his own position on divorce and remarriage was far stricter than that found in these contemporary vernacular penitentials. In the Old

English Letter to his diocesan bishop, Wulfsige of Sherborne (c. 992-1002), Ælfric clearly sets out his own position on divorce:

Ne nan preost ne mot beon set {jam bryd-lacum ahwaer {»ær man aeft wifad, oôôe wif eft ceorlad, ne hy togædere bletsian. Swylce man bycnige him, swa-{)aet him selre waere, {>æt hy wunodon on clænysse. Se læweda mot swa-{)eah be {jæs apostoles leafe odre siôe wifigan, g if his wif him ætfylô, acpa canones forbeodaô {)a bletsunga {jær-to and gesetton dædbote swylcum mannum to donne. (Fehr, 7,11. 9-12 and 8,11. 1-4)36

^^The letters are contained in Bernhard Fehr, éd.. Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics. Bibliothek der angelsachsichen Prosa IX (Hamburg, 1914), rpt. with a supplementary intro, by Peter Clemoes (Darmstadt, 1964). The Old English letter to Wulfsige (Past. L. I) and first Old English Letter to Wulfstan (Past. L. II) are translated in D. Whitelock, M. Brett, and C. N. L. Brooks, eds.. Councils and Svnods with Other Documents Relating to the English Church I, A.D. 871-1204: Part I: 871-1066 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981) 191-229 and 255-302. References to the letters will be to Fehr’s edition and will be by page and line numbers.

187 [No priest may be at the marriage anywhere where a man takes another wife or a woman takes another husband, nor bless them tog^her; as if one indicated to them thus that it were better for them if they remained in chastity. Yet the layman might, with the apostle’s permission [Paul], marry a second time if he loses his wife, but the canons forbid the blessing to it and have set penance for such men to do.]

Ælfric’s Latin and Old English letters to Wulfstan contain similarly strict sentiments on lay divorce and remarriage: he lists no approved reasons for remarriage except the death of one’s spouse; he includes prohibitions against priests’ attending and blessing second marriages (Fehr, 49,11. 1-3); and he prescribes various penances for those who do remarry

(125,11. 32-34 and 126, II. 1-7). If we acknowledge, however, that Æ lfric’s letters are stricter on divorce than the contemporary penitentials, it is equally important to note that the letters themselves betray an awareness of their status as professions of theoretically ideal rather than actual social practices. For example, in both his Latin and Old English Letters to Wulfstan (Past. L. 2 and Past. L. II ), Ælfric boldly states that a man who takes an abandoned woman to marriage is never afterwards to become a deacon or masspriest (Fehr,

49 11. 20-21 and 125,11. 6-10). This offhand reference to abandoned women reveals

Ælfric’s awareness that his notion of marriage as a lifetime contract was somewhat removed from actual marital practice among the Anglo-Saxon laity, that abandoned women were in fact a reality of his culture. Indeed it might be tempting to attribute the strictness of

Ælfric’s views on divorce to the fact that he was writing for the ecclesiasts Bishop

Wulfsige and Archbishop Wulfstan. Private letters exchanged between churchmen tended to be far more rigid and idealistic than penitentials designed to deal with actual social practice, a prime example being the letter sent from Pope John VIII to Ethelred, Archbishop of Canterbury (end of 877 or early in 878) which clearly states that “what God hath joined together let no man put asunder.’’^? Yet even when writing for lay audiences, as in the

37e HD. 882.

188 case of his Life of Æthelthrvth. Ælfric takes pains to suggest that abandoning one’s spouse

is not a desirable lay practice—even for laypeople wishing to serve God. Immediately after

this hagiographie narrative, which details the life of the queen Æthelthryth who leaves her

husband to enter a monastery, Ælfric appends the brief tale of a lay couple who simply

serve God by remaining chaste for thirty years in what Elliott has termed a “spiritual

marriage.”38 Although the husband does ultimately enter a monastery, Ælfiric both

prefaces and ends this Life by claiming that often “woruld-menn” have successfully

preserved their chastity in the married state, thus discouraging laypeople from abandoning

marriages—even to enter monastic life. Given his strict disapproval of divorce, how, then,

was Ælfric to offer Esther and King Ahasuems as an ideal exemplar of marriage, if such a

union was indeed predicated on the king’s leaving his first wife Vashti, an act which boldly

flouted the very ecclesiastical laws Ælfric was struggling to uphold?

One way in which Ælfric attempts to deal with the complicated problem of the king’s leaving his wife Vashti is simply by presenting her as willful and self-aggrandizing;

in short, as an obviously undesirable wife:

Heo worhte eac feorme mid fiilre mærôe eallum ^am wifmannum, jje heo wolde habban to hire mær[3e on ^am maeran palente l)aer f)er se cyning wæs oftost wunigende. (Assmann VIII, 29-32)

[She (Vashti) also made a feast with great glorv for all of the women whom/which she desired to have for her glorv in that great palace where the king was often dwelling.]39

38Dyan Elliott, Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).

^^The referent of the relative pronoun ]2£ in line 30 is (perhaps intentionally) unclear; because it can refer to either feorme or wifmannum. it is unclear whether the queen made a feast for her own glory or whether she desired to have the women present for her glory.

189 In a p^ase that points to the queen’s willfulness, Ælfric claims that Vashti not only invited women to her banquet but, more specifically, those women “^le heo wolde habban” [whom she desired to have]. And unlike Esther, who throws a banquet as an occasion to plead for the lives of her people, Vashti organizes a female banquet purely “to hire mær{)e” [for her

(own) glory]. Ælfric further illustrates Vashti’s penchant for self-aggrandizement through increasing the scale of her banquet: it is not merely a “feorme” but a “feorme mid fiilre mærôe,” held not in any “palente” but in a “mæran palente.” Also significant is that Ælfric constructs Vashti’s banquet as an imitation of King Ahasuerus’ banquet, which is described only a few lines earlier. Just as Ahasuerus invites “eallum his ealdormann and eallum his folce,” Vashti invites “eallum wifmannum”; just as he desires a banquet to display his “mærôe,” so too she desires a banquet “to hire mærjie” [for her glory]. In

Ælfric’s text, then, the queen not only usurps the king’s space, she also creates a mimicry and ultimately a mockery of his banquet by refusing to appear as another bejeweled object in the king’s glorious display of wealth.

Another way in which Ælfric attempts to legitimate the king’s leaving his disobedient wife Vashti is by figuring such an act not as the king’s personal response to his unruly spouse, but as his rightful social obligation to publicly discipline a subject who refused to conform to the social mores of his own culture. Ælfric emphasizes that Vashti’s refusal to appear at the banquet with the crown upon her head was directly contrary to social custom by adding the phrase “swa swa heora seodu wæs, [)æt seo cwen werode cynehelm on heafode” [just as was their custom that the queen should wear the crown on her head] (Assmann VUI, 37-38). Similarly, Ælfric claims that the king became angry

“J)æt heo hine forseah on swylcere gegaderunge” [that she had scorned him among such a gathering] (Assmann VIII, 45), a phrase which focuses on the public nature of her disobedience and has no correlate in the Latin sources. The Anglo-Saxons believed that public sins required public penance in order to counter the bad example set by the sinner

190 before others. In Ælfric’s words: “Tpa diglan gyltas man sceal digelice betan, and Ôa

openan openlice, ^æt ôa beon getimbrode t>urii his behreowsunge, ôe ær wæron {wrh his

mandæda geæswicode” [The secretly guilty man should make amends secretly, and the

openly guilty one openly, so that those may be edified by his repentance who were

formerly seduced by his sins] fCH I, 498, Frantzen, 141). When the king leaves his wife

and refuses to allow her to ever again appear in his palace she is publicly shamed and thus

forced to undergo a type of public penance. Although Vashti is depicted as a truly wicked

exemplar and thus never repents fiilly, Ælfric is careful to show that the queen recognizes

her public dishonor, adding a line which states that “Vasthi geseah [)a, {jaet heo wæs

forsewen” [Vashti saw then that she was dishonored] (Assmann Vm, 69).'^®

But Vashti’s disobedience is portrayed as far more serious than the mere overstepping of social customs. Ælfric depicts the queen as having violated one of the most fundamental social bonds operative in late Anglo-Saxon culture—the essential bond of loyalty between lord and retainer. Throughout the text, Ælfric depicts the king’s two marriages not according to the Christian scheme of marriage as the inviolable union between Christ and the Church, but according to the older Germanic model of marriage as a bond between lord and retainer. The term “cynehlaford” is used seven times throughout the text, invoked interchangeably to describe the relationship between the king and his wives Vashti and Esther as well as the bond between the king and his thanes. However,

Ælfric most often refers to the king simply as “se cyning,” reserving the term

“cynehlaford” to call attention to moments during which the strength of these bonds of faith are called into question (Assmann V m , 56, 112, 185, 220, 279, 288, 297). For example.

