1

ROYAL BOOKS IN ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND: THE IMPLICATIONS OF

BOOKS OWNED OR GIVEN BY KINGS

DAVID PRATT

ABSTRACT
This article examines the evidence for books associated with kings in Anglo-Saxon
England, making the case for the ninth century as the key period of change. A wide
variety of books were probably present in the household of later Anglo-Saxon kings.
There was a degree of connection between the gift of books by kings and practices of
ownership. The donation of de luxe gospel-books to favoured churches played a
distinctive role, emphasizing the kings position in ecclesiastical leadership. In a number
of cases, gospel-books associated with kings subsequently acted as a repository for
documents, entered in the margins or fly-leaves by scribes at the recipient church.
Certain aspects of this practice strengthen the case for identifying several late Anglo-
Saxon gospel-books as royal gifts. Books given by kings had a numinous quality arising
from their royal associations. The strategies underpinning the dissemination of this
royal culture are explored.


The practice of the ownership of books by Anglo-Saxon kings relates to several
important areas of debate, not only the question of the personal learning of individual
kings but such broader issues as the literacy of the lay elite, the relationship of Anglo-
Saxon uses of the written word to Continental trends, and the nature of cultural
patronage.
1
The phenomenon of books associated with kings is well known, arising
naturally for the later Anglo-Saxon period where a number of kings, notably Alfred,
thelstan, Edgar and Cnut, played important roles in literary and cultural patronage.
Their activities featured prominently in the recent British Library exhibition on royal
manuscripts, enabling fruitful comparison with the later medieval and Tudor periods.
2

The field has therefore been shaped by valuable studies of groups of manuscripts
associated with particular kings; some of these are among the best known of Anglo-

1
An early version of this article was delivered at a conference entitled From the bibliophile kings to the
national heritages, hosted by the Bibliopegia Research Group, and held at the Faculty of Information
Sciences, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, 19-21 May 2010 (coordinator: Ana Beln Snchez
Prieto). In the absence of proceedings, this article is offered here as a record of the Anglo-Saxon
component of the conference. I am extremely grateful to Simon Keynes, Rosamond McKitterick and
Tessa Webber for comments and discussion; and to Simon Keynes and David Woodman for generously
allowing me to take account of work in advance of publication.
2
S. McKendrick, J. Lowden and K. Doyle, Royal Manuscripts: the Genius of Illumination (London,
2011), esp. pp. 96-115 (nos. 1-10).
2
Saxon manuscripts, others more obscure.
3
Perhaps as a result, the overall impression of
the evidence for royal book ownership might seem uneven, and dominated by the two
best documented cases, Alfred (871-99) and thelstan (924-39). Indeed, in a recent
survey chapter Richard Gameson has expressed the view that, with the exception of
these two rulers, late Anglo-Saxon kings and queens do not emerge from the surviving
evidence as major sponsors of decorated book production, suggesting a contrast with
the bibliophile activities of contemporaneous Ottonian rulers.
4

The issue is complicated, however, by the distinction between books physically
in royal ownership and books given as gifts by kings, suggesting a variety of uses for
books. One should note especially the uncertain implications of books given as gifts,
which might, on the one hand, have been previously in royal possession, or, on the
other, have been acquired or commissioned for the purposes of gift.
5
The issue relates
more broadly to the uses of books in elite contexts, which included an important role for
opulent display, but also more intimate engagement with their content.
6
One must also
acknowledge the potential importance in such contexts of liturgical and devotional uses
of particular types of book.
7
Perhaps because of these uncertainties, royal book
ownership has tended to be studied not as a practice in its own right, but in relation to
other themes, such as learned kingship, the history of libraries, literacy, or court culture
and patronage.
8
There have been competing impressions of the degree and nature of
royal book ownership. On the one hand, there is a view which would emphasize the

3
S. Keynes, King Athelstans Books, Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies
presented to Peter Clemoes, ed. M. Lapidge and H. Gneuss (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 143-201; T. A.
Heslop, The Production of de luxe Manuscripts and the Patronage of King Cnut and Queen Emma,
ASE 19 (1990), 151-95; S. Foot, thelstan: the First King of England (New Haven, CT, 2011), pp. 57-
8, 106-7 and 117-21; cf. also D. Pratt, The Illnesses of King Alfred the Great, ASE 30 (2001), 39-90,
at 45-9 and 63-6; R. Jayatilaka, King Alfred and his Circle, The Cambridge History of the Book in
Britain I: c. 400-1100, ed. R. Gameson (Cambridge, 2012), 670-8.
4
R. Gameson, Book Decoration in England, c. 871 - c. 1100, The Cambridge History of the Book I, ed.
Gameson, 249-93, at 275, cf. 278.
5
For this issue, see Keynes, King Athelstans Books, pp. 146-7 and 197; R. Gameson, The Role of Art
in the Late Anglo-Saxon Church (Oxford, 1995), p. 257.
6
See esp. R. Gameson, lfric and the Perception of Script and Picture in Anglo-Saxon England,
ASSAH 5 (1992), 87-101; for books as material artefacts, see C. R. Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art: a New
Perspective (Manchester, 1982), pp. 94-8, 107 and 201-3.
7
See below, pp. 9, 13-15, 18, 23-4, 39-40, 44-5, 53-4, 58 and 63.
8
M. Lapidge, Artistic and Literary Patronage in Anglo-Saxon Literature, in his Anglo-Latin Literature
600-899 (London, 1996), pp. 37-91; idem, The Anglo-Saxon Library (Oxford, 2006), pp. 48-50, 115-20
and 237-9; C. P. Wormald, The Uses of Literacy in Anglo-Saxon England and its Neighbours, TRHS,
5th ser. (1977), 95-114; S. Kelly, Anglo-Saxon Lay Society and the Written Word, The Uses of
Literacy in Early Medieval Europe, ed. R. McKitterick (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 36-62; R. Deshman,
Christus Rex et Magi Reges: Kingship and Christology in Ottonian and Anglo-Saxon Art, in his Eye
and Mind: Collected Essays in Anglo-Saxon and Early Medieval Art by Robert Deshman, ed. A. S.
Cohen (Kalamazoo, MI, 2010), pp. 137-71; K. E. Karkov, The Ruler Portraits of Anglo-Saxon England
(Woodbridge, 2004); M. Townend, Contextualizing the Kntsdrpur: Skaldic Praise-Poetry at the
Court of Cnut, ASE 30 (2001), 145-79; Jayatilaka, King Alfred and his Circle.
3
considerable scope for the ownership of books by kings and their close relatives,
especially in the later Anglo-Saxon period, from the ninth to the eleventh centuries.
9
On
the other, in addition to Gamesons view of developments after 939, other voices have
expressed scepticism, either in relation to the lay use of books in general, or to the
literacy of kings, or to the relationship of royal imagery to reality.
10

Two evidential issues are especially relevant. Firstly, if England is viewed
comparatively, one must consider the extensive evidence for book owership on the part
of other European rulers, especially the Carolingian and Ottonian dynasties.
11
From the
reign of Charlemagne onwards, there is remarkable evidence for books in the possession
of rulers, including many surviving manuscripts, and also booklists which have been
interpreted as describing a palace library.
12
Collectively, the material spans a wide
range of types of book, not just devotional material and bibles but also works of
theology, history, other learned texts, poetry of a variety of kinds, and law-books. This
presents a dilemma for the Anglo-Saxonist, inasmuch as the English royal material is
not on the same scale, but there is a question whether England should be judged by the

9
J. W. Thompson, The Literacy of the Laity in the Middle Ages (New York, 1960), pp. 116-22; Keynes,
King Athelstans Books, pp. 144-7 and 196-8; Lapidge, Artistic and Literary Patronage, pp. 49-69;
M. F. Smith, R. Fleming and P. Halpin, Court and Piety in Late Anglo-Saxon England, Catholic Hist.
Rev. 87 (2001), 569-602; D. Pratt, The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great (Cambridge, 2007);
McKendrick, Lowden and Doyle, Royal Manuscripts, pp. 96-115; S. Keynes, Alfred the Great and the
Kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons, The Brill Companion to Alfred the Great, ed. N. G. Discenza and P. E.
Szarmach (Leiden, forthcoming).
10
Doubts have been raised by Patrick Wormald over the impact of King Alfreds educational reforms
(Uses of Literacy, pp. 108-14), and more recently by Malcolm Godden over the degree of connection
between King Alfred and the vernacular works usually attributed to him: see M. R. Godden, Did King
Alfred Write Anything?, M 76 (2007), pp. 1-23; idem, Stories from the Court of King Alfred, Saints
and Scholars: New Perspectives on Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture in honour of Hugh Magennis,
ed. S. McWilliams (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 123-40. Cf. also M. B. Parkes, The Literacy of the Laity,
in his Scribes, Scripts and Readers: Studies in the Communication, Presentation and Dissemination of
Medieval Texts (London, 1991), pp. 275-97, at 275-6.
11
Much of the evidence is conveniently listed in P. E. Schramm and F. Mtherich, Denkmale der
deutschen Knige und Kaiser I: Ein Beitrag zur Herrschergeschichte von Karl dem Grossen bis
Friedrich II, 2nd ed. (Munich, 1981). In addition to the studies of Charlemagnes library, listed in the
next footnote, see R. McKitterick Charles the Bald (823-877) and his Library: the Patronage of
Learning and The Palace School of Charles the Bald, in her The Frankish Kings and Culture in the
Early Middle Ages (Aldershot, 1995), nos. V and VI, pp. 28-47 and 326-39; W. Koehler and F.
Mtherich, Die karolingischen Miniaturen, 7 vols. (Berlin, 1930-); N. Staubach, Rex Christianus:
Hofkultur und Herrschaftspropaganda im Reich Karls des Kahlen - Teil II: Grundlegung der religion
royale, Pictura et Poesis II/2 (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 1993), 221-81; F. Mtherich, The
Library of Otto III, The Role of the Book in Medieval Culture, ed. P. Ganz, 2 vols. (Turnhout, 1986) II,
11-25; H. Hoffmann, Buchkunst und Knigtum im ottonischen und frhsalischen Reich, 2 vols., MGH
Schriften 30 (Stuttgart, 1986); H. Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination: an Historical Study, 2
vols., 2nd ed. (London, 1999); E. Garrison, Ottonian Imperial Art and Portraiture: the Artistic
Patronage of Otto III and Henry II (Farnham, 2012).
12
For the latter, see B. Bischoff, The Court Library of Charlemagne and The Court Library under
Louis the Pious, in his Manuscripts and Libraries in the Age of Charlemagne, trans. M. Gorman
(Cambridge, 1994), pp. 20-55 and 76-92; D. Bullough, Charlemagnes Court Library Revisited, EME
12 (2003), 339-63; R. McKitterick, Charlemagne (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 345-72.
4
same standards.
13
There are good arguments that the Carolingian Renaissance should be
regarded as exceptional in the overall scale of manuscript production, yet it also exerted
considerable influence on neighbouring regions.
14
At the very least, the Anglo-Saxon,
Caroligian and Ottonian elite inhabited the same cultural world.
One faces, secondly, a range of evidential problems in the case of England. In
general the chances of manuscript survival here were weaker when compared with
Continental Europe, with the Norman Conquest and the Dissolution as major
breaches.
15
There are very few lists of book collections of any kind, but while Anglo-
Saxon libraries may have been less substantial than their Continental counterparts, the
more widespread availability of Continental booklists provides greater opportunities to
reconstruct such collections.
16
Another potentially distorting factor is the general
shortage of inscriptions of ownership or donation in Anglo-Saxon books.
17
As will be
seen below, the giving of books appears to have been a regular practice among the later
Anglo-Saxon elite, which raises questions over the limited number of ex-dono
inscriptions. One possible explanation may lie in the general loss of original book
covers, since examples are known of inscriptions once present on the covers of books.
18


13
For this issue, see Keynes, King Athelstans Books, pp. 196-7; cf. Wormald, Uses of Literacy, pp.
100 and 109.
14
For issues of scale, see D. Ganz, Book Production in the Carolingian Empire and the Spread of
Caroline Minuscule, The New Cambridge Medieval History II c.700-c.900, ed. R. McKitterick
(Cambridge, 1995), 786-808, at 786-9 and 801; R. Gameson, Alfred the Great and the Destruction and
Production of Christian Books, Scriptorium 49 (1995), 180-210, at 183-4; Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon
Library, pp. 58-60, and 127-8, cf. 130-1.
15
For the Norman Conquest, see Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library, pp. 70-4; Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon
Art, pp. 216-20 and 224-6; R. M. Thomson, The Norman Conquest and English Libraries, The Role of
the Book, ed. Ganz II, 27-40; D. N. Dumville, Anglo-Saxon Books: Treasure in Norman Hands?, ANS
16 (1993), 83-99; R. Gameson, The Circulation of Books between England and the Continent, c. 871 -
c. 1100, The Cambridge History of the Book I, ed. Gameson, 344-72, at 364-8; M. J. Faulkner, The
Uses of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts c. 1066-1200 (unpubl. DPhil dissertation, Univ. of Oxford, 1996),
esp. pp. 22-71. For early modern developments, see N. R. Ker, The Migration of Manuscripts from the
English Medieval Libraries, in his Books, Collectors and Libraries: Studies in Medieval Heritage, ed.
A. G. Watson (London, 1985), pp. 459-70; Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library, pp. 56, n. 23 and 74-7,
with references.
16
M. Lapidge, Surviving Booklists from Anglo-Saxon England, Learning and Literature, ed. Lapidge
and Gneuss, pp. 33-89; idem, The Anglo-Saxon Library, pp. 53-62 and 133-54; cf. R. McKitterick, The
Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 169-96, 245-52 and 261-6; Ganz, Book
Production, p. 787.
17
Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library, pp. 56-7, with references; see also D. Pratt, The Voice of the King
in King Edgars Establishment of Monasteries, ASE 41 (2013), p. 167, n. 108.
18
Heslop, Production of de luxe Manuscripts, pp. 180-1; cf. also Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, p. 201-3;
M. Gullick, Bookbindings, The Cambridge History of the Book I, ed. Gameson, 294-309, at 304-7.
For the inscription once present on the cover of Rheims, Bibliothque Nationale Carnegie, 9 (England,
s. xi
med
; provenance Rheims, 1062 x 1065), the de luxe gospel-book given to Rhems by lfgar,
ealdorman of Mercia, in memory of his son Burgheard, see S. Baxter, The Death of Burgheard son of
lfgar and its Context, Frankland: the Franks and the World of the Early Middle Ages. Essays in
honour of Dame Jinty Nelson, ed. P. Fouracre and D. Ganz (Manchester, 2008), pp. 266-84, at 272-4.
For the inscription, recording the gift of Henry II and Kunigunde, once present on the cover of
Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Bibl. 140 (Reichenau, c. 1000; provenance Bamberg), the de luxe
5
There is also a general shortage of intimate narrative sources, describing the daily lives
of kings and their families, against which the use of books can be assessed.
19
One must,
therefore, use different types of evidence in combination; there is a particular danger in
arguments relying on the silence of one evidential category.
The purpose of this article as to consider royal book ownership as a practice
which may be associated with a number of later Anglo-Saxon kings, and to explore the
nature of its relationship to the royal practice of giving books, of which a number of
instances are known. It is necessary to integrate all forms of evidence, not only
surviving manuscripts but also lost books known through references in other sources.
The study surveys the Anglo-Saxon period, allowing the case to be made for important
differences in the cultural configuration of later Anglo-Saxon England, and for a
continuous tradition of personal learning among King Alfreds successors. A wide range
of types of books may be suspected to have been present in the household of later
Anglo-Saxon kings; among surviving manuscripts, nevertheless, one must be content
with a narrower group of books with strong claims to have been royal possessions. The
study of manuscripts known or suspected to have been given by kings suggests a degree
of connection between donation and practices of ownership. Donated books were an
important form of royal culture which could be disseminated widely to churches across
the kingdom. Certain donated books are likely to have spent a significant period in royal
ownership, but the sample is unlikely to be representative of books in royal possession.
The gift of de luxe gospel-books to favoured churches was a special practice, with
Carolingian precedents, communicating a royal image of ecclesiastical leadership. The
giving of gospel-books also involved exchange with Continental rulers and churches,
making important statements about the identity of English kingship. A further feature
shared by a number of gospel-books associated with kings was the subsequent entering
of documents in the margins or fly-leaves at the recipient church. The use of gospel-
books for this purpose was a late Anglo-Saxon trend, probably encouraged by the royal
gift of such books; the phenomenon strengthens the case for identifying several late
Anglo-Saxon gospel-books as royal gifts. The practice also attests to what might be
termed the numinous quality of books given by kings, namely, a special resonance
arising from their royal associations. Various acts of donation by later Anglo-Saxon

Apocalypse manuscript probably produced for Otto III, and subsequently given by Henry II and
Kunigunde to the church of St Stephen in Bamberg, see Garrison, Ottonian Imperial Art, pp. 114 and
155-6, n. 2, with references; Schramm and Mtherich, Denkmale, pp. 165 and 483 (no. 136);
Hoffmann, Buchkunst I, 309-10; Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination II, 55 and 220-1.
19
For relevant observations, see J. T. Rosenthal, A Historiographical Survey: Anglo-Saxon Kings and
Kingship since World War II, Jnl of Brit. Stud. 24 (1985), 72-93, at 74-9; S. Keynes, Re-Reading
King thelred the Unready, Writing Medieval Biography 750-1250: Essays in honour of Professor
Frank Barlow, ed. D. Bates, J. Crick and S. Hamilton (Woodbridge, 20060, pp. 77-97, at 77-8.
6
kings expressed forms of power relating to wider political and ecclesiastical contexts
and priorities.


ROYAL BOOKS IN EARLY ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND

One may begin by considering the early Anglo-Saxon period, covering the seventh and
eighth centuries. The evidence for royal book ownership appears limited, a feature
which is probably significant: in this period there is only limited evidence for the wider
acquisition of literate skills by Anglo-Saxon laymen.
20
For various reasons, Latin
literacy appears to have been more tightly restricted in Anglo-Saxon England. An
important factor was linguistic, in that the sharp divide between the spoken language,
Old English, and Latin, meant that the latter had to be learnt from scratch.
21
Despite
certain similarities with the situation in early medieval Ireland, in England there was no
equivalent of the Irish tradition of secular learning represented by the class of lawyers
and other professionals.
22
The early Anglo-Saxon aristocracy nevertheless had extensive
engagement with the written word through the use of written documents, principally in
respect of landholding.
23
The Latin charter, introduced into England in the course of the
seventh century, conveyed a form of land tenure known strikingly as bookland. Yet in
general the aristocracy appear to have been content to employ such documents using
ecclesiastical intermediaries.
24
Several instances are known of Latin documents being
translated orally for a wider lay audience.
25

There are a handful of known examples of learned kings in this period, but their
circumstances may be revealing. Aldfrith, king of the Northumbrians (686-705),
received copies of learned Latin works from eminent scholars of his day: an account of
the Holy Places by Adomnn, abbot of Iona; and the Epistola ad Acircium, a
combination of numerological and metrical treatises, from Aldhelm, abbot of
Malmesbury.
26
Aldfrith had originally been educated, however, in Ireland. One may

20
Wormald, Uses of Literacy, p. 105; Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 82-4.
21
Wormald, Uses of Literacy, pp. 99-104; Kelly, Lay Society, pp. 38-9 and 57-9.
22
Wormald, Uses of Literacy, pp. 101-4.
23
Kelly, Lay Society, pp. 39-57; P. Wormald, Bede and the Conversion of England: the Charter
Evidence, in his The Times of Bede: Studies in Early English Christian Society and its Historian, ed.
S. Baxter (Oxford, 2006), pp. 135-66.
24
Kelly, Lay Society, pp. 43-50; cf. also K. A. Lowe, Lay Literacy in Anglo-Saxon England and the
Development of the Chirograph, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts and their Heritage, ed. P. Pulsiano and E.
M. Treharne (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 161-204.
25
Kelly, Lay Society, p. 57; S. Keynes, Church Councils, Royal Assemblies, and Anglo-Saxon Royal
Diplomas, Kingship, Legislation and Power in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. G. R. Owen-Crocker and B.
W. Schneider (forthcoming).
26
Wormald, Uses of Literacy, p. 105; Lapidge, Artistic and Literary Patronage, pp. 55 and 64-5;
idem, Aldfrith, The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. M. Lapidge, J. Blair, S.
7
compare Sigeberht, king of the East Angles in the 630s, who was also learned,
according to Bede; but Sigeberht had been educated in Gaul.
27
Beyond these cases,
there are wider examples of kings acting as patrons to authors or receiving books. It is
unclear whether each instance should be interpreted as implying Latin literacy on the
part of the ruler, but one may discern two patterns in this fragmentary evidence. The
first is the patronage and ownership of books of historical writing. Bedes Historia
ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, written in 731, was famously dedicated to the
Northumbrian king, Ceolwulf (729-37).
28
Bedes preface refers to all those who hear or
read his work, implying that he envisaged the text being read aloud to a wider audience,
and perhaps also orally translated.
29
Offa, king of the Mercians (757-96), owned a copy
of the Historia ecclesiastica, and the work was almost certainly available to King Alfred
and his scholarly assistants in the late ninth century.
30
It is quite possible that Bedes
work had a special relevance for kings. One should compare Felixs Life of St Guthlac, a
work of hagiography commissed by lfwald, king of the East Angles (713-49).
31

Almost nothing else is known about lfwald, but he corresponded with the Anglo-
Saxon missionary, Boniface, and may well be an under-estimated figure.
A second phenomenon is the royal owership of bibles or part-bibles. From
several remarkable discoveries of fragmentary leaves in the twentieth century it is clear
that the church of Worcester in the later eleventh century possessed a massive de luxe
bible, one of three originally produced in the monastery of Monkwearmouth/Jarrow
during the abbacy of Ceolfrith (688-716).
32
The volume is likely to be the ancient bible
which, according to tradition reported at Worcester, had been originally given to the

Keynes and D. Scragg, 2nd ed. (Oxford, forthcoming); B. Yorke, Adomnn at the Court of King
Aldfrith, Adomnn of Iona. Theologian, Lawmaker, Peacemaker, ed. J. M. Wooding, R. Aist, T. O.
Clancy and T. OLaughlin (Dublin, 2010), pp. 36-50.
27
Wormald, Uses of Literacy, p. 105; B. Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England
(London, 1990), pp. 62, 65, 67-9 and 173-4.
28
Lapidge, Artistic and Literary Patronage, p. 65; D. P. Kirby, Bedes Historia ecclesiastica gentis
Anglorum: its Contemporary Setting, Jarrow Lecture 1992 (Jarrow, 1993), esp. pp. 5-6 and 10-15.
29
Bede, Historia ecclesiastica Praef., in Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. B.
Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), p. 6..
30
W. Levison, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford, 1946), pp. 244-6; Pratt,
Political Thought, pp. 143 and 154-5.
31
M. Lapidge, Felix, The Blackwell Encyclopaedia, ed. Lapidge et al.; Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms,
pp. 59, 63, 66-8 and 70-1; D. P. Kirby, The Earliest English Kings, 2nd ed. (London, 2000), pp. 109-10
and 112.
32
H. Gneuss, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: a List of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments
Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (Tempe, AZ, 2001), nos. 293 and 501.3; The Making of
England: Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture AD 600-900, ed. L. Webster and J. Backhouse (London, 1991),
pp. 122-3 (nos. 87a-c); C. H. Turner, Early Worcester MSS (Oxford, 1916), pp. xli-xlii; Catalogus
Librorum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Wigornensis Made in 1622-1623 by Patrick Young, Librarian
to King James I, ed. I. Atkins and N. R. Ker (Cambridge, 1944), pp. 77-9; D. N. Dumville, Liturgy and
the Ecclesiastical History of Late Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 99-100, 104, 120 and
123; M. P. Brown, The Book of Cerne: Prayer, Patronage and Power in Ninth-Century England
(London, 1996), p. 166.
8
church by King Offa. As Derek Turner suggested, a plausible context for the volume
reaching Mercia would be the marriage of Offas daughter, lfld, to the Northumbrian
king, thelred, in 792.
33
Conceivably, therefore, the codex may have passed through
Northumbrian as well as Mercian royal hands. It is also possible that Offas interest in
such a manuscript had been part of wider practices. Certainly, Offas case bears
comparison with the Stockholm Codex Aureus, the opulent mid eighth-century gospel-
book which was held for ransom by a raiding viking army in mid or late ninth century,
and recovered through a payment of pure gold by Ealdorman lfred and his wife,
Werburh.
34
The inscription recording their gift of the volume to Christ Church,
Canterbury, highlighted the pious nature of the donation, requiring that the book should
be read every month for the sake of the souls of lfred and his family.
35
The fortuitous
nature of this record, matched by the case of Offas bible, leaves open the possibility of
a wider elite tradition.


