"Decoding gerûni: runic sacramenta in the Old Saxon Heliand" (original) (raw)
Related papers
Semantic Shift in Old English and Old Saxon Identity Terms (PhD dissertation)
2019
Christianity substantially altered Germanic life during the early Middle Ages. However, no large-scale studies have attempted to visualize Christianization through macroscopic semantic trends, nor have any studies used Old Saxon as a control group to help illustrate the role of Christianity in less obvious semantic contexts. The core question of this project, then, revolves around semantic corpora and their role in clarifying sociocultural phenomena: how can a cross-section of Old Saxon and Old English semantics help clarify Christianity's role in re-shaping early medieval Germanic identity? This study uses corpus linguistics, post-colonial/historical theory, and Digital Humanities approaches to schematize the processes underlying the semantic shift of eight Old English/Old Saxon lexeme pairs—ambiht/ambaht, facen/fekan, gædeling/gaduling, hosp–hosc/hosk, geneat/ginot, scyldig/skuldig, þegn/thegan, and wlanc/wlank—that illustrate how the Anglo-Saxons and Continental Saxons re-interpreted their social and moral “Self” between ca.600 CE and ca.1100 CE. This study obtained quantitative and qualitative sample data primarily from the Dictionary of Old English Electronic Corpus (DOEEC) and TITUS Texts. To establish a semantic baseline, data collection began with Latin/vernacular glosses and ended with larger works of early Germanic literature, including the Old English Beowulf and Old Saxon Heliand. To better systematize semantic observations, the sample lexemes were organized into two groups: “Social Roles” and “Personal Qualities.” The Old English and Old Saxon conclusions yielded three key observations: First, in the “Social Roles,” the transition from reciprocal exchange to autocratic kingship correlated to the naturalization of Christian hierarchy; second, in the “Personal Qualities,” new Christian moral concepts like the sin of superbia introduced semantic gaps that necessitated the reassignment of preexisting lexemes, resulting in semantic hybridization, specialization, and the subversion of Germanic pride; third, Christianity's preference for the unseen occasioned a shift from material to spiritual representations of salvation. These findings have significance for future research on Old English/Old Saxon semantic shift, the relative and absolute dating of Old English/Old Saxon literature, and hybrid digital/analog approaches to philology.
Journal of Medieval History, 2010
Charlemagne's conquest and conversion of the Saxons was a protracted, bloody affair. Only 33 years of incessant warfare (772-804) subdued them and created a nominally Christian province. 1 Reflecting on those events in his biography of the conqueror, Einhard wrote that the defeated Saxons 'were joined to the Franks and made one people with them'. 2 As Timothy Reuter observed, 'it is not clear, incidentally, that the Saxons agreed. [.] Tenth-century Saxon writers often also showed considerable hostility to the Franks.' 3 That is hardly surprising in light of the tenacious Saxon resistance, which resulted in massive forced deportations and draconian laws before the Franks succeeded in crushing or co-opting the Saxon leadership. Debates concerning the status of Saxons and Franks began long before the tenth century. This article examines how, in comparison with non-Saxon sources like Rudolf of Fulda's Translatio sancti Alexandri, the Saxon authors of the accounts of the translations of the relics of Saints Vitus, Pusinna and Liborius (written between 836 and 909) used history, theology and hagiographical topoi to balance their new Christianity and loyalty to the Carolingians with pride in their ancestry and political ambition. From the story of their defeat and forced Christianisation, these authors attempted to salvage ideas of God's sovereignty, native agency and virtue (especially fidelity) as foundations for defining Saxon identity and to refute negative stereotypes. The areas which generated these translationes d Saxony's relatively prosperous southern region bordering other Carolingian peoples d made questions of identity especially acute. The authors wrote not only to promote the relics but also to address contemporary concerns. By articulating a positive identity, they constructed narratives to help the Saxon elites navigate their role in the political calculus of the Carolingian rulers. These illustrated both possibilities for and limits to the Carolingian empire's absorption of different ethnic groups. Moreover, the concerns of these authors led them to remarkable hagiographical innovations in grappling with paganism, conversion, miracles, social class and faith. Scholarship has generally concentrated on Saxon self-conceptions during Charlemagne's conquest or in the tenth century, but said little about the century in between. Before and during that conquest, the idea of a unified Saxon people was largely a fiction. Instead, regional groupings dominated within 'Saxony'. 