UCC Library and UCC researchers have made this item openly available. Please let us know how this has helped you. Thanks! Title 'Deor and nytenu mid us': animals in the works of Ǽelfric Author(s) Nijhuis, Letty Jantje Publication date 2008 Original citation Nijhuis, L. J. 2008.'Deor and nytenu mid us': animals in the works of Ǽelfric. PhD Thesis, University College Cork. Type of publication Doctoral thesis Link to publisher's http://library.ucc.ie/record=b1839456~S0 version Access to the full text of the published version may require a subscription. Rights © 2008, Letty Jantje Nijhuis http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Embargo information No embargo required Item downloaded http://hdl.handle.net/10468/1520 from Downloaded on 2021-10-05T15:17:10Z t J rt ti n P it Table ofContents Acknowledgements 2 1. Introduction 3 1.1 General 3 1.2 Research Questions and Methodology 4 1.3 State of Research 6 2. Background: Sources and Transmission 14 2.1 Examples Transmission of Natural History 14 in Anglo-Saxon England 2.2 Transmission ofSources in !Elfric 28 2.3!Elfric's Audience and Purpose 35 2.4 Medieval Views on Animals 40 3. Commentary: Domesticated Animals in !Elfric: 4. Commentary: Wild Animals in !Elfric 103 5. Discussion: !Elfric's Use ofAnimals 195 6. Conclusions 228 Bibliography 230 Abbreviations: ASE Anglo-Saxon England CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina CH JElfric's Catholic Homilies EETS Early English Text Society KJB King James Bible LS JEIfric 's Lives ofSaints PL Patrologia Latina Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to the following people for their support during my PhD programme. First of all to my supervisor, Professor Elisabeth Okasha, for her good advice, patience and encouragement. Secondly, to the Faculty of Arts of VCC for their financial support. To Abe, Janny and Willem Nijhuis for all their help. And finally, to my grandfather Willem Hesseling: this dissertation could not have been written without his moral and fmancial support. Thank you all. Letty Nijhuis Cork, March 2008 2 1. Introduction 1.1 General YIp is onn~te nyten mare }x>nne sum hus . eall mid banum befangen binnan l>am felle butan ~t ~am nauelan and he n~fre ne li~ . [An elephant is a huge animal, greater than a house, completely surrounded with bones, within the skin, except at the navel, and he never lies down.] I .£lfric (ca. 955-1020), one ofthe most prolific authors ofthe Old English period, describes the elephant here, providing his audience with infonnation they most likely did not have first-hand: the first elephant was yet to come to England as a present for King Richard III, given to him by King Louis ofFrance in 1255 - it managed to survive for four years. This medieval description ofthe elephant, ultimately derived from other sources such as Ambrose and Isidore, had a long literary life and was for example still used by John Donne in 1612.2 Literature about animals was highly popular in the Middle Ages, judging by the manuscript evidence. Influential works like the Physiologus circulated in great numbers, as did copies ofIsidore's Etymologies and Pliny's Natural History. Many bestiaries survive, too, the first ofwhich started to appear around the tum ofthe fIrSt millennium, and may have been available in England at the time. In England, a tenth-century Anglo-Saxon booklist mentions a Liber Bestiarum, which was probably a copy ofthe Physiologus.3 An Old English version ofthis work certainly existed, but the surviving copy contains accounts ofonly three animals (panther, whale and partridge), so is by no means complete.4 Nevertheless, it is clear that the Physiologus was both available and in use at the time, as the work was known to Aldhelm and used as a source for the Liber Monstrorum. S I LSl., xxv Passio Machabeorum, p. 104, n. 566-568. 2 "Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant [...] Yet nature hath given him no knees to bend" Donne, p. 329. 3 Lapidge 1985, p. 55. 4 Although it has been argued that the OE Physiologus was intended as a complete text, rather than a fragment: see chapter 2. S Ibid., p. 55. 3 We do not know much about iElfric's life, except that he was a monk in Winchester and Cerne Abbas, and became abbot ofthe monastery ofEynsham around 1005.6 Studying in Winchester under Bishop iEthelwold, iElfric was under the influence ofthe Benedictine Reform, a revival in religion, learning and literature. Benefiting from this Reform, iElfric would have had access to an increasing number ofLatin works. Among the latter were a number ofthe afore­ mentioned works on natural history. These are sources which iElfric may have consulted, and in certain cases there is evidence that he did so, for instance when quoting several authorities on the elephant.7 Although Anglo-Saxon scholars based much oftheir knowledge on biblical, classical, patristic and early Christian sources, there is also evidence that there were local traditions in animal lore - the motifofthe 'beasts ofbattle' that occurs several times in Old English POetry is a case in point - and iElfric would presumably have been aware ofthese traditions as well. Animals, as a part ofthe Creation, are a subject that seems to have fascinated iElfric. 