THE NINTH CENTURY AND KING ALFRED

Notwithstanding these uncertainties, various considerations support the case for
regarding the ninth century as an important period of change, involving heightened lay
interaction with the written word.
36
An important long-term process was the widening
use of bookland. Latin charters had originally been used for land held by the church,
but from the late eighth century onwards, charters were increasingly employed to
convey land into secular hands.
37
One consequence was a rise in associated forms of
document written in the vernacular, such as wills, leases and forms of written
agreement.
38
Many ninth-century examples involve secular parties, suggesting
increasing lay use and ownership of such documents. Another process was a rise in the
political importance of the royal household, a development connected with the

33
Turner, Early Worcester MSS, p. xlii.
34
Stockholm, Kungliga Biblioteket, A.135 (Kent (? Canterbury), s. viii
med
; provenance Christ Church,
Canterbury); Gneuss, Handlist, no. 937; N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon,
Reissue with Supplement (Oxford, 1990), p. 456 (no. 385); J. J. G. Alexander, Insular Manuscripts 6th
to the 9th Century (London, 1978), pp. 56-7 (no. 30); Making of England, ed. Webster and Backhouse,
pp. 199-201 (no. 154); R. Gameson, The Codex Aureus: an Eighth-Century Gospel Book, Stockholm,
Kungliga Bibliotek, A. 135, EEMF 28 (Copenhagen, 2001); N. Brooks, The Early History of the
Church of Canterbury (Leicester, 1984), pp. 201-2, cf. 151-2; Pratt, Political Thought, p. 86.
35
S 1204 (CantCC 97); English Historical Documents c. 500-1042, ed. D. Whitelock, Eng. Hist.
Documents 1, 2nd ed. (London, 1979), 539-40 (no. 98).
36
Kelly, Lay Society, p. 45-56; Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 78-92.
37
Kelly, Lay Society, pp. 44-51; Pratt, Political Thought, p. 20, 26-7, 38-9, 44-5, 47-8, 53-4, 67-8, 76-
7, 85-6 and 99-100.
38
Kelly, Lay Society, pp. 46-51; K. A. Lowe, The Nature and Effect of the Anglo-Saxon Vernacular
Will, Jnl of Legal Hist. 19 (1998), 23-61; idem, Lay Literacy.
9
extension in the power of the West Saxon kingdom. Patterns of attestation in the witness
lists of West Saxon charters indicate the growing importance of the royal household as
an arena of power within West Saxon rule.
39
There are signs, for example, of a group of
secular office-holders who had duties to serve the king in his household, comprising the
kings discegn or steward, his hrglegn (keeper of the wardrobe) and byrle or
butler.
40
Simon Keynes has highlighted the significance of an emerging body of royal
priests attached to the household, making a strong case for their involvement in the
drafting of charters and other documents, in addition to officiating in the households
religious observance.
41

This was the context for a concomitant rise in literate court culture, with the
use of books in this royal environment; the key evidence is the account by King Alfreds
biographer, Asser, of the young kings upbringing, indicating conditions prior to
Alfreds rule. Alfred initially encountered vernacular poetry, in written form, receiving
the gift of a book of poetry from his mother; he then learnt the services of the divine
Office and possessed a personal prayerbook.
42
The latter took the form of a libellus in
which were written the day-time offices and some psalms and certain prayers which he
had learned in his youth.
43
In its specific form the volume bears comparison with
Carolingian prayerbooks and psalters personalized for lay use, most notably the
surviving prayerbook of Charles the Bald; Alfreds example shows the influence, within
Wessex, of Carolingian trends in personal piety, involving lay devotion to the divine
Office, an obligation normally fulfilled only by ecclesiastics.
44
As I have argued

39
S. Keynes, Mercia and Wessex in the Ninth Century, Mercia: an Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe,
ed. M. Brown and C. Farr (London, 2001), pp. 310-28, at 326 cf. 322; Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 28-
43 and 52-8.
40
S 348 (D. Whitelock, Some Charters in the Name of King Alfred, Saints, Scholars and Heroes:
Studies in Medieval Culture in honour of Charles W. Jones, ed. M. H. King and W. H. Stevens. 2 vols.
(Collegeville, MN, 1979) I, 77-98, at 78-9), with S. Keynes and M. Lapidge, Alfred the Great: Assers
Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources (Harmondsworth, 1983), pp. 179-81; S. Keynes,
The Diplomas of King thelred the Unready 978-1016: a Study in their Use as Historical Evidence
(Cambridge, 1980), pp. 158-61; R. Abels, Alfred the Great: War, Kingship and Culture in Anglo-Saxon
England (Manchester, 1998), pp. 264-5; Keynes, Mercia and Wessex, p. 326; Pratt, Political
Thought, pp. 30, 33, 36-7 and 168.
41
S. Keynes, The West Saxon Charters of King thelwulf and his Sons EHR 109 (1994), 1109-49, at
1131-4 and 1146-7; Abels, Alfred, pp. 222 and 263; Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 40-1, 54-8, 86-8 and
122.
42
Asser, Vita Alfredi, cc. 22-4 (Assers Life of King Alfred, together with the Annals of St Neots,
erroneously ascribed to Asser, ed. W. H. Stevenson, new imp. (Oxford, 1959), pp. 19-21; Keynes and
Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 74-5); ibid., p. 239, n. 36; Kelly, Lay Society, pp. 59-60; Pratt, Political Thought,
pp. 89-92.
43
Asser, Vita Alfredi, c. 88 (ed. Stevenson, p. 73, lines 6-9; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 99).
44
Schatzkammer der Residenz, Munich, s.n., with original ivory plaques now in the Schweizerisches
Museum, Zurich (court school of Charles the Bald, 842 x 869): Koehler and Mtherich, Die
karolingischen Miniaturen, V: Die Hofschule Karls des Kahlen, 75-87, with pls. 1-3; R. Deshman, The
Exalted Servant: the Ruler Theology of the Prayerbook of Charles the Bald, in his Eye and Mind, ed.
10
elsewhere, Assers account is important since it may well preserve a wider form of
court education available to the secular elite, and also suggests, at this stage, emphasis
on the memorization and recitation of texts, rather than the ability to read directly.
45

Under Alfreds own rule (871-99), one has the impression of transformative
developments, in the form of what is generally termed his educational programme:
that is, major changes in education and learning promoted by the king in the 880s and
890s.
46
As I haved argued, the Alfredian programme built on the court-based education
described above, but promoted two major shifts: firstly, a new emphasis on the ability of
the lay aristocracy to read English; and, secondly, the promotion not of poetry but prose
translations of learned Latin texts.
47
Translations, promoted by the king, were seen as a
repository of wisdom needed by all involved in rulership.
48
King Alfreds kingship
was modelled, above all, on that of the biblical Solomon.
49
Although the overall
ambitions were inspired by Carolingian efforts and example, Alfreds programme took a
distinctive form shaped by West Saxon conditions. The audiences for translated texts
were leading ecclesiastics and the lay elite, and also included aristocratic and royal
children educated in the royal household.
50
Provisions included the reading aloud of
translated texts to those who were unable to read for themselves. The court education
was also in some sense bilingual, involving instruction in Latin as well as English,
though for the laity this Latin instruction was not necessarily at a high level.
51

Crucially, the king himself was presented as a practitioner in learning. Here one
cannot sidestep the remarkable body of translations attributed to Alfreds own
authorship: the Regula pastoralis by Pope Gregory the Great; the first fifty Psalms; the
Consolatio Philosophiae by Boethius; the Soliloquia by St Augustine; and also the
introduction to King Alfreds law-book.
52
Though doubts have occasionally been

Cohen, pp. 192-241. For Alfreds prayerbook and its Continental precedents, see Pratt, Illnesses, pp.
45-9 and 63-6.
45
Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 89-90, cf. 118-26.
46
Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 25-41; S. Lerer, Literacy and Power in Anglo-Saxon Literature
(Lincoln, NE, 1991), pp. 61-96; P. A. Booth, King Alfred versus Beowulf: the Re-education of the
Anglo-Saxon Aristocracy, Bull. of the John Rylands Univ. Lib. of Manchester 79.3 (Autumn 1997),
41-66; N. G. Discenza, Symbolic Capital and the Ruler in the Translation Program of Alfred the
Great, Exemplaria 23 (2001), 433-67; Pratt, Political Thought, esp. pp. 115-34 and 166-78.
47
Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 118-29.
48
Ibid., pp. 115-78.
49
Abels, Alfred, pp. 248-9, 255-8, 282 and 311; A. Scharer, The Writing of History at King Alfreds
Court, EME 5 (1996), 177-206, at 191-9; idem, Herrschaft und Reprsentation: Studien zur Hofkultur
Knig Alfreds des Groen (Vienna, 2001), pp. 83-108; Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 133, 151-66, 170-6,
264-5, 280-1, 286-7, 289-95, 302, 304-7, 318-21, 326-9, 334-7 and 339-45.
50
Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 120-3 and 166-72.
51
Ibid., pp. 120-1 and 166-7, cf. 89-90.
52
D. Whitelock, The Prose of Alfreds Reign, in her From Bede to Alfred: Studies in Early Anglo-
Saxon Literature and History (London, 1980), no. VI, pp. 67-103; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 28-
32; A. J. Frantzen, King Alfred (Boston, MA, 1986); Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 115-78 and 193-337.
11
expressed about this attribution, most recently by Malcolm Godden, his grounds for
doubt involve a number of awkwardnesses in the reading of this vernacular material and
of Assers biography.
53
There are strong linguistic and stylistic arguments for the unity
of the works attributed to the king as a distinctive corpus.
54
There are also many
thematic connections between these texts, relating to power and rule, the need for
humility, the use of earthly resources, and the language of Solomons wise rule; the
handling of such themes, in ways supportive of Alfreds rule, renders very credible
Assers picture of learned kingship.
55
One should note, moreoever, that Alfred appears
to have received assistance from a number of scholarly assistants, including the
Welshman Asser and the monk and priest, Grimbald, recruited from Rheims.
56
One
should therefore ascribe to Alfred a central role in uniting a project which drew,
necessarily and importantly, on these learned resources.
The case for the learned King Alfred complements the broader evidence for the
activities of the kings scholarly circle, indicating extensive interaction with books of a
variety of kinds. One must envisage that the king and his assistants had access to Latin
exemplars for the varous royal translations, and to other sources which are known to
have informed these translations.
57
Copies would presumably have been retained of the
kings translations, and there are signs that other vernacular works passed through the
royal household, most notably Werferths Mercian translation of Pope Gregorys
Dialogues and the common stock of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
58
Another category
would have been personal books owned by Alfred. The understanding of Alfreds
prayerbook is complicated slightly by Assers quasi-miraculous account of the kings
transition to scholarly study and translation, assigned to St Martins Day (11 November)

53
M. Godden, Did King Alfred Write Anything?; idem, Stories from the Court of King Alfred. For
responses, from a variety of perspectives, to Goddens doubts over the royal corpus, see J. Bately, Did
King Alfred Actually Translate Anything? The Integrity of the Alfredian Canon Revisited, M 78
(2009), 189-215; D. Pratt, Problems of Authorship and Audience in the Writings of King Alfred the
Great, Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World, ed. P. Wormald and J. L. Nelson (Cambridge,
2007), pp. 162-91; idem, Political Thought, esp. pp. 115-20, 130-4, 165-71, 176-8, 251, 280-1, 290-5,
320, 325-32 and 334-45; idem, The Voice of the King, pp. 202-4.
54
See esp. J. M. Bately, King Alfred and the Old English Translation of Orosius, Anglia 88 (1970),
433-60, esp. 440-56; idem, Lexical Evidence for the Authorship of the Prose Psalms in the Paris
Psalter, ASE 10 (1982), 69-95; idem, Old English Prose before and during the Reign of King Alfred,
ASE 17 (1989), 93-138, at 118-38; with idem, Did King Alfred Actually Translate Anything?, for
Batelys response to Goddens doubts.
55
Pratt, Political Thought, passim, and esp. pp. 166-78.
56
Ibid., pp. 56-8 and 128-32, cf. 140-2, 160-8, 171, 219, 223, 226-34, 246, 270-7, 292-5, 317, 320 and
335, for evidence indicating the likely influence of the kings scholarly helpers.
57
Ibid., esp. pp. 142-3, 230, 246, 271-3, 282 and 314, for exemplars; Jayatilaka, King Alfred and his
Circle, pp. 670-6.
58
For Bishop Wulfsiges metrical preface to the translation of the Dialogues, see below, pp. 17 and 21.
For the transmission of the common stock of the Chronicle, see Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 275-
80; J. M. Bately, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Texts and Textual Relationships, Reading Med. Stud,
Monograph 3 (Reading, 1991), esp. 59-62.
12
887: the background to this incident involved Assers reading aloud to the king, in
which Alfred ordered the writing down of certain favoured passages (testimonia:
probably, in immediate context, passages of Holy Scripture).
59
Since Alfreds libellus or
prayerbook was already filled with all manner of things, Asser prepared a new quire
(quaternio) to enable such passages to be gathered together separately.
60
The process
contributed to the construction of a volume which the king called his enchridion ... id
est manualem librum, the size of a psalter, containing flowers collected here and there
from various masters which, despite being mixed up, were assembled in the body of a
single libellus.
61

Keynes and Lapidge regarded the enchiridion as an expansion of the prayerbook,
envisaging that the quire and other material had been added to the kings original
volume.
62
The books new title, however, and the concern to preserve the testimonia
separately, might be taken to indicate that the enchiridion had formed a separate
volume, in effect a florilegium.
63
In this connection one should note the survival at
Worcester in the twelfth century of material known as the Dicta regis lfredi; the
same source appears to have been consulted by William of Malmesbury, who equated it
with King Alfreds enchiridion or hand-book.
64
Dorothy Whitelock expressed doubt
over the identification, suggesting that Malmesbury might have encountered a copy of
the Alfredian Soliloquies to which other material had been appended.
65
The scenario
should be taken seriously, yet the various references to the dicta or hand-book
suggest the existence of a composite text somehow identified as Alfredian.
66
Indeed, the
fragments which have survivedrelating to West Saxon royal genealogy, Aldhelms

59
Asser, Vita Alfredi, cc. 88-9 (ed. Stevenson, pp. 73-5; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 99-100). For
the events of 11 November 887, see esp. Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 28; Pratt, Political Thought,
pp. 119-20, 166 and 171, n. 308; Lerer, Literacy and Power, pp. 70-4. For a different view, see
Godden, Stories from the Court of King Alfred, pp. 130-1, questioning the conventional reading of the
relevant Latin sentence, to the effect that Alfred had begun to translate Latin into the vernacular for the
purposes of instructing others; but this should be compared with one of the acrostic poems attributed to
John the Old Saxon, for evidence that Alfred had indeed been represented to contemporaries in a
learned, teaching role: see below, p. 17.
60
Asser, Vita Alfredi, c. 88 (ed. Stevenson, p. 73, line 1, to p. 74, line 34; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred,
pp. 99-100).
61
Asser, Vita Alfredi, c. 89 (ed. Stevenson, p. 75, lines 15-23; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 100).
62
Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 268, n. 208.
63
Pratt, Illnesses, pp. 46-7; idem, Political Thought, p. 120; cf. also Keynes, Alfred the Great and the
Kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons.
64
For the relevant references, see Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 81, 91 and 141-2; idem, Alfreds
Handbook (article in preparation); P. G. Remley, Aldhelm as Old English Poet: Exodus, Asser and the
Dicta Alfredi, Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael
Lapidge, ed. K. OBrien OKeeffe and A. Orchard, 2 vols. (Toronto, 2005) I, 90-108, at 94-6 and 99-
100.
65
Whitelock, The Prose of Alfreds Reign, pp. 71-3.
66
R. M. Thomson with M. Winterbottom, William of Malmesbury: Gesta Regum Anglorum / The History
of the English Kings II: General Introduction and Commentary (Oxford, 1999), 103-4; Pratt, Political
Thought, p. 127.
13
performance as a poet, and Pope Gregorys attitude to his predecessor Pope Siricius
(384-9)comprise material which may reasonably connected with the Alfredian royal
household, and in one case with Asser.
67
Whether literally part of Alfreds enchiridion,
or part of another compilation associated with the king, these fragments relate
intriguingly to Alfredian intellectual interests.

Surviving books associated with King Alfred: the Book of Nunnaminster

Two surviving books cast further light on the Alfredian royal household. In each case
the grounds for developing such a connection relate to a notable practice: namely, the
addition of the texts of charters and other documents into ecclesiastical books of high
status. The practice does not appear to have been widespread in England before the
tenth century; as will be explored below, instances of its adoption in the later Anglo-
Saxon period tend to occur in manuscripts of likely royal ownership or gift, suggesting a
significant relationship.
68
The earliest example, London, British Library, Harley 2965,
the late eighth- or early ninth-century prayerbook known as the Book of Nunnaminster,
has long been associated with King Alfreds wife, Ealhswith, on the basis of a note,
added to 40v in an early form of square minuscule script, recording the bounds of the
tenement (haga) e Ealhswi hf t Wintan ceastre: the land corresponds with the
site of the Nunnaminster, which Ealhswith (d. 902) is known to have founded.
69

Ealhswiths precise relationship to the volume may be debated: while her ownership is
recorded in the present tense, David Dumville has noted that the singling out of the
estate would only have made sense once the Nunnaminster had been founded,
suggesting the copying of an older document.
70
One should, however, take account of
the practice in the tenth century whereby land forming part of the endowment of a
female religious house continued to be held individually by a prominent female, rather
than corporately by the house itself.
71
The note could, then, readily have been composed

67
Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 81, 91, 141-2; Remley, Aldhelm as Old English Poet, pp. 94-100.
68
See below, pp. 49-60.
69
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 432; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 308-9 (no. 237); Alexander, Insular Manuscripts, p. 65
(no. 41); Making of England, ed. Webster and Backhouse, pp. 210-11 (no. 164); A. N. Doane, Anglo-
Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, 1 (Binghampton, NY, 1994), no. 271. S 1560 (Property
and Piety in Early Medieal Winchester: Documents relating to the Topography of the Anglo-Saxon and
Norman City and its Minsters, ed. A. R. Rumble, Winchester Stud. 4.iii: The Anglo-Saxon Minsters of
Winchester, ed. M. Biddle (Oxford, 2002), 47-8 (no. 1)). For the script and hand of the addition, see D.
N. Dumville, English Square Minuscule Script: the Background and Earliest Phases, ASE 16 (1987),
147-79, at 163-4; idem, Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 83-6; cf.
M. B. Parkes, A Fragment of an Early-Tenth-Century Anglo-Saxon Manuscript and its Significance,
in his Scribes, Scripts and Readers, pp. 171-85, at 173 and 177.
70
Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 84-5, with n. 141.
71
B. Yorke, Sisters Under the Skin? Anglo-Saxon Nuns and Nunneries in Southern England, Reading
Med. Stud. 15 (1989), 95-117, at 105-6; Pratt, The Voice of the King, pp. 188-9, 193-4 and 197-8.
14
and added to the manuscript during Ealhswiths lifetime, in the early stages of the
Nunnaminsters existence, the precise chronology of which remains obscure.
72

Other considerations also support the case for Harley 2965 having been
personally owned by Ealhswith.
73
The book is certainly of Mercian origin, one of a
group of four surviving Mercian prayerbooks from the late eighth or early ninth century;
since Ealhswith was the daughter of a Mercian ealdorman, her role would provide a
plausible context for it reaching Wessex.
74
The volume also shows some signs of
having been written for female use: although the majority of gender forms are
masculine, there are two instances, unusually, of female forms within the main text,
suggesting that the compiler had female use in mind.
75
While relating to the original
purposes of the volume, these features would be consistent with Ealhswiths ownership
and might help to explain her interest in it. The likelihood that Ealhswith may have
made personal use of the prayerbook receives support from her husbands devotions,
and the broader Carolingian influence on lay piety which Assers account implies.
76

Indeed, a number of possible connections have been suggested between King Alfreds
pious behaviour, closely linked to the effects of his mysterious adult illness, and certain
devotional themes in the four Mercian prayerbooks, particularly an association between
illness and sin, prayers for protection naming multiple parts of the body, and imagery
concerning vision, darkness and light.
77
It is therefore striking that, uniquely within this
Mercian corpus, Harley 2965 transmits the prayer De latrone, appealing to the example

72
For the early history of the Nunnaminster, see S. Foot, Veiled Women, 2 vols. (Aldershot, 2000) II,
243-52; M. Biddle and D. J. Keene, Winchester in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, Winchester in
the Early Middle Ages: an Edition and Discussion of the Winton Domesday, ed. M. Biddle, Winchester
Studies 1 (Oxford, 1976), 241-448, at 321-3. Although a date of foundation 899 (death of Alfred) x 902
(death of Ealhswith) has generally been suspected, and the completion of a high tower, reported by
thelweard for c. 908, may refer to the Nunnaminster (The Chronicle of thelweard, ed. A. Campbell
(London, 1962), p. 52), one cannot rule out the possibility that the community had origins which
predated Ealhswiths widowhood.
73
Alexander, Insular Manuscripts, p. 65 (no. 41); Making of England, ed. Webster and Backhouse, pp.
210-11 (no. 164); M. P. Brown, Female Book-Ownership and Production in Anglo-Saxon England: the
Evidence of the Ninth-Century Prayerbooks, Lexis and Texts in Early English: Studies presented to
Jane Roberts, ed. C. J. Kay and L. M. Sylvester, Costerus, new ser. 133 (Amsterdam, 2001), 45-67, at
51-6.
74
For the Mercian group of prayerbooks, see esp. Brown, The Book of Cerne; P. Sims-Williams, Religion
and Literature in Western England 600-800, CSASE 3 (Cambridge, 1990), 273-327; T. H. Bestul,
Continental Sources of Anglo-Saxon Devotional Writing, Sources of Anglo-Saxon Culture, ed. P. E.
Szarmach (Kalamazoo, MI, 1986), pp. 103-26, at 105-17; B. Raw, Anglo-Saxon Prayerbooks, The
Cambridge History of the Book I, ed. Gameson, 460-7, at 461-4.
75
An Ancient Manuscript of the Eighth or Ninth Century, formerly belonging to St Marys Abbey, or
Nunnaminster, ed. W. de G. Birch (London, 1889), pp. 15-17; Brown, Female Book-Ownership, pp.
55-6, cf. 57-8.
76
Pratt, Illnesses, esp. pp. 45-9 and 64-6.
77
Ibid., pp. 47-8 and 64-6; P. Kershaw, Illness, Power and Prayer in Assers Life of King Alfred, EME
10 (2001), 201-24, at 210-13; B. Raw, Alfredian Piety: the Book of Nunnaminster, Alfred the Wise:
Studies in honour of Janet Bately, ed. J. Roberts and J. L. Nelson, with M. Godden (Cambridge, 1997),
pp. 145-53.
15
of the thief who acknowledged Christ at the crucifixion.
78
As Anton Scharer has
observed, the same biblical model was used by Asser, applied at some length to Alfred
in the account of St Martins Day 887.
79
Although there is no direct textual relationship,
liturgical resonances might well have encouraged Assers striking image; Ealhswiths
volume provides an important sample of Alfredian prayer.

Bern, Burgerbibliothek, 671

Another devotional book has a tantalizing series of additions. Bern, Burgerbibiothek,
671, a pocket gospel book written in western Britain in the second half of the ninth
century, bears on 74v (in previously blank space at the end of St Johns gospel) two
acrostic poems with the legends AELFRED/ELFRED.
80
Clearly relating to King
Alfred, the poems have been tentatively attributed by Michael Lapidge to the kings
scholarly assistant John the Old Saxon, who composed a similar acrostic in honour of
Alfreds grandson, the future King thelstan.
81
The main text of the gospels, written by
two scribes, employs a cursive form of reformed minuscule, a script deriving from
Wales and southwestern Britain; the regularity of the books quires, suggesting English
influence, would provide a basis for attributing its production to Cornwall rather than
Wales.
82
The acrostics are written in a larger, rounded form of the same script which
cannot be closely dated but would be consistent with having been written in the late
ninth or early tenth century.
83
Comparison with a later form of reformed minuscule
occurring in tenth-century sections of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 572 might
again point to southwestern Britain for the acrostics hand.
84


78
28v: An Ancient Manuscript, ed. Birch, pp. 74-5.
79
Asser, Vita Alfredi, cc. 89-91 (ed. Stevenson, pp. 75-6; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 100-1);
Scharer, The Writing of History, pp. 189-91.
80
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 795; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 4-5 (no. 6); W. M. Lindsay, Early Welsh Script
(Oxford, 2012), pp. 10-16 (no. 3) and 48-51 (pls. IV-V); O. Homburger, Die illustrierten Handschriften
der Burgerbibliothek Bern. Die vorkarolingischen und karolingische Handschriften (Bern, 1962), pp.
31-2; Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 79-83; J. P. McGowan, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in
Microfiche Facsimile, 20: Manuscripts in Switzerland (Tempe, AZ, 2012), no. 12. M. Lapidge, Some
Latin Poems as Evidence for the Reign of Athelstan, in his Anglo-Latin Literature 900-1066, pp. 49-
86, at 69-71; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 192.
81
Lapidge, Some Latin Poems, pp. 70-1, cf. 60-9.
82
Dumville, Liturgy, p. 117, n. 157; D. N. Dumville, A Palaeographers Review: the Insular System of
Scripts in the Early Middle Ages I (Suita, 1999), pp. 123-5; cf. Dumville, English Square Minuscule
Script: the Background and Earliest Phases, pp. 159-61.
83
Lindsay, Early Welsh Script, pp. 50-1 (pl. V); for preliminary views of the script as Celtic, cf. ibid., pp.
11-12; Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 79-80, n. 110.
84
E.g. 14r (script of the opening lines of the Book of Tobit): Lindsay, Early Welsh Script, pp. 60-1 (pl.
XIV); for this composite manuscript, see Gneuss, Handlist, no. 583; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 376-7 (no.
313); Dumville, Liturgy, pp. 116-17; idem, A Palaeographers Review, p. 125, n. 31; H. McKee,
Script in Wales, Scotland and Cornwall, The Cambridge History of the Book I, ed. Gameson, 167-73,
at 170. For the suggestion that Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Voss. lat. F.96A, a binding leaf bearing
16
The book next received a series of additions relating to Bedwyn, Wiltshire, the
core of an important royal estate: firstly, a document announcing the dispostion of tithe
from Bedwyn and from Lambourn, Berkshire (75v); secondly, an incomplete set of
guild regulations probably concerning Bedwyn (75v-76r); and thirdly, two manumission
documents which include among their witnesses all the servants of God at Bedwyn
(76v).
85
While the first two documents were written by different hands in the early tenth
century, the hand of the manumissions has been identified as that of the scribe who also
wrote the will of the nobleman Wulfgar, a document probably dating from the early
930s.
86
Wulfgars will survives as an original single sheet from the archives of the Old
Minster, Winchester, physically attached from an early stage in its history to an original
charter of King thelstan in favour of Wulfgar, issued at Lifton, Devon, on 12th
November 931 and written by the royal charter scribe thelstan A, conveying an
estate at Ham, Wiltshire.
87
This estate, and others bequeathed by Wulfgar, lay close to
the Bedwyn estate, while the names of several beneficiaries of the will recur in the Bern
671 manumissions.
88
A pertinent question, given the contents of Bern 671, is whether
the scribe of Wulfgars will might have been in royal service. As Dumville has
observed, the text of the dorse of the will, which includes treatment of the Ham estate,
may have been written slightly later than that on the face, perhaps prompted by
Wulfgars obtaining of the Ham charter.
89
It seems likely in this context, as Dumville
has argued, that Wulfgar had drawn upon the services of a scribe physically located on

