TY - JOUR
AU - Solopova,, Elizabeth
AB - Abstract The continuity between Old and Middle English periods has been a matter of interest and debate in the field of medieval studies. Though it is widely accepted that Old English texts continued to be copied and used in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the possibility that they were collected, read and studied, and influenced scholars and religious thinkers in late medieval England is often rejected as implausible. The reason most commonly given is the difficulty of understanding the Old English language in the late Middle Ages. The present article aims to reassess this view and re-examine evidence for the reading and use of Old English texts in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries with a primary focus on biblical translation. The article explores the possibility that Middle English glosses that occur in Old English sermon and biblical manuscripts reflect a scholarly interest in these texts, rather than a struggle to understand their language. The article also examines evidence that the translators of the Wycliffite Bible may have had some familiarity with Old English biblical translations, possibly as a result of study of biblical and sermon manuscripts. The Norman Conquest of 1066 and ensuing intellectual, artistic, social and linguistic developments are often seen as the cause of a profound cultural rift in the history of medieval England. Though the boundaries between early and late medieval periods have been repeatedly questioned by literary, linguistic and cultural historians, the periods remain almost universally institutionalized in the teaching of, and research on, the English Middle Ages. One of the assumptions accepted in current scholarship is that Old English language was difficult to understand already in the twelfth century and became largely unintelligible in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. As a result, it is assumed, Old English literature was forgotten during the late Middle Ages and rediscovered only at the Reformation by Protestant scholars. The possibility that it continued to be read and studied, and influenced poets, scholars and religious thinkers in late medieval England is often rejected as unfeasible. The present article aims to reassess this view and thus contribute to the debate about cultural continuity between Old and Middle English periods. It does so by focusing primarily on biblical translation in late medieval England. I. THE KNOWLEDGE OF OLD ENGLISH TEXTS, AUTHORS AND MANUSCRIPTS IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND Late medieval discussions of the translation of the Bible into English frequently use the existence of earlier translations into vernaculars as an argument in favour of its legitimacy. Old English translations are mentioned by both orthodox and Lollard participants in the debate. Yet the possibility that late Middle English scholars read and used Old English texts is rarely discussed and, if mentioned, rejected as implausible. The reason most commonly given is the difficulty of understanding Old English in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Henry Hargreaves, for example, comments that ‘the language of the Old English copies was as unintelligible to Purvey, Wyclif’s secretary, as it is to the layman today; he described them as “of so oolde Englische that vnnethe can any man rede hem”’.1 A sustained interest in Old English is believed to have originated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The early modern study and preservation of Old English texts was driven by an interest in national culture but also by religious and polemical concerns. The first ever Old English text to be published was an Easter homily by Ælfric and extracts from his pastoral letters edited in 1566 by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, under the title Testimonie of Antiquitie.2 Parker sought a historical justification for the theological positions of the new English Church, and the edition was intended to illustrate Ælfric’s views on Eucharist and to provide a precedent to the Protestant view.3 Anglo-Saxons were also seen as early proponents of the translation of the Bible into English, and Parker’s edition was followed within five years by John Foxe’s edition of Old English gospels in 1571. In 1623 William L’Isle brought together two types of material that interested Protestant scholars by reprinting Parker’s Testimonie with his own transcript and translation of Ælfric’s Treatise on the Old and New Testament, where Ælfric gives a synopsis of the entire Bible.4 Considering the importance of Old English precedent to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestant scholars, it is reasonable to enquire whether late medieval religious reformers and their opponents were also interested in using it in their polemical works. There is indeed no shortage of evidence suggesting that this happened, though unlike the activities of early modern editors and collectors of manuscripts, the medieval interest in Old English literacy remains largely undocumented.5 By far the most detailed and sophisticated Middle English discussion of biblical translation is a university determination by Richard Ullerston, originating in lectures and academic exercises in Oxford c.1401 and surviving in a single complete copy and a fragment.6 It is written from an orthodox perspective in favour of the translation of the Bible. The treatise contains references not only to a wide range of Old English texts, but also to Old English manuscripts owned by the author. Ullerston discusses the history of biblical translation in different languages and gives examples to prove the existence of developed literacy in English attested by religious, historical and scientific works. Through this precedent he aims to demonstrate that English is sufficiently flexible and mature to act as a medium for complex theological and philosophical content, including ideas and material found in the Bible. Ullerston mentions the story about St Oswald translating for Bishop Aidan, told by Bede in Historia Ecclesiastica 3:2, as well as claims about Bede’s own translation, and comments that copies of this translation are still available: ‘You must be aware that our own Englishman the Venerable Bede, inspired by the spirit of God, translated the Bible into the demotic English of his time, of which translation some copies remain in numerous English monasteries, as those who have seen it could testify’.7 Ullerston substantiates this by citing Higden’s Polychronicon 5:24, which mentions Bede’s translation of St John’s gospel into English. Referring to the same source, he argues that King Alfred was also an author of several translations, including Orosius’ History, Gregory’s Pastoral Care, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, laws and a part of the Psalter, as well as ‘a book of his own which is called Enchiridion in the original’. In addition he mentions that Alfred ‘had Werferth, bishop of Worcester, translate the books of Gregory’s Dialogues into the Saxon language’. Not all Ullerston’s examples come from Higden—his list of Alfred’s books seems to depend on that given by William of Malmesbury in Gesta Regum Anglorum.8 William’s list includes the Enchiridion, also referred to by Asser in his Life of King Alfred. The identity of this text is unclear, but it does not seem to be the same as the Enchiridion of Byrhtferth.9 Ullerston appears to have owned two Old English manuscripts himself. He reveals that he has a collection of homilies, presumably similar to surviving collections discussed below: ‘And I have myself a small book expounding several gospel [readings] for the annual cycle written in very old English, which scarcely anyone living can understand after the influx of foreign languages into our own English tongue’. Ullerston also supports his claim that ‘Bede is said to have translated the liberal arts into the English language, so that nobody would think the English people to be barbarians’ by reference to an astronomical treatise he owns: ‘And in confirmation of this, I have by me a tract in which the subject matter treated by the author of De sphaera is discussed, as well as the subject matter of the Meteorics, in very old English which is incomprehensible to nearly everybody, and written by Bede or some other ancient father’. This Old English work is most probably either Ælfric’s De temporibus anni or Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion. De temporibus anni is more likely since it was more widely disseminated: it survives in eight copies, but Enchiridion in only one.10 The existence of an earlier written tradition in English is profoundly important for Ullerston’s discussion of what constitutes a codified literary language (‘lingua grammaticata’) that can serve as a legitimate vehicle for the biblical text. Ullerston’s determination and the surviving Latin and English responses it provoked suggest that the topic of Old English literary tradition, as well as the existence of other vernacular translations, was deliberated within universities and beyond. The existence of developed vernacular literacy was seen as a crucial affirmation of the status of European vernaculars in comparison to ‘ancient’ languages, such as Hebrew, Greek and Latin. The Dominican Thomas Palmer, writing slightly later, against biblical translation, also mentions that ‘the venerable Bede translated the whole of scripture into English, so that his language would not be deemed barbarian’.11First seiþ Bois, a partial Middle English adaptation of Ullerston’s determination, written probably between 1407 and 1414, reproduces some of Ullerston’s material and introduces some new.12 