^Æ lfric’s additions also serve to heighten the poetic justice of the entire scene: because Vashti refused to come in before the king’s guests, she is prohibited from ever coming before them; just as she publicly “forseah” [scorned] the king so too she is publicly “forsewen” [scorned].

191 when describing the king's disloyal thanes who are plotting to kill him, Ælfric claims that

these men “woldon berædan swiôe unrihtlice / heora cynehlaford” [desired, very

unrighteously, to betray their lord] (Assmann Vm, 111-12). It is thus significant that in

discussing Vashti’s refusal to appear at the banquet, the king’s male counsellors claim that

“seo cwen forseah hire cynehlaford” [the queen scorned her lord] (Assmarm VUI, 56), a

sharp departure from the Latin which simply states that Vashti refused “Rex Assuerus”

[King Ahasuerus] (1.17). By describing Vashti’s behavior in the same terms as that of the

king’s disloyal thanes, Ælfric constructs her disobedience as a public breach of the social

customs binding lord and retainer and a breach which demanded appropriate retribution. A

common punishment for any type of treachery against one’s lord was exile, and this is

precisely how Ælfric figures the punishment of Vashti. Whereas in the Latin sources

Vashti’s punishment is “that never after should Vashti enter before the king” [nequaquam

ultra Vashti ingrediatur ad regem] (1.19), in Ælfric’s text, the queen is not merely

prohibited from the king, but rather exiled from the larger community of privilege in which

she has heretofore moved: “f)æt seo cwen Vasthi ne cume næfre heononforô into [)inum

pallente betwux [>inum gebeorum” [that the queen Vashti should never come henceforth

into your palace among your guests] (Assmann VIU, 63-64); in effect, her punishment is

social exile from her own class.

If Ælfric depicts the marriage of King Ahasuerus and his first wife Vashti as the

bond between lord and retainer gone awry, he offers the king’s second marriage to Esther

as an idealization of this bond, an exemplar of absolute love between husband and wife

figured as the reciprocal love between sovereign and subject. Ælfric’s Latin source-texts

depict Esther as a queen who despises her royal status, hates her husband, and claims

never to have either eaten at his table or rejoiced in anything except the Lord since arriving

at his court (14.15-18). In marked contrast, Ælfric’s Esther appears to genuinely love the king. Throughout the narrative, she refers to him repeatedly as “leof ’ [dear one] (Assmann

192 vm , 187,252),the same term used by his counsellors (Assmann Vm, 53,60),thus calling attention to the queen’s status as both wife and loving subject. Although the term

"leof” is also used by the treacherous thane Haman (Assmann Vm, 152), thus insinuating that love can be disingenuous, in Esther’s case, Ælfiric never suggests that the queen’s devotion to her husband is anything but real. By manipulating his source-texts, then, and placing the king’s two marriages into the familiar, readily-available Anglo-Saxon model of marriage as a bond between lord and retainer, Ælfiric is able to transform a biblical narrative whose very plot depends on a transgression of ecclesiastical marital law into an model of the exemplary union between king and queen, between lay husband and wife, between sovereign and subject.

rV. The Two Queens’ Bodies

Whether biblical protagonist, warrior-queen, pious abbess, or virgin martyr, the Anglo-

Saxon heroine is always beautiful. The Old English Esther is no exception, and throughout the narrative Ælfiric emphasizes the queen’s physical beauty, remarking on her “hire fægere nebwlite” [her fair face] (Assmann VHI, 89) and describing her as “on waestme cyrten”

[beautiful in figure] (Assmann Vm, 99), neither of which phrase is found in his Latin sources. That Ælfric gives added weight to his biblical heroine’s physical appearance is not surprising, for such a move is indeed consistent both with his depictions of other pious heroines as extremely beautiful—Eugenia, Agnes, Agatha, Cecilia, Judith—as well as with ideologies of beauty current in Anglo-Saxon Christian writings. Although the Church

Fathers of the Latin West, including Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, Jerome, and

Augustine, largely condemned female beauty as a deceptive surface concealing a lustful character, Anglo-Saxon clerics for the most part rejected such rhetoric, focusing instead on alternative discourses of beauty, such as those presented through Christian iconography

193 which equated physical beauty with good and ugliness with evil^l Unlike native

Germanic literature which contains multiple instances of good but notably ugly people (Egü

Skallagrimsson, Skarphedin Njâlsson, and Njâl’s wife Bergthora) and, conversely, evil

but beautiful people (Gunnar’s wife Hallgerd Hoskulddttir), Anglo-Saxon texts almost

never portray heroines as ugly and seldom feature beautiful wicked people, the rare

exceptions being Eve “freo fægest” [free, most fair] (Gen 457a) and Modthryth “hio sy

ænlicu” [she is beautiful] (Beo 1941b) ^2 While the ideological link between beauty and

virtue is particularly apparent in Anglo-Saxon biblical translations and hagiographical

narratives—such texts are rife with examples of men and women who are both beautiful

and virtuous—it is also embedded in more secular writings. For example, when the

Danish coastguard catches sight of Beowulf, one of his first remarks suggests the expectation (or at least the hope) that the hero’s physical beauty promises a similarly fine character. In the words of the coastguard: “nis [>æt seldguma, wæpnum geweorôad, næfne him his wlite leoge, anlic ansyn” [That is not a retainer made to seem good by weapons; may his beauty, his singular form, never belie him] CBeo. 249b-251a). Similarly, it is perhaps the Germanic internalization of the Christian belief that beauty and virtue should go hand in hand which is in part responsible for the continuation of facial mutilation (i.e., the cutting off of ears, noses, and upper lips) as a punishment for adulterous women in late

Anglo-Saxon law codes. While bodily disfigurement as a pimishment for criminal offenses figures less prominently in the later codes and is gradually replaced by monetary

^IPaul Beekman Taylor, “The Old English Poetic Vocabulary of Beauty,” New Readings on Women in Old English Literature. 220-221.

^^The references to the beauty of the purportedly evü characters Modthryth and Eve are complicated by the fact that Modthryth ultimately turns out to be a good queen, and the fact that the Genesis B poet takes pains to illustrate that Eve’s beauty is the result of having been fashioned by God.

194 retribution, even as late as Cnut we find evidence that the facial mutilation of adulterous

women continued as current practice.43

Ælfnc’s added focus on the queen’s beauty in his Esther-translation. then, would

have been a way of tapping into the cultural association between beauty and virtue familiar

to Anglo-Saxon readers from their experiences with other texts. As the German literary

theorist Hans Robert Jauss has argued, “A literary work ... predisposes its audience to a

very specific kind of reception by announcements, overt and covert signals, familiar

characteristics, or implicit allusions. It awakens memories of that which was already read .

.. Esther’s beauty, then, could have functioned like one of Jauss’ “covert signals’’;

awakening memories of that which was already read, the queen’s beauty might have

worked as a kind of shorthand means for Ælfric to emphasize Esther’s virtue.

Complicating such easy associations, however, is the fact that Esther’s is not the only

beautiful body in the narrative. The wicked queen Vashti also possesses a female exterior

marked by its physical perfection, a point that is central to the plot of the biblical narrative,

for it explains why the king wants his crowned queen to appear at his banquet in a public

display. Vashti’s beauty, then, would have presented a very real problem for Ælfric; to

simply eliminate it from his translation would have resulted in a confusing text; yet, to

present Vashti as beautiful was to run the risk of his audience misreading such a

representation and readily assuming that Vashti’s beautiful body, like Esther’s, was a mark

of inner virtue. How, then, to prevent his audience from interpreting all beautiful bodies in

'^^For further discussion of women’s facial disfigurement in early medieval culture, see Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg “The Heroics of Virginity: Brides of Christ and Sacrificial Mutilation,’’ Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Mary Beth Rose (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986) 29-72.