Brittonic glosses, might have been written in Cornwall in the approximate date-range 850 x 930, see D.
N. Dumville, Writers, Scribes and Readers in Brittany, AD 800-1100: the Evidence of Manuscripts,
Medieval Celtic Literature and Society, ed. H. Fulton (Dublin, 2005), pp. 49-64, at 55-6. Cf. also
Rome, Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica, lat. 3363, containing Boethius, De consolatione
Philosophiae written in the Loire valley s. ix
med
, with several layers of subsequent glossing (including
annotations in the hand of Dunstan at Glastonbury): Gneuss, Handlist, no. 908. In the light of recent
work, the earliest Insular glosses appear to have been written by two hands working in proximity, one
using a form of reformed minuscule, the other employing Caroline forms: see M. Godden, Alfred,
Asser, and Boethius, Latin Learning, ed. OBrien OKeeffe and Orchard, I, 326-48, at 333-5 and 343-
4. The earliest Insular glosses bear no relationship to the Old English translation of Boethius. One gloss
written by the Caroline hand has been identified as a specimen of Cornish: P. Sims-Williams, A New
Brittonic Gloss on Boethius: ud rocashaas, CMCS 50 (Winter 2005), 77-86. The case for attributing
this phase of glossing to Cornwall (rather than Wales) might be supported by the combination of scripts;
the use of Caroline forms would however point to a date in s. x
1/2
rather than s. ix
ex
, the dating
sometimes suggested: see Dumville, Liturgy, pp. 116-17, with n. 150; idem, A Palaeographers Review,
p. 125, n. 31.
85
Ptd by H. Meritt, Old English Entries in a Manuscript at Bern, JEGP 33 (1934), 343-51, at 344-6; see
also English Historical Documents, ed. Whitelock, pp. 605-6 (no. 138). D. A. E. Pelteret, Slavery in
Early Mediaeval England (Woodbridge, 1995), pp. 152-3 and 157-8; J. Blair, The Church in Anglo-
Saxon Society (Oxford, 2005), pp. 301, 440-3 and 453-5.
86
London, British Library, Cotton Charter viii.16[b]: S 1533 (ASCharters 26), reproduced in BMFacs.
iii.3. Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 78-80.
87
London, British Library, Cotton Charter viii.16[a]: S 416 (BCS 677), reproduced in BMFacs. iii.3.
Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 16, 25, and 44.
88
Dumville, Wessex and England, p. 110, with n. 260.
89
Ibid., pp. 78-9.
17
the Bedwyn estate, rather than at a royal assembly.
90
Nevertheless the nature of the
Bedwyn arrangements, combining a royal estate with the presence of a religious
community, provides a notable context for both scribe and gospel book.
There are several grounds for associating Bern 671 with the royal household.
The acrostic poems give every impression of having been composed for King Alfred,
probably inspired by Carolingian examples of acrostics written for rulers, as well as
Insular acrostic poetry;
91
the attribution to John the Old Saxon makes sense in view of
the close connections which they exhibit with Alfredian learning. Thus the first poem,
addressing Christ, appeals to the future salvation of the wise man, who will enjoy the
sight of the Divine Visage: the vision and the future sight of God was a major area of
Alfredian interest, featuring prominently in bishop Wulfsige of Sherbornes metrical
preface to the translation of Pope Gregorys Dialogues and, in intimate connection with
the concept of wisdom, throughout the royal translation of Augustines Soliloquies.
92

The second poem, addressing Alfred himself, celebrates the kings devotion to heavenly
matters, praising his right teaching regarding the deceptive charm of [worldly] things
(falsa dulcedine mureR [= rerum]).
93
The statement effectively summarizes the
Solomonic principle, referred to by Asser, of the need for those ruling to reject glory and
wealth, if these qualities are not combined with wisdom; as I have argued, this
Solomonic model, combining wealth with wisdom, supplied language employed across
the Alfredian royal corpus of translations, and formed the organizing principle of

90
Ibid.; cf. also Keynes, Diplomas, p. 21, n. 21
91
A number of Carolingian acrostics were written for rulers or their consorts (ed. E. Duemmler, MGH
PLAC 1 (Berlin, 1881), 90-1, 112-13, 156-7, 226-7); ed. E. Duemmler, MGH PLAC 2 (Berlin, 1884),
165-7; ed. L. Traube, MGH PLAC 3 (Berlin, 1896), 562-5; PL 107, cols. 141-4); for the most well
known example, see E. Sears, Louis the Pious as Miles Christi: the Dedicatory Image in Hrabanus
Mauruss De laudibus sanctae crucis, Charlemagnes Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis
the Pious, ed. P. Godman and R. Collins (Oxford, 1990), pp. 605-28.
92
Lapidge, Some Latin Poems, p. 70; D. Yerkes, The Full Text of the Metrical Preface to Wrferths
Old English Translation of Gregorys Dialogues, Speculum 55 (1979), 505-13, at 512; Pratt, Political
Thought, pp. 335-6, cf. 317-37. For the case for placing the Fuller brooch in the same Alfredian
intellectual context, see ibid., pp. 187-9; D. Pratt, Persuasion and Invention at the Court of King Alfred
the Great, Court Culture in the Early Middle Ages: the Proceedings of the First Alcuin Conference, ed.
C. Cubitt (Turnhout, 2002), pp. 189-221, at 206-20.
93
Lapidge, Some Latin Poems, p. 70. For Fle[c]tas iam mentem sacris in line 3, cf. the notable phrase
in Alfreds Prose Preface forme we noldon to m spore mid ure mode anlutan (because we
were unwilling to incline our minds to the track): C. Schreiber, King Alfreds Old English Translation
of Pope Gregory the Greats Regula Pastoralis and its Cultural Context: a Study and Partial Edition
According to All Surviving Manuscripts Based on Corpus Christi College 12 (Munich, 2002), p. 193.
Cf. also pene omnes illius regionis potentes et nobiles ad secularia magis quam ad divina mentem
declinaverant negotia (nearly all the magnates and nobles of that land had inclined their minds more to
worldly than to divine affairs): Asser, Vita Alfredi, c. 106 (ed. Stevenson, p. 92; Keynes and Lapidge,
Alfred, p. 109), with Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 155, 157 and 189-90. For other hunting imagery
within the translation of Boethius, see N. G. Discenza, The Kings English: Strategies of Translation in
the Old English Boethius (Albany, NY, 2005), pp. 101-4.
18
Alfreds Prose Preface to the translation of the Regula pastoralis.
94
Indeed, the acrostic
seems likely to be alluding specifically to the translation of Boethius, given the focus
within that text of the qualified rejection of worldly goods, if not held in accordance
with the love of wisdom alone.
95

The positioning of the acrostics within Bern 671 appears to have been
significant: the treatment of Christ in the first poem necessarily has textual links with
the gospels which precede it. Although the received text is unlikely to represent the
precise form in which the acrostics were originally composed, their addition to the
manuscript conveyed a clear message connecting the gospels with the contemplation of
Christ and with Alfreds own learned role. Like other pocket gospel books, Bern 671
lacks prefatory material to the gospels and, with pages measuring 160 x 114 mm, would
have been intended for personal use, thereby enhancing the acrostics message.
96
The
book has a compelling provenance, locatable to the Bedwyn estate, probably by the 920s
at the latest, most likely in possession of the community there.
97
As will become clear,
the use of the volume for the copying of significant documents might be taken as a
further indicator of royal connections.
98
Bedwyn was of some importance to King
Alfred, listed among the lands bequeathed to Edward the Elder in Alfreds will: the hill-
fort of Chisbury, one of the burhs of the Burghal Hidage, formed part of the estate,
while Lambourn, associated with Bedwyn in the tithe document, had been bequeathed to
Ealhswith.
99
The Bedwyn estate was appreciably enlarged early in Edwards reign
through the acquisition of Stoke by Shalbourne from the Old Minster, Winchester.
100

Part of a broader policy of strategic land exchange under Alfred and Edward, the
transaction, together with the guild statutes, may indicate a significant shift of focus

94
Asser, Vita Alfredi, c. 76 (ed. Stevenson, pp. 60-1; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 92). Pratt, Political
Thought, pp. 151-7, 175-6, 259, 280-307, 319-20 and 328-9.
95
Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 280-307.
96
For the genre, see P. McGurk, The Irish Pocket Gospel Book, Sacris Erudiri 8 (1956), 249-70;
Dumville, Liturgy, pp. 111-12.
97
Dumville, Wessex and England, p. 82, suggesting that the tithe document may have been written in the
920s.
98
See below, pp. 49-60.
99
S 1507 (NMWinch 1); N. Brooks, The Unidentified Forts of the Burghal Hidage, in his Communities
and Warfare 700-1400 (London, 2000), pp. 93-113, at 93-8; D. A. Hinton, Alfreds Kingdom: Wessex
and the South 800-1500 (London, 1977), pp. 33 and 74-5. For the complex history of the Bedwyn
estate, see Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 107-12; Foot, Veiled Women II, 35-8. As Keynes and
Lapidge point out (Alfred, p. 323, n. 88, cf. 318, n. 28), Lambourn was later bequeathed by thelfld
of Damerham, the second wife of King Edmund (S 1494), so may have been among estates used to
support royal women; whereas Bedwyn was in the later tenth century identified among estates used to
support kings sons.
100
S 373 (BCS 612) and S 1286 (BCS 611), both issued at Bickleigh, Devon, in 904. Dumville, Wessex
and England, pp. 107-9; Keynes, West Saxon Charters, pp. 1144-5.
19
away from the hill-fort towards a reorganized royal estate centre.
101
Contact with the
royal household would therefore provide the most economical explanation for the
volume reaching Bedwyn.
102

Lastly the Cornish (rather than Welsh) features of the manuscript, while not
themselves diagnostic of the books patronage, harmonize with evidence for important
political, ecclesiastical and scholarly connections in Alfreds time. Cornwall may have
fallen under West Saxon dominance from the reign of King Ecgberht (802-39), though
what this meant in practice is largely hidden from view.
103
Nevertheless Asser reports
that Alfred went hunting in Cornwall in his youth, and as king made distributions to
churches there;
104
Alfreds will included two references to Cornish landholding, while
Asser himself was granted Exeter (perhaps as suffragan bishop) with all the jurisdiction
(cum omni parochia) pertaining to it in Saxon territory and in Cornwall.
105
Such
connections may be presumed to have encouraged scholarly contact and influence, as
attested by the importing into Wessex of manuscripts of Cornish origin in this period,
part of broader interaction between Wessex and the Celtic world which extended to the
importing of scholarly personnel.
106
One can therefore imagine how a gospel book

101
Dumville, Wessex and England, p. 46, cf. pp. 107-12; for this policy, see ibid., pp. 44-6; Pratt,
Political Thought, pp. 101-2, 172-3, 175, 210, 212-13, 307, 334 and 341. Brooks, Unidentified Forts,
p. 98; Hinton, Alfreds Kingdom, pp. 74-5.
102
Dumville, Liturgy, p. 111; M. Gretsch, The Intellectual Foundations of the English Benedictine
Reform (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 343-4; Blair, Church, p. 349.
103
For Cornwall in the ninth and tenth centuries, see T. M. Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons 350-
1064 (Oxford, 2013), pp. 428-32 and 569-70; O. J. Padel, Cornwall, The Blackwell Encyclopaedia,
ed. Lapidge et al., with references; idem, Place-names and the Saxon Conquest of Devon and
Cornwall, Britons in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. N. Higham (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 215-30; idem,
Slavery in Saxon Cornwall: the Bodmin Manumissions, Kathleen Hughes Memorial Lectures 7
(Cambridge, 2009); C. Insley, Kings and Lords in Tenth-Century Cornwall, History 98 (2013), 2-22.
104
Asser, Vita Alfredi, cc. 74 and 102 (ed. Stevenson, pp. 55 and 89; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 89
and 107). Bickleigh, Devon, was a evidently a royal hunting lodge in the early tenth century: cf. above,
p. 18, n. 100.
105
S 1507 (NMWinch 1); Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 317, n. 18 (Stratton, Cornwall) and p. 321, n.
56 (Lifton, Devon, with land pertaining to it in Cornwall). King thelstans charter of 12 November
931 in favour of Wulfgar was issued at Lifton (S 416): see above, p. 16. Asser, Vita Alfredi, c. 81 (ed.
Stevenson, p. 68; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 97, with pp. 264-5, n. 193); see now O. J. Padel,
Assers parochia of Exeter, Tome: Studies in Medieval Celtic History and Law in honour of Thomas
Charles-Edwards, ed. F. Edmonds and P. Russell (Woodbridge, 2011), pp. 65-72.
106
Dumville, English Square Minuscule Script: the Background and Earliest Phases, pp. 151 and 159-
61; idem, Liturgy, pp. 111-19, esp. 116-17; cf. idem, Wessex and England, pp. 154-9, 180-2 and 200-2;
Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons, pp. 634-6 and 647; H. McKee, The Circulation of Books
between England and the Celtic Realms, The Cambridge History of the Book I, ed. Gameson, 338-43.
Oliver Padel has suggested that the Abbot Seigno, probably the abbot of Athelney, Somerset,
mentioned in a unique Cornish charter from the reign of thelstan (S 1207), may have been of Cornish
origin: O. J. Padel, The Charter of Lanlawren (Cornwall), Latin Learning, ed. OBrien OKeeffe and
Orchard I, 74-85, at 78 and 81. For Vatican lat. 3363, see above, p. 16, n. 84. For the Breton
contribution, see also M. Lapidge, Israel the Grammarian in Anglo-Saxon England, in his Anglo-Latin
Literature 900-1066, pp. 87-104; for an alternative view of Israels origins, cf. M. Wood, Stand
Strong Against the Monsters: Kingship and Learning in the Empire of King thelstan, Lay
20
produced in Cornwall might have reached the royal household, and also came to be
inscribed with the AELFRED/ELFRED acrostics by a scribe of Cornish origin or
training. In this context the fact cannot be overlooked that the second acrostic directly
addresses Alfred, raising the possibility of the volumes personal use by the king, or at
the very least a learned owner favourable to him.
107
With its striking provenance, the
gospel book provides a tangible link to Alfred and his scholarly circle.
From these various traces what should be stressed is the public nature of royal
learned interaction under King Alfred. The picture of an institutionalized library is
perhaps unhelpful here: one might rather imagine books reaching the court environment
from a variety of sources and being used for a variety of purposes.
108
There are,
nevertheless, grounds for suspecting a role for the kings secular officials. The role of
the hrglegn probably extended to responsibility for the kings treasures (the Latin
equivalent was thesaurarius), and thus may well have included responsibility for the
royal archive of charters and other documents, together, perhaps, with valuable books
personally associated with the king.
109
As Asser indicates, there would have been much
reading aloud in the kings circle.
110


Manuscripts of the royal translation of the Regula pastoralis

Surviving Alfredian vernacular books are, unfortunately, scarce. Most texts are
preserved in later manuscripts; perhaps significantly, the translation of Gregorys
Regula pastoralis, copies of which were distributed to the bishops of southern England,
offering the best chances of long-term survival in ecclesiastical archives, yields the two

Intellectuals in the Carolingian World, ed. Wormald and Nelson, pp. 192-217, at 205-6. Cf. also below,
pp. 33-4, 49-50 and 52.
107
Lapidge, Some Latin Poems, p. 70.
108
See the judicious comments of D. N. Dumville, English Libraries before 1066: Use and Abuse of the
Manuscript Evidence, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: Basic Readings, ed. M. P. Richards (New York, NY,
1994), pp. 169-219, at 192-4.
109
Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 158-61, cf. 147-9, for the actions of King Eadred (946-55), towards the end of
his reign when suffering from illness, in entrusting his suppellectiles (lit. household goods or
effects), comprising many charters and also the ancient treasures (thesauros) of preceding kings, as
well as various precious things (gazas) he had acquired himself, to Dunstan, abbot of Glastonbury, and
other keepers of the royal treasures (regalium gazarum custodes); the king ordered the goods to be
returned to him shortly before his death: B., Vita S. Dunstani, c. 19, cf. c. 20, in The Early Lives of St
Dunstan, ed. M. Winterbottom and M. Lapidge (Oxford, 2012), pp. 60 and 64. Books might well have
formed part of these goods, especially since holy relics were regarded as part of the kings thesauri
(ibid., pp. 148-9). For probable connections between relics and books as objects of royal ownership, see
Keynes, King Athelstans Books, pp. 143-7, cf. 177-8; Heslop, Production of de luxe Manuscripts,
pp. 156-8, 179-80 and 182-8; Foot, thelstan, pp. 68-9.
110
Asser, Vita Alfredi, cc. 76, 77 and 88, cf. 106 (ed. Stevenson, p. 59, lines 9-10, p. 63, lines 20-6, p.
73, lines 1-4, and p. 94, lines 46-54; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 91, 93, 99 and 110).
21
examples of book production on Alfreds behalf.
111
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton
20 famously includes an inscription identifying the book as the copy sent to the see of
Worcester.
112
Fragments also survive of London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B. xi,
another late ninth-century copy now all but destroyed by fire; the volume appears to
have been important, and rather than sent to a bishop, intended for use centrally.
113
As
Keynes has argued, the scribal practices of these manuscripts are compatible with the
involvement of the body of royal priests attached to the royal household, representing an
extension of their likely role in the production of charters and other documents.
114

These two Alfredian books are but fragments of a much more intensive process of book
production, which involved a general pattern of books being distributed under royal
auspices. In his metrical preface to Werferths Mercian translation of Pope Gregorys
Dialogues, bishop Wulfsige of Sherborne described Alfred as the greatest treasure-
giver of all the kings he has ever heard tell of.
115
The effusive praise occurred in the
context of a further book given by the king: the exemplar on which Wulfsiges copy had
been based.


BOOKS IN ROYAL OR SECULAR ARISTOCRATIC HANDS
IN LATER ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND

There is a strong case, moreover, for the survival of many of the mechanisms and
principles of Alfredian education in later Anglo-Saxon England. There was much
copying of Alfredian literature in the tenth century, the court itself remained an
important centre for instruction and learning, and Alfreds programme inspired a

111
For the dissemination of this translation, see S. Keynes, The Power of the Written Word: Alfredian
England 871-899, Alfred the Great: Papers from the Eleventh-Centenary Conferences, ed. T. Reuter
(Aldershot, 2003), pp. 175-97, at 193-6; C. Schreiber, King Alfreds Old English Translation, pp. 51-
82; Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 180-3.
112
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 626; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 384-6 (no. 324); N. R. Ker, The Pastoral Care: King
Alfreds Translation of St Gregorys Regula Pastoralis, MS Hatton 20 in the Bodleian Library at
Oxford, MS. Cotton Tiberius B. XI in the British Museum, MS. Anhang 19 in the Landesbibliothek at
Kassel, EEMF 6 (Copenhagen, 1956); Making of England, ed. Webster and Backhouse, pp. 260-1 (no.
235); The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art 966-1066, ed. J. Backhouse, D. H. Turner and L. Webster
(London, 1984), pp. 20-1 (no. 1); Schreiber, King Alfreds Old English Translation, pp. 53-5; C.
Franzen, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, 6: Worcester Manuscripts (Tempe, AZ,
1998), no. 377.
113
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 375; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 257-9 (no. 195); idem, Pastoral Care, pp. 12-19;
Schreiber, King Alfreds Old English Translation, pp. 51-2.
114
Keynes, Power of the Written Word, pp. 193-7.
115
D. Yerkes, The Full Text of the Metrical Preface to Wrferths Old English Translation of Gregorys
Dialogues, Speculum 55 (1979), 505-13 , at 513; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 188.
22
number of further efforts to provide works of vernacular prose.
116
Particularly striking is
the career of the monastic reformer, thelwold, abbot of Abingdon (c. 954-63) and
bishop of Winchester (963-84), who was educated to a high level at the court of
Alfreds grandson, King thelstan (924-39).
117
thelwolds translation of the Rule of
St Benedict, commissioned or promoted under the patronage of King Edgar (957/9-75)
and his queen, lfthryth, was publicly addressed to unlearned laymen (ungelrede
woroldmenn), a term possibly implying a lay readership as well as use by monastic
novitiates.
118
The format of the translation, in one version accompanied by a preface
recording Edgars approval, consciously echoed the format of Alfredian texts.
119


The education of members of the royal family

A further dimension can be seen in the education of royal children. There is a strong
case for a continuous tradition of personal learning in the West Saxon dynasty,
stretching from Alfred to the eleventh century. Alfreds own children variously
benefited from court instruction according to Asser.
120
William of Malmesbury reports
the high level of education enjoyed by the children of Alfreds son Edward the Elder,
describing thelstan as the most learned (litteratius) ruler of the English: given
Williams enthusiastic account of Alfreds reign, the detail is striking.
121
King Edgar
himself is known to have received instruction in his youth from thelwold;
122
his son,

116
M. Lapidge, Schools, Learning and Literature in Tenth-Century England, in his Anglo-Latin
Literature 900-1066 (London, 1993), pp. 1-48; Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 141-205; M.
Gretsch, Intellectual Foundations; Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 345-6 and 348.
117
M. Lapidge, thelwold as Scholar and Teacher, in his Anglo-Latin Literature 900-1066, pp. 183-
211; Gretsch, Intellectual Foundations, esp. pp. 332-48 and 428-9.
118
Councils & Synods with other Documents Relating to the English Church, I: A.D. 871-1204, ed. D.
Whitelock, M. Brett and C. N. L. Brooke, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1981), pt 1: 871-1066, 151 (no. 33);
Gretsch, Intellectual Foudations, p. 237, n. 32, and p. 279, cf. 123; cf. M. Gretsch, The Benedictine
Rule in Old English: a Document of Bishop thelwolds Reform Politics, Words, Texts and
Manuscripts: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Culture presented to Helmut Gneuss, ed. M. Korhammer, K.
Reichl and H. Sauer (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 131-58, at 146; Pratt, The Voice of the King, p. 163, cf.
p. 173.
119
Gretsch, Benedictine Rule, pp. 149-50; idem, Intellectual Foundations, p. 123; Pratt, The Voice of
the King, pp. 164-8, 187 and 197.
120
Asser, Vita Alfredi, c. 75 (ed. Stevenson, pp. 57-9; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 90-1); Pratt,
Political Thought, pp. 120-1 and 167.
121
William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum II.126 and II.132, cf. II.133, in William of Malmesbury: Gesta
Regum Anglorum / The History of the English Kings, ed. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson and M.
Winterbottom, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1998-9) I, 198-200 and 210); Foot, thelstan, pp. 34-7.
122
Regularis Concordia, ed. T. Symons (London, 1953), p. 1; Byrhtferth of Ramsey, Vita S. Oswaldi
III.11, in Byrhtferth of Ramsey: the Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine, ed. M. Lapidge (Oxford, 2009),
pp. 76-8. For the tradition, probably reliable, Edgar had as an infant been entrusted to lfwynn, wife of
thelstan Half King, following the death of his mother lfgifu in 944, see C. Hart, Athelstan Half
King and his Family, in his The Danelaw (London, 1992), pp. 569-604, at 579-80, 586 and 589.
23
Edward the Martyr, was versed in divine law by the teaching of Bishop Sidemann [of
Crediton], according to Byrhtferths Life of St Oswald.
123

The pattern can be traced further through certain female members of the dynasty,
whose lives are unusually well documented. The female religious house of Wilton
appears to have played a central role in the education of royal and aristocratic
women.
124
Although the use of Wilton would have been specific to women, their
attendance appears to have been informal and compatible with a secular career.
125
The
education that they received illustrates the value attached to learning in court circles.
Thus Edgars daughter, Edith (961 x 964 - 984 x 987), was entrusted by Edgar to
Wilton, where her mother, Edgars second wife, Wulfthryth, had been installed as
abbess.
126
Edith gained profiency in Latin, and her Life, by the late eleventh-century
hagiographer Goscelin, refers to a manual of devotions written in her own hand.
127

Significantly, Edith appears to have remained a secular member of the community,
reflecting a wider pattern.
128
Her example bears comparison with another Edith (d.
1075), the future queen of Edward the Confessor. The daughter of Godwine, earl of
Wessex, as a child she had been similarly educated at Wilton, probably in the 1020s;
according to the Life of Edward, subsequently commissioned by her, as queen she had
held responsibility for the teaching of children of royal blood.
129
One should also
compare another member of the royal dynasty, Margaret (d. 1093), daughter of Edward
the Exile (d. 1057) and thus a close kinswoman of the Confessor, who later married the
Scottish king, Malcolm III (1058-93); her career is largely known from the Life
commissioned by her daughter, Matilda, queen of Henry I of England.
130
Margaret was

123
Byrhtferth of Ramsey, Vita S. Oswaldi IV.18 (ed. Lapidge, p. 138, with p. 139, n. 172).
124
S. Hollis, Wilton as a Centre of Learning, Writing the Wilton Women: Goscelins Legend of Edith
and Liber confortatorius, ed. S. Hollis (Turnhout, 2004), pp. 307-38; B. Yorke, Nunneries and the
Anglo-Saxon Royal Houses (London, 2003), pp. 129 and 158-9; cf. also S. Foot, Veiled Women, 2 vols.
(Aldershot, 2000) II, 221-31.
125
Hollis, Wilton as a Centre of Learning, pp. 309-10 and 324-38.
126
S. Hollis, St Edith and the Wilton Community, Writing the Wilton Women, ed. Hollis, pp. 245-80.
127
Goscelin of Canterbury, Vita S. Edithae, c. 8 (A. Wilmart, La lgende de Ste dith en prose et vers
par le moine Goscelin, AB 56 (1938), 5-101 and 265-307, at 55-7; M. Wright and K. Loncar, The Vita
of Edith, Writing the Wilton Women, ed. Hollis, pp. 23-67, at 34-5); Hollis, Wilton as a Centre of
Learning, pp. 310-18.
128
Hollis, St Edith and the Wilton Community, pp. 249-50; Hollis, Wilton as a Centre of Learning,
pp. 309-10 and 324-7.
129
Vita dwardi regis I.2 (The Life of Edward Who Rests at Westminster, ed. F. Barlow, 2nd ed.
(Oxford, 1992), pp. 22-4); P. Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Womens Power
in Eleventh-Century England (Oxford, 1997), pp. 257-9 and 268-9; Hollis, Wilton as a Centre of
Learning, pp. 330-4. Cf. also E. M. Tyler, The Vita dwardi: the Politics of Poetry at Wilton Abbey,
ANS 31 (2009), 135-56, at 152-56, suggesting the Wilton community as a significant audience for the
Vita dwardi.
130
D. Baker, A Nursery of Saints St Margaret of Scotland Reconsidered, Medieval Women, ed. D.
Baker (Oxford, 1978), pp. 119-41; L. Huneycutt, The Idea of a Perfect Princess: the Life of St
Margaret in the Reign of Matilda II (1100-1118), ANS 12 (1989), 81-97; V. Wall, Queen Margaret of
Scotland (1070-1093): Burying the Past, Enshrining the Future, Queens and Queenship in Medieval
24
also probably educated at Wilton, and was reportedly well versed in scripture and the
opinions of the Fathers.
131
Her personal gospel lectionary remarkably survives as
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Lat. liturg. f. 5, dating from the second or third quarters of the
eleventh century.
132
Although Richard Gameson has questioned how much Margarets
gospel lectionary may reveal about female lay literacy, her case gains strength from the
examples of the two Ediths, and from the nexus of connections centred on Wilton.
133