The anonymous author mentions St Oswald translating for Bishop Aidan and repeats Ullerston’s claim that Bede’s translation of the Bible is still availability in monasteries, supplying his own qualification that this may have been a ‘great part’ rather than the complete Bible: ‘Also venerabile Bede, lede be þe spirit of God, translatid þe Bibel, or a grete parte of þe Bibile, wos originals ben in many abbeis in Englond.’13 The author also mentions Higden’s testimony about Bede’s translation of St John’s gospel and repeats Ullerston’s comment about the antiquity of Bede’s English: ‘þe euaungelie of Ion was drawen into Engliche be þe forseide Bede, wiche euaungelie of Ion, and oþer gospellis, ben ȝ[i]t in many placis of so oolde Englische þat vnneþe can any man rede hem, for þis Bede regnede an hooly doctor after be incarnacioun seuene hundered ȝeer and xxxij’.14 The author reproduces Ullerston’s claim that Bede translated the liberal arts into English,15 and mentions King Alfred’s translation of laws and the Psalter.16 Similarly to Ullerston, the author of Bois supports his claims about the existence of a previous tradition of biblical translation into English by referring to a surviving manuscript: ‘Also a man of Loundon, his name was Wyring, hadde a Bible in Englische of norþen speche wiche was seen of many men, and it semed too houndred ȝeer olde’.17 This information is not in Ullerston’s work, and Wyring has never been identified.18 A Bible in a northern dialect of English could be an Old English manuscript or perhaps one of Middle English pre-Wycliffite translations, such as Pauline Epistles surviving in a single copy in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 32, written in the dialect of North Midlands, or a partial translation of the New Testament.19 As Mary Dove suggests, it could even be Cursor Mundi.20 That it was an Old English manuscript, however, is more probable because widely circulated Cursor Mundi, dating from around 1300, is unlikely to have been referred to as the ‘Bible’ by a learned and scholarly author of Bois, and fourteenth-century translations are unlikely to have appeared to him as 200 years old or exotic enough to inspire such a remark.21 Further comments on Old English biblical translations appear in other works. The author of the General Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible mentions in the final chapter that Bede translated the Bible and that King Alfred translated at the end of his life the beginning of the Psalter.22 John Trevisa in the polemical Dialogue between a Lord and a Clerk, prefixed in some manuscripts to his translation of Higden’s Polychronicon, mentions King Alfred’s translation of laws, of a part of the Psalter, Werferth’s translation of Gregory’s Dialogues, Bede’s translation of St John’s gospel and Cædmon’s biblical poetry.23 Considering that many of the references rely on Bede, Higden and William of Malmesbury, it can be assumed that the translations were known to late medieval writers only from historical sources.24 As demonstrated above, however, the mentions of Old English manuscripts by Ullerston and the author of Bois suggest that the information about Old English translations was not always second-hand. There is indeed extensive evidence that Old English manuscripts were available to late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century scholars, and, contrary to a widely held opinion, were read and studied. II. LATE MEDIEVAL ANNOTATIONS IN OLD ENGLISH MANUSCRIPTS Neil Ker starts a sub-section in the introduction to his Catalogue on the use of Old English manuscripts between 1200 and the Reformation with a familiar statement that the manuscripts had little value in the late Middle Ages because of the linguistic barrier: ‘A manuscript written in Latin in insular minuscule was of little account in the later Middle Ages, quia legi non potest. Manuscripts in OE were at a double disadvantage because both the script and the language were unfamiliar’.25 Ker also observes, however, that the manuscripts were not entirely unread. One of his examples is Thomas Rudborne, monk of St Swithun’s, Winchester, who studied the Old English translation of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History in the middle of the fifteenth century, and cited it in his Historia maior.26 Rudborne also cited the opening words of the will of King Alfred in Old English, as well as another Old English text, a prophetic dream-vision known by its modern title as the ‘Vision of Eadwine’.27 Ker observes that ‘Evidence of at least curiosity and sometimes of a real understanding of OE comes also from the titles, running titles, tables of contents, glosses, and notes written in the manuscripts in hands of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries’.28 Ker’s list of manuscripts with thirteenth-, fourteenth- and fifteenth-century annotations includes those containing glosses, marginal notes, tables of contents, added titles, running titles and numerations, rubrics, foliations and library shelfmarks that occur in Old English religious, literary, historical and legal texts. The glosses and marginal annotations form a particularly rich and interesting body of material, shedding light on late medieval intellectual, literary and religious history. In the introduction and the descriptions of manuscripts Ker only provides, however, a most basic characterization of each item and does not discuss the nature or content of the annotations. An expanded version of Ker’s list, again containing only the briefest characterization of each item, was published more than 40 years ago by Angus Cameron who points out that nearly a quarter of manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon and described in Ker’s catalogue include annotations from the period between 1200 and 1540.29 I will briefly discuss four manuscripts from Ker’s list, containing late medieval additions, but I would like to start with more general observations on the vexed question of whether late medieval scholars could read Old English language and script, and on the nature of English and Latin glosses added to Old English manuscripts during the Middle English period. As mentioned already, the view currently almost universally accepted is that the language became unintelligible in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The evidence, however, is much more complex and contradictory. Cambridge, University Library MS Ii. 1. 33, written in the second half of the twelfth century, includes a marginal note of c.1300 stating that the volume contains sermons in English that cannot be understood because of their unfamiliar dialect (‘Hoc uolumen continet multam copiam sermonum in anglico non appreciatum propter ydioma incognitum’). This note is cited by Ker in his introduction in support of his view that Old English manuscripts were considered to be ‘practically without value in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries’.30 In his description of MS Ii. 1. 33, however, Ker observes that the text was corrected in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, contains running titles of the same date as the inscription about an ‘unfamiliar dialect’, as well as English and Latin glosses of the fourteenth century.31 All this points to a history of recurrent late medieval use. Equally contradictory are comments about language made by late medieval authors cited above. Ullerston writes that the language of an astronomical treatise he owns is ‘incomprehensible to nearly everybody’, but he must have been able to read it in order to know that its subject matter is similar to John of Sacro Bosco’s De sphaera and Aristotle, Meteorologica. The same is true about his observation that the book of homilies he owns is in ‘very old English, which scarcely anyone living can understand’. He must have been able to read at least some of it to know that the book contains expositions of gospel readings for the annual cycle.32 Perhaps such comments should not be taken literally, but as hyperboles, appropriate to the polemical nature of the determination and aiming to stress the antiquity and therefore authenticity of surviving biblical texts, and by extension the age and authority of the tradition of biblical translation. A similar comment about the difficulty of ancient English, presumably motivated by a similar desire to emphasize the antiquity of surviving texts, is made by the author of First seiþ Bois. As is clear from his remark on Bede’s authorship of the Old English Bible cited above, however, the comment applies to a translation that he had not read himself, but only knew about from Higden. The author does not say the same about a Bible owned by Wyring that was seen by his contemporaries and perhaps by himself, and only comments on its northern language and that it seemed 200 years old. Following some earlier suggestions, Christine Franzen made a compelling case that the ‘Tremulous Hand’ consistently improved his knowledge of Old English though study and using aids, such as Ælfric’s Grammar and Glossary that survive in a copy in his hand.33 She argues that he was working on an alphabetical Old English-Latin glossary compiled from several sources, including Grammar and Glossary, and that the amount of effort he put into it suggests that it was intended not just for himself, but possibly to teach others to read Old English. Franzen observes that apart from being interested in the content of Old English religious texts, the ‘Tremulous Hand’ must have ‘got caught up in the language itself’ and wanted to ‘recover and preserve the ability to read the old language’.34 Franzen also points out that the methods of language learning employed by the ‘Tremulous Hand’ were similar to those