4 Matthias Becher has suggested that Saxon identity began to acquire political force in the regnum Francorum et Saxonum of Louis the Younger (876-82), but this new process of ethnogenesis did not flower without royal and aristocratic interaction in the mid-tenth century (his primary interest). 5
Orality, Germanic Literacy and Runic Inscriptions in Anglo-Saxon England
The presence of runic writing before the influx of Latinate literacy in Anglo-Saxon England is often neglected when investigating the transitional nature of orality and literacy in vernacular Anglo-Saxon writing. The presence of runes in Anglo-Saxon society and Old English manuscripts supports the theory that Old English poetry operated within a transitional period between orality and literacy (as argued by O'Keeffe (1990), Pasternack (1995), Amodio (2005)). However runic symbols prob-lematize the definition of orality within Old English oral-formulaic studies because runic writing practices predate Latinate literacy in England. This article explores the possibility that the orality contained within Old English poetry is a form of secondary orality due to the pre-existence of runic writing in Anglo-Saxon England. This form of secondary orality occurs within the wider social cultural shift between primary orality and modern hyper-literate states as runes act as a literary representation of change within the construction of thought and literature in the English language. This article suggests that runes can be understood as a type of 'transitional literacy' between primary orality and Latinate derived literary practices. They act as a way of composing and recording thought as text while still maintaining elements strongly associated with the construction of a primary oral culture in how the texts are interpreted by a culture familiar with writing. Therefore clarification must be made when understanding Old English as a transitional poetic form, namely that the nature and degree of transition contained within Old English poetry builds upon runic inscriptions as it represents a transition between a Germanic and Latinate forms of textuality and literacy.
Holiness in Old English: The Construction of the Sacred in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints
Neophilologus, 2020
The designation of spaces, objects, and people as sacred is a cross-cultural phenomenon, yet the conceptual category of the sacred differs across cultures in terms of how it is constructed and how it interacts with other cultural models. This paper examines the construction of the sacred in Anglo-Saxon hagiographies from a cognitive perspective. The article methodologically brings together close-reading of AElfric's Lives of Saints with consideration of the sub-senses of halig 'holy', and is theoretically informed by Cultural Linguistics and Cognitive approaches to religion. Paden (in: Idinopulos & Yonan (eds), The sacred and its scholars: Comparative methodologies for the study of primary religious data, Brill, Leiden, 1996) notes that for much of the history of comparative religious studies, the 'mana' model has prevailed in descriptions of the concept of sacrality. While he concedes that this model is representative of the sacred in many cultures, he contends that another is at least as important, which he terms the 'sacred-order' model. The sacred, in this second model, stands not in opposition to the mundane but to that which breaks the boundaries between the sacred and the profane. This paper details the construction of the sacred in terms of image schemas, conceptual metaphors and cultural schemas and argues that while the 'mana' and 'sacred-order' models of sacrality exist in Old English, the two models are interconnected and form part of a larger complex cultural model in which space is at the centre.