Margarets daughter, Matilda, was also educated at Wilton, and subsequently acted as
patron to a number of Latin poems, in addition to the Life of her mother.
134
Probably
contributing actively to literary patronage at the court of Henry I, her role represented an
important element of continuity from the late Anglo-Saxon to the Anglo-Norman
world.
135

These patterns throw into focus the unusual case of Emma, wife and queen of
both thelred II and Cnut, who had been reared in Normandy. Very little is known of
her upbringing, but it seems likely that she would have received formal instruction.
136

Her mother, Gunnor, had been of Danish noble descent, and acted as a patron to Dudo
of St-Quentin and in respect of Latin poetry by Warner of Rouen.
137
As Elizabeth Tyler
has argued, the complexity of Emmas linguistic environment, intensified by each of her
marriages, provides a notable context for her subsequent patronage of books and
texts.
138
As will be seen below, even on a conservative reading of the evidence, Emma
and Cnut clearly acted as significant patrons of manuscript production.
139
Many of their
activities bore a relationship to earlier royal practice, and participated in wider European

Europe, ed. A. J. Duggan (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 27-38; A. J. Wilson, St Margaret Queen of
Scotland, rev. ed. (Edinburgh, 2001).
131
Turgot, Vita S. Margaretae Scotorum Reginae, cc. 3, 6, 8 and 10 (Symeonis Dunelmensis Opera et
Collectanea I, ed. I. H. Hinde, Publications of the Surtees Society 51 (Durham, 1868), 238, 240-1, 244-
5 and 247-9); translation available in L. Huneycutt, Matilda of Scotland: a Study in Medieval
Queenship (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 162-78, cf. also 10-17. R. Rushforth, St Margarets Gospel-Book:
the Favourite Book of an Eleventh-Century Queen of Scots (Oxford, 2007), pp. 63-4; Hollis, Wilton as
a Centre of Learning, pp. 333-5.
132
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 650; Golden Age, ed. Backhouse et al., pp. 83 and 85-6 (no. 69); Dumville,
Liturgy, p. 108; R. Gameson, The Gospels of Margaret of Scotland: the Literacy of an Eleventh-
Century Queen, Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence, ed. L. Smith and J. H. M.
Taylor (London, 1997), pp. 149-71; Rushforth, St Margarets Gospel-Book.
133
Gameson, The Gospels of Margaret of Scotland, pp. 161-4; cf. Hollis, Wilton as a Centre of
Learning, pp. 333-4, cf. 321-2 and 337-8; Rushforth, St Margarets Gospel-Book, pp. 57-83.
134
E. M. C. van Houts, Latin Poetry and the Anglo-Norman Court 1066-1135: the Carmen de Hastingae
Proelio, JMH 15 (1989), 39-62, at 50-1; Huneycutt, Matilda of Scotland, pp. 18-21 and 129-34.
135
Huneycutt, Matilda of Scotland, pp. 134-43.
136
Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, pp. 211-14.
137
E. M. C. van Houts, Countess Gunnor of Normandy (c. 950-1031), Collegium medievale 12 (1999),
7-24.
138
E. M. Tyler, Crossing Conquests: Polyglot Royal Women and Literary Culture in Eleventh-Century
England, Conceptualizing Multilingualism in Medieval England, c.800 - c.1250, ed. E. M. Tyler
(Turnhout, 2011), pp. 171-96, at 176-83; cf. also Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, pp. 213-14.
139
See below, pp. 43-5.
25
patterns of cultural emulation. Yet Emmas Continental origins and connections, the
niceties of her queenly career, and her previous experience of West Saxon royal piety
under thelred were all highly relevant to political display. Emmas active use of
scholarly culture is exemplified by the Encomium Emmae reginae, the extraordinary
Latin historical work defending her actions and career, which she commissioned from a
monk of St-Bertin, in St-Omer, Flanders, in 1041-2.
140
The sole surviving medieval
manuscript, London, British Library, Additional 33241, dating from the mid eleventh
century, appears to have been a volume of some importance, adorned with the prefatory
image of Emma enthroned, receiving the Encomium from its author, with her sons
Harthacnut and Edward in attendance.
141
Although the manuscript has some
peculiarities, and has occasionally been assigned to Normandy, a good case has been
made for suspecting production at St-Omer, partly on the basis of the imposing
treatment of the opening leaves, which is compatible with the volume having served as a
presentation or display copy.
142
Although the provenance cannot be diagnostic, St
Augustines, Canterbury, was a house to which Emma herself gave gifts.
143
Whatever
the case, Emmas ownership of a copy of the Encomium appears to be celebrated in the
prefatory image, boldly precocious in showing a queen enthroned.
144
The closest
precedents for this feature, significantly, were depictions of enthroned Ottonian male
rulers, themselves partly inspired by an earlier representation of Charles the Bald; the
imagery and resonances may well have been known to the Encomium artist.
145






140
Encomium Emmae Reginae, ed. A. Campbell, reprinted with a supplementary introduction by S.
Keynes (Cambridge, 1998); see esp. Keynes, Encomium, pp. xxxix-lxxi; Stafford, Queen Emma and
Queen Edith, pp. 12-40; A. Orchard, The Literary Background to the Encomium Emmae Reginae,
JML 11 (2001), 156-83; E. M. Tyler, Fictions of Family: the Encomium Emmae Reginae and Virgils
Aeneid, Viator 36 (2005), 149-79.
141
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 287; Golden Age, ed. Backhouse et al., p. 145 (no. 148); Keynes, Encomium,
xli-xlv.
142
See R. Gameson, LAngleterre et la Flandre aux X
e
et XI
e
sicles, Les changes culturels au moyen
ge, Publications de la Sorbonne, Srie histoire ancienne et mdivale 70 (Paris, 2002), 165-206, at
175; idem, Book Decoration, p. 277.
143
Keynes, Encomium, pp. xlv and lxxvii; Heslop, Production of de luxe Manuscripts, p. 184.
144
For the novelty of the image, see C. Neuman de Vegvar, A Paean for a Queen: the Frontispiece to the
Encomium Emmae Regine, Anglo-Saxon History: Basic Readings, ed. D. A. E. Pelteret (New York,
NY, 2000), pp. 317-21; P. Stafford, Emma: the Powers of the Queen in the Eleventh Century, Queens
and Queenship, ed. Duggan, pp. 3-26, at 4-5; C. E. Karkov, Emma: Image and Ideology, Early
Medieval Studies in memory of Patrick Wormald, ed. S. Baxter, C. E. Karkov, J. L. Nelson and D.
Pelteret (Farnham, 2009), pp. 509-20, at 517; cf. also idem, Ruler Portraits, pp. 146-56.
145
For Ottonian depictions of enthroned rulers, and the model provided by Munich, Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14000 (Codex Aureus of St Emmeram; court school of Charles the Bald, 870),
present at Regensburg in this period, see below, p. 61, n. 338.
26
Books owned by members of the secular aristocracy

Royal practices were part of a wider lay tradition. This is shown most clearly by the
example of thelweard, ealdorman of the western provinces (d. c. 998), who, informed
by the precedents of Alfred and Edgar, acted as patron to lfric of Eynsham,
commissioning a number of vernacular prose texts, including the Lives of Saints and a
version of Genesis.
146
The Latin Chronicon which survives in thelweards name
amounted to an ambitious new history of the English and their ruling dynasty.
147

Although doubts have occasionally been raised whether the Chronicon had in reality
been thelweards work, most recently by Godden, as Mechthild Gretsch has shown,
there are indications that thelweard had competence in reading Latin to a reasonable
standard, while certain features of the Chronicon, most notably its exuberant stylistic
pretensions and often ungrammatical syntax, support the picture of an educated
layman.
148
That thelweard was far from unique in his interests is supported by several
instances of other laymen owning books in the later Anglo-Saxon period. Thus
ealdorman Ordulf, the uncle of King thelred II, and founder of Tavistock abbey, was
bequeathed copies of Hrabanus [Maurus] and a Martyrology, by lfwold, bishop of
Crediton, in the early eleventh century.
149
A later ealdorman thelweard, who married
a daughter of the historian thelweards son, thelmr, gave a manuscript, now
London, Lambeth Palace 149, containing Bedes In Apocalpysin and Augustines De
adulterinis coniugiis, to a monastery dedicated to St Mary, probably Buckfast, Devon,
of which he was regarded as the founder.
150
Two extensively illustrated manuscripts,
conveying vernacular versions of parts of the Old Testament, may well have had lay

146
See now M. Gretsch, Historiography and Literary Patronage in Late Anglo-Saxon England: the
Evidence of thelweards Chronicon, ASE 41 (2013), pp. 205-48.
147
E. van Houts, Women and the Writing of History in the Early Middle Ages: the Case of Abbess
Matilda of Essen and thelweard, EME 1 (1992), 53-68; S. Ashley, The Lay Intellectual in Anglo-
Saxon England: Ealdorman thelweard and the Politics of History, Lay Intellectuals in the
Carolingian World, ed. Wormald and Nelson, pp. 218-45.
148
Gretsch, Historiography and Literary Patronage, pp. 111-12 and 238-42; cf. Godden, Did King
Alfred Write Anything?, p. 6.
149
S 1492 (Councils & Synods, pp. 382-6 (no. 51); Lapidge, Surviving Booklists, pp. 55-6; Gretsch,
Historiography and Literary Patronage, p. 248, n. 188. For Ordulfs career, see Keynes, Diplomas, p.
188, 192 and 209.
150
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 506; Ker, Catalogue, p. 340 (no. 275); M. T. Hussey, Anglo-Saxon
Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, 22: Exeter Manuscripts (forthcoming), no. 311. S. Keynes,
Cnuts Earls, The Reign of Cnut: King of England, Denmark and Norway, ed. A. R. Rumble (London,
1994), pp. 43-88, at 68-9; R. Gameson, The Origin of the Exeter Book of Old English Poetry, ASE 25
(1996), 135-85, at 162-79; Gretsch, Historiography and Literary Patronage, p. 248, n. 188. For
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 23, vol. i (southern England, c. 1000; provenance Malmesbury), a
lavishly illustrated copy of Prudentiuss Psychomachia, given to Malmesbury by a certain thelweard,
possibly the same ealdorman, see Keynes, Cnuts Earls, p. 69, n. 150; D. N. Dumville, English
Caroline Script and Monastic History: Studies in Benedictinism, A.D. 950-1030 (Woodbridge, 1993),
pp. 105-6. See also Lapidge, Artistic and Literary Patronage, pp. 46-7, likening the volume to an
Anglo-Saxon coffee-table book.
27
patrons. Oxford, Bodliean Library, Junius 11, the main section of which, containing the
Old English poems Genesis A and B, Exodus and Daniel, is conventionally dated to the
turn of the eleventh century, appears to have been written for a certain lfwine,
depicted in a portrait roundel (p. 2).
151
Wearing a cloak and lacking a tonsure, the figure
has been persuasively identified by Barbara Raw as a layman.
152
Since lfwine was a
relatively common name, it would be hazardous to venture a closer identification, but
prosopographical analysis suggests at least two prominent lfwines among the
contemporaneous secular elite: firstly, lfwine, father of the Mercian ealdorman,
Leofwine, plausibly identified as the lfwine killed at the battle of Maldon in 991;
153

and secondly, the kings thegn lfwine, beneficiary of a charter of King thelred, dated
984, conveying land in Oxfordshire, who served as King thelreds scriptor.
154
As a
lay royal scribe, the latter would be a striking candidate for the books original
patron.
155
London, British Library, Cotton Claudius B. iv, a lavishly illustrated copy of
the Old English Hexateuch from the second quarter of the eleventh century, combining
translations by lfric with those of another translator, has been plausibly interpreted as
evidence for a broader enterprise at St Augustines, Canterbury, to produce multiple
copies of such codices for lay use.
156
As Raw has observed, the unfinished illustrative
schemes in Junius 11 and Claudius B. iv may have contributed to the unusual

151
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 640; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 406-8 (no. 334); E. Temple, Anglo-Saxon
Manuscripts 900-1066 (London, 1976), pp. 146-8 (no. 58); Golden Age, ed. Backhouse et al., p. 152
(no. 154); I. Gollancz, The Cdmon Manuscript of Anglo-Saxon Biblical Poetry (London, 1927); P.
G. Remley, Junius Manuscript, The Blackwell Encyclopaedia, ed. Lapidge et al.. For arguments for a
slightly earlier date of production, c. 950-c. 980, on art-historical grounds, see L. Lockett, An
Integrated Re-examination of the Dating of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 11, ASE 31 (2002), 141-
73.
152
B. Raw, The Probable Derivation of most of the Illustrations in Junius II from an Illustrated Old
Saxon Genesis, ASE 5 (1976), 133-48, at 135.
153
S. Baxter, The Earls of Mercia: Lordship and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 2007),
pp. 17-19 and 74; PASE (2005), s.n. lfwine 29.
154
S 853 (Burt 24); Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 135-6, 147, 149 and 160; S. Baxter and J. Blair, Land
Tenure and Royal Patronage in the Early English Kingdom: a Model and Case Study, ANS 28 (2006),
19-46, at 30-3, 37, 41, 43 and 45; PASE (2005), s.n. lfwine 32, cf. lfwine 41, represented as a
kings thegn in charter attestations, 983 - 1012 x 1013, who may have been the same person; cf. also S.
Keynes, An Atlas of Attestations in Anglo-Saxon Charters, c. 670-1066 (Cambridge, 2002, Tables
LXIII and LXIV).
155
The second artist of Junius 11 has been identified as also having illustrated Corpus 23, vol. i (see
above, p. 26, n. 150), and might thus be envisaged as an artist accustomed to working under lay
patronage. For Christ Church, Canterbury as the likely medieval provenance for Junius 11, see R.
Thomson, Identifiable Books from the Pre-Conquest Library of Malmesbury Abbey, ASE 10 (1982),
1-19, at 16-18.
156
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 315; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 178-9 (no. 142); Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts,
pp. 102-4 (no. 86); Golden Age, ed. Backhouse et al., p. 153 (no. 157); A. N. Doane, Anglo-Saxon
Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, 7: Anglo-Saxon Bibles and The Book of Cerne (Tempe, AZ,
2002), no. 182; C. R. Dodwell and P. Clemoes, The Old English Illustrated Hexateuch (British Museum
Cotton Claudius B. i), EEMF 18 (1974), p. 58; Raw, The Probable Derivation of most of the
Illustrations in Junius II, p. 135.
28
preservation of both books, in ecclesiastical hands.
157
Another book-owning layman
was possibly Odda of Deerhurst (d. 1056), earl in the west midlands during the
Confessors reign: a short Worcester book-list includes Oddan boc among a list of
books in English, perhaps identifying a book given or bequeathed by him.
158
The Old
English poem known as Thureth celebrates the generosity of a certain Thored, in all
likelihood a nobleman, in commissioning an ornate binding for London, British Library,
Cotton Claudius A. iii, fols. 31-86 and 87-105, a late tenth or early eleventh-century
pontifical of uncertain origin once owned by Wulfstan, archbishop of York (d. 1023).
159

Although the poem has often been connected with Thored, ealdorman of Northumbria
during thelreds reign (fl. 979-92), Wormald advanced an alternative case for a
Fenland Thored, son of Earl Oslac of Northumbria (?963x6-75): whatever the case, the
lay patronage of a bishops book would be striking, and may indicate some special
association between Thored and the manuscript.
160

The general context for such practices lay in the social and political
consequences of the monastic reform movement: not just the foundation or refoundation
of reformed houses by individual aristocratic families, but aspects of the extension of
previously monastic ideals to members of the secular elite.
161
It would be insufficient to

157
Raw, The Probable Derivation of most of the Illustrations in Junius II, p. 135.
158
Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. A. J. Robertson, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1956), p. 250 (Appendix II, no. 5),
with p. 499; Lapidge, Surviving Booklists, pp. 130-2, suggesting the alternative identification of a mid
eleventh-century monk of Worcester; cf. now P. Stokes, The Vision of Leofric: Manuscript, Text and
Context, RES 63 (2012), 529-50, at 533-5, suggesting a date of s. xi
ex
for the manuscript of the book-
list. For Oddas career, see A. Williams, The World Before Domesday: the English Aristocracy, 900-
1066 (London, 2008), pp. 11-17 and 20-2. Cf. also D. Ganz, Review Article: When is a Library not a
Library?, EME 17 (2009), 444-53, at 447, for the suggestion that the list of books e estanes
wran, written s. x
2/2
, in British Library, Cotton Domitian i, 55v might have been those of a scholar
working under the patronage of the important ealdorman, thelstan Half King (who died after 957,
having entered monastic retirement at Glastonbury): cf. Lapidge, Surviving Booklists, pp. 113-16. The
idea has attractions, but explanation would be needed for the provenance of the surviving books to
which the booklist appears to refer, from St Augustines, Canterbury (including Domitian i, probably
also produced at St Augustines): Ker, Catalogue, nos. 120 and 326.
159
31v: The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, ed. E. V. K. Dobbie, ASPR 6 (New York, NY, 1942), 97; C.
Ronalds and M. C. Ross, Thureth: a Neglected Old English Poem and its History in Anglo-Saxon
Scholarship, N&Q 246 (2001), 359-70. Claudius Pontifical I: Gneuss, Handlist, no. 314; Ker,
Catalogue, pp. 177-8 (no. 141). For the relationship to fols. 32-8, bearing the Latin and Old English
versions of the law-code known as VI thelred, in hand of s. xi
1/4
, see Wormald, The Making of
English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century. I: Legislation and its Limits (Oxford, 1999), 191-2. It
is hard to be certain that the writing of Thureth postdated the addition of the law-code texts: cf. Ronalds
and Ross, Thureth, p. 363, n. 23.
160
Wormald, Making of English Law I, 192-4, with references; cf. Dumville, Liturgy, pp. 78-9. For
discussion of the pontifical, see now C. A. Jones, Wulfstans Liturgical Interests, Wulfstan,
Archbishop of York: the Proceedings of the Second Alcuin Conference, ed. M. Townend (Turnhout,
2004), pp. 325-52, at 334-46.
161
M. McC. Gatch, Piety and Liturgy in the Old English Vision of Leofric, Words, Texts and
Manuscripts, ed. Korhammer et al., pp. 159-79, at 161-2; Smith, Fleming and Halpin, Court and
Piety, pp. 579-88; C. Cubitt, lfrics Lay Patrons, A Companion to lfric, ed. H. Magennis and M.
Swan (Leiden, 2009), pp. 165-92, esp. 181-4 and 187-90; A. Williams, Thegnly Piety and
Ecclesiastical Patronage in the Late Old English Kingdom, ANS 24 (2002), 1-24, at 21-2; idem, The
29
imagine lay piety as acting at a distance from the physical technology of learning.
162
In
some cases the engagement with monastic life was relatively extreme: both thelmr
and Odda entered monastic retirement.
163
Yet the Old English Vision of Earl Leofric
provides a glimpse of practices associated with an earl in power, Leofric, earl of Mercia
(d. 1057).
164
Probably written shortly after the earls death by an author who had known
him, the text describes Leofric as having visited churches at night in order to pray, and
hearing at least two Masses daily.
165
One might compare Leofrics contemporary, Earl
Harold Godwineson, brother of Queen Edith, who is known to have possessed an
extensive collection of relics, and was a generous donor to Waltham abbey.
166
Harolds
case yields a further, unexpected glimpse of book ownership: an early twelfth-century
source, a treatise on hawking by Adelard of Bath, refers enigmatically to the Haraoldi
regis libri in terms which suggest writings in English relating to falconry.
167
The
nearest parallel is probably the Old English corpus of medical literature, but the
reference may indicate an entire class of books largely hidden from view.
Another category badly under-represented among surviving books is vernacular
poetry. The survival of two Old English battle poems, the Battle of Brunanburh and the
Battle of Maldon, together with other poems preserved within the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle, suggests a broader genre of court poetry relating to contemporary deeds.
168


Piety of Earl Godwine, ANS 34 (2012), 237-56, at 244-6 and 252-3; cf. also Pratt, Illnesses, pp. 40-
51. For parallel Carolingian developments, see S. Airlie, The Anxiety of Sanctity: St Gerald of Aurillac
and his Maker, JEH 43 (1992), 372-95; J. M. H. Smith, Gender and Ideology in the Early Middle
Ages, Gender and Christian Religion, ed. R. N. Swanson, Stud. in Church Hist. 34 (Woodbridge,
1998), 51-73, at 61-73; J. L. Nelson, Monks, Secular Men and Masculinity, c. 900, Masculinity in
Medieval Europe, ed. D. M. Hadley (Harlow, 1999), pp. 121-42; R. Stone, Morality and Masculinity in
the Carolingian Empire (Cambridge, 2012).
162
Cf. Wormald, Uses of Literacy, pp. 109-111.
163
S. Keynes, An Abbot, an Archbishop, and the Viking Raids of 1006-7 and 1009-12, ASE 36 (2007),
151-220, at 160 and 169-70, with references; idem, King thelreds Charter for Eynsham Abbey
(1005), Early Medieval Studies, ed. Baxter et al., pp. 451-73, at 451, 454-6 and 470; Williams, The
World Before Domesday, p. 16.
164
Gatch, Piety and Liturgy; S. Baxter, The Earls of Mercia: Lordship and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon
England (Oxford, 2007), pp. 1-4, 14, 154, 169 and 196; Stokes, The Vision of Leofric.
165
Stokes, The Vision of Leofric, pp. 548-9.
166
Smith, Fleming and Halpin, Court and Piety, pp. 582-8; see also N. Rogers, The Waltham Abbey
Relic-List, England in the Eleventh Century: Proceedings of the 1990 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. C.
Hicks (Stamford, 1992), pp. 157-81; Blair, Church, pp. 358 and 362-3.
167
Smith, Fleming and Halpin, Court and Piety, p. 583; C. H. Haskins, King Harolds Books, EHR 37
(1922), 398-400. Cf. R. M. Wilson, The Lost Literature of Medieval England, 2nd ed. (London, 1970),
p. 69, for a treatise on hunting attributed to King Alfred in the library catalogue (s. xiv) of Christ
Church, Canterbury; the claim is probably a misidentification arising from confusion with Albert the
Great.
168
J. Thormann, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Poems and the Making of the English Nation, Anglo-
Saxonism and the Construction of Social Identity, ed. A. J. Frantzen and J. D. Niles (Gainesville, FL,
1997), pp. 60-85; The Battle of Maldon, AD 991, ed. D. Scragg (Manchester, 1991); M. Townend, Pre-
Cnut Praise-Poetry in Viking Age England, RES 51 (2000), 349-70; T. A. Bredehoft, Textual
Histories: Readings in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Toronto, 2001); Foot, thelstan, pp. 112-15, with
30
One faces the poor preservation of vernacular poetry in general, largely restricted to four
codices; yet it should be noted that Lambeth 149 was written by the same scribe as the
Exeter Book, and both volumes were among those given to Exeter cathedral by Bishop
Leofric (d. 1072).
169
It is quite possible that the Exeter Book had also been owned by
thelmr, just as Junius 11 may have been produced for the layman lfwine. In the
age of Danish conquest, furthermore, a group of Old Norse poems have been tentatively
identified as court poetry from the circle of King Cnut.
170
Nor should one unhesitatingly
dismiss an early modern tradition which identified London, British Library, Cotton
Caligula A. vii, the later tenth-century English copy of the Old Saxon Heliand, as a
book once owned by King Cnut.
171
The attribution rests solely on a Cottonian fly-leaf
inscription: the claim may be nothing more than a wishful extrapolation from a note,
added by the same hand on the opening page of the Heliand (11r), identifying the text as
Evangelia in lingua Danica, but one cannot rule out the possibility that annotator had
some other basis for associating the volume with Cnut.
172
An Old Norse saga suggests
that Edward the Confessor had been accustomed to recite a saga recounting the deeds of
the Norwegian king, Olaf Tryggvason, to the men of his court on the first day of Easter,
using a book that Olaf himself had sent to King thelred from Jerusalem.
173
Though
the evidence is late, and some details probably fanciful, the story must be set alongside

references; S. Thompson Smith, The Edgar Poems and the Poetics of Failure in the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle, ASE 39 (2011), 105-37.
169
Exeter, Cathedral Library, 3501 (Exeter Book; southern England, c. 975; provenance Exeter by s.
xi
3/4
); Gneuss, Handlist, no. 257; Ker, Catalogue, p. 153 (no. 116); Golden Age, ed. Backhouse et al.,
p. 149 (no. 153); Hussey, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, 22, no. 130. Keynes,
Cnuts Earls, p. 69, n. 150; Gameson, The Origin of the Exeter Book, pp. 162-79.
170
R. Frank, King Cnut in the Verse of his Skalds, The Reign of Cnut, ed. Rumble, pp. 106-24;
Townend, Contextualizing the Kntsdrpur; idem, Kntr and the Cult of St lfr: Poetry and
Patronage in Eleventh-Century Norway and England, Viking & Med. Scandinavia 1 (2005), 251-79;
idem, Cnuts Poets: an Old Norse Litarary Community in Eleventh-Century England, Conceptualizing
Multilingualism, ed. Tyler, pp. 197-216.
171
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 308; Ker, Catalogue, p. 172 (no. 137); Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp.
59-60 (no. 33); Doane, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, 1, no. 177. The circulation
within England, by the tenth century at the latest, of the Heliand and also an Old Saxon versification of
Genesis (a portion of which lies behind Genesis B, Old English verse translating the original Old Saxon
text) is an important and relatively neglected phenomenon: see Gretsch, Intellectual Foundations, pp.
388-9, 397-8 and 415; R. McKitterick, Exchanges between the British Isles and the Continent, c. 450 -
c.900, The Cambridge History of the Book I, ed. Gameson, 313-37, at 330-1. As has sometimes been
noted, the royal household would provide one potentially relevant set of East Frankish connections in
the ninth and tenth centuries (Raw, The Probable Derivation of most of the Illustrations in Junius II,
esp. 146-8; A. N. Doane, The Saxon Genesis: an Edition of the West Saxon Genesis B and the Old
Saxon Vatican Genesis (Madison, WI, 1991), pp. 51-3), but ecclesiastical and scholarly contact was
also more general.
172
For these additions, see Doane, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, 1, 2-3; cf. R.
Priebsch, The Heliand Manuscript Cotton Caligula A. VII in the British Museum: a Study (Oxford,
1925), pp. 48-9.
173
Wilson, Lost Literature, p. 50; F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT, 1997),
pp. 6-7, cf. 13-14.
31
the considerable evidence for the Confessors personal piety. Part of the value of lay
literate skills may have lain their multi-faceted application.
Two evidential issues relating to later Anglo-Saxon England provide an
important context in which the picture presented above should be judged. The first is the
continuing shortage of intimate narrative sources; for example, the surviving royal
biographies, comprising only the Lives of Alfred and Edward the Confessor, and the
Encomium of Queen Emma, compares unfavourably with the Carolingian corpus.
174