used by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century antiquarians, including John Leland, Robert Talbot, Laurence Nowell and William Dugdale.35 They too used Ælfric’s Grammar and Glossary to learn Old English, made transcripts and extracted word pairs from it. This little-studied text survives in 14 copies and was ‘one of the most popular texts of eleventh- and twelfth-century England’,36 attested in more manuscripts than any other Old English work. What is particularly significant is that two transcripts of a lost fifteenth-century manuscript also survive. Evidence of late medieval use or awareness of Grammar is present in its surviving copies and needs further study: in addition to Worcester Cathedral MS F. 174 written by the ‘Tremulous Hand’, Oxford, St John’s College MS 154, the only complete and probably the earliest surviving copy from the eleventh century, contains fourteenth- and fifteenth-century shelfmarks, a Latin title, and is described in 1391 as ‘Donatus anglice’ in the catalogue of Durham cathedral library.37 Middle English glosses in Old English manuscripts have been often interpreted as evidence of insufficient knowledge of the language and attempts to keep it alive, but the reasons for their presence are almost certainly more complex. In a discussion of the glosses by the ‘Tremulous Hand’ in the homilies of Wulfstan, Dorothy Bethurum observes that their purpose is not easy to define, but that it was probably not simply to provide a translation, because it is not just difficult words that are glossed, but also words that would have been easily recognizable, such as the various forms of the verb to have.38 Bethurum concludes that the purpose of thirteenth-century Latin glosses may have been teaching Latin. Christine Franzen also comments that many words glossed by this scribe were still in use in the first half of the thirteenth century, though some were becoming rare. She points out that the reason for glossing familiar words may have been to clarify their grammatical function and contextual meaning.39 In a discussion of the intentions of the ‘Tremulous Hand’ she suggests a number of possibilities, such as teaching Latin and English, making Old English homiletic texts easier to read for others, as well as the work on an editorial project, where Old English texts were used as source material. Bethurum’s and Franzen’s observations on the difficulty of interpreting the functions of Middle English glosses in Old English manuscripts seem to be relevant not just to the activities of the ‘Tremulous Hand’, but much more widely. In many cases the glosses do not look like attempts to translate an unintelligible text and call for much more sophisticated explanations. This is the case with Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 509, containing Old English translations of the first seven books of the Old Testament, dated by Ker to the second half of the eleventh century, and known as the Old English Heptateuch.40 On many of its leaves it contains interlinear Latin glosses translating Old English words in a hand that Ker dates to the late eleventh or early twelfth century. The glosses were therefore added probably between 30 to 70 years after the biblical text was written which makes it unlikely that the reason for their addition was the difficulty of understanding the language or script. In fact many glossed words would have been almost certainly easily recognizable, such as the ones in the following list transcribed with their Latin glosses: under (‘sub’), wæs (‘erat’), wæron (‘erant’), ys (‘est’), þæt (‘quod’), æfen (‘vesper’), morgen (‘mane’), dæg (‘dies’), godes (‘dei’), of eorðan (‘de terra’), of heofene (‘de celo’), me (‘mihi’), to (‘ad’), þine (‘tua’), wif (‘uxor’), ealle (‘omnia’), nama (‘nomen’), sunu (‘filius’), him (‘illi’), ofer (‘super’). Simple function words, such as ‘þæt’ or ‘wæs’, are often glossed repeatedly in neighbouring lines. What is also interesting and has so far been overlooked is that the glosses in MS Laud Misc. 509 are not simply translations, but a result of comparison of the Old English text with the Latin Bible. This is not difficult to establish because back-translation into Latin could have resulted in a text very different from the Vulgate text. All the glossed Old English words and phrases and their Latin glosses in Exodus 15–16 on fol. 53r, a randomly chosen glossed page from MS Laud Misc. 509, are reproduced below: 15:23 higȝ comon to ðære stowe þe ys mara ȝenemned (et venerunt in Marath), for þa (eo quod essent), biter (amare), biternys (amaritudo) 15:27 þer (ibi), wæron (erant), twelf wyllas (xii fontes), & hundseofontiȝ (et septuaginta), palm (palme), & wicodon (et castrametati sunt), be (iuxta), wætrum (aquas) 16:1 færdon (profectique sunt), þanon (inde), fiftiȝoðan (quintodecimo), dæȝe (die), æfteran (secundi), monþes (mensis), þæs (postquam), ut ferdon (egressi sunt), of eȝipta lande (de egip[t]a terra), 16:3 hwi woldon (cur eduxistis) 16:12 æfen (vespere), morȝen (mane), ȝewiton (scietis), 16:13 ȝewearð (factum est), æfen (vespere) All of the annotator’s Latin translations are from the Vulgate, with just two exceptions: ‘ibi’ that glosses ‘þer’ corresponds to ‘ubi’ in the Vulgate (15:27) and ‘inde’ that glosses ‘þanon’ does not correspond to anything in the Latin text (16:1). Considering, however, how variable was the text of the Vulgate in late medieval manuscripts, it is entirely possible that the Latin version used by the glossator was different from the modern edition in these readings.41 Whether translating individual words or phrases, the glosses were not added mechanically and there is little doubt that the scribe could understand the Old English text. As mentioned already, words that are not in Latin are also occasionally glossed, and Latin word order is changed to reflect Old English word order. The gloss ‘de egipta terra’, for example, follows Old English word order (‘of egipta lande’) rather than that of the Latin. The overall purpose of the glosses, however, remains elusive. What, for example, is the purpose of glossing ‘æfen’ as ‘vesper’ repeatedly on the same page, or for glossing ‘morȝen’ as ‘mane’? As with the ‘Tremulous Hand’ the reason is probably not simply to provide a translation; a scholarly interest in Old English Old Testament seems to be a more likely explanation. The importation of glosses from a Latin source is not unique to MS Laud Misc. 509. Franzen notes that four texts glossed by the ‘Tremulous Hand’, that had close Latin sources, Gregory’s Dialogues and Pastoral Care, the Benedictine Rule, and part of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, were annotated particularly heavily, and the glosses were from Latin sources by the time the scribe moved from his earlier practice of glossing in English to glossing in Latin.42 Franzen also observes that if the ‘Tremulous Hand’ simply wanted to read the texts, he would have read them in Latin, and that ‘none of the possibilities which assume that he was interested in these texts solely for their content makes much sense’.43 The glossator of MS Laud Misc. 509 also occasionally supplied text omitted in translation. Chapter 15 of Exodus on fol. 53r is partly a translation, but partly a summary. Two longer insertions in the right margin of the manuscript page contain the text omitted by the translator and supplied by the glossator in Latin. The first insertion is cited below with surrounding Old English text and a translation: (Exodus 15:25–26) þa clypode moises to drihtne & sæde him þær folces neode þa æt yþðe drihten moise an treow cyn & het don þat treow on þat wæter & hit wearð syþþan wered to drincanne. [Ibi constituit ei precepta et iudicia et ibi temptauit eum dicens Si audieris uocem domini etc] Þa comon hiȝ to helim (NIV) Then Moses cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a piece of wood. He threw it into the water, and the water became fit to drink. [There the Lord issued a ruling and instruction for them and put them to the test. He said, ‘If you listen carefully to the Lord your God]44 The early twelfth-century glossator’s is not the only medieval hand found in the Heptateuch. It also contains annotations in a hand that Ker dates to the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century. This annotator, working two centuries later than the first and at a time when Old English was supposed to have been forgotten, was also interested in omissions in the Old English translation. Omitted passages are marked on many pages with oblitus (e.g. fols 51r, 53r, 66v, 67r). Such notes identifying omissions are frequent throughout the Heptateuch, appearing sometimes up to four times on a single page (e.g. fol. 69v), which suggests both careful and fluent reading of Old English. Someone struggling with the language is unlikely to have annotated a lengthy text in this way. This annotator also indicated with the word ‘Cantemus’ the location of the canticle Cantemus domino in chapter 15 of Exodus omitted in Old English translation (Exodus 15:1–20, fol. 52v). In addition he supplied chapter numbers and running titles of books, such as ‘Leviticus’, similar to the ones found in late medieval Bibles. These late thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century annotations yet again suggest a scholarly interest, rather than a struggle to understand the language. Annotations in this hand continue in texts that follow the Heptateuch in MS Laud Misc 509, including Ælfric’s letter to Wulfgeat and his Treatise on the Old and New Testament, where the late medieval reader would have had much less help from Latin texts. Annotations in the Treatise provide the titles of biblical books summarized by Ælfric and sometimes indications of the subject