^H ans Robert Jauss, Towards an Aesthetics of Reception, trans. Timothy Bahti (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982) 23.

195 the same way? How to disrupt the automatic cultural association, so strong in late Anglo-

Saxon England, between physical perfection and inner virtue?

One way Ælfric does so is through highly selective Old English translations of the

Vulgate’s terminology of beauty. The Vulgate employs various forms of the adjective

“pulchra” [beautiful] or the noun “pulchritudo” [beauty] as a means of interchangeably denoting the physical beauty of Esther, Vashti, and the multitude of unnamed virgins presented to King Ahasuerus. Esther is described as “pulchra nimis” [very beautiful] (2.7) or “incredibili pulchritudine” [on account of her incredible beauty] (2.15); Vashti is

“pulchra valde” [very beautiful] (1.11) or “pulchritudinem illius” [the beauty of that one]

(1.11), and the uimamed virgins are “pulchrae virgines” [beautiful virgins] (2.8). The

Vulgate’s undiscriminating use of the adjective “pulchra,” as a term equally applicable to almost all of the women in the text, masks any sense of Esther’s beauty as at all unique or in any way linked to inner virtue. Likewise, while Esther is the only woman in the Latin versions described as “decora facie” [decorated/beautiful in appearance] (2.7) and as

“formosa valde” [very beautifiil-in-form] (2.15), these adjectives of exteriority locate

Esther’s beauty alongside that of all the other women in the narrative; squarely in the realm of the senses. However, Ælfric is far more selective in translating these terms. In the case of Vashti, for example, the queen is described only by the adjective “wlitig” or the substantive “wlite” (Assmann VHI, 39). In his introduction to the wicked queen, Ælfric simply states that “seo wæs swiôe wlitig” [she was very beautiful] (Assmann VUI, 28), a phrase echoed twelve lines later when he describes the queen as “swiôe wlitig on hiwe”

[very beautiful in appearance] (Assmann VIU, 40), a translation of the Vulgate’s “pulchra valde” (1.11). The pairing of the adjective “wlitig” with the additional phrase “on hiwe” suggests that Ælfnc viewed “wlitig” as a means of denoting physical beauty alone. Such a reading is supported by the fact that the Old English term “wlitig” often appears in Anglo-

Saxon literature as a kind of beauty which appeals mainly to the senses—the earth in

196 Phoenix (7a), the enticing aroma of the panther in Panther (65a), and the beautiful, ancient sword in Grendel’s cave (Beo I662b).'^5 While Esther is in fact described twice as

“wlitig,” the adjective is always accompanied by reference to her “fægemysse”: she is either “wlitig maedenmaim on wundorlicre fægemysse” [beautiful maiden of wonderful fairness] (Assmann VHI, 32) or “swiôe wlitig on wundorlicre gefægemysse” [very beautiful of wonderful fairness] (Assmann VIII, 97). The adjective “fægere,” as a term for beauty in Anglo-Saxon culture, was heavily laden with religious significance and resonated with a multiplicity of meanings. As a description for the beautiful Phoenix as a symbol of

Christ’s resurrection (291a), Eve before the Fall (Gen 457a), the angels in Genesis (79a), and Christ’s body in The Dream of the Rood (73a), the term suggested physical beauty that was linked to stainless character and righteous belief. Ælfric capitalizes on the term’s associative richness in his first description of Esther, forging an immediate and inextricable bond between the queen’s physical beauty and her pious belief by describing both as

“fægere.”

.. . and he mid him hæfde his broôor dohter, seo hatte Esther, wlitig mædenmann on wundorlicre fæ g e m ysse. And he hi geforôode on fx g eru m [jeawum æfter godes æ and his ege symie. (Assmann VHI, 80-84)

[... and he (Mordecai) had with him his brother’s daughter who was named Esther, a beautiful maiden of wonderful fairness. And he raised her in fair customs always according to the law of God and his fear (of God).]

Having established this link between Esther’s fair body and character, Ælfric repeatedly invokes the term “fægere” in relation to Esther: he refers to “hire fægere nebwlite” [her fair face] (Assmann VHI, 89), a phrase which is not present in his Latin sources; he describes

^^Taylor, 214.

197 her as “swiôe wlitig on wuldorlicre fægemysse” [very beautiful in wonderful fairness]

(Assmann VDI, 97), a translation from the Latin “pulchra valde & incredibili pulchritude”

[very beautiful and on account of her incredible beauty] (2.15); and where the Latin has

Esther adorning herself in royal apparel (5.1), Ælfric simply claims that the queen is

“swiôe fægere hiwes” [very fair in appearance] (Assmann VHI, 179). Significantly, the wicked queen Vashti is never described as “fægere.”4^ Thus while Ælfric showcases the two queens’ beautiful bodies, he concomitantly distinguishes between them, using particular Old English terms for beauty to suggest that Vashti’s beauty is merely physical, unlike Esther’s which is both inextricably bonded with—and in fact the embodiment of— her inner virtue and thus wholly different from the beauty of any other woman in the text.

Still, Ælfric, known for his tendency to present hagiographie exemplars in clear, unambiguously moral terms, may have worried that his careful terminological distinctions between the two queens’ beauty could be lost on readers less attuned to such linguistic subtleties. He thus further differentiates between the two queens by appending discussions of their characters immediately after his references to their beauty, creating a structural scheme by which the reader is coerced into looking beyond the queen’s beauty and considering her character. In the case of Vashti, for example, Ælfnc claims:

His cwen hatte Vashti, seo wæs swiôe wlitig Heo worhte eac feorme mid fiilre mærôe eallum [jam wifmannum, [?e heo wolde habban to hire mærjje on {)am mæran palente [)ær [)er se cyning wæs oftost wunigende. (Assmann VTU, 28-32)

[His queen was named Vashti, she was very beautiful. She, also, made a feast with great glory for all of the women whom/which she desired to have for her glorv in that great palace where the king was often dwelling.]

^ I n fact, Esther is the only person in the text described as “fægere.

198 Thus, Ælfric makes no attempts to conceal or downplay the wicked queen’s beauty and, in fact, highlights her physical appearance by inserting the phrase “seo wæs swiôe wlitig”

[she was very beautiful] (28). But he immediately undercuts Vashti’s beauty by following it with a series of slurs on her character: her willfulness, penchant for self-aggrandizement, and wifely disobedience.

If Ælfric’s references to Vashti’s beauty are undercut by a series of negative remarks on her character, his discussions of Esther’s beauty and, more generally, to the beauty of any ideal queen, are always buttressed by references to her stainless character— her fair customs, wise manners, unshakable faith, fertility, and noble birth—character traits of an ideal queen which are not present in Ælfric’s Latin sources. For example, Ælfric immediately follows his first reference to Esther’s beauty with several additional lines noting the queen’s pious upbringing:

. .. and he mid him hæfde his broôor dohter, seo hatte Esther, wlitig mædenmann on wundorlicre fægemysse. And he hi geforôode on fægerum jpeawum æfter godes æ and his ege symle. (Assmann VIE, 80-84)

[... and he (Esther’s uncle Mordecai) had with him his brother’s daughter who was named Esther, a beautiful maiden of wonderful fairness. And he raised her in fair customs always according to the law of God and his fear (of God).l

Similarly, Ælfric’s second reference to Esther’s beauty is also followed by an addition which both calls attention to her wise customs and suggests her fertility:

Heo wæs swiôe wlitig on wundorlicre gefægemysse and swiôe lufigendlic eallum onlociendum, and wislice ge|?eawod and on wæstme cvrten. (Assmann VUI, 97-99)

[She was very beautiful in wonderful fairness and very lovely for all those observing her and wisely mannered and beautiful in form.l

199 Ælfric’s use of the phrase “on wæstme cyrten” here is particularly noteworthy, for the term cvrten —which appears in Riddle 25, “The Onion Riddle,” to describe the churl’s daughter—connotes both a sexually desiring and desirable woman, and the term “wæstm” carries a primary meaning of “fiuit” or “offspring,” frequently appearing in Old English texts in the compound “wæstberende” [fertile]. In these lines, then, Ælfric constructs the ideal queen as one who is not only beautiful, but who is also fair-mannered and has the potential to produce heirs.'^^

This notion that the ideal queen should have specific character traits in addition to being beautiful is perhaps most lucidly illustrated in Ælfric’s translation of the scene in which King Ahasuerus has banished his first wife Vashti and is looking for a new one. In this scene, Ælfric adds several phrases which clearly attest to his belief that the ideal wife for the king would be a woman who was not merely beautiful but also bom of noble stock:

Hit wær[) [)a gecweden [xirh {jæs cyninges witan, [)æt man ofaxode on eallum his rice, gif ænig mæden ahwær mihte beon afunden swa wlitiges hiwes, ])e him wurde wære: and swilcere gebvrde. ]pe his gebedda wære; and seo [)ænne fenge to Vashties wurômynt. (Assmann VIII, 70-75)

[It was then said by means of the king’s counsellors that it should be asked throughout the kingdom if any maiden anywhere might be found of so beautiful an appearance who might be worthv of him and of such birth who might be his bed- companion/wife/consort, and she might then attain to Vashti’s honor.]