8 Not only did he write the Exameron Ang/ice, a work dealing exclusively with the Creation, but his version ofAlcuin's Interrogationes Sigewu/fi Presbyteri in Genesin and his Catholic Homilies also show a strong interest in the same topic. It is no surprise then that animals appear frequently throughout iElfric's works. iElfric refers to more than 400 animals in his Lives of Saints and Catholic Homilies alone, animals that range from maggots to lions and birds to camels, from the above-mentioned elephants in the homily on the Maccabees to the seals (or are they otters?) that dry St Cuthbert's feet. 1.2 Research Questions and Methodology The frequent use ofanimals in iElfric's work raises many questions. When trying to describe the use ofanimal imagery in iElfric, a few things need to be considered. What information about animals was available to him from patristic and classical sources, such as Augustine, Pliny, or Isidore and which ofthese sources were then used by him? How did the transmission ofexternal sources 6 For a biography, see White 1974. For a more general backgrO\Dld to ..f:lfiic and the Benedictine Reform, see for example Gatch 1978. 7 See Chapter 5. Sources examined in detail in Cross 1965: 367-373. • Crawford 1968, p. 18. 4 take place, and what was the impact ofthese sources on the way JElfric viewed animals? What 'native' traditions existed in animal imagery, and were they acknowledged by JElfric in his work? And, fmally, how are animals used in JElfric's texts? The aim ofthis work is to attempt to answer these questions by providing an inventory and discussion ofthe use ofanimals in the works ofJElfric. The dissertation will offer a survey ofthe animal imagery used, the sources on which JElfric based this imagery, the contexts in which the animals occur, and the ways in which they are presented. The work ofJElfric is particularly suited for such an examination, as many ofhis sources are known, either through his own admission or by the considerable body ofextant source studies. JElfric regularly combines several different sources for his information on animals, showing that he has carefully researched the topic. As JElfric lived and wrote just before or at the start ofthe great upsurge in the production ofbestiaries in the eleventh century, it should be useful to see what the state ofanimal imagery was in Anglo­ Saxon England before this new influx. To carry out this project, all references to animals made by JElfric in his most important works, the Catholic Homilies and Lives ofSaints, were collected. These were then entered into a searchable database, making the data easily accessible. The animal imagery thus found is then considered against the background ofmedieval views ofanimals, paying specific attention to processes oftransmission. After a consideration ofthe present state ofresearch in the field of medieval 'zoology' in section 1.3, chapter 2 discusses what sources on animals were available to the Anglo-Saxons, and, more specifically, to JElfric. It charts which sources were used by JElfric himself, and how he used them. For information on JElfric's sources, I have relied on several studies, the most important ofwhich are the combined commentaries on JElfric's works, the Fontes Anglo-Saxonici project,9 and the Sources ofAnglo-Saxon Literary Culture project. IO In the same chapter, I also briefly consider JElfric's proposed audience, and how this could have influenced his use ofanimals. 9 Accessible at http://fontes.english.ox.ac.uk 10 Biggs 1990. 5 Section 2.3 gives an impression ofwhat views on animals existed in the sources used by iElfric. It examines the general views ofanimals which existed in the early medieval period. It aims to give an overview and analysis ofthe animal imagery used by classical, patristic and medieval authors, in order to show to what views ofanimals iElfric had been exposed. The animals in iElfric's works are discussed in more detail in the following two chapters, with the help of many examples from his work. These chapters 3 and 4 deal with the search for iElfric's approach to animals, by providing a commentary on the domesticated and wild animals respectively. Chapter 5 is a detailed summary and examination ofthe information discussed in the previous two chapters. For iElfric's two series ofCatholic Homilies, the texts used throughout the dissertation are the EETS editions by Clemoes (the first series) and Godden (the second series and the commentary on both series).