matter, such as ‘de miraclis domini’. There is similarly late medieval scholarly interest in the contents in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodl. 340 and MS Bodl. 342, a collection of homilies in two volumes, nearly all by Ælfric, written in the first half of the eleventh century.45 MS Bodl. 340 contains interlinear Latin translations of Old English words on its first leaf (fol. 1r–v) in a hand dated by Ker to the beginning of the fourteenth century. MS Bodl. 342 contains extensive Latin glosses in the same hand throughout, though interestingly they are almost entirely restricted to translations of the pericopes from the gospels and epistles which Ælfric provides at the beginning of many of his homilies. In addition MS Bodl. 342 contains a Latin table of contents written on a fly-leaf, almost certainly in the same hand as the glosses, indicating a repeated use by a late medieval reader. Supplied Latin glosses come yet again from the Vulgate, but as in MS Laud Misc. 509, they follow Old English word order and the glossator consistently shows understanding of the structure of the Old English text. Latin translations appear above their Old English equivalents and the glossator knows, for example, that ‘middan eard’ (fol. 46r, l. 2) is ‘mundus’, even though spelt as two words, whereas the relative and personal pronouns, ‘þeþu’ (fol. 46r, in l. 6), though written as a single word, are two words ‘que tu’. As with previous examples, Latin glosses in MS. Bodl. 242 translate not only difficult but also many easily recognizable words. On fol. 45v, for example, Old English ‘lif’ is glossed as ‘vita’, ‘tima’ as ‘hora’, ‘com’ as ‘venit’, ‘him’ as ‘ei’, ‘is’ as ‘est’, ‘god’ as ‘deum’, ‘fæder’ as ‘pater’, ‘Crist’ as ‘cristus’ and so on. Kenneth Sisam has argued that the reason why only biblical passages were glossed in MS Bodl. 342 is that this was the easiest part of the text to understand, because the glossator had access to the Latin original.46 This does not explain, however, why easily recognizable words were glossed alongside more difficult ones, and academic interest in Old English translation, perhaps with the intention of working out how to translate the Bible, seems a possible reason for glossing. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodl. 343 is a collection of homilies and other texts, most by Ælfric, but some by Wulfstan, written in the second half of the twelfth century.47 It contains many late medieval ‘notae’ throughout that are difficult to date, but suggest that the text was read. Apart from the marks of ‘nota’ the manuscript contains other late medieval annotations in at least two different hands. Notes in the first, late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century, hand appear on fol. 71v in the margins of Ælfric’s ‘Sermon on the Lord’s Epiphany’ next to a passage describing the rite of baptism. The first addition on this folio corrects an omission in the Old English text reproduced below with supplied text in square brackets followed by a version of the same text from Malcolm Godden’s edition and a translation: (MS. Bodl. 343, fol. 71v) Nu stent ðeos sætnesse on godes laðunge þæt man þa unspekende cild fullian & heo ðurh oðra manna leafan [y fulled ben] (Godden, Catholic Homilies) Nu stent ðeos gesetnys on godes gelaðunge. þæt man ða unsprecendan cild fullige. and hi beoð gehealdene þurh oðra manna geleafan (‘Now this law stands in God’s church, that unspeaking children be baptised, and they shall be saved through the belief of other men’).48 The original scribe of MS Bodl. 343 omitted the verbal phrase ‘beoð gehealdene’ (‘shall be saved’), no doubt because of an eye-skip at line break—in the manuscript heo appears at the end of a line. The absence of a verb makes the text faulty and the Middle English annotator supplies ‘y fulled ben’ (‘are baptised’) in the margin. This sermon is preserved in other manuscripts and we therefore know that this conjecture is wrong—Godden’s base text is Cambridge, University Library MS Gg. 3. 28 and his apparatus does not cite any other instances of ‘y fulled ben’, so that it appears to be unique to MS Bodl. 343. But it is nevertheless a good conjecture that restores the sense and shows a perfect understanding of the Old English text. Another addition on fol. 71v is ‘nota bene’ that marks an exchange of questions and answers between a priest and a godparent, where the godparent rejects the devil on the child’s behalf, and replies ‘credo’ (‘I believe’) when asked by the priest about several points of doctrine. The same passage has another Middle English addition in the margin that reads: ‘and þe prest seiþ serua mandata’. Its intended location is marked in the text and the passage is reproduced below: He andwyrt. Ic ilefe. Ant þe preost fullað þæt cild mid þisse leafa. [& þe prest seiþ serua mandata] Hit wyrcst and gað forð & ne can þisses in leafan nan þing. (‘He answers, ‘I believe’. And the priest baptizes the child with this belief [and the priest says ‘keep the commandments’]. It grows and goes forth, and knows nothing of this belief). The instruction ‘keep the commandments’ is indeed given by a priest when baptism is performed following an exchange of questions and answers with a godparent.49 These marginal annotations and many a mark of ‘nota’ in MS Bodl. 343 were apparently added by someone, presumably a cleric, who was interested in Ælfric’s description of baptism, was familiar with this rite, and had no difficulty reading the Old English text. In addition to marginalia, MS Bodl. 343 contains about 100 English glosses, all appearing over a span of about five pages (fols. 141v–143v) towards the end of the book. They are in a different hand than the annotations just discussed and are dated by Ker to the fifteenth century. According to Ker, ‘the glossator shows on the whole a remarkably good knowledge of OE’.50 Indeed he translates correctly Old English ‘ungelimp’ as ‘mescheues’ in its Middle English meaning ‘misfortune’, and Old English ‘adreogan’ as ‘suffer’. Some of the glosses on fol. 142r are reproduced with comments below and more problematic translations are underlined: Bethurum V (‘The Last Days’), ll. 94–107 OE bregeð (‘terrifies’) ME torment (the glossator did not reproduce the grammatical form, 3rd prs. sg. pres., in translation, possibly intentionally, rather then erroneously) OE sacæð (‘fight’) ME werreth (the form of the present tense plural suggests that the glossator was a speaker of southern English) OE foræn (‘before’) ME ȝeynes OE sacu (‘strife’) ME hate OE clacu (‘contention’) ME smychi[n]g OE hol & hate (‘slander and hate’) ME enuy and hate OE rupera reaflac (‘thieves’ plunder’) ME robbyng & reuyng (‘robbing and plundering’, ME reven ‘to rob, plunder’) OE here (‘raiding army’) ME nede OE bryne & blodgyte (‘burning and blodshed’) ME brenne & blodsched OE stric & steorfæ (‘plage and death’) ME sekenes & dyng (‘dying’) OE ungelimpæ (‘misfortunes’) ME mescheues (with ME meaning ‘misfortunes’) OE tunglan (‘stars’) ME steres OE eȝesan (‘terrors’) ME dredes (correctly interpreted as a plural form) OE gryre (‘terror’) ME drede OE eȝeslicen (‘dreadful’) ME gryselych Glosses suggest a reasonably good understanding of Old English, and not all problematic translations are necessarily errors. Old English ‘here’, for example, ‘the raiding army’, is translated as ‘nede’, but its use in this passage is figurative, meaning ‘war, devastation’, rather than literally ‘an army’: ‘Eac sceal aspringan wide & side sacu & clacu, hol & hete & rupera reaflac, here & hunger, bryne & boldgyte’51 (‘And there will arise widely fighting and strife, slander and hate, robbery by thieves, war and hunger, burning and bloodshed’). ‘Rupera reaflac’ is translated incorrectly as ‘robbyng & reuyng’, but again this may have been intended in order to preserve alliteration. But what were the reasons for glossing this particular section towards the end of a large book? This is the only glossed section in the entire volume, spanning, as mentioned already, about five pages. The glossed text has a manuscript rubric ‘Secundum Marcum’ (‘according to Mark’, fol. 141v) and is an amalgamation of three eschatological homilies by Wulfstan: Bethurum V (‘The Last Days’), Bethurum Ia (‘De Antichristo’) and Bethurum IV (‘The Deeds of Antichrist’).52 They follow one another without a break and are preceded by a gospel pericope in Latin consisting of verses 14, 17 and 19 from Mark 13. The verses are abbreviated in the manuscript and reproduced below in translation: 14 When you see ‘the abomination that causes desolation’ standing where it does not belong—let the reader understand—then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17 How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! 