Ælfric’s musings on the ideal queen for King Ahasuerus are thus very different from the corresponding Latin passage, in which the only qualifications for queenship are physical

“^^There are no scriptural references attesting to Esther’s having children. What I am claiming rather is that Ælfric uses the term “wæstm” to suggest her future reproductive potential.

200 beauty, feminine adornments, possibly virginal status, and the ability to please the eyes of

the king:

& mittantur qui considèrent per uni versas provincias puellas speciosas & virgines: & adducant eas ad civatatem Susan, & tradant eas in domum feminamm sub manu Egei eunuchi, qui est præpositus & custos mulierum regiarum: & accipiant mundum muliebrem, & cetera ad usus necessaria. Et quaecunquæ inter onmes oculis regis placuerit, ipsa legnet pro Vashti. (2.3-2.4)

[And let someone be sent through all the provinces to look for beautiful women and virgins: and let them bring them to the city of Susan and put them into the house of the women under the hand of Egeus the eunuch, who is the overseer and keeper of the king’s women: and let them receive women’s ornaments and other things necessary for their use and whosoever shall please the eyes of the king, let her be queen instead of Vashti.]

While Ælfnc concurs that the ideal queen should indeed be a beautiful virgin, he omits any

mention that this beauty should be heightened by outward adornment, and adds that the

potential queen should be not only beautiful but also “wurô” [worthy] of the king and that

she should be of noble birth. Ælfric’s belief that the queen should come from noble stock

is more clearly stated in his Homily on the Epiphany of the Lord, in which he claims:

Hit gelimpô forwel oft |)æt on anre tide acend seo cwen and seo wylm, and deah gedicd se ædeling be his gebyrdum to healicum cynesetle, and dære wylne sunu wunad eal his lif on deowte.^

[It happens very often that the queen and the slave bring forth at one time, and yet the prince, through his birth, grows up for the lofty throne, and the son of the slave continues all his üfe in servitude.]

Benjamin Thorpe, ed.. The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church: The First Part. Containing the Sermones Catholici or Homilies of Ælfric 2 vols. (London: Ælfric Society, 1844-46) 110.

201 Ælfric’s claim in this Homily is that it is not the time of a boy’s birth that will determine his

future, but rather the “gebyrdum” or social status of the family into which he is bom; and

here Ælfnc links the boy’s social status to the status of his mother. Indeed Ælfric’s view

that the queen should be of noble stock was borne out in late Anglo-Saxon succession

practices. Unlike the earlier continental notion—most prevalent in Burgundy, Austrasia,

Neustria, and Gaul during the sixth and seventh centuries—that the birth or status (whether

queen or concubine) could not affect the succession-rights of her sons, in late tenth-century

England, both the birth and status of the mother were frequently invoked as rationale for

determining the outcome of succession struggles.^^

Ælfnc’s Esther-narrative is filled with additions which overtly discuss the inner

thoughts, feelings, motivations, and internal virtues or evils of the text’s biblical characters.

Ælfric thus always encourages his readers to look beyond a character’s exterior and to

reflect on why he or she might be behaving in either a particularly good or evil manner.^®

By following his references to both Vashti’s and Esther’s beauty with immediate discussions of their character attributes, Ælfric also creates a structural system of reception by which his audience is encouraged always to read beyond a character’s exterior, to look beneath the beautiful surface of the queen and consider whether the lovely exterior is, in fact, a reflection of the queen’s inner virtue.

A queen’s beauty, then, may or may not function as a means of signifying virtue.

But it can do other cultural work as well. Louise Fradenburg has proposed a link between the queen’s beauty and the male sovereign’s public image. The queen’s beauty “keeps her

Janet Nelson, “Queens as Jezebels: Brunhild and Balthild in Merovingian History,” Politics and Ritual. 4-5.

^ (^ is emphasis on interiority in late Anglo-Saxon biblical translations and saints’ lives has never been noted; I plan to examine it further in a subsequent study.

202 in the realm of the senses” and thus enables the king’s disembodiment, as she “takes on his

presence, immediacy, accessibility.”51 Indeed, the accessibility of the queen’s beauty is of

central importance in the biblical Esther which turns on the difference between, on the one

hand, the queen Vashti who denies the court visual access to her beauty and, on the other,

the queen Esther whose beauty is consistently open to the public gaze. And Ælfnc’s

Esther-translation retains all of the biblical references which present Esther’s beauty as a

means of satisfying the visual desires of both the court and King Ahasuerus (Assmarm

VTU, 88,90,98). But the queen’s body can never be too open, for specular accessibility

might easily be mistaken for sexual availability, which, in a queen, could usher in deep

anxieties as to the legitimacy of the heir. This issue surfaces in Æ lfnc’s Latin sources

which contain a problematic moment of intimacy between the queen Esther and the king’s

treacherous counsellor Haman, an episode in which the king returns from his garden and

interprets his wife’s body as being too accessible to her subjects:

Qui cum reversus esset de horto nemoribis consito, & intrasset convivii locum, reperit Aman super lectulum cormisse, in quo jacebat Esther, & ait: Etiam reginam vult opprimere, me praesente, in domo mea.

[And when he (King Ahasuerus) had returned from the garden planted with trees and entered the place of the banquet he found that Haman had fallen upon the bed, in which Esther lay, and he said: “He wishes to force the queen, in my presence, in my house.”] (7.7)

The Old Latin conveys a similar sense of King Ahasuerus’ fear of his wife’s imminent rape through his claim that Haman intended “uxorem violare meam” [to violate my wife] (7.7).

To preserve the unquestionable integrity of his heroine’s body, Ælfric’s rendition of this scene is highly sanitized: there are no beds; the queen is upright rather than lying down;

^^Louise Olga Fradenburg, City. Marriage. Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval Scotland (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991) 75.

203 Hainan’s motives for lying at the queen’s feet are clearly spelt out; and there is only the

faintest whisper of sexual impropriety.

Ac he h ra ^ sona eft eode him inne. And efne Aman pa niôer afeallen to {were cwene fotum, ^æt heo him gefultumode to his agenum feore. pa oflicode ^am cyninge, {wet he læg hire swa gehende. (Assmann VHI, 270-274)

[But he (the king) quickly afterwards came inside. And Haman merely fell down at the queen’s feet, so that she might help him save his own life. This was displeasing to the king that he lay so near to her.]

Yet, steeped as he was in the ideology of ecclesiastical reform, Ælfric was concerned to

present Esther’s body as inaccessible not only to her male subjects but also to the king— until they were properly married. A central aspect of the reform movement was to extend ecclesiastical standards of chastity (in somewhat softened form) to the laity; one important aspect of lay chastity was the strict prohibition of premarital sex. The biblical Esther presented Ælfric with quite a challenge in this respect, for the Latin texts clearly state that

King Ahasuerus stages an extensive series of sexual tryouts for all of the women he was considering as potential candidates for queenship: the women are first given over to the eunuch Susagaz, who is overseer of the king’s concubines, for a one-year beautification regimen; each is then brought to the king’s tent for one night; and the women whom the king finds sexually pleasing are invited back for further consideration. Ælfric deletes all of these references to female beautification, the royal harem, and premarital sex, replacing this entire section of his source-texts with a few simple lines explaining how the king came to choose Esther as his wife:

Seo weard [la gebroht and besæd {jam cyning And he hi sceawode and him sona gelicode hire fægere nebwlite and lufode hire swiôe

204 ofer ealle oôre, ôe he ær gesceawode. (Assmann VHI, 87-90)

[She was then brought and placed near the king. And he observed her, and her fair face was immediately pleasing to him and he loved her greatly over all the others whom he had observed before.]

