This volume makes important contributions to our stock of primary manuscript evidence: it recovers parts of six previously unrecorded charters and analyses two sets of fragments, each unique in its own way two leaves of Old Testament text written in Mercia or Canterbury early in the ninth century and six leaves of a missal written at Worcester in the mid-eleventh century. Significant issues in both ecclesiastical and secular history are tackled too the location of Lindsey, the fate of Rutland during the Scandinavian invasions and settlements, and the state of our knowledge of the archaeology...

Material evidence brought to light in this book includes a niello disc from Limpsfield Grange (Surrey) and two fragments of a composite Old English homily discovered in Westminster Abbey. Many previously accepted scholarly positions are reassessed and challenged. A comprehensive assessment of the palaeography of the Exeter Book situates it in the context of late tenth-century book production, and shows that there are no grounds for thinking that the manuscript originated in Exeter itself and that its origin must as yet remain unknown. As always, the interpretation of Old English poetry...

Among the diverse topics covered in this volume is a pioneer account of a unique group of Anglo-Saxon embroideries preserved on the continent and the publication of a previously unknown charter. Themes illuminated are as varied as the status of women, early urban history, the nature of medical collections, the standing of Marian feasts and the function of musical notation. The study of Old English poetry is advanced textually, codicologically, culturally, linguistically and critically. Innovation and established practice go hand-in-hand: a record of the first conference of the International...

That Alcuin addressed to the monks of Lindisfarne the question, ???What has Ingeld to do with Christ????, is a much repeated dogma in Old English studies; but in this book close examination of the letter in question shows that it was addressed not to Lindisfarne nor to a monastic community, but to a bishop in Mercia. That ???Ult??n the scribe??? was responsible for some of the most lavishly illuminated Anglo-Saxon manuscripts is shown to be another untenable dogma. Fresh perspectives from interdisciplinary study: the ???beasts-of-battle??? typescenes which are characteristic of Old English...

Several unusual fields of study are extensively explored in this volume: a distinctive politico-religious cult, penitentials, inscriptions, the Sutton Hoo whetstone and medical knowledge; while treatments of more ???standard??? subjects like late Anglo-Saxon law, King Alfred??'s Boethius and Beowulf, lead to unusual conclusions. A phenomenon special to Anglo-Saxon England is given a full and separate treatment in a careful and imaginative analysis of the ecclesiastical and political significance of the cults of murdered royal saints. Elizabeth Okasha??'s Hand-List which has been indispensable...

Four very different kinds of Anglo-Saxon thinking are clarified in this volume: traditions, learned and oral, about the settlement of the country, study of foreign-language grammar, interest in exotic jewels as reflections of the glory of God, and a mainly rational attitude to medicine. Publication of no less than three discoveries augments our corpus of manuscript evidence. The nature of Old English poetry is illuminated, and a useful summary of the editorial treatment of textual problems in Beowulf is provided. A re-examination of the accounts of the settlement in Bede??'s Historia...

The contents of this first volume typify the range of interests that will be covered throughout the series. The topics treated include the first two centuries of Christianity in East Anglia; geographical knowledge in King Alfred's court; the part played by Bishop AEthelwold's school at Winchester in the period of tenth-century monastic reform in standardizing the vernacular and in studying and composing Latin poetry; allegory in Old English literature; the place of origin of the Book of Kells; the source of a fourteenth-century Icelandic saga writer's picture of Edward the Confessor; the...

Among topics covered in this volume, two important authorship questions are settled; the discovery of a major Northumbrian settlement is reported; the conceptions of Old English literature which have prevailed during the last three hundred years are paraded for critical inspection and substantial contributions are made to our knowledge of subjects as diverse as a monastic library of the first rank, eighth-century Latin poetic activity, metrical technique and literary convention in our greatest surviving vernacular poem; the family basis of political power in the tenth century; late...

Place-names, charters, coins and manuscripts are among the forms of evidence studied in this second volume. The topics range from the course of English settlement in the south-east to the power and influence of a leading aristocratic family in the tenth century and the possible presence of Jews in England in the eleventh. An important liturgical manuscript, the Bosworth Psalter, is more securely localized; the exemplars of the Vercelli Book and its probable area of origin are clarified. Several motifs in Old English literature are elucidated, and the influence of Christian doctrine on the...

This book illustrates some of the exciting paths of enquiry being explored in many different fields of Anglo-Saxon studies - archaeology, legal history, palaeography, Old English syntax and poetic, Latin learning with its many reflexes in Old English prose literature, and others. In all these fields it is clear that fresh perspectives may be achieved by examining even well-known objects and texts in the light of modern approaches and scholarship. Several studies concentrate on aspects of early Anglo-Saxon civilization: the settlement at Mucking, Essex; the iconography of the famous gold coin...