The evidence discussed above thus has additional significance, and that relating to
female literacy particular value. The phenomenon of the educated royal or noble woman
should not be regarded as a separate gendered category: the flexibility of female secular
careers has already been noted.
175
More is known about Edith of Wilton, and Queens
Edith and Margaret because certain details of their lives are credibly recorded in
hagiographical sources.
176
These detailed examples should be set alongside the blunter
fact, that royal males are regularly reported as having been educated.
177

A second issue concerns the corpus of wills, where there are only limited
references to books in secular hands, which led Patrick Wormald to suggest a contrast
with the ninth-century Carolingian evidence and practices.
178
Yet Anglo-Saxon wills
typically had landholding as their major focus, and were selective in their disposal of
personal possessions.
179
Gender appears to have been a major factor: as Linda Tollerton
has explored for wills of the tenth and eleventh centuries, outside the heriot payment
(due to the lord on the death of his man), female wills were significantly more likely to
include moveable wealth, referring to a wider range of items.
180
One explanation may

174
Rosenthal, A Historiographical Survey, pp. 74-9; cf. M. Innes and R. McKitterick, The Writing of
History, Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, ed. R. McKitterick (Cambridge, 1994), pp.
193-220.
175
Cf. Wormald, Uses of Literacy, p. 110; see above, p. 23.
176
Hollis, Wilton as a Centre of Learning, pp. 318--38.
177
The Anglo-Saxon examples appear to differ from that of Queen Margarets husband, the Scottish
king, Malcom III, whose interest in her books is reported in Turgots Life, despite the fact that he
himself had been ignorant of letters (ignarus [...] literarum): Turgot, Vita S. Margaretae Scotorum
Reginae, c. 6 (ed. Hinde, p. 241); cf. Gameson, The Gospels of Margaret of Scotland, pp. 158-9 and
163. One common usage of the term illiteratus denoted an individual unable to read Latin specifically:
H. Grundmann, Litteratus - illiteratus: der Wandel einer Bildungsnorm vom Altertum zum Mittelalter,
Archiv fr Kulturgeschichte 40 (1958), 1-66; R. McKitterick, Introduction, The Uses of Literacy, ed.
McKitterick, pp. 1-10, at 3. It is just possible that Turgots formulation should be understood in the
same terms, as opposed to an inability to read letters of any form.
178
Wormald, Uses of Literacy, pp. 99 and 110; cf. McKitterick, Carolingians and the Written Word,
pp. 245-50.
179
M. M. Sheehan, The Will in Medieval England (Toronto, 1963), pp. 99-106, cf. 83-99; Lowe, The
Nature and Effect of the Anglo-Saxon Vernacular Will, pp. 37-41; J. Crick, Women, Wills and
Movable Wealth in Pre-Conquest England, Gender and Material Culture in Historical Perspective, ed.
M. Donald and L. Hurcombe (London, 2000), pp. 17-37; L. Tollerton, Wills and Will-Making in Anglo-
Saxon England (Woodbridge, 2011), esp. pp. 180-227.
180
Tollerton, Wills, p. 221.
32
be the association between female will-making and widowhood, where moveable wealth
may have had a more important role in the assertion of status.
181
It is also revealing to
consider the treatment of land in wills: as Wormald showed, wills did not normally
include the testators entire landholding, but only land which was capable of being
alienated, that is, the testators bookland.
182
Other land was subject to customary laws
of inheritance. Such principles may help to make sense of the handling of personal
possessions. On the one hand, the prominence of references to books in the wills of
bishops, and also to some extent in the wills of secular women, may have had specific
causes: both categories of individual are likely to have had more complex testatory
arrangements, with more dispositions falling outside the normal customary
principles.
183
By the same token, there is a danger of investing significance in the
silence of secular male wills. For example, King Alfreds will makes no mention of
books, but barely refers to personal possessions at all: his goods were distributed by
value only.
184
Books may have been implicitly included in this distribution;
alternatively, they could have been divided among relatives according to customary
principles, or subject to separate, oral gift.
185
Yet one should ask whether royal books
would necessarily have been regarded as part of the kings personal possessions. Within
royal landholding an important distinction existed between lands specifically attached to
the royal office and lands which were the kings personal property.
186
A further
possibility is that royal books had a similar official status, and could therefore pass to
subsequent kings.
187



181
Ibid., pp. 221-2 and 295-8, cf. 145-65 and 167-9
182
P. Wormald, On a wpnedhealfe: Kingship and Royal Property from thelwulf to Edward the
Elder, Edward the Elder 899-924, ed. N. J. Higham and D. H. Hill (London, 2001), pp. 264-79, a view
supported by his reading of S 1507 (will of Ealdorman lfred); for a slightly different interpretation,
see J. Hudson, The Oxford History of the Laws of England II: 871-1216 (Oxford, 2012), 126-8. Cf. also
J. Mumby, Property Rights in Anglo-Saxon Wills: a Synoptic View, Gender and Historiography:
Studies in the Earlier Middle Ages in honour of Pauline Stafford, ed. J. L. Nelson, S. Reynolds and S.
M. Johns (London, 2012), pp. 159-74.
183
Cf. Wormald, Uses of Literacy, p. 110. For books bequeathed by women, see Crick, Women, Wills
and Moveable Wealth, pp. 25-6; Tollerton, Wills, pp. 212, 275-6 and 295-8. The Ulf who bequeathed a
mass-book to St Albans in the mid eleventh century (S 1532) seems most likely to have been a widowed
nobleman who had entered into confraternity with a religious community: ibid., p. 214, with references.
184
S 1507 (WinchNM 1), with Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 174-8, at 177.
185
For the former mechanism, see Hudson, Oxford History, p. 152. For the latter, cf. Sheehan, The Will,
pp. 100-1; see also p. 103 for the observation that to succeed to a property was, normally, to succeed to
its equipment.
186
Wormald, On a wpnedhealfe, p. 268.
187
Such a scenario might have a Continental parallel in the fate of the books of Otto III, which came into
the possession of Henry II after Ottos death in 1002. Otto did not make a will; the precise mechanism
of transmission is unknown: see Mtherich, The Library of Otto III, pp. 12-13. For a view of the
patronage of Henry II highlighting the shrewd harnessing and refocusing of Otto IIIs memory, see
Garrison, Ottonian Imperial Art, pp. 1-10 and 87-171.
33

BOOKS AS ROYAL GIFTS IN LATER ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND

If one looks closely enough, there are grounds for suspecting the existence of a wide
range of types of books in the circle of later Anglo-Saxon kings and their children
prayerbooks, books of vernacular poetry, gospel-books, copies of the works of King
Alfred and other Alfredian and later vernacular prose textstogether with documentary
material of a variety of kinds, including charters, copies of law-codes, wills and
letters.
188
This provides a broader context within which to consider one final class of
evidence: surviving books which were royal gifts in later Anglo-Saxon England. The
phenomenon was widespread, and appears to have received impetus from King Alfreds
dissemination of his translation of the Regula pastoralis. One may now consider two
further known phases of donation, under thelstan and Cnut; in each case, one is
dealing with an impressive series of surviving manuscripts which are known or
suspected to have been royal gifts. The evidence is not only revealing but also
tantalizing in its broader implications.

Books given by King thelstan (924-39)

In the case of thelstan, there is a corpus of six manuscripts which can be clearly
identified as gifts by thelstan to religious houses; five out of the six bear inscriptions
recording the kings gift and the beneficiary. Since these manuscripts have been the
subject of a fine study by Keynes, the corpus may be conveniently summarized with
reference to each manuscripts origins and ecclesiastical recipient. Two manuscripts
were gifts to Christ Church, Canterbury: London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A. ii,
a de luxe Continental gospel-book of the late ninth or early tenth century, which may
have reached thelstan in association with the marriage of thelstans half-sister,
Eadgyth, to the Emperor Otto I (929 x 930);
189
and London, Lambeth Palace 1370 (olim
771), an Irish pocket gospelbook of the second half of the ninth century, seemingly
previously owned by the Irish ecclesiastic Mael Brigte mac Tornin (d. 927).
190
St

188
For the latter, see A. R. Rumble, Anglo-Saxon Royal Archives: their Nature, Extent, Survival and
Loss, Kingship, Legislation and Power, ed. Owen-Crocker and Schneider (forthcoming).
189
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 362; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 239-40 (no. 185); Schramm and Mtherich,
Denkmale, pp. 140 and 481 (no. 64); Keynes, King Athelstans Books, pp. 147-53; Golden Age, ed.
Backhouse et al., p. 20 (no. 3); McKendrick, Lowden and Doyle, Royal Manuscripts, pp. 102-3 (no. 4);
Foot, thelstan, pp. 94 and 118; Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 87-94.
190
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 521; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 346-7 (no. 284); Alexander, Insular Manuscripts, pp.
86-7 (no. 70); Keynes, King Athelstans Books, pp. 153-9; Foot, thelstan, pp. 106-7 and 118;
Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 85-7; D. Woodman, thelstan A and
the Rhetoric of Rule, ASE 42 (forthcoming). For Mael Brigte mac Tornin, see D. N. Dumville, Mael
Brigte mac Tornin, Pluralist Coarb (927), JCS 4 (2004), 97-116.
34
Augustines, Canterbury, received London, British Library, Royal 1. A. xviii, a gospel-
book, probably of Breton origin, of the late ninth or early tenth century.
191
St Peters,
Bath, was given London, British Library, Cotton Claudius B. v, a copy of the Acts of the
Council of Constantinople (680), written on the Continent in the late ninth century.
192

Two manuscripts were gifts to St Cuthberts, Chester-le-Street: London, British Library,
Cotton Otho B. ix, a de luxe gospel-book, probably of Breton origin, of the late ninth or
early tenth century, a volume now known only from fragments, but which once included
a portrait-page bearing a depiction of thelstan presenting a book to St Cuthbert,
probably influenced by Carolingian models;
193
and Cambridge, Corpus Christi College
183, a manuscript wholly produced in England during thelstans reign, probably in
Wessex, containing Bedes two Lives of St Cuthbert, plus episcopal lists of the English
church, and bearing a imposing portrait-page, clearly related to the depiction of the king
once present in Otho B. ix.
194

To this corpus Keynes tentatively added two further manuscripts possibly owned
by thelstan. London, British Library, Royal 1 B. vii, a Northumbrian gospel-book of
the first half of the eighth century, includes the record of a manumission by King
thelstan.
195
The inclusion of two royal priests among witnesses suggests that the hired
mentioned in the manumission referred to the royal household, and that the manuscript

191
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 444; Keynes, King Athelstans Books, pp. 165-70; Foot, thelstan, p. 118.
192
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 316; Keynes, King Athelstans Books, pp. 159-65; Foot, thelstan, p. 119.
193
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 354; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 223-4 (no. 176); Keynes, King Athelstans Books,
pp. 170-9; Foot, thelstan, pp. 107 and 121-2.
194
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 56; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 64-5 (no. 43); Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp.
37-8 (no. 6); Keynes, King Athelstans Books, pp. 180-5; Foot, thelstan, pp. 120-1; Woodman,
thelstan A and the Rhetoric of Rule. Cf. D. Rollason, St Cuthbert and Wessex; the Evidence of
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 183, St Cuthbert, his Cult and his Community to AD 1200, ed.
G. Bonner, D. Rollason and C. Stancliffe (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 413-24, at 420-4, for the suggestion
that Corpus 183 might have been initially produced for use in Wessex, and only reached Chester-le-
Street or Durham at a later stage in its history. Although the ruler-portraits in Corpus 183 and Otho B.
ix have received considerable discussion, the relative rarity of Anglo-Saxon royal portrait miniatures,
and the fact that thelstan was explicitly identified in Otho B. ix as giving the gospel-book to the see of
St Cuthbert, underpins the case for regarding the depictions as a pair. Rollason suggested that in the
Corpus 183 portrait thelstan might be depicted reading the book in his hands, rather than in the act of
gift; it should therefore be noted that the kings eyes are directed laterally to the haloed figure, rather
than downwards towards the page. For the inventory in Northumbrian dialect on 96v (an added flyleaf),
see Ker, Catalogue, p. 65, whose view, that this placed the manuscript in Northumbria s. x, appears to
reflect a palaeographical, as well as linguistic, judgement (cf. Rollason, St Cuthbert and Wessex, p.
422, n. 44). For the two depictions of thelstan, see also Karkov, Ruler Portraits, pp. 55-68. M. Wood,
The Making of King thelstans Empire: an English Charlemagne?, Ideal and Reality in Frankish
and Anglo-Saxon Society, ed. P. Wormald with D. Bullough and R. Collins (Oxford, 1983), pp. 250-72,
at 268-8.
195
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 445; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 316-17 (no. 246); Alexander, Insular Manuscripts, p.
48 (no. 20); Keynes, King Athelstans Books, pp. 185-9; R. Gameson, The Royal 1. B. vii Gospels
and English Book Production in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries, The Early Medieval Bible: its
Production, Decoration, and Use, ed. R. Gameson (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 24-52; Doane, Anglo-Saxon
Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, 7, no. 281; McKendrick, Lowden and Doyle, Royal Manuscripts,
pp. 96-7 (no. 1); Foot, thelstan, pp. 65 and 189-90.
35
had been a royal possession when the manumission was recorded. Coburg,
Landesbibliothek I, a gospel-book written at Metz in the mid ninth century, bears an
inscription associating King thelstan with a Queen Eadgifu.
196
The reference is
arguably most likely to concern thelstans step-mother, but could conceivably be to
thelstans half-sister of the same name, who had married the West Frankish ruler
Charles the Simple, and spent a significant period in exile in Wessex between 923 or
929 and 936. The manuscript has a Gandersheim provenance, and might be suspected to
have reached Germany in the course of thelstans extensive contacts with his brother-
in-law, Otto I.
197

Keynes detailed scrutiny of this corpus permits some broader observations on
what appears to have been a major phase of royal book donation. The dominance of
imported books over those of native origin, generally involving books with a degree of
age rather than of recent production, is striking, and suggests not only the cosmopolitan
connections of the West Saxon dynasty but thelstans ideological pretensions in re-
using volumes obtained from the Frankish world, Ireland and Northumbria.
198
The
regular presence of inscriptions indicates the importance attached to the recording of
thelstans gifts. Keynes has additionally advanced grounds for identifying a number of
the inscriptions as the work of scribes in royal service, strengthening the impression of
acts of donation genuinely emanating from the political centre, and by implication
involving the king directly.
199
This view is strengthened by the seemingly public
nature of the inscriptions, which commonly involve the conceit of addressing quisquis
hoc legerit (whoever reads this). As I have argued elsewhere, in this and in certain
other themes the thelstan inscriptions, which are are mostly in Latin, appear to build
on the earlier Alfredian tradition of prefaces to vernacular works, suggesting that

196
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 809; Schramm and Mtherich, Denkmale, pp. 139-40 and 481 (no. 63); Keynes,
King Athelstans Books, pp. 189-93; Foot, thelstan, pp. 57-8.
197
Considerations of space preclude fuller discussion of the so-called thelstan Psalter, London,
British Library, Cotton Galba A. xviii (northern Francia, s. ix
1/2
, with subsequent augmentations; in
England by s. x
in
at the latest), a complex manuscript which has often been regarded as a likely royal
possession: Gneuss, Handlist, no. 334; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp. 36-7 (no. 5); Keynes,
King Athelstans Books, pp. 193-6; idem, Anglo-Saxon Entries in the Liber Vitae of Brescia,
Alfred the Wise: Studies in honour of Janet Bately, ed. J. Roberts and J. L. Nelson with M. Godden
(Cambridge, 1997), pp. 99-119, at 117-19; R. Deshman, The Galba Psalter: Pictures, Texts, and
Context in an Early Medieval Prayerbook, in his Eye and Mind, ed. Cohen, pp. 35-57; McKendrick,
Lowden and Doyle, Royal Manuscripts, pp. 100-1 (no. 3); Foot, thelstan, pp. 105 and 195. As Simon
Keynes has noted, the early additions to the manuscript would be compatible with a link either to the
royal household or to one of the Winchester houses; the idea that the book had been specifically owned
by thelstan rests on a sixteenth-century note of uncertain authority. Of the added material, the most
suggestive is the Greek litany at the end of the volume, transmitted in a form also found in a dossier of
material associated with the scholar Israel the Grammarian; for Israels career, and patronage by King
thelstan, see Lapidge, Israel the Grammarian, pp. 99-103.
198
For the ideological significance of learning in this context see esp. Wood, The Making of King
thelstans Empire; cf. Keynes, King Athelstans Books, pp. 146 and 197-8.
199
Keynes, King Athelstans Books, pp. 150, 156-9 and 167-70, cf. 176.
36
thelstans donations were seen to bear a relationship to Alfreds earlier generosity in
the giving of books, particularly the distribution of the translation of the Regula
pastoralis.
200
Certainly, in the case of Christ Church, Canterbury, and other southern
sees which had received a copy of Alfreds translation, such a tradition of learned
markers or signs, identifying books as specifically royal in origin, might well have
been recognized. As will be seen, there are several examples of books of royal origin
being used in ways which suggest that they had special significance for their subsequent
owners.
201
By analogy with Alfreds generosity, and given the many vagaries of
manuscript surival, the thelstan corpus should probably be seen as preserving merely
the rump of a larger number of donated manuscripts.
202

A further consideration is the likely selectivity of the corpus as books which the
king had chosen donate, and which may well have been selected for complex reasons
relating to their contents, origins and character. It would therefore be dangerous to
regard the corpus as a representative sample of books in royal ownership;
203
it is also
uncertain in most cases whether the book had been royal property for a significant
period before being given by thelstan. The majority of books are nevertheless of
probable ninth- rather than tenth-century origin, raising the possibility at least of longer-
term possession stretching beyond thelstans reign to Edward the Elder or Alfred:
Lambeth 1370 and Claudius B. v offer the widest parameters for putative royal
acquisition in the late ninth or early tenth century.
204
The relative chronology of the gifts
is difficult to assess, and one cannot rule out the possibility of a focused campaign of
gift-giving at a certain point in the reign. Nonetheless the likely association of Otho B.
ix with thelstans campaign north in 934, and the fact that the completion of Corpus
183 must be placed in the period June 934 - October 939, suggests two acts of donation
in respect of the Chester-le-Street community;
205
whereas the context for Tiberius A. ii,
if it had indeed been given to thelstan in 929 x 930, would imply a period with the
book in royal possession, since the ex-dono inscription appears to date from the later
930s.
206
These examples, indicating the complex circulation and re-use of books for
royal purposes, arguably strengthen the case for suspecting that some of the other books
had experienced a significant period in royal possession.

200
Pratt, The Voice of the King, pp. 164-8.
201
See below, pp. 49-53, cf. above, pp. 13-20.
202
Leland in the sixteenth century reported finding several books at Bath which had been given by
thelstan, but only Claudius B. v now survives: Keynes, King Athelstans Books, p. 164; Foot,
thelstan, p. 119.
203
Keynes, King Athelstans Books, p. 146.
204
Ibid., pp. 154-5 and 160, n. 92.
205
Ibid., p. 178 and 182-4; Foot, thelstan, pp. 121-2.
206
Keynes, King Athelstans Books, pp. 147-50.
37
Especially striking is the dominance of gospel-books within the corpus,
comprising six out of the eight manuscripts. The preference for the use of gospel-books
as gifts appears to have been conscious, and may be attributable to a number of factors.
In the first place gospel-books had resonance as prestige items specially associated with
kings.
207
That the gospels had specific importance is suggested by evidence for the
playing of Gospel Dice in thelstans household, an elaborate board-game seemingly
devised by scholars in the kings service.
208
One might think of Offas bible codex as a
possible precedent for thelstans patronage, but probably more pertinent is the
extensive evidence for the production of sumptuous gospel-books under the patronage
of the Carolingian dynasty, which reached its high point under Charlemagne.
209
The
practice involved the promotion of a standard gospel text and format, a goal which is
ruled out in thelstans case by the electic range of manuscripts.
210
Yet in the
Carolingian case codices were typically gifted to churches; the practice remained
important among thelstans European contemporaries, as suggested by the Coburg
gospel-book, which might well have been given to Gandersheim by Otto I.
211
The West
Frankish king Radulf (923-36) is also known to have given libri preciosissimi to
Sens.
212
Given the re-use of de luxe manuscripts of Carolingian origin, and the inclusion
of a number of Carolingian royal books in the book collection of Otto III, some which
might well have reached the Ottonian court at an earlier stage, the West Saxon gift-
giving emerges as the conscious emulation of Carolingian ecclesiastical leadership.
213


207
R. McKitterick, Royal Patronage of Culture in the Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians:
Motives and Consequences, in her The Frankish Kings and Culture, no. VII, pp. 93-129, at 117;
Wood, The Making of King thelstans Empire, p. 269.
208
Lapidge, Israel the Grammarian, pp. 89 and 103; M. Bayless, Alea, tfl, and Related Games:
Vocabulary and Context, Latin Learning, ed. OBrien OKeeffe and Orchard I, 9-27, esp. 9-10 and 20-
3; Foot, thelstan, pp. 104-5 and 108.
209
McKitterick, Royal Patronage of Culture, pp. 103-110.
210
Ibid., pp. 112-17.
211
Keynes, King Athelstans Books, p. 193.
212
For Radulf, see J. Wollasch. Kaiser und Knige als Brder der Mnche: zum Herrscherbild in
liturgischen Handschriften des 9. bis 11. Jahrhunderts, DAEM 40 (1984), 1-20, at 12. Cf. Mayr-
Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination I, 47-55, suggesting a range of contrasts between Germany and
West Francia in patterns of royal patronage. For the now-lost prayer-book or psalter of Queen Emma,
wife of King Lothar (954-86), a richly illuminated book probably produced in northeastern France 979
x c.990 (destroyed by fire at Rheims in 1774), see W. Cahn, The Psalter of Queen Emma, Cahiers
archologiques 33 (1985), 72-85. For the gift, by Arnulf of Carinthia, of the de luxe gospel book
produced under the patronage of Charles the Bald, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14000
(Codex Aureus of St Emmeram; court school of Charles the Bald, 870) to Regensburg in 893, see
Schramm and Mtherich, Denkmale, pp. 134-5 and 480 (no. 52); Wollasch, Kaiser und Knige, p. 12;
McKitterick, Charles the Bald (823-877) and his Library, p. 38, n. 2; Garrison, Ottonian Imperial Art,
pp. 17-18 and 126-7.
213
See R. McKitterick, Ottonian Intellectual Culture in the Tenth Century ad the Role of Theophanu,
EME 2 (1993), 53-74, at 61, highlighting gifts given by King Odo of West Francia to Arnulf in 895 as a
possible route by which Carolingian royal manuscripts reached the Ottonian court library. As I have
argued elsewhere, whereas Carolingian court culture was also typically characterized by gifts, of a
38
The practice adds a further dimension to the prominence of Charlemagnes memory in
thelstans court culture, demonstrated, for example, by the court poem Carta dirige
gressus.
214

Secondly, the donation of gospel-books might be linked with the increasing
Christological dimensions which have been detected in West Saxon royal ideology in
the tenth century.
215
The strongest evidence relates to Edgars kingship, but the A
version of the Second English Ordo for the anointing of kings, the compilation of which
has been placed in either the late ninth century or first quarter of the tenth century, made
greater reference to Christ, in addition to Old Testament precedent.
216
The gifts of
gospel-books may be the early expression of a trend which would reach its high point
under King Edgar. Indeed, an intriguing case has been made by Michael Wood for
attributing the production of the Old English translation of the gospels to thelstans
patronage; though the argument necessarily involes some conjecture, thelstans gifts
would provide a credible context for elite interest in the gospel text.
217
Thirdly,
thelstans gifts related to the specific context of his political achievement: namely, his
creation of a single kingdom of the English, following his conquest of Northumbria in
927.
218
thelstan had thus given a measure of political unity, for the first time, to the
territory contiguous with the ecclesiastical structures of the English church.
219
The
intensity of thelstans book-giving gave symbolic expression both to his newly created
hegemony, and to the potential which it offered for the establishing of a special
relationship between the English church and the king, in the manner of Charlemagnes
ecclesiastical leadership. These concerns probably lie behind the depictions of thelstan

variety of kinds, given to rulers, West Saxon kings appear to have held a tighter monopoly over the
giving of gifts: see Pratt, Political Thought, esp. pp. 38-43, 99, 104-5, 134, 339-45 and 349.
214
Lapidge, Some Latin Poems, pp. 71-81 and 86; Wood, The Making of King thelstans Empire,
pp. 250-2 and 268-72.
215
E. John, Orbis Britanniae (Leicester, 1966), pp. 56-8; R. Deshman, Christus Rex et Magi Reges; A.
Jones, The Significance of the Regal Consecration of Edgar in 973, JEH 33 (1982), 375-90, at 375-6,
383-6 and 389-90.
216
Ordines Coronationis Franciae: Texts and Ordines for the Coronation of Frankish and French Kings
and Queens in the Middle Ages, ed. R. A. Jackson, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, PA, 1995 and 200) I, 183,
184, 186, 187 and 190. For the A version and its dating, see J. L. Nelson, The Second English Ordo,
in her Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London, 1986), pp. 361-74, at 361-7, cf. idem,
The First Use of the Second Anglo-Saxon Ordo, Myth, Rulership, Church and Charters: Essays in
honour of Nicholas Brooks, ed. A. Wareham and J. Barrow (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 117-26 for her
revised view. I hope to consider this question further in a future publication.
217
M. Wood, Stand Strong Against the Monsters: Kingship and Learning in the Empire of King
thelstan, Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World, ed. Wormald and Nelson, pp. 192-217, at 213-
15.
218
S. Keynes, England, c. 900-1016, in The New Cambridge Medieval History III c.900-c.1024, ed. T.
Reuter (Cambridge, 1999), 456-84, at 468-71; Wood, Stand Strong Against the Monsters, pp. pp.
199-203; Foot, thelstan, pp. 25-8, 127-57 and 212-16.
219
J. Campbell, The United Kingdom of England: the Anglo-Saxon Achievement, in his The Anglo-
Saxon State (London, 2000), pp. 31-53, at 43-6.
39
himself, seemingly influenced by Carolingian models, in supplicatory gesture towards St
Cuthbert; they are encapsulated, indeed, by the gifts to the Chester-le-Street community,
which also received land from the king, and might also be detected in the interest in the
deeper history of the church suggested by Claudius B. v.
The generally de luxe nature of the thelstan gospel-books raises interesting
questions over their use by recipient churches. It is possible that such books were treated
as ornamental or display items, used more occasionally for personal reading and rituals,
for example, in the taking of oaths. Liturgically, a gospel-book had specific uses in the
lection within the Mass, and in the ordination of bishops.
220
Doubts have sometimes
been raised about the use of late Anglo-Saxon gospel-books in the Mass: many
examples lack the capitulary which provided a means of identifying the correct gospel
reading within the liturgical year.
221
Yet another copy of the capitulary could, one
presumes, have been consulted. The reading of the gospel within the Mass had potent
symbolism; there are indications, within the Gallican tradition, of a ceremony involving
the formal carrying of the book to the lectern from which it was read.
222
It should be
noted that the books given by thelstan would very likely have had ornate bindings in
gold and gems. Only in the case of the Coburg gospel-book, bearing a Carolingian ivory
of the Metz school, does part of the original binding survive in situ, but bejewelled
covers are explicitly referred to in Rex pius thelstan, the presentation poem in
Tiberius A. ii.
223
Some impression of the imposing nature of late Anglo-Saxon de luxe
bindings may be gained from the metal covers of two gospel-books, now in the Pierpont
Morgan Library, New York, once owned by Judith, countess of Flanders (d. 1094), wife
of Tostig Godwineson, earl of Northumbria (d. 1066): since these books were written in
England, it is quite possible that the metal covers were also of Anglo-Saxon, rather than
Flemish, origin.
224