What is striking about this passage is its emphasis on specularity; twice, Ælfric states that the king “observed” [sceawode, gesceawode] Esther. While the Latin does call attention, on several occasions, to Esther’s visual accessibility to both her subjects and the king (2.4,

2.9, 2.15), the Latin scene in which the king actually chooses Esther as his wife (2.16-

2.17) contains no references to his observing Esther. Ælfric’s added references to specularity in this passage serve to clearly convey to his readers that the pleasure the king found in Esther before their marriage was purely visual. According to Ælfric’s translation,

Esther’s marriage was thus undertaken in strict accordance with ecclesiastical prohibitions against premarital sex; for until the king marries Esther he, like his subjects, is just looking.

V. Queenship and Roval Counsel

Many biblical scholars have remarked on the centrality of counsel and advice to the plot structure of the Old Testament narrative Esther. As Jack Sasson has argued;

The king (in Esther) is totally open to suggestion, and never acts without some expressly stated or subtly intimated advice. Indeed, the frequency with which advice is offered from all sources and to every character is such a major feature of Esther’s plot structure that it has led some scholars wrongly to locate Esther’s origin in Wisdom circles

52jack M. Sasson, “Esther,” The Literarv Guide to the Bible, ed. Robert Alter and Frank Kermode (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 1987) 336-37.

205 Sasson is indeed correct to note the centrality of advice to Esther’s plot structure. The very

crux of the narrative, in fact the fate of the Israelite people, turns on the question of whether

the king Ahasuerus will accept the false counsel of his wicked thane Haman or be guided

by the intercessory pleas of his wife Esther. Yet counsel and intercession are two very

different entities: the former based on a model of royal openness in which the king seeks

help to decide on a course of action, the latter being limited to the modification of a

previously-determined course of action. By exploring the many additions Ælfiric makes to

his Esther-translation regarding the subject of royal counsel, this section will demonstrate

that Ælfiric strictly delimits Esther’s role as either a royal counsellor or independent political

agent, defining her primarily either as an intercessor or as a spiritual counsellor to her

husband.

Ælfric does not tamper with the biblical narrative’s depiction of Esther as an

intercessor with her husband on behalf of the Israelite people. He even closes his narrative

by adding several lines calling attention to the queen’s role as an intercessor, claiming that

the Israelite people “lived in peace through the intercession of the queen” [on f n ^

wunedon {)urh [)ære cwene [)ingunge] (Assmann VIU, 312-13), and noting that “they

rejoiced wonderfully that they had found such an intercessor for themselves” [wundorlice

blissodon, [)æt hi swilcne forespræcan him afunden hæfdon] (Assmann VUI, 316-17). Yet

Ælfric strictly delimits Esther’s role to either that of intercessor or as a counsellor to her

husband in spiritual matters alone, suggesting that it is not the king’s wife but rather his

male counsellors who are most intimately involved with his personal and political affairs.

One way in which Ælfric enhances the role of the king’s male counsellors is simply by

adding various lines to his text which establish the importance of their presence. For example, when describing the royal marriage of Esther and Ahasuems, Ælfiric writes:

206 He gewifode t?a swa be his witena ræde on heora gewitnvsse. (Assmann VHI, 105-106)

[He married then, according to the advice of his counsellors in their witness !

And after the queen Esther reveals to her husband that the treacherous thane Mordecai is

plotting to kill all of her kinspeople, the king leaves his wife and retreats to his apple

orchard for counsel. Unlike the Latin versions of Esther which give no indication of why the king leaves his wife to go into the apple orchard, Ælfnc explicitly suggests that he does so to seek counsel:

And se cyning aras hrajpe gehathyrt and eode him sona ut binnon his æppeltun swilce for rædinge. (Assmann VHI, 268-270)

[And the king arose quicklv. angry, and he went out into his apple orchard as if for counsel.1

Furthermore, Ælfric heightens the importance of the male counsellors by suggesting that they are on very intimate terms with the king. The king’s counsellors refer to their king as

“leof cynehlaford” [dear lord], the same title by which Esther refers to her husband. Yet

King Ahasuerus’ male counsellors appear to have greater knowledge of their king’s inner emotional state than does the queen. After the queen reveals the intended slaughter of her people to King Ahasuerus, he grows extremely angry. At this point, Ælfric adds a line stating that it is the king’s male retainers, not the queen, who immediately recognize and respond to the king’s anger by suggesting that Haman, the instigator of this plot, be hanged: “And [)a cnihtas oncneowan [)æs cyninges micclan graman” [And the retainers recognized the king’s great anger] (Assmann VTU, 275). Ælfric also heightens the intimacy between the king and the Israelite Mordecai, Esther’s uncle. In the Latin, when the king is listening to his thanes reading aloud from a contemporary historical chronicle

207 and hears the story of how Mordecai saved him from the treachery of his disloyal thanes,

he asks what honors and rewards Mordecai received “pro hac fide” [for this faith]. In

Ælfric’s rendition, the king interprets Mordecai’s having saved him not as a thane’s

fulfillment of his proper social obligation to keep fide with the king, but as stenuning from

a genuine concern for the king’s personal welfare, as he asks his thanes what reward came

to Mordecai “on account of that he so truly cared about me” [for [jam [)aei he swa holdlice

hogode embe me] (Assmann VIU, 217-18). Finally, Ælfric heightens the intimacy

between the king and his male counsellors by constructing a more personal model of

counsel than that presented in the Vulgate. The Vulgate stresses the role of the counsellor

as an interpreter of unalterable laws or formal judgments from the past:

Interrogavit sapientes, qui ex more regio semper ei aderant, et illomm faciebat cuncta consilio, scientium leges ac iura majorum. (Vulgate, 1.13)

[He (King Ahasuerus) asked the wise men who, according to roval custom, were always near him, and all he did was always by their counsel, those who knew the laws and judgments of their forefathers.l^G

In translating this passage, Ælfric omits any mention of the fact that the king’s advisors

rely on laws or formal judgments from the past, leaving the reader to infer that the king’s

male counsellors provide counsel which is based not on their knowledge of written law but

simply on their intimate knowledge of the king’s wants and needs:

And befran his witan p e wæron æfre mid him on ælcum his ræde, p e he rædan wolde, and he ealle [)ing dyde æfre be heora ræde. (Assmann VTU, 46-48)

^^The underlined text constitutes portions of the Latin that Ælfric did not translate into Old English.

208 [And he asked his counsellors, who were always with him in each of his councils, whom he would consult, and he did all things according to their counsel.]

Similarly, in the Vulgate, when the king’s male counsellors ask their lord to have an edict

drawn up, they request that it “be written according to the law of the Persians and the

Medes which is unlawful to be altered” [scribatur juxta legem Persarum atque Medorum,

quam praeteriri illicitum est] (1.19). Ælfric omits any mention of this law, with the

counsellors’ sole request being that the edict represent that which “all the Medes say with

unanimous counsel and also all of the Persian people” [ealle Medas cweôaô anmodum

gejjeahte / and eac [)a Persican leode] (Assmann VHI, 61-62). By omitting at several points

in his translation the fact that the king’s male counsellors rely on formal or written judgments from the past, Ælfnc thus heightens the intimacy between the king and his male

counsellors; for if the counsellors’ judgments are not based on interpretations of written

laws, they can only be based on a close personal knowledge of the king’s personal and

political affairs.

Ælfric does not suggest, however, that all men are good counsellors; as he carefully points out, in a significant addition to his source-texts, the wicked thane Haman is guided by the “dyslicum ræde” [foolish counsel] of his kinsmen (Assmann VHI, 207). Rather

Ælfric’s point is that the exemplary king is guided mainly by the counsel of men, whereas the queen’s role is limited to that of intercessor and informal spiritual counsellor. Ælfric’s attempt to sharply delimit the queen’s formal political power is lucidly illustrated in a very brief but important moment towards the end of his Esther-translation during which the king doles out rewards to both Esther and her uncle Mordecai. The Latin clearly denotes three exchanges of wealth: the king gives Haman’s “domus” (the word suggests both the actual residence as well as its lands) to Esther; the king gives his personal ring to the Israelite

Mordecai; Esther then gives her kinsman Mordecai jurisdiction over her “domus.” In

209 Ælfric’s version, these exchanges are slightly but strikingly different: the king gives

Haman’s possessions (æhta) to Esther, he gives his own ring to Mordecai; and, most

significantly, it is he, not the queen, who gives Mordecai “anweald” [command] over

anything at all.

