Old English macian, Its Origin and Dissemination

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66612/2/10.1177_007542428601900105.pd

Royal Authority in the Biblical Quotations of the Old English Pastoral Care

The Old English Pastoral Care, a late-ninth-century translation of Gregory the Great’s Regula pastoralis attributed to Alfred the Great, is a text without a clear authorial voice. Gregory’s authorial presence is hinted at in the metrical preface and epilogue to the translation, but is curiously absent from the prose preface. Here, at the very beginning of the text, the authorial voice is that of King Alfred. Whether or not Alfred was actually responsible for translating the Regula pastoralis, as the prose preface claims, his voice and presence resonate throughout the translation. The king’s persona re-voices not only Gregory’s words, but the many biblical quotations that Gregory relies upon to support his argument. The royal authority natural to a king is compounded with the textual authority that comes through translating and therefore re-voicing a canonical text such as the Regula pastoralis, and this is nowhere more significant than in the translations of biblical quotations. Here, the Alfred-persona re-voices biblical figures such as King David, King Solomon, the evangelists and Christ Himself. In the translations of these quotations, Alfred’s royal authority is shored up by the echoes of these voices from Scripture. This article finds examples of where the wording of these translated quotations represents ideology, and even phraseology, found elsewhere in Alfredian documents. Through appropriation of scriptural voice, Alfredian ideals such as wisdom, moderate use of resources and a ruler’s humility are given unquestionable authoritative backing

The Binding of Religious Heroes in Andreas and the Hêliand

Scholarly approaches to the Old English Andreas have tended to emphasise the poem's formulaic debt to Beowulf and the works of Cynewulf, but as of yet unexplored is its strikingly similar use of the binding motif also present in the Old Saxon alliterative gospel, the Hêliand. These two poems, likely produced in a similar period, share not only a depiction of bound religious heroes that far outstrips their sources, but also specific formulaic and linguistic parallels. The suggestion that the Hêliand's preoccupation with the binding of Christ stems directly from the experience of those Saxons subjugated by the Franks is, therefore, problematised when we take into account the formulaic nature of binding terminology in the closely related language of Old English. Similarly, a desire to read the binding of the saints in Andreas as a unique innovation does not take into account the possibility that the poet may have been familiar with a tradition in which Christ's Passion includes binding. In discussing these two texts together, this paper emphasises a cross-cultural interest in bondage, as well as the importance of exploring formulaic connections between the Old English and Old Saxon corpora