220
L. Duchesne, Christian Worship: its Origin and Evolution (London, 1903), pp. 196, 375 and 378, cf.
301; see also Gatch, Piety and Liturgy in the Old English Vision of Leofric, pp. 169-70.
221
R. M. Liuzza, Who Read the Gospels in Old English?, Words and Works: Studies in Medieval
English Language and Literature in honour of Fred C. Robinson, ed. P. S. Baker and N. Howe
(Toronto, 1998), pp. 3-24, at 13-14; P. McGurk and J. Rosenthal, The Anglo-Saxon Gospelbooks of
Judith, Countess of Flanders: their Text, Make-up and Function, ASE 24 (1995), 251-308, at 256 and
279. For the capitulary, see also P. McGurk, Text, The York Gospels, ed. N. Barker, The Roxburghe
Club (London, 1986), pp. 43-63 at 45-8; McKitterick, Royal Patronage of Culture, pp. 113-14.
222
Duchesne, Christian Worship, p. 196; Gameson, The Role of Art, pp. 60-1; Mayr-Harting, Ottonian
Book Illumination II, 76, cf. I, 49.
223
The ivory depicts the Ascension; a further ivory, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, depicting
the Crucifixion, is thought to have been a second element of the original binding: see Keynes, King
Athelstans Books, p. 192, n. 235, with references; cf. also Wood, The Making of King thelstans
Empire, pp. 260-1. For references to opulent book covers in written sources, see Dodwell, Anglo-
Saxon Art, pp. 201-3; Gullick, Bookbindings, pp. 304-6. Lapidge, Some Latin Poems, pp. 83-4, with
n. 155.
224
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M. 708 (England, s. xi
med
; provenance Bavaria, c. 1071,
provenance Weingarten s. xi
ex
): Gneuss, Handlist, no. 860; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp.
109-10 (no. 94). New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M. 709 (England, s. xi
med
; provenance Bavaria,
40
In this connection one should also consider the widespread use of liturgical
commemoration by the West Saxon dynasty, which included the performance of regular
devotions on behalf of the king and his family.
225
The earliest signs may be detected
under Alfreds father, thelwulf, in connection with his Second Decimation of 854, a
significant administrative act which appears to have lessened the burdens falling on
landholders.
226
The standard text found in a number of charters made provision for the
singing of psalms and the celebrating of two Masses in churches throughout the
kingdom every Saturday, one for King thelwulf, one for bishops and ealdormen.
227

Since thelwulf is described as the living king, it is quite possible that the practice
had been intended to continue under his successors. This view would be compatible
with the law-code V thelstan, recording decrees issued by a royal assembly at Exeter,
which makes provision for the singing of fifty psalms in all monasteries every Friday for
the king and for all who wish what he wishes, that is, by implication, those bound by
specific obligations of service as kings thegn.
228
The choice of Friday, perhaps
dovetailing with the arrangements begun in 854, and the link with the content of
thelstans legislation, concerning the establishment of the tithing system, suggests a
broader pattern of royal liturgical commemoration associated with acts of administrative
reform.
229
Overall, there are good grounds for suspecting the use of royally donated
gospel-books on notable liturgical occasions including, perhaps especially, Masses said
on behalf of the king. The giving of books, prominently recorded by inscription or
presentation page, would have had special value in these circumstances, as a means of
associating thelstans person with the force of prayers and devotions.


c. 1071, provenance Weingarten s. xi
ex
): Gneuss, Handlist, no. 861; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts,
pp. 108-9 (no. 93). See McGurk and Rosenthal, The Anglo-Saxon Gospelbooks of Judith, Countess of
Flanders, pp. 277-80; W. M. Hinkle, The Gift of an Anglo-Saxon Gospel Book to the Abbey of Saint-
Remi, Reims, JBAA 33 (1970), 21-35, at 33-5; Rushforth, St Margarets Gospel-Book, pp. 50-1; cf.
Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, p. 311, n. 136; Gullick, Bookbindings, p. 307.
225
Royal book-giving is importantly connected with liturgical commemoration in a Continental context
by Wollasch, Kaiser und Knige. For an integrated interpretation of Ottonian patronage emphasizing
the role of books in memorialization, and the likely liturgical use of de luxe illuminated manuscripts,
see Garrison, Ottonian Imperial Art, esp. pp. 6-10, 46-50 and 124-54.
226
Keynes, West Saxon Charters, pp. 1119-23; Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 66-72 and 334; cf. also J.
L. Nelson, Presidential Address: England and the Continent in the Ninth Century: III, Rights and
Rituals, TRHS, 6th ser. 14 (2004), 1-24, at 14-24.
227
H. P. R. Finberg, The Early Charters of Wessex (Leicester, 1964), pp. 209-13, at 210-11.
228
V thelstan 3 (F. Liebermann, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, 3 vols. (Halle, 1903-16) I, 168).
229
D. Pratt, Written Law and the Communication of Authority in Tenth-Century England, England and
the Continent in the Tenth Century: Studies in honour of Wilhelm Levison (1876-1947), ed. D.
Rollason, C. Leyser and H. Williams (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 331-50, esp. 346; Foot, thelstan, pp. 136-
48. For Carolingian precedents, and later Anglo-Saxon instances of the same phenomenon, see Keynes,
An Abbot, an Archbishop, pp. 180-9. Further interest in royal commemoration during thelstans
reign is indicated by the recording of the kings name in a number of Continental confraternity books, in
association with the visit to Germany by Cenwald, bishop of Worcester, in 929: see Keynes, King
Athelstans Books, pp. 198-201.
41
Gospel-books as gifts in later Anglo-Saxon England

Yet thelstan was not unique in this respect, and might well have been the founder of a
wider strategy. Thus William of Malmesbury reports the gift of a gospel-book to
Glastonbury by King Edmund (939-46).
230
Ely material, describing the sumptuous
gospel-books present there in the twelfth-century, refers to a gospel-book with richly
adorned covers given by King Edgar.
231
Had either book survived, one may be certain
that it would now be among the most important of late Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. Such
references also suggest that the cases of thelstan and Cnut, while better documented,
differed from other late Anglo-Saxon kings only in the intensity of their patronage and
gift-giving.
232
This picture is supported from a further angle by notable evidence for
wider participation in the giving of gospel-books by the secular elite. This includes one
surviving manuscript gifted by a male aristocrat, the Burgheard Gospels, Rheims,
Bibliothque Municipale Carnegie, 9, identifiable as the book given to Rheims by
lfgar, earl of Mercia (d. c. 1062), in memory of his son, Burgheard, who died there in
1061 en route to Rome.
233
The codex originally had bejewelled gold covers, depicting
the Crucifixion on the front, and inscribed with a poem recording the donation. To this
might be added the group of four gospel-books owned Judith, countess of Flanders, who
subsequently married Welf IV of Bavaria; at least three of the volumes appear to have
reached the Bavarian monastery of Weingarten as a bequest on Judiths death in
1094.
234
Harold Godwineson, as earl, is reported to have given three large gospel-books
with gold covers to Waltham abbey, along with five other books bound in silver gilt.
None of these books is known to have survived, but two were still at Waltham in the

230
William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum II.143 (ed. Mynors, et al. I, 230, cf. II, 128); William of
Malmesbury, De antiquitate Glastonie ecclesie, c. 54 (J. Scott, The Early History of Glastonbury: a
Edition, Translation and Study of William of Malmesburys De antiquitate Glastonie ecclesie
(Woodbridge, 1981), pp. 114-15).
231
Liber Eliensis, ed. E. O. Blake (London, 1962), pp. 290-1; Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, p. 202;
Gameson, Book Decoration, p. 275.
232
Cf. Gameson, Book Decoration, pp. 275 and 278, suggesting royal patronage may have been weaker
after 939.
233
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 906; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp. 121-2 (no. 105); Hinkle, The Gift
of an Anglo-Saxon Gospel Book; S. Baxter, The Death of Burgheard son of lfgar and its Context,
Frankland: the Franks and the World of the Early Middle Ages. Essays in honour of Dame Jinty
Nelson, ed. P. Fouracre and D. Ganz (Manchester, 2008), pp. 266-84, at 272-4; Gameson, Book
Decoration, pp. 270-1.
234
For Pierpont Morgan M. 708 and M. 709, see above, pp. 39-40, n. 224. Fulda, Hessische
Landesbibliothek, Aa. 21 (England, s. xi
med
and Continent, 1065 x 1071; provenance Bavaria, c. 1071,
provenance Weingarten s. xi
ex
): Gneuss, Handlist, no. 827.5; Rushforth, St Margarets Gospel-Book,
pp. 50-1 and 80-1. Monte Cassino, Archivio della Badia, BB. 437 (England, s. xi
med
; provenance
Bavaria, c. 1071; provenance Italy, c. 1089): Gneuss, Handlist, no. 851; Temple, Anglo-Saxon
Manuscripts, pp. 111-12 (no. 95). See McGurk and Rosenthal, The Anglo-Saxon Gospelbooks of
Judith, Countess of Flanders; Smith, Fleming and Halpin, Court and Piety, pp. 584, 592 and 595.
42
sixteenth century, and seemingly contained gospel material in Old English.
235
A
Canterbury obituary list records two thegns, Thored (fl. 1033-6) and Osbern Bigga (fl. c.
1043), each of whom gave two gospel-books to Christ Church.
236
A certain thelfld,
the daughter of an ealdorman, is reported to have given a gospel-book to Abingdon.
237

A thirteenth-century annotation to a mid eleventh-century gospel-book, London, British
Library, Royal 1 D. iii, records the tradition that the volume had been given to the
catheral church of Rochester by Godgifu (d. c. 1056), sister of Edward the Confesor.
238

From fuller details in the early thirteenth-century Registrum Roffense the gospel-book
appears to have reached Rochester long after Godgifus death, probably in the mid
twelfth century, from her former manor of Lambeth: these details leave open the
possibility, nevertheless, that Godgifu had been the original patron of the manuscript.
The cluster of examples from the last generation before the Norman Conquest is
striking, and might well represent a pronounced extension of royal practices to the
secular elite, a form of piety closely linked with the expression of wealth and power.
239

One must in particular qualify Henry Mayr-Hartings suggestion, that almost every
illustrated book of any importance in this period, whether in the Ottonian Empire or in
England, was either intended for a royal court or for a church or churchman closely
associated with royal rule.
240
Even in the German case, it should be noted that the most
significant episcopal patron of the age, Egbert, archbishop of Trier (977-93), had been
of noble birth; The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 76. F. I., a ninth-century Franco-
Saxon gospel-book, includes two miniatures depicting Egberts parents, Count Dietrich
and his wife Hildegard, which were added to commemorate their gift of the codex to the

235
Smith, Fleming and Halpin, Court and Piety, p. 584; for relics also given by Harold to Waltham, see
ibid., pp. 577 and 587-8; Rogers, The Waltham Abbey Relic-List.
236
Smith, Fleming and Halpin, Court and Piety, pp. 584-5, n. 81; R. Fleming, Christchurchs Sisters
and Brothers: an Edition and Discussion of Canterbury Obituary Lists, The Culture of Christendom:
Essays in Medieval History in commemoration of Denis L. T. Bethell, ed. M. A. Meyer (London, 1993),
pp. 115-53, at 128. Gervase of Canterburys identification of Osbern as thelric Bigga is probably
incorrect; Osbern is known to have been thelric Biggas son: see Brooks, Canterbury, pp. 302-3.
None of these gospel-books is known to have survived. For the suggestion that London, British Library,
Royal 1. D. ix might have been one of the books given by Thored, see Brooks and Kelly, Charters of
Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 1134-5, and below, p. 53. This Kentish Thored is unlikely to be the
Thored who paid for an ornate binding for Claudius Pontifical I: see Wormald, Making of English
Law I, 192-4, and above, p. 28.
237
Smith, Fleming and Halpin, Court and Piety, p. 585; Historia Ecclesie Abbendonensis / The History
of the Abbey of Abingdon, ed. J. Hudson, 2 vols. (Oxford, 2002-7) I, 172 (I.107), with n. 379.
238
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 446; McKendrick, Lowden and Doyle, Royal Manuscripts, pp. 112-13 (no. 9);
Faulkner, The Uses of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts c. 1066-1200, pp. 65-6. For Godgifu, who had two
important marriages, to Count Drogo of the Vexin (probably 1024), and to Count Eustace II of
Boulogne (probably 1036), see E. van Houts, Edward and Normandy, Edward the Confessor: the Man
and the Legend, ed. R. Mortimer (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 63-76, at 63-70.
239
Smith, Fleming and Halpin, Court and Piety, esp. pp. 579-81 and 600-602; Heslop, Production of
de luxe Manuscripts, p. 179.
240
Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination I, 51.
43
family monastery of Egmont, c. 940 x 970.
241
A pericopes book probably produced at
Reichenau in the early or mid eleventh century, Lille, Bibliothque de lInstitut
catholique, 1, includes a miniature depicting Werner and his wife Irmingard, in all
likelihood members of a leading aristocratic family, in the act of pious donation; the
dedicatory inscription describes Irmingard as having made the gift for the soul of her
dead husband.
242
One might compare two of Judiths gospel-books, which include
prefatory miniatures: both appear to be early additions, but while the example in Fulda,
Hessische Landesbibliothek, Aa. 21, was the work of a Low Countries artist (4v), the
image in New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M. 709, depicting a noble lady at the foot
of Christ in Crucifixion (1v), has not been securely localised.
243
The overall pattern of
the English evidence for lay patronage bears comparison with Carolingian Francia,
where the intensive royal donation of gospel-books and bibles under Charlemagne was
followed by a role for lay patrons, reaching a high point in the early to mid ninth
century.
244


Books given by King Cnut (1016-35)

All this is a relevant context for a second attested phase of royal gospel-book donation,
under King Cnut (1016-35). The evidence in this case is more controversial: in the
absence of ex-dono inscriptions, the attribution of a number of manuscripts to Cnuts
patronage must rest on other grounds. Of central importance is the remarkable narrative
account in the Life of St Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester (1062-95), by William of
Malmesbury, a Latin translation of a now lost Life in Old English written shortly after
Wulfstans death by the monk Coleman. Williams Life tells of two sumptuous
manuscripts which had the principal letters written in gold, a sacramentary and a psalter;

241
Ibid. II, 60.
242
Pericopes Book of St-Mihiel: K. Schmid, Zum Stifterbild im Liller Evangelistar des 11.
Jahrhunderts, FS 16 (1982), 143-60 and plates IV-V; Gameson, The Gospels of Margaret of
Scotland, p. 159. Cf. F. Fuchs and U. Kuder, Das Liller Evangelistar, eine reichenauische
Bilderhandschrift der salischen Zeit. Neue Beobachtungen, FS 32 (1998), 365-99 and plates XXIV-
XXXIX, suggesting production at Hirsau c. 1090, a view questioned by H. Hoffmann, Schreibschulen
des 10. und des 11. Jahrhunderts im Sdwesten des Deutschen Reichs, 2 vols., MGH Schriften 53.I-II
(Hanover, 2004) I, 215-16.
243
McGurk and Rosenthal, The Anglo-Saxon Gospelbooks of Judith, Countess of Flanders, pp. 280-8.
The latter miniature is reproduced in Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, Ill. 289, and Rushforth, St
Margarets Gospel-Book, p. 80.
244
McKitterick, Royal Patronage of Culture, pp. 103-8 and 127-9; for a convenient summary of the lay,
non-royal patrons of de luxe bibles produced at Tours in this period, see D. Ganz, Mass Production of
Early Medieval Manuscripts: the Carolingian Bibles from Tours, The Early Medieval Book: its
Production, Decoration and Use, ed. R. Gameson (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 53-62, at 60-1. Cf. Nancy,
Trsor de la Cathdrale, s.n. Gospel-Book of St Gauzlin (Tours, c. 835), a de luxe bible produced for
the named patron Arnaldus, probably the lay fidelis of that name under Louis the Pious: see B.
Fischer, Die Alkuin-Bibeln, in his Lateinische Bibelhandschrifte im frhen Mittelalter (Freiburg,
1985), pp. 203-403, at 393-4.
44
both had been produced at the monastery of Peterborough by Wulfstans teacher
Ernuvius (OE Earnwig). The books had been given by Earnwig as gifts to Cnut and
Queen Emma respectively.
245
Cnut had then given them to the see of Cologne in
Germany; they had then ultimately been given to Ealdred, bishop of Worcester, while on
an embassy to the Emperor Henry III, by implication in 1054.
246
Neither book survives,
but the testimony here is early, its details are compelling and appear to provide a
glimpse of the production of a royal manuscript.
247
The generosity of Cnut and Emma
to English churches is well documented, and included Emmas gift of a golden gospel-
book to Christ Church, Canterbury.
248
Emma is also known to have given a large
illuminated psalter to her brother, Robert, archbishop of Rouen, while Cnut sent another
book written in gold, an illustrated book of saints, to William, duke of Aquitaine,
probably in 1024.
249
Intriguingly, in 1029 the West Frankish king Robert the Pious
(996-1031) is known to have given six gospel-books to St-Aignan, Orlans, with a
missal from overseas well made in ivory and silver (cum missali transmarino bene

245
William of Malmesbury, Vita S. Wulfstani I.1, in William of Malmesbury: Saints Lives / Lives of SS.
Wulfstan, Dunstan, Patrick, Benignus and Indract, ed. M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson (Oxford,
2002), p. 16; Heslop, Production of de luxe Manuscripts, pp. 159-60; M. K. Lawson, Cnut: the Danes
in England in the Early Eleventh Century (Harlow, 1993), p. 159; Gameson, The Circulation of
Books, pp. 344 and 362. Cf. also Gameson, Book Decoration, p. 277, questioning Cnuts active
patronage, on the basis that the books were offered as gifts by Earnwig. A role for gift exchange need
not rule out the possibility of more complex interaction between Peterborough and the royal household.
In hagiographical context, moreover, the story illustrated Earnwigs preference for worldly advantage,
which may have encouraged the assigning of agency to Earnwig rather than Cnut and Emma.
246
William of Malmesbury, Vita S. Wulfstani I.9 (ed. Winterbottom and Thomson, p. 40). L. M. Larson,
Canute the Great (New York, 1912), p. 227, not unreasonably suggests a context for the gifts to
Cologne in Cnuts journey to Rome in 1027 for the coronation of Emperor Conrad II. For the broader
context of contact and interaction between England and Germany in the later Anglo-Saxon period, see
Deshman, Christus Rex et Magi Reges, esp. pp. 157-61; K. Leyser, The Ottonians and Wessex, in
his Communications and Power in Medieval Europe: the Carolingian and Ottonian Centuries, ed. T.
Reuter (London, 1994), pp. 73-104; van Houts, Women and the Writing of History; Gameson, The
Circulation of Books, pp. 361-3.
247
A modern tradition should be reported which would associate King Cnut with Cambridge, Clare
College 30, Parts I and II (both parts Worcester, s. xi
2/2
or xi
3/4
), comprising two manuscripts of
theological texts: Gneuss, Handlist, nos. 34 and 34.1; R. Gameson, The Manuscripts of Early Norman
England (c.1066-1130) (Oxford, 1999), p. 60 (nos. 50 and 51). The tradition, of uncertain origin and
represented in a label of later twenieth-century date, suggests that the volume might have been one of
the books written by Earnwig and subsequently given by Cnut to Cologne. The manuscripts contents
do not accord, however, with the books described in Colemans story, and an association with Cnut
appears to be precluded by their later date. I am most grateful to Mrs Anne Hughes, the Librarian and
Curator of the Fellows Library, for her kind assistance.
248
Heslop, Production of de luxe Manuscripts, pp. 157-8, 181 and 184.
249
Ibid., pp. 158-9; Lawson, Cnut, p. 159; Gameson, The Circulation of Books, pp. 358 and 360. For
the psalter, see Orderic Vitalis, Historia ecclesiastica III.ii.42, in The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic
Vitalis, ed. M. Chibnall, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1968-80) II, 42, where Emma is described as the wife of the
English king thelred. It is difficult to be certain that the gift should be dated before 1017 on this basis
(cf. Gameson, The Circulation of Books, p. 358): Orderics formulation might reflect his awareness of
the importance of Emmas first marriage for the Confessors lineage. It is unclear from Orderics story
whether the psalter had been a personal possession of the queen: the large format arguably points
against this possibility.
45
parato hebore et argento); it is interesting to find Cnuts contemporary in possession of
such a high-status manuscript.
250

T. A. Heslop, in making the case for Cnuts patronage, connected this narrative
evidence with, firstly, the remarkable preponderance of de luxe gospel-books surviving
from the early eleventh century, and, secondly, two specific groups of de luxe
manuscripts connected by the involvement of scribes.
251
These manuscripts are best
summarized in tabular form. Heslops palaeographical analysis has been qualified
slightly in an important study by Dumville, which is taken account of here.
252
These
groups comprise, firstly, de luxe manuscripts involving the work of two scribes, B and
C, for whom Heslop suggested a Peterborough location; and, secondly, de luxe
manuscripts involving the distinguished Anglo-Saxon scribe, Eadui (OE Eadwig)
Basan, who was probably based at Christ Church, Canterbury, from c. 1020:

Group 1 - ? Peterborough production ?
Shelfmark Scribes Date Medieval provenance
London, British Library,
Royal 1. D. ix (Royal
Gospels)
253

B and
C
before
1020
Christ Church, Canterbury by
1017 x 1020
London, British Library, Loan
11 (Kederminster
Gospels)
254

C and
B
s. xi
1/4
Windsor (s. xiv)
Cambridge, Trinity College
B. 10. 4 (Trinity
Gospels)
255

B s. xi
1/4
unknown

250
Helgaud of Fleury, Vita Rotberti Pii, c. 22 (Vie de Robert le Pieux. Epitoma Vitae Regis Rotberti Pii,
ed. R.-H. Bautier and G. Labory, Sources dhistoire mdivale 1 (Paris, 1965), p. 112; Wollasch,
Kaiser und Knige, p. 11. For the use of transmarinus by Continental writers to indicate England
specifically, see J. L. Nelson, A King Across the Sea: Alfred in Continental Perspective, in her
Rulers and Ruling Families in Early Medieval Europe: Alfred, Charles the Bald and Others (Aldershot,
1999), no. I, pp. 45-7.
251
Heslop, Production of de luxe Manuscripts, pp. 152-6 and 162-81.
252
Dumville, English Caroline Script, pp. 111-40; also idem, On the Dating of Some Late Anglo-Saxon
Liturgical Manuscripts, Trans. of the Cambridge Bibliographical Soc. 10 (1996 for 1991-5), 40-57.
253
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 447; Ker, Catalogue, p. 317 (no. 247); Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp.
88-9 (no. 70); Golden Age, ed. Backhouse et al., p. 69 (no. 52); Doane, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in
Microfiche Facsimile, 7, no. 282; McKendrick, Lowden and Doyle, Royal Manuscripts, pp. 108-9 (no.
7); Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 94-5.
254
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 501; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, p. 89 (no. 71); Golden Age, ed.
Backhouse et al., p. 68 (no. 51).
255
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 172; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp. 83-4 (no. 65); Golden Age, ed.
Backhouse et al., p. 68 (no. 49).
46
Rouen, Bibliothque
Municipale, Y. 6 (274)
(Sacramentary; Missal of
Robert of Jumiges)
256

B s. xi
1/4
given to Jumiges by Robert
as bishop of London (1044 x
1051)
Copenhagen, Kongelige
Bibliotek, G. K. S. 10 (2_)
(Copenhagen Gospels)
257

A and
B
s. xi
1/4
Scandinavia (s. xvi); probably
had left England by s. xii
ex

Salisbury, Cathedral Library,
Portfolio 4/1 (fragment of a
leaf from gospel-book)
258

B s. xi
1/4
unknown

Group 2 - de luxe books associated with Anglo-Saxon scribe Eadui (Eadwig) Basan
Shelfmark Scribes Date Medieval provenance
Hanover, Kestner-Museum,
W. M. XXIa, 36 (Eadwig
Gospels)
259

Eadui s. xi
1/4
Germany by s. xi
London, British Library,
Additional 34890
(Grimbald Gospels)
260