Ælfric’s omission of the queen Esther’s power to alienate lands to her Israelite

kinsman Mordecai resonates strongly with a 1003 entry recorded in the C, D, and E

versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This entry describes the fall of Exeter as a result

of its having been placed by Æthelred’s foreign queen Emma, daughter of Richard of

Normandy, under the jurisdiction of her Norman kinsman Hugh, an event which may very

well have taken place during the very time that Ælfric was working on his Esther-

translation (1002-05):

mille, iii. Her wæs Eaxanceaster abrocen [)uruh [xsne frencisan ceorl Hugan [)e seo læfdige hæfde hyre geset to gerefan, 7 se here [)a ôa burh mid ealle fordyde 7 micle herehujje [>ær genam.^*^

[1003. Here was Exeter captured on account of the French ceorl Hugh, whom the queen had appointed as her reeve, and the (Danish) army then completely destroyed the borough and seized much booty there.]

The fall of Exeter to the Danes in 1(X)3 demonstrates how very decisive and, in fact,

disastrous a queen’s actions could be in the ongoing struggle against foreign invaders.

More specifically, it attests to the dangers of a foreign queen who might alienate English

lands to foreign kinsmen with political agendas not necessarily beneficial to England.

Ælfnc was taking no chances. His Esther-translation provides an exemplar of the ideal

^^The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, vol. 6, MS D, ed. G. P. Cubbin (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1996) 51. Translated in EHD. 239.

210 queen as one whose actions are sharply delimited to that of intercessor and spiritual counsellor. In his translation, it is only the king who has the power to alienate lands.

In an important article on the intercessory functions of the queen in late thirteenth- century England, John Carmi Parsons has argued that the decline of the queen’s formal power in late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century England was closely linked to an increased emphasis in papal and episcopal letters on her mediatoryro le .^ 5 Building on

Parsons’ argument, Paul Strohm has suggested that the very warmth with which intercessory queenship was accepted and promulgated among thirteenth- and fourteenth- century clerics and chroniclers is cause for suspicion and might be viewed as part of the late medieval celebration of female subordination and self-marginalization as an ostensible source of feminine p o w e r .5 6

But the power of the queen was not at all declining during the period in which

Ælfric was writing. Rather, late tenth- and early eleventh-century England witnessed a host of significant increases in queens’ formal power including: new titles for queens and queen-mothers; the first recorded anointing ceremonies for Wessex queens; the formal appointment of a queen as the official patron of female monasteries; and the regular appearance of queens’ signatures on royal charters. Ælfric’s depictions of the queen Esther as a woman who lacked the ability to freely alienate property and whose agency was confined to the roles of intercessor and spiritual counsellor is thus far removed from the actual roles of the queen during his own lifetime.^? His translation is not an attempt to

^^John Carmi Parson, “The Queen’s Intercession in Thirteenth-Century England,” Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women. 147-177.

56paul Strohm, Hochon’s Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Centurv Texts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992) 96.

^^On the late Anglo-Saxon queen’s ability to alienate property, see Stafford, “The King’s Wife in Wessex, ” New Readings on Women in Old English Literature, esp. 65-66; see also Marc Anthony Meyer, “The Queen’s ‘Demesne’ in Later Anglo-Saxon England,”

211 represent the late Anglo-Saxon queen’s actual roles but rather an attempt to create an exemplar that would thrust her back in time, placing her into the traditional roles of mediator and informal spiritual advisor—familiar, readily-available models of queenship that Ælfric would have known well through histories such as Bede’s, which depict queens as instrumental in softening their husband’s hearts and urging them toward spiritual conversion.

Capitalizing on the metaphorical potential of the queen and relying on the possibilities biblical translation offered to create a past peopled with characters radically different than those present in his Latin sources, Æl&ic uses the biblical queens Vashti and

Esther to create a model of queenship, to provide commentary on a variety of social issues, and to envision an England united in belief and foreign defense. The many changes he makes to his biblical source-texts attest to his belief in the inadequacies of the pre-Christian past even as his creation of the exemplary Esther-narrative stands as a testament to his profound disappointment with the present.

The Culture of Christendom: Essavs in Commemoration of Denis L.T. Bethell. ed. Marc Anthony Meyer (London and Rio Grande, OH: Hambleton Press, 1993) 75-115; and Meyer, “Women’s Estates in Later Anglo-Saxon England: The Politics of Possession,’’ The Haskins Societv Journal 3 (1991): 111-129.

212 VI. Addendum: William L isle's Habits of Textual Transmission

As early as 1876, Henry Sweet accused L isle of producing a transcription of Ælfiric’s On the Old and New Testament that was “full of omissions and wanton alterations.”^^ Sweet’s comment was seconded by S. J. Crawford in 1922 although, like Sweet, Crawford does not provide any particulars as to L ’Isle’s omissions or alterations.59 Similarly, Alan

Frantzen refers to L’Isle as a “gatekeeper or synthesizer who created a retrospective on earlier textual communities,” noting that L’Isle both made notes in and altered his transcription of Ælfric’s On the Old and New Testament, although he too does not elaborate on the ways in which L’Isle altered this text.60 And Fred Robinson has referred to L’Isle as “another antiquary who freely exercised his facility at recreating Old English texts” warning that “transcripts of Old English texts by sixteenth- or seventeenth-century antiquarians ... must be treated with caution.”6l While it has thus become a critical commonplace among Anglo-Saxonists to view L’Isle as an inaccurate transcriber, few critics elaborate on L’Isle’s inaccuracies. Thus, the question still remains: was L’Isle a faithful transcriber, and to what extent do his alterations interfere with cultural analyses of pre-Conquest literature—specifically, Ælfric’s Esther-translation?

In his discussion of L’Isle’s transcription of the Ancrene Riwle. Fred Robinson notes that L’Isle archaized the early Middle English of the text back into a form of Old

^^Henry Sweet, Anglo-Saxon Reader in Prose and Verse, with Granunatical Introduction. Notes, and Glossarv. 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879) 56.

^^Crawford, Heptateuch. 4.

^Frantzen, 161.

Robinson, “Afterlife of Old English,” 280-281.

213 English and also that he added Old English titles to these prayers.62 W. W. Skeat provides

further evidence of L’Isle’s transcription habits by comparing L’Isle’s transcription of

Ælfiric’s In Mense Septembri. quando legitur Job fCH IIXXXV) with Benjamin Thorpe’s

version of the Job Homily, transcribed fi-om Cambridge University Library MS Gg. 3.

28.63 Skeat found that L ’Isle deleted six passages from Ælfiric’s Job Homily. Five of

these passages are Ælfiric’s interpretive comments on the text, while one is an omission due

to eye skip. Timothy Alan Gustafson has reexamined the two versions of Ælfric’s Homily

on Job and found that L’Isle further omitted a large portion of the homily’s conclusion,

which offers an apology for the brevity of the text, a brief discussion of the limits of lay

understanding, a tropological interpretation of Job, and a concluding p r a y e r . 6 4 Neither

Skeat nor Gustafson find any evidence of L’Isle’s having deleted biblical material from the

homily, merely that he deleted a few of Ælfric’s interpretive comments, apologies for

brevity, and tropological interpretations. Most importantly, neither Skeat nor Gustafson

found evidence of L’Isle’s having inserted a single word into the Job Homily.

It is not L’Isle’s transcription of Ælfric’s Job Homily, however, but rather his

transcription and accompanying translation of Ælfric’s On the Old and New Testament that

^^Robinson, “Afterlife of Old English,” 280-281. Robinson bases his comments on the study of Arthur S. Napier, “The Ancre Riwle,” Modem Language Review 4 (1909): 433- 36.

^^Skeat did not actually work with L’Isle’s transcription, but rather with several printed versions of it. For a more extensive discussion of Skeat’s methodology and findings, see Skeat, Lives of Saints, vol. II, xxx-xxxi.