Nithe and onde, þat is here broþer: The lexicalisation of a Middle English binominal (2020)
Of ye Olde English Langage and Textes: New Perspectives on Old and Middle English Language and Literature, 2020
This study investigates the origin and diffusion of a binominal construction _nith and onde_ 'spite and hate' in Middle English, by using A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English as the main source. It argues that _nith and onde_ is also used as a lexicalised unit to refer to 'the deadly sin of envy'. Its development towards greater fixedness, or freezing, and the lexicalisation of 'envy' meaning are seen as part of a broader historical process, generated by the ecclesiastical reforms of the thirteenth century. The author examines the semantic field Envy, jealousy in general, which, apart from the binominal, also includes _nith_ and _onde_ as individual words, as well as _aefest_ and _envie_, and establishes their collocates, frequencies, and distributions across regions and subperiods of Early Middle English. It emerges that the binominal has a strong association with the West Midlands, and that around 1225 it is beginning to lexicalise as the equivalent for Latin _invidia_ and French _envie_. The availability of the latter from around 1300, however, challenges this situation, and the English set phrase is gradually ousted into the periphery of the lexical field, while envy becomes established at the centre.
Survival and loss of Old English religious vocabulary between 1150 and 1350 (2018)
English Language and Linguistics, 2018
Middle English religious vocabulary is radically different from that of the previous period: while Old English is characterised more by lexical pattern replication of Latin (and Greek) etyma, Middle English is the period of matter replication. Due to the intake of new French religious words, English lexemes and also whole word families undergo semantic transformation and lexical replacement. Other terms, however, survive from the Old English period into the present day, resisting contact-induced pressure. This study shows that the survival of old lexemes into Middle English is largely determined by the extent of their diffusion and frequency of occurrence before the Norman Conquest. It is postulated that two kinds of inherited Old English lexis should be distinguished in the Middle English period: (i) established terms that had belonged to the West Saxon standard and were still preserved in general use by the lower regular clergy, parish priests and the faithful at large, and (ii) terms of limited currency that had failed to spread outside local communities with strong ties and survived for a short time after the Conquest in smaller religious foundations. The innovation and spread of new francophone religious lexis was conditioned by the new preaching practices that began to develop in Europe in the wake of the Fourth Lateran Council and the emergence of mendicant orders. Preachers of the new type were the multilingual innovators who generated new lexis in English and at the same time were instrumental in its diffusion, serving as weak ties between the various levels of the medieval society. Urban middle classes, on the other hand, were the most likely English-speaking early adopters of new norms.
The transmission and reception of Graeco-Roman mythology in Anglo-Saxon England, 670–800
Anglo-Saxon England, 1998
Rhetoricians, orators, and public speakers of all stripes, if asked the question, which Greek or Roman deity they should invoke in case of need, would surely answer 'Hermes' or 'Mercury'. 1 Members of this profession who also read early Latin-Old English glossaries might therefore be surprised to learn that the deus oratorumwas none other than Priapus! This came as good news to me as one who occasionally looks for novel ways to arouse an audience. However, as I reflected further on the meaning of Epinal Glossary 10v32, my expectations wilted. Oratorum must be a simple error for hortorum, 'of gardens'. Priapus may befecundus, but he is notfacundus. This article is unconnected to oratory; it has nothing at all to do with gardens, and Priapus is raised only as an example of a pagan god whose name was known to the Anglo-Saxons. It is not very usual to think of the Anglo-Saxons around the time of Bede as having an interest in Graeco-Roman mythology. However, the monastic education that developed in England during the course of the seventh century included the reading of the pagan poets. This held especially for Canterbury and Wessex. In the north, we have Bede, who, though instructed in the pagan poets, was not partial to them. To exemplify his attitude he wrote his De arte metrica, a textbook that relied wholly on the Christian poets for its examples. 2 Pagan poets such as Vergil and Ovid would have evoked an unfamiliar world to barbarians educated in Christian schools in the early Middle Ages. 3 The 1 This article is a revised and expanded version of a paper presented at the meeting of the
Introduction: Anglo-Saxon Predecessors and Precedents
Remembering the Medieval Present: Generative Uses of England's Pre-Conquest Past, 10th to 15th Centuries, 2019
This introduction prefaces a collection of ten essays focusing on how individuals living in the late tenth through fifteenth centuries engaged with the authorizing cultural and political fiction of Anglo-Saxon England.