Digital Commons @ Assumption University English Department Faculty Works English Department 2012 Asser's Bible and the Prologue to the Laws of Alfred Kristen Carella Assumption College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.assumption.edu/english-faculty Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Carella, K. (2012). Asser's Bible and the Prologue to the Laws of Alfred. Anglia: Journal of English Philology 130(2): 195-206. https://doi.org/10.1515/ang-2012-0041 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English Department at Digital Commons @ Assumption University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Department Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Assumption University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ASSER’SBIBLE AND THE PROLOGUE TO THE LAWS OF ALFRED Abstract: In this article, Icompare the Biblical citations in the Prologue to Laws of King Alfred with those in Asser’s De rebus gestis Ælfredi to see if the author(s) of these documents quoted from asimilar text of the Scriptures, and what this data might reveal about the authorship of the aforementioned Prologue. My analysis shows that the author of both documents knew and relied on an Insular Celtic version of the New Testament. While acknowledging that the data available for analysis is too scant to draw firm conclusions, Isuggest that my evidence supports the possibility that Asser played aformative role in drafting the Prologue to Al- fred’slaw code and speaks against the active participation of Alfred’sContinental guests. 1. INTRODUCTION For roughly the past two decades, the relatively small corpus of writings attributed to the West-Saxon King Alfred (r. 871–899) has drawn increas- ing scrutiny. Scholarship employing awide variety of methods has raised serious questions – and doubts – about matters such as the parameters of the canon, the authenticity of individual texts, their authorship, and their relationship to one another.1 While new facts have emerged, no interpreta- 1 These questions have along history in scholarship and have attracted particular interest recently. See especially: Kenneth Sisam, “The Authorship of the Verse Translation of Boethius’ Metra”,inKenneth Sisam, ed., Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford: Clarendon, 1953) 293–297; Dorothy Whitelock, “The Prose of Alfred’sReign”,inEric Gerald Stanley, ed., Continuations and Be- ginnings: Studies in Old English Literature (London: Nelson, 1966) 67–103; R. W. Clement, “The Production of the Pastoral Care:King Alfred and his Helpers”, in Paul Szarmach, ed., Studies in Earlier Old English Prose (Albany, NY: State U of NY P, 1986) 129–152; Patrick Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999; repr. 2001) 272–277; Janet Bately, “The Old English Orosius: The Question of Dictation”, Anglia 84 (1966): 255–304; Janet Bately, “King Alfred and the Old English Translation of Orosius”, Anglia 88 (1970): 289–322; Janet Bately, “Compilation of the Anglo- Saxon Chronicle,60BCtoAD890: Vocabulary as Evidence”, Proceedings of the British Academy 64 (1978): 93–127; Janet Bately, ed., The Old English Orosius, EETS, s.s. 6(Oxford: Oxford UP, 1980) lxxiii–lxxv; Janet Bately, “Lexical Evi- dence for the Authorship of the Prose Psalms in the Paris Psalter”, Anglo-Saxon England 10 (1981): 69–95; Janet Bately, “The Literary Prose of King Alfred’s 196 BRYAN CARELLA tion of the ever-growing quantity of evidence has attained general accep- tance. At the very least, the dated view that held Alfred as the “Father of Old English Prose” has been shaken, and the generations-old image of the King as primary author and translator (relying to agreater or lesser extent on the help of his advisors), though by no means abandoned, has been left teetering precariously and will certainly meet with considerable challenges in the future. Indeed, many now seriously ask whether Alfred wrote (or translated) anything at all.2 To be sure, Ishall not settle this debate here. In the present article, I shall add my voice to the wider conversation only by addressing anar- rowly focused question for which this ongoing controversy necessarily provides abackdrop. Although my conclusions may bear on questions re- levant to the Alfredian canon as awhole, it is my purpose here only to examine the relationship between one work attributed to the King, namely the Prologue to his law code, and the principal work attributed to his chief advisor, Asser’s De rebus gestis Ælfredi.Inparticular, Ishall compare the non-standard Biblical citations in these documents to see what, if any- thing, this data might reveal about apossible connection between them. So far, this question has escaped consideration, Isuspect because of the paucity of Scriptural citations available for analysis in Asser’s De rebus gestis Ælfredi and because none of these citations overlaps with those ci- ted in the Prologue to Alfred’slaw code. At the outset, then, the prospects for unearthing any significant evidence would appear bleak. That said, I Reign, Translation or Transformation?”,Paul Szarmach, ed., Old English News- letter Subsidia 10 (London: King’sCollege, UofLondon, 1980; repr. Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 1984); Janet Bately, “Old English Prose Before and During the Reign of King Alfred”, Anglo-Saxon England 17 (1988): 93–138; Janet Bately, “The Alfredian Canon Revisited: One Hundred Years On”,inTimothy Reuter, ed., Alfred the Great: Papers from the Eleventh- Centenary Conferences (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003) 109–120; Simon Keynes &Michael Lapidge, Alfred the Great. Asser’sLife of King Alfred and Other Con- temporary Sources (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983) 28–36; Malcolm Godden, “Wærferth and King Alfred: the Fate of the Old English Dialogues”,inJane Ro- berts &Janet L. Nelson with Malcolm Godden, eds., Alfred the Wise. Studies in Honour of Janet Bately on the Occasion of Her Sixty-fifth Birthday (Woodbridge: Brewer, 1997) 35–51; Patrick O’Neill, King Alfred’sOld English Prose Transla- tion of the First Fifty Psalms (Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 2001) 44; Paramjit S. Gill, Tim B. Swartz &Michael Treschow, “AStylometric Analysis of King Alfred’sLiterary Works”, Journal of Applied Statistics 34 (2007): 1251–1258; Paramjit S. Gill, Tim B. Swartz &Michael Treschow, “King Alfred’sScholarly Writings and the Authorship of the First Fifty Prose Psalms”, The Heroic Age 12 (2009) [online journal]; Malcolm M.R. Godden, “The Old English Orosius and Its Sources”, Anglia 129 (2011): 297–320. 2 Malcolm Godden, “Did King Alfred Write Anything?”, Medium Ævum 76 (2007): 1–23; Janet Bately, “Did King Alfred Actually Translate Anything? The Integrity of the Alfredian Canon Revisited”, Medium Ævum 78 (2009): 189–215. ASSER’SBIBLE AND THE PROLOGUE TO THE LAWS OF ALFRED 197 would argue that circumstances render the matter worthy of examination, despite its apparent lack of promise. Foremost among these circumstances is the Insular character of the aforementioned Prologue. As Ihave argued in two recent articles,3 the Prologue to Alfred’slaw code was not only based on aHiberno-Latin source, the so-called Liber ex lege Moysi,4 but it also relied on legal and theological ideology typical of the contemporary Irish milieu out of which its source emerged. For several reasons, not all immediately obvious, this might lead one to suspect Asser’sinvolvement in the composition of the Prologue. Although the Irish origin of the source would not have attracted the Welsh-born Asser in and of itself, the ideas contained within it would likely have seemed more familiar and hence more appealing to someone with an Insular education and sensibilities. Moreover, since the text ap- pears likely to have been transmitted to Alfred’sWessex not from Ireland directly but rather via Brittany,5 Asser would have encountered it (first- hand or at some unknown number of removes) from churchmen with whom he shared alanguage differentiated only by minor dialectal var- iance, and with whom he shared aclosely related historical and theologi- cal background. Idonot mean to suggest that Asser would have been motivated by sentimentality for his Celtic compatriots, but only that the ideological underpinnings of the text would have seemed familiar and hence compelling to him given his cultural and educational background. While the data Ipresent below falls well short of proving Asser’sinvol- vement in the composition of the Prologue to Alfred’slaw code, it does suggest that, like Asser when composing De rebus gestis Ælfredi,the author of the Prologue to the Laws of Alfred relied on an Insular version of the gospels closely related to the Irish Book of Armagh. Ishall discuss the significance and limitations of these findings in my conclusion. My primary aim, therefore, is to examine the Scriptural evidence that points to aconnection between these two documents, and then – having estab- lished that case to the best degree possible – to consider its potential im- plications. Ihope my conclusions will provide apiece of alarger puzzle, proving useful to others addressing broader questions concerning the Al- fredian canon. 3 Bryan Carella, “The Source for the Prologue to the Laws of Alfred”, Peritia 19 (2005): 91–118, and Bryan Carella, “Evidence for Hiberno-Latin Thought in the Prologue to the Laws of Alfred”, Studies in Philology 108 (2011): 1–26. 4 The text has been edited recently by Sven Meeder, “The Liber ex lege Moysi: Notes and Text”, Journal of Medieval Latin 19 (2009): 173–218. 5 For asummary of the evidence supporting aBreton provenance for the Liber ex lege Moysi and related texts, see Carella 2011, 17–18. 198 BRYAN CARELLA 2. BIBLICAL CITATIONS IN ASSER’S DEREBUS GESTIS ÆLFREDI As William Henry Stevenson noted in the introduction to his edition of Asser’s De rebus gestis Ælfredi,there are seven unambiguous Biblical quo- tations included in the text marked with formal wording indicating them as such.