^U nlike Skeat, who works with Thorpe’s transcription of Cambridge University Library MS Gg. 3.28, Gustafson works with Godden’s edition: Ælfiric’s Catholic Homilies: The Second Series Text. 260-67. For a fuller discussion of these omissions, along with complete transcriptions and modem English translations, see Gustafson, 15-17.

214 have given rise to his reputation among critics as an inaccurate transcriber This

transcription was published in 1623 under the title A Saxon Treatise Concerning the Old

and New Testament, and was prefaced by an elaborate dedication, in the style of Vergil’s

Fourth Eclogue, to Prince Charles upon his return from Spain.66 The preface is followed

by a lengthy Letter to the Readers, in which L ’Isle states his intention to publish more

Anglo-Saxon transcriptions (sig. blr)^? and also explains how he learned to read Old

English: he began by acquainting himself with both High and Low Dutch; he then practiced

with Gavin Douglas’ Scottish translation of Vergil’s Aeneid. using the Latin to help make

sense of the Scottish; he then read Parker’s A Testimonie of Antiouitie and the Power

Gospels (which he incorrectly attributes to John Foxe);^ and finally he began to explore

^^In a booklist dated 23 April 1621, Robert Cotton notes that he lent William L’Isle Bodleian Laud Misc. 509 (Ker 344), which contains Ælfiric’s Preface to Genesis. Hexateuch. and On the Old and New Testament. It is most likely this manuscript which served as the exemplar for L’Isle’s transcription of Ælfiric’s On the Old and New Testament: see Ker, Catalogue. Iv. The book-list states that L’Isle also borrowed the following additional manuscripts: (1) British Museum Cotton Claudius B.iv (Ker 142), containing Ælfric’s Preface to Genesis and Hexateuch. which he made notes in, occasionally altered, underlined, and collated with 344, Ker, 422; (2) British Museum Cotton Otho B.xi (Ker 180), which is a miscellaneous collection of Old English texts, including approximately half of the Old English translation of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, fragments of the Parker Chronicle, the laws of Alfred and Ine, etc. L’Isle also owned and made notes in Bodleian Laud 636 (Ker 346), the Peterborough Chronicle, which he collated with item 180, Ker, Catalogue. 234 and 426.

66john L ’Isle, A Saxon Treatise Concerning the Old and New Testament (London, 1623); republished in 1638 under the title Divers Ancient Monuments in the Saxon Tongue (London, 1638).

67“Sig” refers to “signatures,” numbered pages which are gathered together in groups of four, with each successive foursome bearing the next letter of the alphabet. “Sig. blr” refers to the recto side of the first sheet of the second signature. While L’Isle clearly intended to publish more Old English transcriptions, his Saxon Treatise was the only one of his transcriptions ever published.

^^In 1571, John Foxe published the Anglo-Saxon Gospels, with an accompanying preface and English translation. While Foxe wrote the preface, the editing and translating

215 the manuscript collections of “his kinsman Sir H. Spelman,” his “honorable friend Sir

Rob. Cotton,” and the libraries in Cambridge (sig. dlv-2v). Both the Preface and Letter to the Readers confirm that L’Isle used Anglo-Saxon religious writings, as did earlier writers

such as John Bale, John Foxe, and Matthew Parker, as a means of establishing a historical

precedent for Anglican customs against those of Rome, as he repeatedly states that the

Saxons and most likely the Britons as well possessed vernacular Bibles in order to squelch

Romanist opposition to the use of vernacular Scripture in his own time (sig. d2v, sig. d3r).

Yet, L’Isle was also concerned to advance linguistic and philological arguments for the preservation of Old Englishw ritin g s.69 in a lengthy section of the Letter entitled “What boots it now to know this old English, which we call Saxon,” he offers the following six reasons for preserving the Saxon tongue: (1) to make known to the world both that the

Saxons translated Scripture and the ways in which they did so; (2) to understand the etymologies and roots of England’s current place-names, rivers, and boundary-marks; (3) to understand the ancient laws of England which might shed light on the country’s current legal practices; (4) to explain to others the meanings of their titles, charters, privileges, territories and, above all, their own names;70 (5) to settle controversies among antiquarians such as the true meaning of Prince Charles’ seal “Ic Dien” (I serve) or the sense of the

were done by either Matthew Parker (1504-1575) or Parker’s secretary John Joscelyn (1529-1603), for there is no evidence that Foxe knew Old English. See Adams, 31.

69pranzten, Desire For Origins. 162.

^®In spite of his interest in promoting the public knowledge of etymologies, L’Isle was not above mistranslating or providing false etymologies for purposes of personal gain. In what is an obvious case of prince-pleasing, L’Isle falsely claims that the name “Charles” in Dutch “signifies one of masculine strength or vertue” and that in Old English it means “a married man” (sig. f2r-3v). L’Isle’s attempts to associate Charles’ name with marriage are particularly interesting in that the Saxon Treatise was dedicated to Charles I upon his arrival home from Spain, a trip which was designed to result in the prince’s marriage but was thwarted by the refusal of the future bride’s father.

216 Anglo-Saxon word “alderman”; (6) “many other respects both honourable and delightfull,”

including increased pride in the English language which would, L’Isle argued, be brought

about by a better understanding of the nation’s pre-Conquest vernacular past (sig. f2v-3r).

L’Isle’s religious and philological arguments for preserving his nation’s textual past come

together nicely in his frequent condenmations of inaccurate biblical translators, those “who

by their partiall translations and glosses, would make this light shine onely for their owne

purpose” (sig. d4r).^^

However, because L’Isle rails against the inaccuracies of other translators does not

mean that he himself was an accurate translator or transcriber. To shed further light on

L’Isle’s transcription habits, 1 have examined his transcription of Ælfnc’s On the Old and

New Testament alongside Crawford’s transcription of the same m anuscript.^^ The results of this study are listed below.

1. Title Alterations

•L’Isle slightly altered the opening of the text, changing Ælfric’s simple statement “libellus de veteri testamento et noue” into an actual title, “De veteri testamento.”

2. Word Breaks

•Old English words are frequently broken up in the wrong places, i.e., “frum sceafte” [first creation] for “frumsceafte” (sig. b2v, line 17); “J)aer on” [therein] for “Jîæron” (sig. f3v, line 8); “ge cyônysse” [Testament] for “gecyônysse.”

See also sig. e3r, in which L’Isle condemns “translators; who to provide for their owne opinions, not otherwise found in the word of God, stuff the text with such fustian, such inkehome termes, as may seem to favor their parts; or darken at least the tme meaning of holy Scripture ...”

^^Crawford, Heptateuch. 15-75. Crawford painstakingly footnotes all departures from the manuscript.

217 •Conversely, Old English words are incorrectly run together, i.e., “onlife” [in this life] for

“on life” (sig. flv, line 13); “onbibliothecan” [in the Bible] for “on bibliothecan” (sig. f4v);

“onge leafulre ciricean” for “on geleafulre ciricean” [in lawful churches] (sig. k4v, line 9);

“se[)e arixajj” for “se [le a rixa{>” [he who reigns forever] (sig 14v, line 5).

3. Mistranscriptions the verb “geworhton” transcribed as “worhte” (sig. a3v, line 17) or as “ge worlite” (sig. blv, line 9); “on sorlige” for “on sorhge” (sig. b2v).

4. Contractions

•L’Isle does not expand the original manuscript contractions for [?æt. dominus. and ]x)nne.

•He sometimes expands manuscript contractions for [jam, um. and and.

5. Insertions

•Above the line in a late hand (possibly L’Isle’s) “7 eac se [)ridda” [and also the third] as further description of Seth as Adam’s third son (sig. b3v, line 15).

•The phrase “gif [)u wil” [if you knew] is supplied in a late hand (possibly L’Isle’s) to fill a lacuna (sig. f4v, line 25).

•L’Isle inserts the possessive pronoun “his” (sig h2v, line 21) and the pronoun “hi” (sig. h3r, line 3).

6. Order of Text

•L’Isle both rearranges the order in which the apostles are listed and also adds Matthew and

Simon the Canaanite to the list. Ælfric’s list is as follows; Peter, Andrew, James, John,

Thomas, the other James (James of Alpheus), Philip, Bartholomew, Thaddaeus, Paul, and

218 Matthias. L ’Isle’s order is: Peter, Andrew, Hiilip, Bartholomew, James, John, Thomas,

Matthew, the other James, Thaddaeus, Simon the Canaanite, Paul, and Matthias.