19 because those will be days of distress unequalled from the beginning, when God created the world, until now—and never to be equalled again (NIV). A very similar passage occurs in Matthew 24:15–21: 15 So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand… The most likely reason for late medieval interest in this passage is its wide use within the context of late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century religious controversy. It was cited extensively by Wyclif, as can be seen from the following list of its occurrences in his works published by the Wyclif Society (London, 1883–1921): Mark 13:14–19/Matthew 24:15–21 Trialogus III: 15, IV: 7, Suppl.: 4 (pp. 181, 268, 425–6); Opus evangelicum 35, 49, 50 (ii, pp. 127–31, 178–9, 182–3); De fundatione sectarum 26 (Polemical Works i, p. 75); De novis ordinibus 3 (Polemical Works i, pp. 332–3); De ecclesia 16 (p. 377); De veritate sacrae scripturae 10, 13 (i, pp. 225, 326); De potestate papae 7, 9, 10, 12 (pp. 150, 221, 228, 321–2, 241); Speculum secularium dominorum 5 (Opera minora, p. 88); De vaticinacione seu propheta (Opera minora, p. 167); Super Matthei XXIII 7 (Opera minora, p. 336); Super Matthei XXIV 3, 4 (Opera minora, pp. 359, 363–5). Whereas for Wulfstan this was a prophesy about the approaching reign of Antichrist, in the late fourteenth century ‘abomination of desolation in holy places’ was interpreted differently and used by Wyclif and other authors in polemical statements against the failings of the church. More specifically, Wyclif used it in his attacks on papacy. The work with the largest number of references in the list above is his treatise De potestate papae. According to a marginal summary of Wyclif’s argument in the Wyclif Society volume, ‘The popedom is the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel and Christ’.53 As can be seen from the above list, Wyclif wrote an exposition of Matthew 24, a polemical treatise against the friars, the cardinals and particularly against the Pope—about half of the exposition is dedicated to a highly outspoken criticism of papacy. References to this passage also occur in the English Wycliffite Sermons: ‘Of Mynystris in þe chirche’ is an exposition of Matthew 24 where verse 15 (the ‘abomination of desolation’) heads a highly critical discussion of papacy.54 Manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible also suggest that this passage from Matthew attracted considerable attention, presumably because of its polemical use. It is sometimes marked in the manuscripts in fifteenth-century hands. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Selden Supra 49, for example, written in the first quarter of the fifteenth century, contains the four gospels in the Later Version of the Wycliffite Bible and has many marks of ‘nota’ in the margins, some marking passages of possibly Lollard interest, including the ‘abomination of desolation’ passage in Matthew 24.55 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 36 is a copy of Wycliffite gospels where the same passage is marked with a pointing hand.56 It is impossible to know on which side of the debate were the readers who left these annotations, but these marks attest to interest in this passage and awareness of its controversial use. Existing accounts of late medieval additions in Old English manuscripts, such as those by Ker and Cameron, do not attempt to relate the annotations to contemporary fourteenth- and fifteenth-century concerns: scholars tend to see glosses simply as attempts to translate a difficult text. As demonstrated, however, historical and cultural contextualization of Middle English annotations and other evidence of use is both possible and necessary, and questions need be asked about the reasons why particular Old English texts and passages attracted attention in the Middle English period, the purpose of their glossing, updating and alteration, and the concerns of individuals who were interested in them. Contrary to what one might expect, a careful study of the glosses reveals a purposeful and sophisticated reading and use of Old English texts by late medieval owners. As at the Reformation, the motivation was partly ideological. One of the most striking and currently enigmatic pieces of evidence of the relevance of Old English manuscripts in the late Middle Ages comes from the famous twelfth-century Eadwine Psalter, containing Old English and French interlinear translations.57 It appears to have been borrowed from the library of Christ Church, Canterbury, by the notorious opponent of vernacular biblical translation, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel, the sponsor of the Constitutions of 1407 that prohibited new translations of the Bible in English. This is attested by a contemporary inscription in the manuscript, though at the moment nothing is known about the circumstances or reasons for the loan.58 The inscription is not recorded in Ker’s catalogue and has almost entirely escaped the attention of modern scholars. Late medieval annotations are not confined, of course, to Old English biblical translations. Old English manuscripts provoked not only religious, but also linguistic, scientific, historical and anthropological interest, increasingly common in the fifteenth century, and attested, for example, in late medieval annotations in the copies of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and manuscripts of scientific texts. The Peterborough Chronicle (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 636) contains marginalia in Latin of the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, showing, according to Ker, that the Old English text was read at this date ‘by someone with an interest in local affairs’.59 Ælfric’s De temporibus anni (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 367, pt. II) contains fourteenth-century marginal notes in Latin that refer to the text.60 Yet a distinctive strand of late medieval attention to Old English texts was addressed to versions or excerpts of vernacularized Scripture, a subject of polemical debate in late medieval England. III. TEXTUAL EVIDENCE The most difficult question that still needs to be answered is whether there is any textual evidence of the use of Old English sources in late Middle English biblical translations themselves. The Wycliffite Bible, which survives in an earlier version and its revision, is the most learned and innovative of medieval English translations of the Vulgate.61 The possibility that the Wycliffite translators consulted earlier biblical manuscripts is evident already in an account of their work given by the author of the General Prologue to the Bible. In a well-known passage the anonymous author explains that the project went through several stages, and that as the first step he ‘wiþ dyuerse felowis and help[er]is’ gathered ‘many elde bibles’ in order to make one Latin Bible ‘sumdeel trewe’.62 The author demonstrates awareness of the textual variability and corrupt state of Latin Bibles, and is particularly suspicious of recent copies. His advice to any critic of the English translation is to examine the Latin text, as it might have a greater need to be corrected: ‘but loke þat he examyne treuli his Latyn Bible, for no doute he shal fynde many biblis in Latyn [ful] false if he loke many, namely newe’.63 The author follows suggestions made by some earlier textual critics of the Vulgate, such as Roger Bacon, who recommended the study of ancient codices that may retain a text free from alteration and error.64 What is highly innovative about Wycliffite translation is not awareness of the problems with the Vulgate text but an attempt to establish its correct form. Recent research suggests that efforts to correct the Latin text not only accompanied the initial stages of translation but continued throughout the project, extending into revision: some differences between the Earlier and Later versions of the Wycliffite Bible are a result of the adoption of different Latin readings.65 The Latin source text used by the Wycliffite translators was undoubtedly a composite one, incorporating readings from different late medieval and perhaps also early medieval Vulgate manuscripts. The translators’ interest in earlier Bibles may have started with the Latin text, but in the course of their work they may have come across glossed Old English gospels and psalters, consulted pericopes in Old English homily manuscripts, or Old English translations of the Old Testament, psalms and gospels, as did anonymous Middle English glossators whose work (discussed above) is preserved in manuscripts of these texts. There is some evidence of the ownership of Old English manuscripts by academics, such as Ullerston (as discussed above), and individuals possibly close to the translators. Books listed in the inventory of forfeited goods of Thomas of Woodstock, youngest son of Edward III, included an ‘old’ psalter with an English gloss.66 Thomas of Woodstock is known as the owner of the earliest datable copy of the Wycliffite Bible, probably written and illuminated for him in London.67 There is some evidence that he was sympathetic to the Lollard cause, and his Bible is the only manuscript known to have Lollard interpolations in the original hand.68 Jenny Stratford observes that Thomas of Woodstock’s books were parcelled out among the men active in administering the forfeitures of the goods of the Lords Appellant, and the psalter was bought by John Godmanston, a chamberlain of the Exchequer, for 13s. 4d.69 The complexity of the problem of textual evidence can be illustrated by perhaps the most curious example of continuity in the history of English biblical translation. The Geneva Bible was a new translation published between 1557 and 1560 by a group of Protestant scholars in exile from England.70 It became famous, among many other things, for its reading ‘breeches’ in the story about the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:7 and was even nicknamed the ‘Breeches Bible’ by collectors. When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, according to the Geneva Bible: Then the eyes of them bothe were opened, & they knewe that they were naked, and they sewed figtre leaues together, and made them selues breeches.71 A much ridiculed reading, ‘breeches’, however, has a very respectable ancestry. Different translations of Genesis 3:7 are given below: καὶ ἐποìησαν ἑαυτοῖς περιζώματα (Septuagint) et fecerunt sibi perizomata (Vulgate) and worhton him wædbrec (Ælfric) and maden hem brechis (WBEV) and maden brechis to hem silf (WBLV) and made them apurns (Tyndale) and made them apurns (Coverdale) and made them selues aperns (Great) and made them apurns (Matthew) & made them selues apernes (Bishops’) and made themselues aprons (Douay-Rheims) and made them selues breeches (Geneva) and made themselves aprons (KJB).72 As this shows, the Septuagint reading perizomata was borrowed into the Vulgate, and Ælfric was the first to introduce a version of the reading ‘breeches’. Old English brec derives from a root that is attested in different Germanic languages, but does not have a reliable Indo-European etymology. Its original meaning, according to the OED, was ‘an article of clothing for the loins and thighs’ (accessed 20 November 2019).73 Ælfric’s wædbrec is almost certainly a neologism created for Genesis 3:7—it is attested in the surviving Old English corpus two more times, both in Ælfric’s Glossary.74 Ælfric gives it as the English for perizomata or campestria, and the Glossary distinguishes between brec and wædbrec since the gloss ‘femoralia brec’ immediately precedes the gloss ‘perizomata vel campestria wædbrec’. Presumably for Ælfric brec was ‘breeches’, ‘tunic covering the thighs’, whereas wædbrec was ‘loincloth’, and the compound was created out of desire for precision and in order to distinguish between different biblical terms. Ælfric’s translation shows the knowledge and influence of Isidorean discussion of perizomata and campestria at Genesis 3:7: ‘Humankind’s most ancient article of clothing was the loincloth (perizoma), that is, the subcinctorium, with which only the genitals are hidden. The first mortals made these for themselves, at first from tree leaves, because they were blushing after their disobedience and hid their private parts. … These are also called campestria, because young men, exercising unclothed on a field (campus), cover their private parts with these same loincloths’.75 Ælfric’s neologism may have been also based on or influenced by Old Latin readings that included not only ‘perizomata’ and ‘succinctoria’, but also ‘tegimenta’.76 It is worth noting that the poet of Genesis B avoids mentioning what exactly Adam and Eve made for themselves—they simply clothe themselves with leaves, and euphemism is another possible response to this passage.77 The poet explains that Adam and Eve used leaves because ‘wæda ne hæfdon’ (‘did not have cloth’) which gives another parallel to Ælfric’s compound wædbrec. The modern use in plural with the meaning ‘short trousers’ probably developed, according to the OED, in the fifteenth century. Both the Earlier and Later versions of the Wycliffite Bible have the reading ‘breeches’, though this does not necessarily mean that the modern usage replaced Old English usage already then and ‘breeches’ became pluralia tantum in the late fourteenth century. The reading ‘aprons’ was introduced by Tyndale and was used in all translations up to the King James Bible, apart from the Geneva Bible. What seems clear is that all translators struggled with this verse, were unsure which term to use and most simply copied earlier work, as the translator of the Vulgate who borrowed a word from Greek instead of using an appropriate Latin term. This also suggests that the readings are unlikely to be independent: perizomata, ‘breeches’ and ‘aprons’ are not obvious renderings of source words to be arrived at by different translators independently. It appears that the learned Geneva translators may have consulted the Wycliffite Bible, and by the same logic, the Wycliffite translators may have consulted Ælfric. It is also worth pointing out that the reading ‘breeches’ occurs in Chaucer’s Parson’s Tale in a passage translating Genesis 3:1–7: ‘they sowed of figge leues a manere of breches to hiden hire membres’.78 The date of the Parson’s Tale is uncertain and there is a plausible argument that, though Chaucerian, it was not part of the original Canterbury Tales but was added by the early copyists or editors as a means of ending the Tales.79 As a separate treatise, therefore, it could hypothetically pre-date the Wycliffite Bible.80 A more likely explanation, however, is that Chaucer knew the Wycliffite Bible and, though he did not cite it directly, was influenced by its wording and translation technique. A full discussion of such an influence is outside the scope of this essay, but it is worth noting that Chaucer’s translation of Genesis has a number of similarities with the Wycliffite Bible, particularly the Earlier Version.81 This includes similarities in wording, as well as Chaucer’s attempt to reproduce the word order of the Latin text. Also significant is Chaucer’s consistent translation of Latin roots in all their occurrences with the same English root, such as the Vulgate vescor, translated as ‘feed’ at Genesis 3:2 and 3:6, and comedo translated as ‘eat’ at Genesis 3:1, 3:3, 3:5 and twice at 3:6. The adherence to the Latin word order and translation of the Latin terms with fixed English equivalents was characteristic of the Earlier Version, but partly abandoned in the Later Version. Alfred Kellogg also remarks that the extensive biblical quotation in the Parson’s Tale is unusual in its length in the contemporary genre of a penitential treatise. He points out that biblical citations are abbreviated in Chaucer’s sources and attributes the quotation from Genesis to Chaucer himself.82 This opens up the possibility that Chaucer may be responding to the reading of the Wyclififte Bible; his phrasing ‘a maner of breches’ seems thoughtful and may signal awareness of the problematic match of English and Latin. A second example of textual similarity between the Wycliffite Bible and Old English translation is Matthew 7:3: Quid autem vides festucam in oculo fratris tui: et trabem in oculo tuo non vides? (Vulgate) To hwi gesihst þu þæt mot on þines broþor egen. & þu ne gesyhst þone beam on þinen agenum eagan? (WSG) But what seest thou a festu,or a litil mote, in the eiȝe of thi brother, and thou seest nat a beme in thin owne eiȝe? (WBEV) But what seest thou a litil mote in the iȝe of thi brother, and seest not a beem in thin owne iȝe? (WBLV) Why seist thou a moote in thy brothers eye/& perceavest not the beame yt ys yn thyne awne eye? (Tyndale) And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? (KJB).83 All versions starting with the West Saxon Gospels use ‘mote’ to translate Latin ‘festuca’. Old English mot is attested in the surviving texts only within the context of this biblical saying at Matthew 7:3 and Luke 6:41, in the West Saxon Gospels and gospel glosses, in citations of these verses by Ælfric and in the Benedictine Rule, and in the Latin-Old English glossary in London, British Library, Cotton MS Cleopatra A III where mot translates attomos (‘an atom, a small particle’).84 According to the OED, mot does not have a secure etymology outside the Germanic group where its meaning is ‘dust, grit’, but also ‘dust from straw, sawdust’ (Dutch) and ‘short piece of straw, flake, grain’ (Norwegian, regional). The OED also lists a ‘contextual’ meaning: ‘an irritating particle in the eye or throat’ and treats ‘a mote in the eye’ as a figurative set phrase with allusion to Matthew 7:3 and Luke 6:41. In addition to Old English examples given above, the OED also cites the use of ‘a mote in the eye’ in Ayenbite of Inwyt (1340): ‘Þet y-zyeþ þet mot ine þe oþres eȝe’.85 In Middle English mot was a common word, widely attested with a meaning ‘speck, particle, bit of dirt or foreign matter; an impurity in drink’ from around 1300.86MED also lists figurative meanings—‘a trifle’ and ‘a blemish, spot, stain, flaw’—that are attested later, for the first time within the context of the biblical verse in Ayenbite of Inwyt and the Wycliffite Bible. This suggests that the figurative meanings were a later development probably arising from the use of mot in adaptations of Matthew 7:3 and Luke 6:41. This also demonstrates that neither Old English nor Middle English mot is an obvious translation of Latin. Its most commonly attested meaning is ‘stalk, straw’, though the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources also traces the sense development from ‘straw’ to ‘splinter’ with the latter exemplified in the work of Bede and Alcuin.87 In the biblical context the metaphor is clearly vegetable: festuca, a diminitive ‘grass stem’, is contrasted to a large trabs, ‘a tree trunk’; and even if such hypothetical meanings of mot as ‘an irritating particle’ and ‘a short piece of straw’, the latter attested only in Scandinavian languages, explain its use in Old English translations, it is difficult to imagine that its Middle English and early modern uses in the same context are a coincidence, independent of the earlier tradition.88 Similarly to Genesis 3:7, a close parallel between Old and Middle English occurs in a passage that presents difficulties for a translator who has to decide how to render an unusual word or image. As with perizomata, it is likely that translators reused earlier renderings, though it is unclear how such influences were transmitted. Consultation of earlier manuscripts is possible, but so is a tradition of rendering biblical passages in a particular way, reflected in the surviving texts, but also presumably transmitted orally due to the practice of memorization of the Bible and liturgy. The striking similarities in wording between Old English biblical translations and the Wycliffite Bible reported here are by no means unique, but a discussion of further examples is beyond the scope of the present article. A detailed analysis of a much wider set of shared readings, with reference to a full range of Middle and early modern biblical translations and adaptations, would be required to answer with any certainty the question of the circumstances and processes responsible for such parallels and to make a choice between alternative explanations. The present discussion aims primarily to draw attention