The Ideology of War in Early Medieval England: Three Case Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature
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THE IDEOLOGY OF WAR IN EARLY MEDIEVAL ENGLAND: THREE CASE STUDIES IN ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE Lucrezia Pezzarossa PhD Department of English and Related Literature University of York July 2013 ABSTRACT This thesis aims at enhancing current understanding of the ideological dimension of war in early medieval England by investigating how war is represented and discussed in a number of Anglo-Saxon literary texts. In order to highlight how ideas and attitudes towards war evolved through time, this study comprises of three case studies arranged in chronological order. Chapter One considers the perception and representation of war in the Old English biblical poems Genesis, Exodus and Judith, showing how the Old Testament ideology of war was highly popular and influential throughout the Anglo- Saxon period. Chapter Two investigates ideas and attitudes towards war in a number of ninth-century texts produced in the context of King Alfred’s programme for the revival of literature and learning. This case study highlights how the coming of the Vikings prompted the ‘intellectual community’ operating under Alfred’s aegis to develop articulate and unprecedented reflection on the issue of war. Chapter Three focuses on the second Viking Age and explores how two notable late Anglo-Saxon authors, namely Ælfric of Eynsham and Wulfstan of York, responded to the violent return of the Scandinavian raiders. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements............................................................................................. iv Author’s declaration …....................................................................................... v Abbreviations …................................................................................................. vi Notes …............................................................................................................... vii Introduction ........................................................................................................ 1 Chapter One Foundations: the Old Testament ideology of war, the late antique tradition and their reception in Anglo-Saxon England ….................................................. 18 Chapter Two Inception: Alfredian literature and the first Viking Age ….................................................. 84 Chapter Three Consolidation?: Ælfric, Wulfstan and the second Viking Age …................................................ 160 Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 214 Bibliography .................................................................................................... 217 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all I would like to thank my supervisor Elizabeth Tyler, because she has taught me the importance of thinking with my own head and how to convey my ideas more boldly and effectively. I would also like to express my appreciation to Matthew Townend, member of my TAP, for helping me and Elizabeth consider a number of issues which arose over these years. I am deeply grateful to Kathy Cubitt, Craig Taylor and Guy Halsall, who very generously helped me with their valuable time and extensive knowledge. On the ‘Italian’ side, I would like to thank all the members of the Associazione Italiana di Filologia Germanica and in particular Professors Giulio Garuti Simone, Alessandro Zironi, Maria Elena Ruggerini and Patrizia Lendinara for their valuable advice and constant encouragement throughout these years. The ‘young’ members of the Associazione have proven to be not only a welcoming and stimulating group of bright future academics, but above all funny and good friends. I do hope we will be able to regard ourselves as colleagues one day. I owe a very special thanks to Professor Francesca Tinti for setting me on the road to England and for her unwavering support and unfailing kindness especially at desperate times. I most definitely would not be here without her! I am greatly indebted to a number of wonderful people personally, only a few of whom I am able to acknowledge here. In particular, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to: my students, for always making me feel good about myself and for forcing me to learn Old English properly; York University Dance Society, for providing a challenging and exciting distraction from my studies; my friends Laura Cavallina, Laura Rice, Roberta Bassi, Roberta Bocedi, Elena Catalanotti, Amedeo Santoro and Beatrice Demarchi, for helping me through very difficult times. Finally, my family deserves special thanks, and in particular: my father, Professor Fulvio Pezzarossa, for passing on to me his passion for history and literature, for sharing (albeit reluctantly) some good advice and a very small part of his vast knowledge and, most of all, for providing me with an academic model to which I aspire; Riccardo, whose kindness to me is beyond words, just as is my gratitude and affection for him; my greatest debt is without doubt to my mother, who has not only read all that I wrote from elementary school up to the present, but who has listened patiently and repeatedly to the impromptu translation of almost every word of this thesis, so that I could make sense of my own ideas. Although Anglo-Saxon history and literature are very far from her field of expertise – and war and religion even further from her interests – she has become quite learned in these subjects and has endlessly provided valuable suggestions and thoughts that have deeply influenced my work. Finally, special mention must be made of my most beloved and much-missed grandparents, nonno Ivo and nonna Elda, who witnessed the beginning of this project but are no longer here to rejoice at its completion. Their unremitting love and kindness will accompany me forever, together with the many tokens of their love. This work is dedicated to them, and to the many members of my family who are no longer with us. v AUTHOR’S DECLARATION The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. In Chapter One, section two (‘The reception of the Old Testament ideology of war in Anglo-Saxon England: the Old English poems Genesis, Exodus and Judith’) I have developed and extended some arguments that were first presented in my MA dissertation. A version of my discussion of the representation of war in the Old English Orosius (Chapter Two, pp. 90-108) will appear in the forthcoming article ‘Reading Orosius in the Viking Age: an Influential Yet Problematic Model’, to be published in the collection of essays edited by P. LENDINARA, La prosa Anglosassone / Old English Prose, Filologia Germanica – Germanic Philology 5 (Milano: Prometheus, forthcoming 2014). vi ABBREVIATIONS ASC Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. For reasons that will be outlined below,1 all references to and quotations from the Chronicle, unless otherwise stated, are from MS A. All translations are drawn from M. SWANTON (ed. and trans.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles (London: Phoenix Press, 2000). CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina Ch. Chapter EETS Early English Text Society o.s. original series s.s. supplementary series EHD English Historical Documents, c. 550-1042, ed. and trans. by D. Whitelock (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1968). MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica Capit. Capitularia Conc. Concilia Epp. Epistolae SS rer. Germ. Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi nt. note SEM Studies in the Early Middle Ages s. sub s.a. sub anno 1 See below, Ch. 2, p. 134. vii NOTES The Bible As clearly illustrated by Richard Marsden,2 no standard version of the Bible existed during the early Middle Ages. In the present study, all references to and quotations from the biblical text are drawn from R. WEBER ET AL. (eds.), Biblia Sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem (Stuttgart: Württembergische Bibelanstalt, 1969). Abbreviations of the biblical books – used to refer to direct quotations from the Bible – are also taken from this edition. All translations are from the Douay-Rheims Bible, and specifically from R. CHALLONER (ed. and trans.), The Holy Bible, Translated from the Latin Vulgate, Diligently Compared with the Hebrew, Greek, and Other Editions in Divers Languages (Rockford, Ill.: Tan Books and Publishers, 1989). Primary Sources Throughout the thesis, details of the edition used are given under the first reference to each primary source. In a number of instances, homilies, prayers and documents have been cited from the same edited volume (e.g. Ælfric's homilies from W.W. Skeat’s edition of the Lives of Saints). In these cases, each text is identified by the title given to it by its editor. For the sake of brevity, however, these primary sources are not listed separately in the bibliography, but only the main edition is quoted. Translations Throughout the present study, published translations have been used whenever possible. Details of the translation used are given under the first reference to each text. Translations are my own when not otherwise stated. Spelling Individual Old English words, mentioned without reference to any specific text or texts, are spelled according to the entries of the Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, ed. by J.R. Clark Hall, 4th edn. (Toronto; London: University of Toronto Press, 1960). 2 R. MARSDEN, ‘Wrestling with the Bible: Textual Problems for the Scholar and the Student’, in The Christian Tradition in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. by P. Cavill (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2004), pp. 69- 90. 1 INTRODUCTION “God is our