•The line “Laboratores sind ^ us bigleofan tiliaô, yrdiingas 7 aehte men to {jam anum

betaehte” ILaboratores are those who till for sustenance for us, plowmen and farmers, to

whom alone this is entrusted] has been rearranged and the pronoun “hig” added to read

“Laboratores sind yrdiingas 7 æhte men to {jam anum be tæhte {je hig us bigleofan tiliad’’

ILaboratores are plowmen and farmers, to whom alone is the charge to procure for us that

which maintains life] (sig. llv, lines 19-21).

7. Phrase Changes

•The phrase “cymô to demende” [shall come to judge] is altered to “cymô eft to demen’’

[shall come again to judge] (sig. g4v, line 14).

•In the context of describing Paul’s letters, L’Isle inverts the phrase “to thesalonicenses

twegen, to colosenses anne,’’ [two to the Thessalonians, one to the Colossians], resulting

in the phrase “to colosenses anne. to thesalonicenses twegen’’ [one to the Colossians, two to the Thessalonians] (sig. hlv, lines 19-20).

8. Punctuation

•The phrase “7 we habbad awend witodlice on englisc’’ [which we have thus turned into

English] is placed in parentheses (sig. c4v, line 2).

9. Manuscript Format

•L’Isle faithfully reproduces the original manuscript format of twenty-six Old English lines to the page.

219 10. Marginal Notations

•L’Isle makes frequent marginal notations alongside his English translation.

11. Manuscript Corrections

•Above the line in a late hand (probably L ’Isle’s), “wifiim” [women] is substituted for

“hiwum” [people] (sig. b4v, line 23), in reference to Lot’s wife and two daughters.

•A late hand (probably L’Isle’s) makes other small corrections which do not alter the meanings of the word, including: “feower fetan” (an alternative spelling of “four-footed”] substituted for “fîôerfetan” (sig. civ, line 26); the word “siôôa” changed to “siôôan” (sig. elv, line 1); “wæpnum” substituted for “wænrnum” (sig. f3v, lines 13 and 17); “wundre” changed to “wuldre” (sig. k3v, line 16).

•L’Isle often faithfully transcribes the original manuscript spellings and declensions, even when the result is a) a nonsensical word as in “gecied” for “geiced” [added, placed] (sig. dlv, line 25) or “godgundnysse” [divinity] for “godcundnysse” (sig. g2v, line 15-16; sig. g3v, line 4; and sig k3v, line 19); b) retention of a scribal error of repetition that spoils the alliteration as in “heard heardlice” [vigorous, vigorously] (sig. d2v, line 11) or

“mildheortnysse 7 his mildeheormysse” [mercy and his mercy] (sig. i4v, line 2); c) an incorrect declension, i.e., retention of manuscript “sida” for what should be “sidan” (sig. bv, line 11 ); “gingstan” [youngest] for “ginsta” (sig. c2v, line 9); “heretoga” [commander] for “heretogan” (sig. c4v, line 9); “witega” [prophets] for “witegan” (sig. e4v, line 25).

220 CHAPTERS

CONCLUSION: SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

This study of queenship in the literary and historical writings of late ninth- through early eleventh-century Wessex is intended as a contribution toward furthering our understanding of early medieval gender relations and, more generally, the ways in which textual representations are used to construct public thought. Because a dissertation is necessarily a very limited project, I have been able to explore only some of the issues surrounding changing ideals of Wessex queenship. However, my research has suggested to me potentially fruitful areas for further inquiry, and in this conclusion I will briefly outline a few of them.

Throughout my dissertation, I have discussed the late tenth through early eleventh centuries as a period that witnessed significant increases in the power, status, and influence of Wessex queens. However, this period saw a concomitant decrease in the status and opportunities available to other classes of women, including laywomen and female monastics. The general decline of female power and autonomy during this period is not fully understood, although it is sometimes partly attributed to the Benedictine reforms, which emphasized the differences between the sexes and increasingly stressed the importance of monastic and clerical chastity as well as the sexual threat women posed to male priests. More work is needed on the cultural conditions that gave rise to a period in which women’s status and authority were being increasingly determined by class rather than gender. In short, we must ask why the power of queens should increase at a time

221 when the power of almost all other classes of women was decreasing. The question is an

especially fascinating one if we consider, too, that Anglo-Saxon kings and queens seem to

have been used as exemplars for husbands and wives of lesser social status. While the very

idea of exemplarity always assumes a gap between exemplar and audience, we might want

to ask if it was at all problematic for tenth- and eleventh-century Wessex queens to function

as exemplars for contemporary laywomen, given the increasing autonomy of these queens and the increasing restrictions placed on women of lesser social status.

Because the increase in the power, status, and influence of tenth-century queens is a cultural phenomenon specific to Wessex, my discussion of attitudes toward queenship outside of Wessex is very limited. However, changing attitudes toward queenship in other areas of England and in Francia, which had close contact with England throughout this period, may provide interesting parallels with Wessex. For example, tenth-century Francia witnessed an increase in noble power and concomitant decline in royal power similar to that which occurred in mid eleventh-century England, during which the powerful aristocratic clans of Godwin and Leofric arose. It is not yet clear how the increase in noble power and decline of royal power in either tenth-century Francia or mid eleventh-century England affected the status of queens. More research is needed to address the complex relationships between the power of the nobility, the royal family, and the changing status of queens.

1 have limited my investigations here to representations of earthly queens. But approximately a third of all Old English references to queens appear in invocations of the

Virgin Mary as Queen of Heaven. While Mary Clayton has argued that this trope is no more common in late tenth-cenmry Anglo-Saxon writings than in earlier texts, there are significant changes in iconographie depictions of Maria Regina during this rimeJ As

^Mary Clayton, The Cult of the Virgin Marv in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1990) 273.

222 Robert Deshman has argued, it is during the late tenth century that Mary is depicted for the

first time in Anglo-Saxon art with angels lowering a crown upon her head.^ Moreover,

there are several extant drawings that depict the Virgin in the company of earthly queens,

including Edgar’s Privilege for New Minster, Winchester (c. 966) and the frontispiece of

the Liber Vitae of New Minster, Winchester (c. 1020-30). In future research, I would like

to examine how and why late Anglo-Saxon iconography attempts to draw close parallels

between the heavenly queen and her more earthly counterparts, and also to investigate the

first English depictions of the Virgin’s Coronation in the context of the significant

developments in late tenth- and early eleventh-century coronation ceremonies for English

queens.

Finally, my approach throughout this dissertation clearly assumes that the construction of public attitudes in any given culture is best understood by approaching those attitudes within as specific a historicist frame as possible. Thus, I have tried to contexmalize the writings examined in my dissertation through recourse to the cultural symbols and practices that existed in ninth- through early eleventh-century Wessex.

Without attempting to find in early medieval English culture any direct lessons for the late

1990s, 1 would, however, like to more fully consider in a later version of this project whether my work on queens has any implications for twentieth-century culture. One such implication of my project is it demonstrates that politically-powerful women—particularly women who inhabit ill-defined offices sucn as that of queen or First Lady—are extremely susceptible to public attitudes, and those attitudes are shaped by representations that take various forms. In late ninth-century Wessex, queens’ susceptibility to public attitudes are evident in Asser’s explanation that it was popular opinion that gave rise to Wessex queens’

^Robert Deshman, “Kingship and Christology in Ottonian and Anglo-Saxon Art,’ Fruhmittelalterliche Studien 10(1976): 397.

223 low social status and lack of political power. In the late 1990s, the strength of public attitudes toward female political power is evident in a recent news report that four out of five English subjects would flatly refuse to accept Camilla Parker Bowles as their queen or, closer to home, Hillary Clinton’s decision to grow out her hair as a concession to public ideals of femininity. The past several decades have witnessed significant advances in research on women and political power; however, our understanding of female leadership and the public attitudes that accompany it is still in an emergent stage. Studying how

Anglo-Saxon writings worked to construct popular attitudes toward queenship may help us to better understand twentieth-century attitudes toward female political power by making us more sensitive to the complex ways in which attitudes are shaped.

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