to the existence of such similarities, unnoticed in previous scholarship, rather than to give them a definitive explanation. IV. CONCLUSIONS An interest in Old English among early modern Protestant scholars has been a subject of academic research for a long time, and there have been important studies tracing Old English influences on early Middle English literature and scholarship, including Laȝamon’s poetry and the work of the ‘Tremulous Hand’. The research of Mary Swan and Elaine Treharne has established the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as a productive field within Old English studies.89 The present article is an attempt to close the gap further and make a case for extending the scope of research on Old English language and literature into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Old English translation of the Bible was used within the context of religious and political controversy not only at the Reformation, but throughout English history. Already in the thirteenth century the author of The First Worcester Fragment, a poem copied, presumably approvingly, by the ‘Tremulous Hand’, praised Bede and Ælfric for translating books, including the Pentateuch, and commended Anglo-Saxon bishops, such as John of Beverly, Cuthbert and Oswald of Worcester, for preaching in English and teaching people in their own language. The author of the Fragment regretfully concludes: Nu is þeo leore foreleten, and þet folc is forloren. Nu beoþ oþre leoden þeo læreþ ure folc And feole of þen lorþeines losiæþ and þet folc forþ mid (now this teaching is forsaken and the people are lost, now there are other people who teach our folk, and many of our teachers are damned and our folk with them).90 Late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century scholars seem to have been part of the same long tradition of citing Old English precedent in contemporary debates, and this, as by the ‘Tremulous Hand’ and Protestant reformers, was accompanied by collection, study and re-use of Old English works. In particular, in the tradition of translating Scripture, awareness of Old English literacy and engagement with Old English texts were far greater in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries than have been assumed. This evidence has wider implications: the continuity in the literary and intellectual history of the early and late medieval periods makes a powerful case for methodological unity of Old and Middle English studies and the importance of cross-period approaches in teaching and research within the discipline. Acknowledgement I am grateful to Mark Griffith, Anne Hudson and anonymous readers for reading drafts of this paper and making many valuable suggestions. Footnotes 1 H. Hargreaves, ‘From Bede to Wyclif: Medieval English Bible Translations’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 48 (1965), 118–49. Hargreaves’s quotation comes from First seiþ Bois, believed by earlier scholars to have been written by John Purvey. The most recent edition of First seiþ Bois is Mary Dove, The Earliest Advocates of the English Bible (Exeter, 2010), 143–9. 2 For an account of early modern efforts to edit Old English texts see M. Godden, ‘Old English’, in A. G. Rigg (ed.), Editing Medieval Texts: English, French, and Latin Written in England. Papers Given at the Twelfth Annual Conference on Editorial Problems, University of Toronto, 5–6 November 1976 (New York, NY, 1977), 174–90. 3 A. J. Kleist, ‘Monks, Marriage, and Manuscripts: Matthew Parker's Manipulation (?) of Ælfric of Eynsham’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 105 (2006), 312–27. 4 T. Graham, ‘Early Modern Users of Claudius B. iv: Robert Talbot and William L’Isle’, in R. Barnhouse and B. C. Withers (eds), The Old English Hexateuch: Aspects and Approaches (Kalamazoo, MI, 2000), 271–316. 5 See an overview of the controversy about the translation of the Bible in M. Deanesly, The Lollard Bible and Other Medieval Biblical Versions (Cambridge, 1920), 131–55. 6 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek MS 4133 and Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College MS 803/807, fragment 36. For a discussion of Ullerston’s career and the treatise, see Anne Hudson, ‘The Debate on Bible Translation, Oxford 1401’, English Historical Review, 90 (1975), 1–18. Ullerston’s determination is currently unpublished, but an edition is in preparation; Elizabeth Solopova, Jeremy Catto, Anne Hudson, From the Vulgate to the Vernacular: Four Debates on an English Question c.1450. 7 Quotations from Ullerston are from Solopova, Catto, Hudson, From the Vulgate to the Vernacular, an edition of the Latin text with a facing translation. 8 Higden mentions only Alfred’s translations of laws and psalms, see J. R. Lumby, Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden monachi Cestrensis: Together with the English Translations of John Trevisa and of an Unknown Writer of the Fifteenth Century, 9 vols (London, 1865–1866), 1. 355–6 (bk 6, ch. 1). Ullerston’s list is much closer to that given by William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, whom he does not mention (see A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom Gesta regum Anglorum, ed. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom, 2 vols (Oxford, 1998–1999), 1. 193, with commentary 2. 102–4). According to William of Malmesbury, Alfred’s translations included Gregory’s Pastoral Care, Bede’s History, Boethius On the Consolation of Philosophy and liber proprius quem patria lingua Enchiridion, id est Manualem librum appellauit (‘a book of his own which he called in his native tongue Enchiridion, that is Hand-book’). 9 For a detailed discussion see esp. D. Whitelock, ‘William of Malmesbury on the Works of King Alfred’, in D. A. Pearsall and R. A. Waldron (eds), Medieval Literature and Civilization (London, 1969), pp. 78–93. 10 See Ælfric’s De temporibus anni, ed. Heinrich Henel, EETS OS 213 (London, 1942); Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion, ed. and trans. Michael Lapidge and Peter S. Baker, EETS SS 1 (Oxford, 1995). 11 Palmer’s determination is edited in M. Deanesly, The Lollard Bible and Other Medieval Biblical Versions (Cambridge, 1920) (1929), 418–37 at 119. See also C. Linde, ‘Arguing with Lollards: Thomas Palmer, O.P. and De translatione scripture sacre in linguam barbaricam’, Viator, 46 (2015), 235–54. 12 Dove, The Earliest Advocates, 143–9. 13 Dove, The Earliest Advocates, 145, ll. 78–80. 14 Dove, The Earliest Advocates, 145, ll. 80–4. 15 Dove, The Earliest Advocates, 146, ll. 97–100. 16 Dove, The Earliest Advocates, 148, ll. 88–91. 17 Dove, The Earliest Advocates, 146, ll. 84–6. 18 Dove, The Earliest Advocates, 215. 19 M. J. Powell The Northern Pauline Epistles, ed. M. J. Powell, EETS ES 116 (London, 1916); A Fourteenth Century English Biblical Version, ed. A. C. Paues (Cambridge, 1904). 20 Dove, The Earliest Advocates, 215. 21 Christina von Nolcken discusses this mention of a northern Bible in ‘Lay Literacy, the Democratization of God’s Laws and the Lollards’, in John L. Sharpe III and Kimberly van Kampen (eds), The Bible as Book: The Manuscript Tradition (London, 1998), 177–95, at 79 and n. 30, and argues that this may be a reference to an Old English biblical manuscript. 22 Dove, The Earliest Advocates, 84, ll. 2,935–9. 23 Ronald Waldron, ‘Trevisa’s Original Prefaces on Translation: a Critical Edition’, in E. D. Kennedy et al. (eds), Medieval English Studies Presented to George Kane (Cambridge, 1988), 285–99 at 392, ll. 134–42. 24 This is the conclusion made by Hargreaves, ‘From Bede to Wyclif’, 121. 25 N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957; reissued with supplement, 1990), xlii. 26 Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts, xlix. 27 See J. M. Toswell, ‘Prophetical Traditions in Northern Europe: Introduction’, Florilegium, 17 (2000), 167–73. 28 Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts, xlix. 29 A. F. Cameron, ‘Middle English in Old English Manuscripts’, in B. Rowland (ed.), Chaucer and Middle English Studies in Honour of Rossell Hope Robbins (London, 1974), 218–29. 30 Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts, xlix. 31 A detailed description of Middle English additions in MS Ii. 1. 33 is given in Oliver M. Traxel, Language Change, Writing and Textual Interference in Post-Conquest Old English Manuscripts: The Evidence of Cambridge, University Library, Ii.1.33 (Frankfurt am Main, Oxford, 2004), 134–55. 32 It is unclear how much of the books Ullerston needs to have been able to read in English in order to summarize their subject matter. A collection of homilies in particular is likely to have had liturgical rubrics and incipits of biblical pericopes in Latin. 33 J. Zupitza, Ælfrics Grammatik und Glossar (Berlin, 1880); on the use of the Grammar in the seventeenth century see R. E. Buckalew, ‘Nowell, Lambarde, and Leland: the Significance of Laurence Nowell’s Transcript of Ælfric’s Grammar and Glossary’, in C. T. Berkhout and M. McC. Gatch (eds), Anglo-Saxon Scholarship: The First Three Centuries (Boston, MA, 1982), 19–50. 34 C. Franzen, The Tremulous Hand of Worcester: A Study of Old English in the Thirteenth Century (Oxford, 1991), 190. 35 Franzen, The Tremulous Hand, 117–8. 36 M. J. Menzer, ‘Ælfric’s English Grammar’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 103 (2004), 106–24 at 106. 37 Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts, 437. 38 D. Bethurum, The Homilies of Wulfstan (Oxford, 1957; corr. repr. 1971), 104–6. 39 Franzen, The Tremulous Hand, 166–73. 40 Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts, 422–4; M. Swan, E. Treharne, O. Da Rold, J. Story, T. Kato, The Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060 to 1220, http://www.le.ac.uk/english/em1060to1220/index.htm (accessed 20 November 2019). 