Eadui s. xi
1/4
New Minster, Winchester by s.
xi
ex

York, Minster Library,
Additional 1 (York
Gospels)
261

Eadui
et al.
before
1023
York by 1020 x 1023

256
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 141; Ker, Catalogue, p. 449 (no. 377); Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp.
89-91 (no. 72); Golden Age, ed. Backhouse et al., p. 69 (no. 50); Dumville, On the Dating, p. 52; P. J.
Lucas and A. M. Lucas, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, 18: Manuscripts in France
(Tempe, AZ, 2012), no. 445.
257
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 812; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, p. 69 (no. 47); Golden Age, ed.
Backhouse et al., p. 68 (no. 48); Dumville, On the Dating, p. 44; S. L. Keefer, D. Rollason and A. N.
Doane, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, 14: Manuscripts of Durham, Ripon, and
York (Tempe, AZ, 2007), no. 494.
258
Formerly collection of Mr H. Bailey of Salisbury (? Winchester): T. A. M. Bishop, The Copenhagen
Gospel-Book, Nordisk Tidskrift fr Bok- och Biblioteksvsen 54 (1967), 33-41, at 40; Dumville,
English Caroline Script, p. 139; H. Gneuss, Second Addenda and Corrigenda to the Handlist of Anglo-
Saxon Manuscripts, ASE 40 (2011), 293-306, at 300 (no. 754.8). Cf. Paris, Bibliothque Nationale de
France, lat. 987, fols. 85-111 (southern England, s. xi
2/4
or s. xi
3/4
; provenance France before s. xvi
ex
?):
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 880; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, p. 54 (no. 25); Golden Age, ed.
Backhouse et al., p. 60 (no. 39). As Dumville notes, this benedictional was added to the group by Derek
Turner (Golden Age, ed. Backhouse et al., p. 60; cf. Heslop, Production of de luxe Manuscripts, p.
170-1, n. 57); both Heslop and Dumville would reject Turners identification of fols. 85-111 as the
work of scribe B.
259
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 831; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp. 85-6 (no. 67); Golden Age, ed.
Backhouse et al., p. 72 (no. 56).
260
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 290; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp. 86-8 (no. 68); Golden Age, ed.
Backhouse et al., p. 72 (no. 55); McKendrick, Lowden and Doyle, Royal Manuscripts, pp. 14-15 (no.
10); Dumville, On the Dating, pp. 44-5.
47
London, British Library,
Arundel 155 (Eadwig
Psalter)
262

Eadui 1012 x
1023
Christ Church, Canterbury

Florence, Biblioteca Medicea
Laurenziana, Plut. XVII. 20
(Gospel lectionary)
263


Eadui
and
?C

s. xi
1/4


Continent by s. xi

Connections between these two groups are suggested by Florence Plut. XVII. 20, the
bulk of which was written by Eadui, but contains on fol. 1 features which suggested to
Heslop the work of scribe C.
264
A variety of possible circumstances of production might
be indicated by these patterns. Heslop suggested multi-centric production under a single
(royal) source of patronage, involving collaboration between Peterborough and
Canterbury, and perhaps other centres as well.
265
The case for Peterboroughs
involvement has rested on the apparent Peterborough connections of the exemplar for
the Missal of Robert of Jumiges, and the fact that another book written by scribe C,
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 163, fols. 2-5 and 8-227, was at Peterborough in the
twelfth century.
266
As Dumville has pointed out, these features of the evidence might be
variously explained, and since Canterbury production has been seen to make sense from
an art-historical perspective, could be compatible with the hypothesis that both groups
had been produced at a single centre, Christ Church, Canterbury.
267
These Peterborough
links seem noteworthy, nevertheless, given the role assigned to Peterborough in the Life
of Wulfstan. A further complication arises from uncertainties over the career of Eadui
Basan, who was reponsible for adding the text of a writ of King Cnut, datable 1017 x
1020, to Royal 1. D. ix, and was the draftsman of a charter dated 1018 in favour of
lfstan, archbishop of Canterbury, which survives as a single-sheet in what appears to

261
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 774; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp. 79-80 (no. 61); Golden Age, ed.
Backhouse et al., p. 72 (no. 54); Dumville, On the Dating, pp. 53-4.
262
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 306; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 167-71 (no. 135); Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts,
pp. 84-5 (no. 66); Golden Age, ed. Backhouse et al., pp. 72 and 74 (no. 57).
263
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 827; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, p. 88 (no. 69).
264
Heslop, Production of de luxe Manuscripts, pp. 173-4; Dumville, English Caroline Script, p. 117,
120 and 127.
265
Heslop, Production of de luxe Manuscripts, pp. 172-8. For balanced discussion, see P. McGurk,
Anglo-Saxon Gospel-Books, c. 900-1066, The Cambridge History of the Book I, ed. Gameson, 436-
48, at 442-3.
266
Ibid., pp. 152-6 and 161-2, building on the view of Bishop, The Copenhagen Gospel-Book, pp. 40-
1.
267
Dumville, English Caroline Script, pp. 116-20; cf. also idem, Liturgy, pp. 25-6 and 37-8; R.
Gameson, Manuscript Art at Christ Church, Canterbury, in the Generation after St Dunstan, St
Dunstan: his Life, Times and Cult, ed. N. Ramsay, M. Sparks and T. Tatton-Brown (Woodbridge,
1992), pp. 107-220.
48
have been its original form.
268
It is just possible, as Dumville has suggested, that Eadui
may have been a royal scribe for a period in his career before c. 1020.
269
The idea has
some attractions, though an explanation would be needed for the exclusively Christ
Church transmission of his surviving diplomatic work.
270
At the very least, one should
be alive to the range of possibilities suggested by manuscripts connected by the work of
a single, expert scribe.
It should be stressed that the manuscripts considered by Heslop are among the
most magnificent from later Anglo-Saxon England, typically elaborately decorated,
including portrait-pages and other illustrations, with some use of gold, and written in an
elegant form of Caroline minuscule. If one judges their form alone, the books might be
compatible with elite patronage of a variety of kinds. The lack of ex-dono inscriptions,
contrasting with thelstans case, is striking whatever form of patronage is envisaged.
Yet many of these volumes are likely to have had elaborate book covers, none of which
survives; these might well have provided a record of donation, as in the case of the
Burgheard Gospels a generation later.
271
Despite these uncertainties, several of the
manuscripts seem especially suggestive of the likelihood of their having been used as
royal gifts. One pattern points towards gifts abroad, of the sort that Cnut and Emma are
known to have made. The Eadwig Gospels, for example, include a colophon in Eaduis
name which, in apparent reference to the future owner of the book, employs the formula
seruus Dei .N., perhaps implying that the scribe had known the book to be a
commission, but had not known the name of its intended recipient.
272
The manuscript
has a north German provenance, and additions of the eleventh and twelfth century

268
44v: S 985 (CantCC 145). London, British Library, Stowe Charter 38: S 950 (CantCC 144),
reproduced in OSFacs. iii.39 and Golden Age, ed. Backhouse et al., pp. 166-7 (no. 169).
269
Dumville, English Caroline Script, pp. 122-8; see now S. Keynes, Church Councils, Royal
Assemblies. For Eaduis career, see also R. W. Pfaff, Eadui Basan: Scriptorum Princeps?, England in
the Eleventh Century, ed. Hicks, pp. 267-83; R. Gameson, The Colophon of the Eadwig Gospels, ASE
31 (2002), 201-22, at 201-13; C. Farr, Style in Late Anglo-Saxon England: Questions of Learning and
Intention, Anglo-Saxon Styles, ed. C. E. Karkov and G. H. Brown (Albany, NY, 2003), pp. 115-30, at
117-28; R. Rushforth, English Caroline Minuscule, The Cambridge History of the Book I, ed.
Gameson, 197-210, at 205-8.
270
See now Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 56-7, 1054-5 and 1059.
271
Heslop, Production of de luxe Manuscripts, pp. 180-1; cf. above, pp. 4-5, cf. 28 and 39. For
balanced treatment of the issue of patronage, see McGurk, Anglo-Saxon Gospel-Books, pp. 443-5; cf.
doubts expressed by Gameson, The Role of Art, pp. 258-9; idem, Book Decoration, p. 277.
272
Pfaff, Eadui Basan, pp. 268-9; cf. Heslop, Production of de luxe Manuscripts, pp. 175-6;
Dumville, English Caroline Script, pp. 120-2 and 127. For the view that .N. may have represented a
universal appeal to future readers, see Gameson, The Colophon of the Eadwig Gospels, pp. 209-213;
as Gameson acknowledges (p. 213), such a reading need not be incompatible with the book having been
written as a specific commission; cf. also C. E. Karkov, Writing and Having Written: Word and Image
in the Eadwig Gospels, Writing and Texts in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. A. R. Rumble (Cambridge,
2006), pp. 44-61, at 44-5 and 58-61.
49
indicate that it reached Germany at an early stage in its history.
273
The Florence gospel
lectionary had also reached the Continent in the eleventh century.
274
The Copenhagen
Gospels are notable in having a Scandinavian provenance, having left England by the
twelfth century at the latest.
275
One must also compare New York, Pierpont Morgan
Library, M. 869, the Arenberg Gospels, lying outside the two groups, the production of
which is generally assigned to Christ Church, Canterbury.
276
The codex has a
provenance from the church of St Severin, Cologne, and had reached Cologne by the
early twelfth century at the latest.
277
As Heslop argued, the manuscript might be as late
as the 1020s; given Cnuts known generosity to Cologne, it is quite possible that it
represents a further royal gift.
278

The case for regarding some further gospel-books as royal gifts within England
is strengthened by consideration of a practice which has already been encountered:
namely, the addition of the texts of charters and other documents into ecclesiastical
books of high status, especially gospel-books. As David Dumville and Dafydd Jenkins
have observed, the practice has several precedents in manuscripts associated with Wales
and western Britain, and does not appear to have been widespread in England before the
tenth century.
279
The earliest examples of royal charters and writs added to gospel-

273
Gameson, The Colophon of the Eadwig Gospels, pp. 221-2; Liuzza, Who Read the Gospels in Old
English?, p. 22.
274
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 827; cf. also Dumville, English Caroline Script, p. 127.
275
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 812.
276
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 864; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp. 74-5 (no. 56); Golden Age, ed.
Backhouse et al., p. 68 (no. 47).
277
Liuzza, Who Read the Gospels in Old English?, p. 23; Gameson, The Circulation of Books, p.
362.
278
Heslop, Production of de luxe Manuscripts, pp. 153 and 169-70. Cf. Deshman, Christus Rex et
Magi Reges, p. 158, who suggested that the book might have reached Cologne during the
archiepiscopate of Heribert (999-1021), who had previously been in the service of Otto III (d. 1002).
The dating of the manuscript, often assigned to s. x
ex
, depends in part on a possible scribal relationship
to London, British Library, Harley 603 (Harley Psalter: Christ Church, Canterbury, s. x/xi or s. x
1/2
),
the precise dating of which is itself uncertain: see Gameson, Manuscript Art at Christ Church,
Canterbury, pp. 200, 203-4 and 208; Dumville, English Caroline Script, pp. 106-7, 109-10, 122, 128
and 130; W. Noel, The Harley Psalter (Cambridge, 1995), p. 39, n. 54, cf. pp. 136-40.
279
Dumville, Liturgy, pp. 119-27, cf. 111-19; D. Jenkins, From Wales to Weltenberg? Some
Considerations on the Origins of the Use of Sacred Books for the Preservation of Secular Records,
Vom mittelalterlichen Recht zur neuzeitlichen Rechtswissenschaft: Bedingungen, Wege und Probleme
der europischen Rechtsgeschichte, ed. N. Brieskorn, P. Mikat, D. Mller and D., Willoweit
(Paderborn, 1994), pp. 75-88. See also Charles-Edwards, Wales the the Britons, pp. 246-8; F.
Wormald, The Sherborne Chartulary, Fritz Saxl, 1890-1948: a Volume of Memorial Essays, ed. D.
J. Gordon (London, 1957), pp. 101-19, at 106-9; Keynes, King Athelstans Books, p. 189, n. 216; S.
Keynes, The Additions in Old English, and B. Barr, The History of the Volume, The York Gospels,
ed Barker, pp. 81-99, at 81, and pp. 101-176, at 104; S. Keynes, The Liber Vitae of the New Minster
and Hyde Abbey, Winchester, EEMF 26 (Copenhagen, 1996), 55. For a useful study of the role of
gospel-books as the repository for documents in the late Anglo-Saxon and post-Conquest periods, see
Faulkner, The Uses of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts c. 1066-1200, pp. 152-77.
50
books in England date, as will be seen, from the early eleventh century;
280
but instances
involving manumissions, guild statutes and private vernacular documents relating to
landholding survive from the tenth century.
281
Indeed, one stimulus for the English use
of gospel-books in this way may have been the recording of manumissions in writing,
encouraged by influences from western Britain.
282
It is striking that two of the earliest
written manumissions occur in gospel-books with royal associations: namely, Royal 1
B. vii, the Northumbrian gospel-book bearing the record of King thelstans
manumission;
283
and Bern 671, the pocket gospel book containing the
AELFRED/ELFRED acrostics.
284
The next earliest record concerned a manumission
by King Eadwig (955-9), and occurs in London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B. v,
vol. 1, fol. 75, the fragment of an eighth-century Northumbrian gospel-book of Exeter
provenance.
285
The manumission formed an annotation to a record of the Exeter guild
statutes, which were added to this leaf in the first half of the tenth century; the
manumission was reportedly written in Eadwigs presence.
286
Even if allowances are
made for the likelihood that royal manumissions were considered more worthy of
record, the pattern suggests a link between gospel-books with royal associations and the
adding of pertinent documentary material.
287


280
For valuable discussion of the practice, see Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury,
pp. 53-8.
281
For the earliest examples of the latter, see two vernacular documents added to Cambridge, Corpus
Christi College 286 (Gospels of St Augustine: s. vi
2/2
or vi/vii, Italy; provenance St Augustines,
Canterbury, s. x): S 1198 (CantStA 24), the vernacular record of a grant of renders by Ealhburh to St
Augustines, Canterbury (c. 850), entered on 74v in a hand probably dating to the 920s; and S 1455
(CantStA 31), the vernacular record of an agreeement between Wulfric, abbot of St Augustines,
Canterbury, and Ealdred, son of Lyfing, about land at Cilfe, Kent (c. 985 x 1006), entered on 77v in a
hand of s. x
ex
: Gneuss, Handlist, no. 83; Ker, Catalogue, p. 95 (no. 55); Making of England, ed.
Wehster and Backhouse, pp. 17-19 (no. 1); Kelly, Charters of St Augustines, Canterbury, pp. xxxviii-
xxxix, 95 and 118-19. Also S 1218a (ASCharters 71), the vernacular record of a grant by lfhelm to
his goldsmith, Leofsige, preserved as an addition, in a hand of s. x
2/2
, to London, British Library, Cotton
Tiberius B. v, vol. 1, fol. 74, a detached leaf from the gospel-book Cambridge, University Library, Kk.
1. 24 (Northumbria, s. viii; Ely provenance): Gneuss, Handlist, no. 21; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 35-6 (no.
22).
282
Cf. Pelteret, Slavery, pp. xiv-xvi and 137-41. Cf. esp. London, British Library, Additional 9381
(Bodmin Gospels: Brittany, s. ix/x, with manumissions added s. x
med
- xi/xii; provenance s. x St
Petrocs, Padstow, then Bodmin): Dumville, Liturgy, pp. 114, 120 and 122-3; Pelteret, Slavery, pp. xiv-
xv; Padel, Slavery in Saxon Cornwall.
283
15v: Select English Historical Documents, ed. Harmer, pp. 32-3 (no. 19); Ker, Catalogue, pp. 316-17
(no. 246); Keynes, King Athelstans Books, pp. 185-6 and 188-9; Pelteret, Slavery, pp. 146-8 and
161; Foot, thelstan, pp. 65 and 189-90. Cf. above, pp. 34-5.
284
7v: Merritt, Old English Entries, p. 346; Pelteret, Slavery, pp. 152-3 and 157-8. See above, pp. 15-
20.
285
P. Conner, Anglo-Saxon Exeter: a Tenth-Century Cultural History (Woodbridge, 1993), p. 168, cf.
pp. 165-8: Gneuss, Handlist, no. 374; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 256-7 (no. 194); Pelteret, Slavery, pp. 148
and 159.
286
Councils & Synods; pp. 58-60; Conner, Anglo-Saxon Exeter, pp. 168-9.
287
See Dumville, Liturgy, pp. 126-7, who notes that there are almost twice as many gospel-books and
gospel-lectionaries from Anglo-Saxon England with no documentary texts as there are with such
51

Probable gifts by King Cnut: London, British Library, Royal 1. D. ix

It is in this broader context that one should consider Royal 1. D. ix, sometimes known
as the Royal Gospels, written by scribes B and C, probably before 1020. The codex was
present at Christ Church, Canterbury, at an early stage, and received two documentary
additions, both in the vernacular: firstly, a record of Cnuts spiritual confraternity with
the Christ Church community, also that of his brother, Harald, and of Thor, Kartoca
and Thuri, probably the names of thegns with landholding in Kent (43v); and secondly,
a purported writ in Cnuts name, written in the hand of Eadui, recording Cnuts
conferring of certain privileges on Christ Church, including permission to draw up a
new charter of freedom (freols) (44v).
288
The writ describes Cnut as having laid Christ
Churchs existing freolsas on the churchs altar in a formal ceremony. Though irregular
in some respects, the writ, seemingly drafted 1017 x 1020, in all likelihood refers to a
real event in the time of Archbishop Lyfing (1013-20).
289
As will be discussed below,
the general context related to important dealings between Cnut and Christ Church both
in the latter part of the Lyfings archiepiscopate and following the appointment of
Archbishop thelnoth in 1020.
290

The treatment of the writ has further significance, however, since it is one of a
number of documents added to royal books at Christ Church in this period, forming a
documentary connection with the books that Christ Church had received from King
thelstan.
291
These documents include several writs and a purported royal charter,
amounting to the earliest examples of the preservation of such documents within gospel-
books; the practice appears to have become more widespread later in the eleventh

additions, and comparing evidence for the excision of vernacular material from certain gospel-books in
the post-Reformation period, which might imply the loss of some added material. The general pattern
nevertheless suggests that the entering of documents in gospel-books in the late Anglo-Saxon period
involved an important degree of selectivity in the books chosen for such purposes.
288
Ptd by Ker, Catalogue, p. 317; J. Gerchow, Prayers for King Cnut: the Liturgical Commemoration of
a Conqueror, England in the Eleventh Century, ed. Hicks, pp. 219-38, at 237. S 985 (CantCC 145).
For the additions to Royal 1. D. ix, see Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, pp.
94-5; Faulkner, The Uses of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts c. 1066-1200, p. 155.
289
See Brooks, Canterbury, pp. 288-90 (cf. also Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church,
Canterbury, pp. 1060-1), who shows that the document was dependent on S 22 (CantCC 8), the forged
privilege in the name of King Wihtred (690-725), the production of which may be associated with
Wulfred, archbishop of Canterbury (805-17/18 and 821-32). As Brooks notes, the case for Eaduis
intimate involvement in proceedings is strengthened by the fact that the earliest manuscript of S 22,
London, British Library, Stowe Charter 2 (reproduced in OSFacs. iii.2), is in Eaduis hand: see Brooks
and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 307-9. See also Lawson, Cnut, pp. 88 and 127-
8; Dumville, English Caroline Script, p. 122, n. 55; Rushforth, English Caroline Minuscule, p. 207;
Keynes, Church Councils, Royal Assemblies.
290
See below, pp. 62-3.
291
For the Christ Church gospel-books containing added documents, see Brooks and Kelly, Charters of
Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 85-95, cf. 53-8.
52
century.
292
Thus Tiberius A.ii, the de luxe Continental gospel-book containing the poem
Rex pius thelstan, received copies in Latin and Old English of a forged refoundation
charter for Christ Church in the name of King thelred, dated 1006, purportedly
reestablishing the house as a monastic community.
293
As Nicholas Brooks has observed,
the freolsas deposited by Cnut on the churchs altar probably included a spurious charter
of King thelberht and a forged privilege in the name of King Wihtred associated with
Archbishop Wulfred (805-817/18 and 821-32); it is therefore tempting to see the forged
thelred charter as having served a similar purpose.
294
Furthermore, Lambeth Palace
1370, the Irish pocket gospel-book also given by thelstan, received two closely
associated documents: firstly, a copy of a writ in the name of Wulfstan, archbishop of
York, reporting the consecration of thelnoth as archbishop of Canterbury in 1020; and
secondly, a copy of a writ of Cnut recording his grant to thelnoth of judicial and
financial rights over men variously under his lordship.
295
In this case, as Brooks notes,
the items appear to have been entered into the gospel-book at at a slightly later stage,
probably towards the end of thelnoths archiepiscopate (1020-38).
296
Indeed, since the
added documents as a whole primarily concern Archbishop thelnoth, Brooks and
Kelly have suggested that Lambeth Palace 1370 might have been his personal
possession.
297
The archiepiscopal focus of the additions is striking, though the long-

292
The relevant gospel-books are conveniently laid out by Dumville, Liturgy, pp. 120-2; see also
Faulkner, The Uses of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts c. 1066-1200, pp. 154-63; cf. the comments of
Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 53-4.
293
Now London, British Library, Cotton Claudius A. iii, fols. 2-6: S 914 (CantCC 140 i and 140 ii). For
the reconstruction of the original structure of Tiberius A. ii, which also included London, British
Library, Cotton Faustina B. vi, fols. 95 and 98-100, bearing additions of s. xii, see now Brooks and
Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, p. 88-94 and 1026-7, cf. also N. R. Ker, Membra
Disiecta, Brit. Museum Quarterly 12 (1938), 130-5, at 130-1; Faulkner, The Uses of Anglo-Saxon
Manuscripts c. 1066-1200, pp. 157-9. For the case for regarding S 914 as a forgery, see Brooks,
Canterbury, pp. 257-8, a view which depends on a number of considerations, including the
impossibility of the date 1006, and its incompatibility with the witness list. Cf. now Brooks and Kelly,
Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 1027-31, for the suggestion that the Old English version
(which lacks a dating clause) could be prior to the Latin text, and on this basis might be authentic. There
are certainly differences between the two versions, but the Latin text includes recognizable formulas,
represented in the Old English text, indicating the textual priority of the former. A further point against
S 914 is the prominence accorded to King thelberht, which looks suspicious in the light of S 985
(CantCC 145), the irregular writ of Cnut: see above, p. 51. There is now consensus that the hand of the
charter texts is unlikely to be that of Eadui (cf. Brooks, Canterbury, p. 257), and may be broadly
assigned to the second, third or fourth decades of s. xi: see Dumville, English Caroline Scirpt, p. 126, n.
75; Gameson, The Colophon of the Eadwig Gospels, p. 202, n. 4; Brooks and Kelly, Charters of
Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 1026-7.
294
Brooks, Canterbury, pp. 289-90. For S 22, see above, p. 51, n. 289.
295
69v: S 1386 (CantCC 150). 114v: S 986 (CantCC 150A). For these and other additions of s. xi to
Lambeth Palace 1370, including documents on the detached leaf London, British Library, Cotton
Tiberius B. iv, fol. 87, see Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 86-7, cf.
1124-6.
296
Brooks, Canterbury, p. 290; Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 1074-5
and 1077; cf. Ker, Catalogue, pp. 239-40.
297
Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, p. 87, cf. p. 53.
53
term presence of the volume at Christ Church should also be considered. Almost
certainly authentic, nevertheless, these documents might well have been regarded as
pertaining to Canterburys rights.
These patterns have several important implications. The first is that the
concerted campaign of entering documents in gospel-books at Christ Church under
thelnoth suggests that Royal 1. D. ix may also, like Tiberius A. ii and Lambeth 1370,
have been a royal gift. Brooks and Kelly have recently suggested an alternative view of
the codex, connecting the name Thor, in the notice of spiritual confraternity in Royal
1. D. ix (43v), with the Kentish thegn, Thored, recorded as having given two gospel-
books to Christ Church in an obituary list, suggesting that Royal 1. D. ix might be one
of Thoreds gifts.
298
Yet the notice of spiritual confraternity assigns the greatest weight
to Cnut himself, his name recorded in capital letters, and account must also be taken of
the broader pattern of the entering of documents at Christ Church, which otherwise
focused intensively on the gospel-books given by King thelstan. Indeed, a possible
connection cannot be ruled out between Royal 1. D. ix and the golden gospels
reportedly given to Christ Church by Emma, though the context for her gift is unknown;
the volume might equally have been given by Cnut in other circumstances.
299
Royal 1.
D. ix need not, as Heslop pointed out, have been a Christ Church production; it is
striking that in this case Eaduis work was restricted to one of the documentary
additions.
300
Secondly, if, as seems likely, Royal 1. D. ix represented a gift to Christ
Church by Cnut, the context involved his intimate dealings with Lyfing and thelnoth,
and the assertion of the houses monastic identity.
301
Thirdly, the entering of documents
appears to have been connected with the solemn purposes underlying Cnuts ritual
depositing of freolsas on the Christ Church altar. The ritual may have encouraged the
subsequent copying of various documents supportive of Canterburys rights in gospel-
books given by kings. Indeed, in the case of Tiberius A. ii, one cannot rule out the
possibility that the forged refoundation charter had been present at the time of the ritual,

298
Ibid., pp. 1134-5. For the obituary list, see above, p. 42, n. 236. The name Thored was not uncommon
in this period; for valuable prosopographical discussion, see also Wormald, Making of English Law I,
192-4.
299
Gervase of Canterbury, Gesta regum, De Cnutone rege (Gervasii Cantuaresis Opera Historica, ed.
W. Stubbs, 2 vols. (London, 1879-80) II, 56; Heslop, Production of de luxe Manuscripts, p. 157, 181
and 184. Cf. S 1229 (CantCC 175) for Emmas grant of Newington, Oxfordshire, to Christ Church,
datable to 1042 x 1052, a further charter surviving as a copy entered into Tiberius A. ii, in a hand of s.
xi
med
: now London, British Library, Cotton Claudius A. iii, 6r (see Ker, Catalogue, no. 185, p. 240;
Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, p. 90). As Heslop notes, it is unclear
whether the golden gospels had been given in conjunction with Newington and Britwell, mentioned by
Gervase, or in a separate context.
300
Heslop, Production of de luxe Manuscripts, pp. 154-5; cf. Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ
Church, Canterbury, p. 94.
301
The connection between the documents added to gospel-books and the monastic identity of the
community is rightly emphasized by Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, p. 56.
54
enabling the book to participate in Cnuts ritual act.
302
Fourthly, one may observe in this
distinctive treatment signs that books given by kings had a numinous quality, an
association with royal culture that transcended merely physical features. The origins of
these volumes mattered, and were harnessed by the Christ Church community in order
to bolster and commemorate a favourable view of Canterburys rights and privileges.

