Durham E-Theses Religious Thought and Reform in late tenth-century England: The Evidence of the Blickling and Vercelli Books KEARNS, THOMAS,ROBERT,ARIS How to cite: KEARNS, THOMAS,ROBERT,ARIS (2020) Religious Thought and Reform in late tenth-century England: The Evidence of the Blickling and Vercelli Books, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/13926/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Religious Thought and Reform in late tenth-century England: The Evidence of the Blickling and Vercelli Books Thomas Kearns This thesis is a sustained historical analysis of religious thought in late tenth-century England focusing on two collections of vernacular religious literature: the Blickling Book (Princeton, Scheide Library, MS 71) and the Vercelli Books (Biblioteca Capitolare di Vercelli MS CXVII). The late tenth century was a complicated time in Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical history on account of the dominance in the primary evidence of authors espousing church reform. The dominance of these voices has led to a one-sided view of the period founded upon caricatures of the non- reformed. This thesis has two aims. The first is to discern from the Blickling and Vercelli books a sense of the ideas and worldview of these non-reformed ecclesiastics. The second is to offer an analysis of late tenth-century ecclesiastical reform which interprets the evidence in light of the Blickling and Vercelli books, rather than the more usual approach of evaluating the books in light of the evidence produced by reformers. To achieve these goals this thesis first engages with ongoing debates over the origins and audiences of the books. After addressing these, it proceeds to consider the issues most often discussed by the Blickling and Vercelli authors: ideals of the priesthood; the main penitential practices of prayer, vigils, fasting, and almsgiving; and the authors’ underlying theology. The main benefit of viewing the period through the lens of Blickling and Vercelli is that it offers a more nuanced view of the relationship between reformers and the non-reformed. It emerges that the late tenth-century Anglo-Saxon Church was typified by significant continuity in ideas, attitudes, and practices. The late tenth-century Church had a strong pastoral tradition that inspired both reformers and the non-reformed; it also had monastic traditions that similarly transcended boundaries set by reformist rhetoric. Yet this reforming rhetoric does not accurately reflect the realities of the late tenth-century Church. Religious Thought and Reform in late tenth-century England: The Evidence of the Blickling and Vercelli Books Thomas Kearns This thesis is submitted for the degree Doctor of Philosophy 2020 Department of History Durham University Table of Contents - Abbreviations i - Statement of Copyright ii - Acknowledgments iii - Introduction 1 o Methodology and Sources 2 o Terminology 4 - The Manuscripts and their Origins 9 o The Dates of the Blickling and Vercelli Books 10 o Previous Scholarship on the Origins of Blickling and Vercelli 15 o Textual Circulation and the Origins of the Blickling and Vercelli Books 20 - The Partially Knowable Audiences of the Blickling and Vercelli Books 36 o The Audience of the Blickling Book 38 o The Audience of the Vercelli Book 47 - Priesthood and Reform 67 o Duties of the Priesthood 68 o Ideals of the Apostolic Life 74 - Practising Christianity in late tenth-century England 85 o Prayer 86 o Vigils 95 o Fasting and Almsgiving 99 - Theology I: Soteriology and Sacramentality 115 o Soteriology 116 o Sacramentality 125 - Theology II: Eschatology and the Church 142 o Individual Eschatology 143 o General Eschatology 153 - Conclusion 167 - Appendix: Tables and Maps 172 - Bibliography 177 Abbreviations ASE Anglo-Saxon England HE Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, in The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, transl. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1972). CÆ Canterbury Ælfric tradition CCCC Cambridge, Corpus Christi College SE South East VSO Byrhtferth of Ramsey, Vita Sancti Oswaldi, in The Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine, ed., and transl. by M. Lapidge (Oxford, 2009). WM West Midlands i The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the author’s prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. ii Acknowledgments The idea for this thesis was born in the computer room of the Cambridge University English Faculty as I worked to complete my third-year undergraduate dissertation. I am deeply thankful to Dr David Callander, who supervised that dissertation, and to Professor Richard Dance, who first observed that I pursue my interest in Anglo-Saxon theology. I am also thankful to Professor Sarah Foot for her encouragement in pursuing the study of late tenth-century monastic reform and in making the present thesis the focus of my doctoral research. My appreciation also goes to the Arts and Humanities Research Council who funded this project and to the History Department of Durham University who hosted it. My thanks also go to St Mary’s College, Oscott, for allowing me to use their library during an extended period of dog- sitting at home. I am also deeply grateful to all my family, friends, acquaintances, and colleagues who have been a constant help and support throughout this long and often difficult process, in particular to Hannah Piercy, Abigail Steed, Thais Rocha de Silva, Samuel Thompson, Holly Bee, Ella Watts, Sarah Doré, Gale Ryan, Fr Andrew Louth, Dr Chris Riedel, Dr Ana Dias, Dr Erik Niblaeus, and Professor Richard Gameson. I am also deeply grateful to Dr Helen Foxhall Forbes for supervising this thesis and her endless patience, understanding and guidance despite my many emails and questions. I also owe a debt of gratitude to my parents, Janet and Robert Kearns, for their love and support. Finally, I am forever thankful to my fiancée, Emily DeRoo, who has been there through the highs and lows of this process and was always able to help me see the light at the end of the tunnel. iii Introduction One day in the year 964, as the canons of the New Minster performed the Divine Office, Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester, strode into the cathedral with an entourage of monks and armed royal agents. He presented the canons with a stark choice, to take up the monastic life or leave. All the canons left, although two subsequently returned as monks to re-join the new strictly-Benedictine monastic cathedral that Æthelwold created.1 In the eyes of future generations, this event marked the first act of a movement that would remake the English Church and produce an environment in which the old ‘secular clergy’ were denigrated as corrupt and uneducated. Due to such rhetoric, the late tenth-century reforms may appear to be a watershed in English ecclesiastical history.2 While there has been a tendency to move away from such a stark dichotomy, the perception of the period as a watershed remains and this leads to a continued sense that texts produced on either side of it offer glimpses into different intellectual worlds.3 This thesis tests this notion by re-examining the late tenth century through the writings of those usually associated with the established order of the Anglo-Saxon Church. The image that emerges from this endeavour challenges the sense of the period as a watershed. Rather, trends of both continuity and diversity characterise the period and these attest to the vitality of vernacular religious thought among the ‘non-reformed’. It also highlights how indebted some writers in the reformed tradition such as Wulfstan were to older ideas. The watershed narrative depends on the testimony of reformers, while other perspectives reveal a subtler transformation in which most ideas and attitudes remained essentially unchanged while writers developed fresh ways of discussing them. Rather than a watershed, the period shows signs of a more gradual evolution. The prime sources for this endeavour are the prose and poetic texts found in the Blickling and Vercelli Books (Princeton, Scheide Library, MS 71 and Biblioteca Capitolare di Vercelli MS CXVII respectively). These two manuscripts present an enigma to historians. Many articles have been written about their language, their literary value, and the place of their script in the history of Anglo-Saxon handwriting. Yet, for all this discussion, Blickling and Vercelli remain peculiarly detached from their historical context which, regardless of whether 1 Wulfstan of Winchester, Vita sancti Æthelwoldi, c.20, in The Life of St. Æthelwold, ed. M. Lapidge and M. Winterbottom (Oxford, 1991). 2 Gatch, M., Preaching and Theology in Anglo-Saxon England: Ælfric and Wulfstan (Toronto, 1977), p. 8. 3 Zacher, S., Preaching the Converted: The Style and Rhetoric of the Vercelli Book Homilies (Toronto, 2009), pp. 34-36; Ó Carragáin, É, ‘Rome, Ruthwell, Vercelli: The Dream of the Rood and the Italian Connection’, in Vercelli tra Oriente ed Occidente, tra tarda antichità e Medioevo, ed. V. Docetti Corazza (Alessandria, 1998), pp.