41 The edition used here is Biblia sacra iuxta Vulgatam versionem, ed. R. Weber et al., 5th edn (Stuttgart, 2007). 42 Franzen, The Tremulous Hand, 80, 121. 43 Franzen, The Tremulous Hand, 121. 44 The Holy Bible: New International Version (London, 1978). 45 Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts, 361–7; The Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060 to 1220, https://www.le.ac.uk/english/em1060to1220/catalogue/intro.htm (accessed 20 November 2019); J. Wilcox, Homilies by Ælfric and Other Homilies, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile 17 (Tempe, AZ, 2008), 53–69; H. Gneuss and M. Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series 15 (Toronto, 2014), 444–9. 46 Kenneth Sisam, ‘MSS. Bodley 340 and 342: Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies’, The Review of English Studies, 9 (1933), 1–12 at 1. 47 Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts, 368–75; The Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060 to 1220; A. Conti, ‘Individual Practice, Common Endeavour: Making a Manuscript and Community in the Second Half of the Twelfth Century’, New Medieval Literatures, 13 (2011), Special Issue: Producing and Using English Manuscripts in the Post-Conquest Period, ed. E. Treharne, O. Da Rold and M. Swan, 253–72. 48 Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The Second Series, ed. Malcolm Godden, EETS SS 5 (Oxford, 1979). 49 ‘Deinde, quasito nomine, ponat cereum ardentem in manu infantis, dicens, “N., accipe lampadem ardentem et irreprehensibilem, custodi baptismum tuum, serva mandata”’ (T. M. Fallow, The Order of Baptism, Public and Private, according to the Use of the United Church of England and Ireland (London, 1838), ‘Sacra institutio baptizandi juxta usum insignis Ecclesiæ Sarisburiensis’—‘Ritus baptizandi’, 20). 50 Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts, 368. 51 Bethurum, The Homilies, 140, ll. 102–4. 52 Bethurum, The Homilies, 113–5, 128–41. 53 Johannis Wyclif Tractatus de potestate papae, ed. J. Loserth (London, 1907), 221. 54 ‘Of Mynystris in þe Chirche’, Matthew 24, in English Wycliffite Sermons, ed. by P. Gradon and A. Hudson, 5 vols (Oxford, 1983–1996), 2.332. 55 Elizabeth Solopova, Manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible in the Bodleian and Oxford College Libraries (Liverpool, 2016), 220–3. 56 Solopova, Manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible, 175–8. 57 Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts, 135–6; Phillip Pulsiano, ‘The Old English Gloss of the Eadwine Pslater’, in M. Swan and E. M. Treharne (eds), Rewriting Old English in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 2000), 166–94; E. M. Treharne, Living through Conquest: the Politics of Early English, 1020–1220, Oxford Textual Perspectives (Oxford, 2012), 167–87. 58 Dominique Verfaillie-Markey, ‘Deux inscriptions grattées dans le Psautier d’Eadwine’, Scriptorium, 39 (1985), 97–102. The inscription reads: ‘Istud psalterium sancte ecclesie Cantuariensis traditum est ad usum Domini Thome Archieoiscopi eiusdem ecclesie per priorem at capitulum eiusdem ad suum beneplacitum. Per modum mutui’. 59 Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts, 425. 60 Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts, 108. 61 The Holy Bible … in the Earliest English Versions Made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and his Followers, ed. J. Forshall and F. Madden, 4 vols (Oxford, 1850); M. Dove, The First English Bible: The Text and Context of the Wycliffite Versions (Cambridge, 2007); E. Solopova (ed.), The Wycliffite Bible: Origin, History and Interpretation (Leiden, 2017). 62 Dove, The Earliest Advocates, 80, ll. 2,802–5. 63 Dove, The Earliest Advocates, 81–2, ll. 2,849–52. 64 See Robert Belle Burke, The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon. A Translation, 2 vols (Philadelphia, PA, 1928), 1. 78, 88–9. 65 See Anne Hudson and Elizabeth Solopova, ‘The Latin Text’, in Solopova, The Wycliffite Bible, 107–32 at 120–6. 66 ‘un veill psaut’ glose d’englys’: J. Stratford, ‘Clerks, Forfeiture and Books’, in J. Luxford and M. Michael (eds), Tributes to Nigel J. Morgan. Contexts of Medieval Art: Images, Objects and Ideas (Turnhout, 2010), 163–71 at 168, 171. 67 London, British Library, MS Egerton 617/618; see Dove, The First English Bible, 305; Elizabeth Solopova, ‘The Manuscript Tradition’, and Lynda Dennison and Nigel Morgan, ‘The Decoration of Wycliffite Bibles’, in Solopova, The Wycliffite Bible, 223–45 and 266–345. 68 M. Peikola, ‘The Sanctorale, Thomas of Woodstock’s English Bible, and Orthodox Appropriation of Wycliffite Tables of Lessons’, in Mishtooni Bose and J. Patrick Hornbeck (eds), Wycliffite Controversies (Turnhout, 2011), 153–74; Anne Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford, 1988), 12, 112; Solopova, ‘The Manuscript Tradition’, 229. 69 Stratford, ‘Clerks, Forfeiture and Books’, 166–8. 70 S. L. Greenslade, ‘English Versions of the Bible, 1525–1611’, in S. L. Greenslade (ed.), The Cambridge History of the Bible, vol. 3: The West, from the Reformation to the Present Day (Cambridge, 1963), 141–74 at 155–9; David Norton, ‘English Bibles from c.1520 to c.1750’, in Euan Cameron (ed.), The New Cambridge History of the Bible, vol. 3: From 1450 to 1750 (Cambridge, 2016), 305–44 at 315–9. 71 The Geneva Bible: A Facsimile of the 1560 Edition, ed. William Whittingham and Lloyd E. Berry (Peabody, MA, 2007), 2. 72 The Bible in English (990–1970), Chadwyck-Healey Limited, 1997 – ProQuest LLC, 2018. Forshall and Madden, The Holy Bible, do not cite any variants at this point; all copies seem to have brechis in different spellings. 73 The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn, 20 vols (Oxford, 1989), http://www.oed.com/ (accessed 20 November 2019). 74 perizomata oððe campestria wædbrec (Zupitza, Ælfrics Grammatik und Glossar, 315, l. 1); Perizomata wædbrec et Campestria Succinctoria (L. Kindschi, ‘The Latin-Old English Glossaries in Plantin-Moretus MS. 32 and British Museum MS. Additional 32246’, PhD dissertation, Stanford University, 1955)); see Dictionary of Old English Corpus (Toronto, 2009). 75 Stephen A. Barney et al. (eds), The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville (Cambridge, 2006), XIX.xxii.5 (384). 76 Vetus Latina Database (Brepols, 2015). 77 A. N. Doane, The Saxon Genesis: An Edition of the West Saxon Genesis B and the Old Saxon Vatican Genesis (Madison, WI, 1991), 230, ll. 845–6. 78 The Riverside Chaucer, ed. L. D. Benson et al, 3rd edn (Boston, MA, 1987), 297 (X(I).330). 79 Charles A. Owen, Jr., ‘What the Manuscripts Tell us about the Parson’s Tale’, Medium Aevum, 63 (1994), 239–49; Lee W. Patterson, ‘The “Parson’s Tale” and the Quitting of the “Canterbury Tales”’, Traditio, 34 (1978), 331–80. 80 Anne Hudson argues that the work on the Earlier Version took place in the late 1370s and early 1380s (‘The Origin and Textual Tradition of the Wycliffite Bible’, in Solopova, The Wycliffite Bible, 133–61). 81 Compare, for example, the following: EV: Of the fruyt of trees that ben in paradis we eten; of the fruyt forsothe of the tree that is in the mydil of paradis, commaundide us God, that we shulden not eten, and that we shulden not towche it, lest perauenture we dien. PT: ‘Of the fruyt,’ quod she, ‘of the trees in Paradys we feden us, but soothly, of the fruyt of the tree that is in the myddel of Paradys, God forbad us for to ete, ne nat touchen it, lest par aventure we sholde dyen’. 82 Alfred L. Kellogg, ‘St. Augustine and the Parson's Tale’, Traditio, 8 (1952), 424–30 at 428 n. 16. 83 The Bible in English (990–1970). 84 Occurrences of mot outside the gospels cited in the Dictionary of Old English Corpus are Homilies of Ælfric: A Supplementary Collection, ed. J. C. Pope, EETS 259, 260 (London, 1967–1968), ‘Dominica V post Pentecosten’, 36:141, 37:146, 38:153; The Rule of St. Benet, ed. H. Logeman, EETS 90 (London, 1888, repr. 1973), 2.12.3, 2.13.11; J. J. Quinn, ‘The Minor Latin-Old English Glossaries in MS. Cotton Cleopatra A.III’, PhD dissertation, Stanford University, 1956, 15–69. 85 Dan Michel’s Ayenbite of Inwyt, or, Remorse of Conscience: In the Kentish dialect, 1340 A.D, ed. Richard Morris, EETS OS 23 (London, 1866), 175. 86 R. E. Lewis, (Editor-in-Chief), Middle English Dictionary (Ann Arbor, MI, 2001), http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/ (accessed 20 November 2019). 87 R. E. Latham et al., Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources Online (Turnhout, 2015). 88 The Lindisfarne gloss at Matthew 7:3 gives ‘stre vel mot’ as a rendition of ‘festuca’, seemingly showing awareness of both literal and figurative senses (W. W. Skeat (ed.), The Holy Gospels in Anglo-Saxon, Northumbrian, and Old Mercian Versions, 4 vols (Cambridge, 1871–1887), vol. 1, 61). 89 M. Swan and E. M. Treharne (eds), Rewriting Old English; Swan, Treharne, Da Rold, Story, Kato, The Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060 to 1220, and references in the ‘Bibliography’ there. 90 S. K. Brehe, ‘Reassessing the First Worcester Fragment’, Speculum, 65 (1990), 521–36; Treharne, ‘Making their Presence Felt’, 400–5. © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press 2019; all rights reserved This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - From Bede to Wyclif: The Knowledge of Old English within the Context of Late Middle English Biblical Translation and Beyond
JO - The Review of English Studies
DO - 10.1093/res/hgz134
DA - 2019-12-11
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/from-bede-to-wyclif-the-knowledge-of-old-english-within-the-context-of-FejXNSfLY0
DP - DeepDyve
ER -