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ALCUIN and ALFRED: TWO ANGLO-SAXON LEGAL REFORMERS BRYAN CARELLA a Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the University of No View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Carolina Digital Repository ALCUIN AND ALFRED: TWO ANGLO-SAXON LEGAL REFORMERS BRYAN CARELLA A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English. Chapel Hill 2006 Approved by: Advisor: Patrick P. O’Neill Reader: Theodore H. Leinbaugh Reader: H. Craig Melchert Reader: Richard W. Pfaff Reader: Joseph Wittig © 2006 Bryan Carella ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT BRYAN CARELLA: Alcuin and Alfred: Two Anglo-Saxon Legal Reformers (Under the direction of Patrick P. O’Neill) In this dissertation, I examine the use of scripture in the legal documents composed by two early Anglo-Saxon intellectual figures, Alcuin of York and king Alfred of Wessex. In my introductory chapter, I begin with some general background on the topic, including the relationship between secular and ecclesiastical law, and I explain my methodology. In chapter two, I consider the Legatine Capitulary of 786, a collection of twenty canons produced by a legation sent to England by pope Hadrian to address certain abuses. This document was composed during Alcuin’s first return visit to York after he left for Charlemagne’s royal court, and there has been ongoing debate about the extent of his role in drafting it. By comparing the scriptural passages quoted in this text with parallel quotations in the remainder of Alcuin’s work, I show that he had significant influence on these canons. Next, in chapter three, I consider the debate over the source of Alfred’s extended translation from Exodus that serves as an introduction to his law code. While Fournier argued almost a century ago that Alfred used a Hiberno-Latin tract known as the Liber ex lege Moysi, his thesis has remained unproven. I construct a working edition of the Liber and compare it to Alfred’s Prologue. My analysis not only upholds Fournier’s thesis, but iii also shows that Alfred was using the Liber in a way consistent with the ideology of the Irish Church of the time. In my final chapter, I draw some general conclusions about the use of scripture in Anglo-Saxon law. Specifically, I look at (1) the implications of using Latin or the vernacular for a law code, (2) the way Anglo-Saxon legalists perceived the relationship between the Old and New Testaments, and (3) how scripture could be used to justify legal reform. Finally, I end with some thoughts about future research in this area. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Abbreviations……………………………………………………………………...vi Chapter I. INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………….1 II. ALCUIN AND THE LEGATINE CAPITULARY OF 786………………....17 III. THE SOURCE FOR THE PROLOGUE TO THE LAWS OF ALFRED…...54 IV. CONCLUSIONS……………………………………………………………..87 APPENDICES…………………………………………………………………………....99 I. Translation of the Legatine Capitulary of 786……………………………...99 II. Transcription of the portion of the Liber ex lege Moysi that corresponds to the Prologue to the Laws of Alfred……………........120 IIIa. Reconstructing a Lost Homily on Ecclesiasticus 5.8……………………...128 IIIb. Translations of Homiletic Works in Appendix IIIa……….........................157 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………….....165 v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Certain abbreviations specific to individual chapters are listed at the end of that chapter (see, in particular, the list of sigla referring to biblical MSS and the list of abbreviations for Alcuin’s works at the end of chapter two). Below, I have included abbreviations for common works I have used throughout the dissertation. CCSL Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina. CLA E.A. Lowe. Codices Latini Antiqiores, 11 vols. and supplement. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934-71. CMA Gallia M.-H. Jullien and Françoise Perelman. Clavis Scriptorum Latinorum Medii Aevi: Auctores Galliae, 735-987. Turnhout: Brepols, 1994-. CPL E. Dekkers, and E. Gaar. Clavis Patrum Latinorum, 3rd ed. Turnhout: Brepols, 1995. CPPM J. Machielson. Clavis Patristica Pseudepigraphorum Medii Aevi. Turnhout: Brepols, 1990-. MGH Capit. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Capitularia Regum Francorum. MGH Epp. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae. MGH LL Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Leges MGH SS rer. Merov. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum. PL Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Latina vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION I. Scope and Purpose At the outset, my intent in this project was to examine the use of biblical quotations in Anglo-Saxon law, beginning with the Laws of Æðelberht and continuing until just after the Conquest, roughly from 600 to 1100. I had planned to include not only the secular laws, but also ecclesiastical works, such as those by Theodore and Wulfstan. My goal was not simply to create a catalog of scriptural citations in these documents (though that would be my starting point), but to analyze the function of these quotations as well. After doing so, I hoped to arrive at some general conclusions about the use of scripture by Anglo-Saxon jurists throughout the Old English period: what text(s) of the bible they were using, how secular law related to ecclesiastical law, and what their choice of biblical quotations might reveal about their sources. Very early on, I realized this goal was well beyond the scope of a single dissertation. Several issues led me to this conclusion. My first problem had to do with my data set. While there are very few scriptural quotations in the vernacular laws, my definition of “law” includes ecclesiastical codes in Latin as well; and these documents are often replete with biblical quotations. Thus, it was either feast or famine when it came to scriptural quotations in Anglo-Saxon legal documents, and I came to understand that merely cataloging them would not provide the kind of data I needed to answer the sort of questions I outlined above. Before going any farther, it is necessary for me to explain a bit more about my definition of “law,” since the one I use differs from others in the field. The late Patrick Wormald, for example, whose scholarship has set the groundwork for Anglo-Saxon legal studies in recent decades, defined law as “written decrees by secular authority with ostensibly general application.”1 Ruling out ecclesiastical law in this way, however, seemed, to me, an artificial gesture, especially for the kind of project I was conducting. To me, it seemed more fruitful an approach to look for connections between the two bodies of law rather than assert their differences. For this reason, the definition of “law” I use in this study expands fundamentally upon Wormald’s. Mine removes the word “secular,” from his definition, thus including the relatively large body of ecclesiastical documents which existed alongside, and, to a certain extent, operated in tandem with the secular codes. For a host of reasons, I felt that narrowing my project by ruling out ecclesiastical texts, even if I were to widen the body of secular documents I included in my study, would not provide the kind of data I hoped to gather. First of all, Anglo-Saxon laws, whether secular or ecclesiastical, were usually enacted in the presence of and with the sanction of both lay and spiritual authorities; and to imagine that the legal codes produced by either of these groups could have remained uninfluenced by the interests of the other seems, to me, naïve. Secondly, the very use of the word “written” to describe law (referring here again to Wormald’s definition above) almost certainly implies the involvement of the Church. Unless one wishes to argue for the existence of a literate class of lay jurists, educated and working outside the ecclesiastical sphere of influence, 1 Patrick Wormald, “Lex Scripta and Verbum Regis: Legislation and Germanic Kingship From Euric To Cnut,” in Early Medieval Kingship, ed. P.H. Sawyer and I.N. Wood (Leeds: The editors, 1977), 107. 2 and with enough wealth to produce vellum on a large scale, it seems impossible that any substantial body of documents, written and preserved in Anglo-Saxon England, could have been drafted without the active participation of churchmen. Overall, then, my choice to focus on scriptural quotations as a means of approaching these texts seemed likely to reveal more about how the ecclesiastical and secular realms overlapped than where they diverged. I decided, therefore, that any reduction in the scope of my project would not depart from this inclusive definition of law: I would not exclude legal documents from my study based on the classifications “secular” or “ecclesiastical.” And so, the most logical way of narrowing the scope of my project, it seemed at the time, was to reduce its chronological bounds. Provisionally, then, I decided to end my inquiry after the Laws of Alfred, thus focusing on the period roughly from 600 to 900. I spent by far the greater amount of time working under these chronologically limited parameters than the longer period I initially proposed. Nonetheless, I came to realize that even this reduction in scope was insufficient. Almost immediately, I ran into several problems, related both to my method, and to the history of scholarship on my topic. Taking these problems in order: First of all, I soon learned that in order to understand the function of scriptural quotations within a single legal code, I almost always had to consider their context, not only of individual quotations within a particular text, but often in closely related documents as well. Thus, for example, I found it impossible to separate the Laws of Alfred from their Prologue, which quotes scripture extensively, and which (I will argue) reframes traditional, vernacular, Anglo-Saxon law within a highly intellectualized, ecclesiastical worldview. Similarly, I found that 3 understanding the scriptural passages in the Legatine Capitulary of 786 required me to undertake a thoroughgoing investigation of similar quotations by Alcuin, their probable author (as I will argue), throughout the entire corpus of his work.
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