The York Gospels

A parallel case may be York, Minster Library, Additional 1, known as the York
Gospels, another numinous manuscript with a complex history. The dating of the
manuscript is clouded by its having been written in the four stages: firstly, the work of
the principal scribe, whose script, a form of Caroline minuscule, has various
peculiarities (24r-156r); secondly, preliminaries to the gospels, written in English square
minuscule of the tenth century (fols. 10-14); thirdly, canon tables and a picture of
Matthew, written in Anglo-Caroline minuscule of the early eleventh century, in a
Canterbury style; fourthly, the opening of St Matthews gospel, in the hand of Eadui
(23v).
303
The manuscript reached York at an early stage in its history, as shown by
further additions (156v-161v), which include corrections in the hand of Wulfstan,
archbishop of York (d. 1023).
304
A likely context for the volume reaching York is the

302
The physical involvement of books in the ritual is perhaps more likely in the case of the thelstan
gospel-books, Tiberius A. ii and Lambeth 1370, than Royal 1. D. ix. See Brooks and Kelly, Charters of
Christ Church, Canterbury, p. 88, for the suggestion that Tiberius A. ii may have been kept on the altar
of Christ, on the basis of a section of S 1047 (CantCC 181), a spurious charter in the name of the
Confessor, once present in Tiberius A. ii (now London, British Library, Cotton Claudius A. iii, 6v: the
relevant section is written in a hand of the 1070s). The wording of the charter, describing the
Confessors purported dedication of an enactment to Christ, leaves open the possibility that the volume
was envisaged as having been present on the altar for the duration of the ritual only.
303
Dumville, On the Dating, pp. 53-4 (cf. idem, English Caroline Script, p. 123), raising the possibility
of a Continental origin for the principal scribe, cf. the case for a English scribe advanced by P. McGurk,
Palaeography, The York Gospels, ed. Barker, pp. 37-42, at 41-2; also Barr, The History of the
Volume, pp. 101-4. On either view, the production of the books principal contents seems likely to
have begun in s. x
ex
. Cf. Heslop, Production of de luxe Manuscripts, pp. 166-9, and T. A. Heslop, Art
and the Man: Archbishop Wulfstan and the York Gospelbook, Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, ed.
Townend, pp. 279-308, at 285-98, envisaging a single phase of production contemporaneous with
Eaduis work, a view which, notwithstanding debate over the script of the principal scribe, is difficult to
reconcile with the English square minuscule of fols. 10-14 (cf. M. P. Brown, review of The York
Gospels, ed. Barker, in The Book Collector 38 (1989), 551-5, at 553-5). The balance of opinion would
associate the display-script on 23r (the display page of St Matthews Gospel) with Eadui; Heslop has
advanced credible grounds for regarding the display-script on 61r (the display page of St Marks
Gospel) as the hand of Eadui, but if so, considerations of layout would imply that this work had been
executed subsequent to the main text and initial on the same page (cf. Heslop, Art and the Man, p.
287). The finding need not have any deeper implications for the chronology of construction.
304
158r, 159r and 159v: N. R. Ker, The Handwriting of Archbishop Wulfstan, England before the
Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources presented to Dorothy Whitelock, ed. P. Clemoes and K. Hughes
(Cambridge, 1971), pp. 315-31, at 330-1, cf. 318-19; Keynes, The Additions in Old English, pp. 82-3
and 92.
55
consecration of thelnoth by Wulfstan, which occurred on 13 November 1020.
305
The
volume could have been a gift from Canterbury, but as Wulfstans writ (preserved in
Lambeth 1370) reveals, the consecration was evidently of some importance, and had
been undertaken on Cnuts specific instructions: one should also note the uncertainties
over the nature of Eaduis position at this stage in his career.
306
If, moreover, Cnut had
given Royal 1. D. ix to Canterbury, there would be a further supportive context for his
gift of a gospel-book to the northern archiepiscopal see.
The case for the manuscript having been a royal gift is again strengthened by
early additions, in this case associated with Archbishop Wulfstan.
307
This does not rule
out a role which other factors may have played in encouraging the recording of
documents in gospel-books in the eleventh century, but the patterns of addition, and the
early and intensive treatment of royal documents in the Canterbury manuscripts,
suggests that the reverence accorded to gospel-books given by kings may have been a
significant factor. The additions in the York Gospels begin with three vernacular
surveys of archiepiscopal estates, at Sherburn-in-Elmet, Otley and Ripon, including
lands which are known to have been previously lost and regained; the estates appear to
have been regarded as significant to the York endowment.
308
There follow three
homiletic tracts by Wulfstan; each comprises a catena of statements which recur in
other works by Wulfstan, especially law-codes.
309
The first, entitled Sermo Lupi, should
be distinguished from Wulfstans famous Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, and focuses on the
duties of the servants of God and of all Christians, in respect of Gods law and the

305
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 1020D: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS D, ed. G. P. Cubbin, The Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle: a Collaborative Edition, ed. D. Dumville and S. Keynes 6 (Cambridge, 1996), p. 63
(text); The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: a Revised Translation, ed. D. Whitelock, with D. C. Douglas and
S. I. Tucker (London, 1961; rev. 1965), p. 98 (translation); Barr, The History of the Volume, p. 105.
306
69v: S 1386 (CantCC 150); for Eaduis career, cf. above, pp. 45-8, 51 and 53. Barr, The History of
the Volume, p. 105, suggested the scenario of a royal gift while acknowledging other possibilities; cf.
Heslop, Art and the Man, pp. 304-5, favouring a gift by Cnut and/or Emma while also acknowledging
the possibility of Canterbury patronage (cf. also Lawson, Cnut, p. 135); see also Wormald, Making of
English Law I, 195, suggesting presentation by Canterbury to Wulfstan on the occasion of his
consecrating Archbishop thelnoth in 1020.
307
Keynes, The Additions in Old English; Wormald, Making of English Law I, 195-7; S. Baxter,
Archbishop Wulfstan and the Administration of Gods Property, Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, ed.
Townend, pp. 161-205, at 179-90; Heslop, Art and the Man, pp. 282-5; E. Treharne, The Politics of
Early English, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 88.1 (Spring 2006), 101-
22, at 109-22; idem, Living through Conquest: the Politics of Early English, 1020-1220 (Oxford,
2012), pp. 22-7 and 58-68. Art and the Man
308
S 1461a (North 7); Keynes, The Additions in Old English, pp. 83-91; Baxter, Archbishop Wulfstan
and the Administration of Gods Property, pp. 179-86; Woodman, Charters of Northern Houses, pp.
63-4, 124-6, 135-6 and 143-8.
309
Keynes, The Additions in Old English, pp. 91-5; Wormald, Making of English Law I, 196; J.
Wilcox, Wulfstans Sermo Lupi ad Anglos as Political Performance, Wulfstan, Archbishop of York,
ed. Townend, pp. 375-96, at 394.
56
avoidance of sin, including treatment of the rules of Christian marriage.
310
The second,
Be hendome, opens with a pronouncement against heathen practices but then attacks
a broader range of actions contrary to Gods law; as Keynes has observed, the tract is
notable in adopting the tone of the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos in the context of Cnuts
reign.
311
The third, Be Cristendome, rehearses the duties of all Christians towards
churches, with particular reference to tithe, St Peters Pence, church-scot and other
payments.
312
Wulfstans tracts are followed by a political document of some
importance, the only surviving copy of Cnuts first letter to the English people, first
drafted in 1019 or 1020.
313
The letter probably descends from a document originally
widely circulated to the English elite, perhaps by being read out at meetings of the shire-
court.
314
The letter was in all likelihood sent during Cnuts visit to Denmark during the
winter of 1019/20, and highlighted the success of his intervention there from an English
perspective. As Elaine Treharne has emphasized, such long-distance communication by
the Danish Cnut made politically significant use of the written vernacular.
315
The
transmitted text of the letter probably represents a version redrafted by Wulfstan; it is
therefore striking, as Keynes has noted, that the strongest signs of Wulfstans style occur
in the latter part, which includes pronouncements against the killing of kin and other
bloodshed, the marrying of religious women, and the upholding of zealous Christian
observance.
316
These themes, while widely paralleled in Wulfstans writings, also bear
comparison with the content of the three preceding tracts. Cnuts letter, moveover,
commented significantly on his relations with the bishops of England, highlighting
letters sent to him by the Pope (Benedict VIII), recently brought from Rome by
Archbishop Lyfing, urging Cnut to exalt the praise of God and to uphold justice and
security.
317
In the same letter, Cnut urged his archbishops and bishops to be zealous

310
Wulfstan: Sammlung der ihm zugeschriebenen Homilien nebst Untersuchungen ber ihre Echtheit,
ed. A. S. Napier, repr. with bibliographical supplement by K. Ostheeren (Dublin, 1967), pp. 307-9 (no.
LIX); Keynes, The Additions in Old English, pp. 92-3.
311
Wulfstan, ed. Napier, pp. 309-10 (no. LX); translation available in Treharne, Living through
Conquest, p. 64. Keynes, The Additions in Old English, pp. 93-4.
312
Wulfstan, ed. Napier, pp. 310-11 (no. LXI); translation available in Treharne, Living through
Conquest, pp. 65-6.
313
Liebermann, Gesetze I, 273-5; see also Councils & Synods, pp. 435-41 (no. 61). Keynes, The
Additions in Old English, pp. 95-6; Wormald, Making of English Law I, 347-8.
314
F. E. Harmer, Anglo-Saxon Writs (Manchester, 1952), pp. 56-7; Lawson, Cnut, pp. 63-4, cf. 88 and
91.
315
Treharne, The Politics of Early English, pp. 110-19.
316
Liebermann, Gesetze I, 274-5 (chs. 14-20); Keynes, The Additions in Old English, p. 96. For the
change of voice, from first-person singular to first-person plural, in ch. 14, see Treharne, The Politics
of Early English, p. 118; idem, Living through Conquest, p. 26.
317
Liebermann, Gesetze I, 273 (ch. 3). Appointed archbishop in 1013, Lyfing had travelled to Rome,
probably in 1017/18, to collect his pallium: Brooks, Canterbury, pp. 278-9 and 288; Brooks and Kelly,
Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, p. 218. It is possible that Lyfings dealings with Benedict VIII
might have concerned this practice, the source of some controversy in this period, to judge from the
letter of protest, probably drafted by Archbishop Wulfstan, from the bishops of Britain to the Pope:
57
with regard to the rights of God (Godes gerihta) in their dioceses, and his ealdormen
to assist the bishops in this task.
318

Various considerations suggest that the collocation of these documents was of
considerable significance. As Stephen Baxter has explored, it is difficult not to see
connections between the estate-surveys, which relate to the recovery of certain lands to
the see of York, and two themes in the tracts: payments to churches, prominent in Be
Cristendome, and the rights of God, emphasized in the Sermo Lupi and Cnuts
letter.
319
As Treharne has argued, the manuscript and thematic connections between the
tracts and Cnuts letter suggest that the group represented a cogent statement by
Wulfstan on conditions in the early 1020s.
320
What needs stress is the degree of
connection between the immediate concerns, of landholding and the rights of God, and
Cnuts broader strategies of accommodation early in his reign. Thus one cornerstone of
Cnuts position, enshrined in the 1018 Oxford agreement and the law-code of the same
year drafted by Wulfstan, was his zealous observance of the laws of King Edgar;
321

significantly, the tract Be Cristendome drew ultimately on Edgars Andover code, II-III
Edgar, and the sequence of legislation inspired by it.
322
Cnuts letter, meanwhile, was a
further aspect of his beneficent actions towards the church, as prompted by Archbishop

Councils & Synods, pp. 445-7 (no. 61). Whitelock (Councils & Synods, pp. 441-5) proposed a date of c.
1020, but cf. Brooks, Canterbury, pp. 291 and 386, n. 104, suggesting composition in the late tenth or
early eleventh century. As Brooks suggests (p. 288), Lyfings belated collection of his pallium might
explain why lfwig, bishop of London, was consecrated at York in 1014. Whitelock suggested that the
question of who was to perform thelnoths consecration could have been the cause of dispute in 1020:
Councils & Synods, pp. 442-5 and 447-8; cf. also Lawson, Cnut, p. 217. As Brooks pointed out
(Canterbury, p. 386, no. 104), there is no evidence that the consecration had been disputed, and the
letter of protest did not address the issue. Yet it should be noted that, since all archbishops of
Canterbury since Plegmund (890-923) had been translated from other sees, thelnoth might have
presented a special case: Whitelock, Councils & Synods, p. 444; cf. also now Brooks and Kelly,
Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 291-20 and 1075-6.
318
Liebermann, Gesetze I, 273-4 (ch. 8). For Godes gerihta, see Harmer, Writs, p. 487.
319
Baxter, Archbishop Wulfstan and the Administration of Gods Property, pp. 187-9.
320
Treharne, Living through Conquest, pp. 66-8; cf. idem, The Politics of Early English, pp. 110-19.
Baxter, Archbishop Wulfstan and the Administration of Gods Property, p. 189, has suggested that the
tracts and Cnuts letter may not have been added to the manuscript at the same time. This might be
suggested by the fact that the corrections in Wulfstans hand are restricted to the tracts, and do not
extend to Cnuts letter. Both the tracts and Cnuts letter are, however, the work of the same scribe, and
the mise en page of Cnuts letter has a number of correspondences with that of the tracts: see Wormald,
Making of English Law I, 196-7; also Treharne, Living through Conquest, pp. 66-7. In all likelihood,
the outer chronological limits for the writing of these items are 1020 (consecration of theloth and
latest possible date for sending of Cnuts letter) and May 1023 (death of Wulfstan): see Keynes, The
Additions in Old English, p. 83.
321
D. Whitelock, Wulfstan and the Laws of Cnut, EHR 63 (1948), 433-52; P. Stafford, The Laws of
Cnut and the History of Anglo-Saxon Royal Promises, ASE 10 (1982), 173-90, esp. 173-6; A. G.
Kennedy, Cnuts Law Code of 1018, ASE 11 (1983), 57-81; Lawson, Cnut, pp. 20 and 53; Wormald,
Making of English Law I, 129-33, 346-7 and 463-4.
322
Baxter, Archbishop Wulfstan and the Administration of Gods Property, p. 188, cf. 186-7; Keynes,
The Additions in Old English, pp. 94-5.
58
Lyfing; the letter too made appeal to Edgars laws and the Oxford agreement.
323
Seen in
this light, the combination of documents added to the York Gospels amounted to a
symbolic statement of Cnuts rapid accommodation with the English ecclesiastical
establishment, spelling out the implications of rule in the manner of King Edgar, both
from a York perspective and from that of the wider church. The parallel with the
entering of documents in Christ Church gospel-books is striking, and might even
suggest knowledge on Wulfstans part of one or other of the Canterbury books. At the
very least, the ceremonial role accorded to a gospel-book in the ordination of bishops
seems likely to be relevant here, and might help to explain the contexts in which
thelnoths consecration was remembered.
324
Unfortunately one can only speculate
which gospel-book, of the various books then available at Canterbury and York, might
have been used by Wulfstan in thelnoths case.

The Grimbald Gospels

One further book which may be viewed in the same light is London, British Library,
Additional 34890, known as the Grimbald Gospels.
325
The book is among the most
lavish of the de luxe gospel-books, written entirely by Eadui and with decoration
incorporating silver and gold, with a late eleventh-century provenance of the New
Minster, Winchester. Strongly associated with the West Saxon dynasty, the house
benefited at an early stage from favourable actions by Cnut.
326
According to a charter
issued at Easter 1019, the king had previously been misled by a youth of Winchester
into believing that he had the power to grant an estate of five hides at Drayton,
Hampshire, but by the terms of the charter the estate was restored to the New Minster,
and other charters annulled.
327
Cnuts generosity extended to the gift of a large gold
cross of considerable value, probably inset with precious stones and relics.
328
This gift
was duly celebrated in the portrait-page (6r) of the New Minster Liber Vitae, the new
confraternity book constructed c. 1031 under Abbot lfwine (1031-57).
329
The

323
Liebermann, Gesetze I, 274 (ch. 13); see Keynes, The Additions in Old English, p. 96, n. 71;
Wormald, Making of English Law I, 347-8.
324
Cf. above, p. 39.
325
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 290; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp. 86-7 (no. 68); Golden Age, ed.
Backhouse et al., p. 72 (no. 55); McKendrick, Lowden and Doyle, Royal Manuscripts, pp. 14-15 (no.
10); Dumville, On the Dating, pp. 44-5.
326
Keynes, The Liber Vitae of the New Minster, pp. 34-7; Lawson, Cnut, p. 154
327
S 956 (WinchNM 33), with English Historical Documents, ed. Whitelock, pp. 599-601 (no. 132),
which survives in its original form: Winchester, Winchester College Muniments 12093, reproduced in
OSFacs. ii, Winchester College, 4.
328
Heslop, Production of de luxe Manuscripts, pp. 157 and 187; Keynes, The Liber Vitae of the New
Minster, pp. 35-7; Lawson, Cnut, pp. 133-5.
329
London, British Library, Stowe 944, fols. 6-61: Gneuss, Handlist, no. 500; Ker, Catalogue, pp. 338-
40 (no. 274); Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp. 95-6 (no. 78); Golden Age, ed. Backhouse et al.,
59
depiction of Cnut, prominently paired with Emma, consciously evoked that of King
Edgar (2v) in the New Minster Refoundation Charter, presenting a potent image of
continuity under Cnuts rule.
330
It would not be surprising, then, if Cnut had further
sealed his relationship to the New Minster by the gift of a magnificent gospel-book.
In this case, too, one may point to added material: in the late eleventh century,
the codex received a copy of the letter from Fulk, archbishop of Rheims, to King Alfred,
recommending Grimbald to his service (c. 886).
331
The significance of this letter should
not be under-estimated, since Grimbald (d. 901) was remembered as a saint of great
importance for the New Minster community, and regarded, probably from the later tenth
century, as having played a central role in the houses founding under Edward the
Elder.
332
Yet Fulks letter does not appear to have been previously known in a
Winchester context, and its copying in Additional 34890 may have reflected the New
Minster communitys belated knowledge of a source central to the understanding of

p. 78 (no. 62); Keynes, The Liber Vitae of the New Minster, esp. pp. 37-9 and 79-80; McKendrick,
Lowden and Doyle, Royal Manuscripts, pp. 110-11 (no. 8).
330
London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian A. viii, fols. 1-33 (Winchester, 966): Gneuss, Handlist, no.
70; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, p. 44 (no. 16); Golden Age, ed. Backhouse et al., p. 47 (no. 26);
McKendrick, Lowden and Doyle, Royal Manuscripts, pp. 104-5 (no. 5). Keynes, The Liber Vitae of the
New Minster, pp. 38-9 and 79-80, with references; Karkov, Ruler Portraits, pp. 119-56, cf. 85-93;
idem, Emma: Image and Ideology, pp. 513-15. For Emmas generosity to the Winchester male houses
after Cnuts death, see Heslop, Production of de luxe Manuscripts, pp. 157-8 and 186-8; Keynes, The
Liber Vitae of the New Minster, pp. 40-1; L. Jones, Emmas Greek Scrine, Early Medieval Studies, ed.
Baxter et al., pp. 499-507.
331
158r-160v: Councils & Synods, pp. 7-12 (no. 4); English Historical Documents, ed. Whitelock, pp.
883-6 (no. 223); Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 182-6. The same scribe also added copies of two
post-Conquest charters relating to Riwallon, abbot of the New Minster (1072-88), to the New Minster
Liber Vitae, British Library, Stowe 944, 41r and 59r: see Keynes, The Liber Vitae of the New Minster,
pp. 101-2 and 106; Dumville, On the Dating, pp. 44-5; cf. Gameson, The Colophon of the Eadwig
Gospels, p. 203, n. 15, suggesting a date of s. xii
in
. I am most grateful to Tessa Webber for affirming to
me her view that the hand, showing strong signs of the influence of Mont St-Michel practices, may be
dated with some confidence to s. xi
4/4
. For a broader post-Conquest context for the scribes actions, see
Faulkner, The Uses of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts c. 1066-1200, p. 176, n. 165, cf. pp. 172-7,
comparing the copying of letters in the flyleaves of manuscripts, some of pre-Conquest origin; see also
pp. 155-62), arguing that records copied into pre-Conquest gospel-books accrued a special type of
symbolic capital arising from the antiquity of the host manuscript (p. 156). For Fulks letter, see
Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 331-3; J. L. Nelson, ...sicut olim gens Francorum...nunc gens
Anglorum: Fulks Letter to Alfred Revisited, in her Rulers and Ruling Families, no. V, pp. 141-58;
Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 25, 51-2, 57-8, 148, 167, 211, 219, 223 and 226-8.
332
See P. Grierson, Grimbald of St Bertins, EHR 55 (1940), 529-61; M. Lapidge, Grimbald of Saint-
Bertin, The Blackwell Encyclopaedia, ed. Lapidge et al.. This view is dependent on liturgical lections
for St Grimbald, preserved in the fourteenth-century Breviary of Hyde Abbey, which appear to derive
from a now-lost Vita of Grimbald written in the second half of the tenth century; and an account of the
early history of the New Minster, seemingly composed in the late tenth century, preserved in the New
Minster Liber Vitae, British Library, Stowe 944, 8r-12v: see Keynes, The Liber Vitae of the New
Minster, pp. 81-2, cf. 16-18, for Grimbalds monasteriolum in Winchester as a possible forerunner to
the New Minster. It should be noted that the account in the Liber Vitae is not consistent in various
respects with the lost Vita.
60
Grimbalds career.
333
Moreover, the letter attested to the West Saxon tradition of
learned kingship, which Cnut himself had been presented as extending. Fulks letter was
thus a muniment of immense importance, and appears to have contributed to the further
development of Grimbalds cult in the later middle ages at Hyde Abbey, where the
house relocated in 1110.
334
The entering of the letter in Additional 34890 suggests that
the volume had, in the manner of the various gospel-books at Christ Church, and the
York Gospels at York, special status for the community and its memory.

Royal strategy in the giving of books by King Cnut

Overall, this phase of gospel-book donation under Cnut seems to have been closely
connected with Cnuts early efforts to stabilize his rule in the aftermath of conquest.
Particularly pertinent was Cnuts shrewd use of his marriage to Emma, as thelreds
widow, in 1017, and his careful cultivation of relations with leading churches of the
kingdom.
335
Book-giving here involved the conscious emulation of thelstan and other
kings of the West Saxon dynasty, and also the native English production of de luxe
books, of the highest possible standard, in what appears to have been an early and rapid
burst of royal largesse. Cnuts strategy probably also owed some direct inspiration to his
German contemporaries Henry II (1002-24) and Conrad II (1024-39), both associated
with the gift of de luxe manuscripts.
336
The former had an extensive book collection,

333
Neither the account in the Liber Vitae nor the lost Vita shows knowledge of Fulks letter. Without
considering the implications of Additional 34890, Grierson (Grimbald of St Bertins, pp. 548 and
559-60) suggested that Fulks letter had only become known at Winchester in the twelfth century.
334
For a second Vita of Grimbald, seemingly composed 1131 x 1141, also now lost, see Grierson,
Grimbald of St Bertins, pp. 531-8. For the Aa group of manuscripts of William of Malmesburys
Gesta regum, which preserve an interpolation relating to Grimbald apparently derived from the Vita
prima, see Mynors, Thomson and Winterbottom, William of Malmesbury: Gesta Regum Anglorum I,
835-6 and II, 99-100, cf. Grierson, Grimbald of St Bertins, pp. 559-60; the Aa group probably
derives from a now-lost Winchester exemplar. For twelfth-century references to the church or
monastery of St Grimbald, referring to the New Minster/Hyde community, see Keynes, The Liber
Vitae of the New Minster, pp. 35 and 43, cf. 105, for Grimbalds relics.
335
Lawson, Cnut, pp. 81-9, cf. 117-60; Gerchow, Prayers for King Cnut, pp. 221, 223-4 annd 235-8;
Keynes, The Liber Vitae of the New Minster, pp. 34-5; P. Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, pp.
226-33.
336
For contact and interaction with Germany as a relevant source of inspiration in this period, see
Deshman, Christus Rex et Magi Reges; Leyser, The Ottonians and Wessex; Lawson, Cnut, pp. 121
and 136-8; Gerchow, Prayers for King Cnut, pp. 225-30; cf. A. S. Cohen, The Uta Codex: Art,
Philosophy and Reform in Eleventh-Century Germany (University Park, PA, 2000), pp. 150-5, for the
influence on German illumination of Anglo-Saxon models, including de luxe manuscripts then imported
from England. Cf. also Gameson, Book Decoration, p. 275, suggesting a contrast in the scale of royal
patronage, after 939, between England and Germany; cf. also Hoffmann, Buchkunst I, 23-4. For an
interpretation of Henry IIs patronage focusing on relations with Aachen and Bamberg, see Garrison,
Ottonian Imperial Art, pp. 87-171. For books owned and/or given by Henry II, see Schramm and
Mtherich, Denkmale, pp. 155-62, 164-5, 167-8 and 484-6 (nos. 108, 110-18, 121-8, 135-6 and 141-2);
Wollasch, Kaiser und Knige, pp. 4 and 12-14; Mtherich, The Library of Otto III; Mayr-Harting,
Ottonian Book Illumination I, 66-7 and 179-201, and II, 11-24; G. Suckale-Redlefsen, Prachtvolle
61
having taken possession of the books of Otto III, and gave generously to the churches of
Bamberg, Regensburg (St-Emmeram) and Monte Cassino.
337
Many of these gifts were
books recently commissioned by Henry from ecclesiastical ateliers, decorated with
dedicatory images and inscriptions influenced by Carolingian models; others were of
ninth- and tenth-century origin.
338
As M. K. Lawson has observed, the Christ-centred
nature of Ottonian and Salian ruler-depiction provides a further context for Cnuts
various pious actions.
339
Moreover, in addition to his gifts to St-Aignan, Orlans, the
West Frankish king Robert the Pious gave Henry II a gospel book decorated with gold
and precious stones in 1023,
340
and is known to have commissioned a sumptuous
gospel-lectionary, Paris, Bibliothque Nationale de France, lat. 1126, illustrated by an
imported Lombard scribe.
341
Cnuts gifts abroadto Scandinavia, Germany and West

Bcher zur Zierde der Kirchen, Kaiser Heinrich II. 1002-1024, ed. J. Kirmeier, B. Schneidmller, S
Weinfurter and E. Brockhoff (Augsburg, 2002), pp. 52-77. For Conrad II, see Schramm and Mtherich,
Denkmale, pp. 170-1 and 486 (no. 148); Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination II, 187; cf.
Wollasch, Kaiser und Knige, p. 13.
337
Schramm and Mtherich, Denkmale, pp. 155-9, 161-2, 165 and 484-5 (nos. 108, 110, 115-18, 122-4,
126-8 and 136: books with Bamberg provenance, presumed to have reached the see by gift in or after
1007, or by bequest); pp. 157-8 and 484-5 (nos. 111 and 114: early Regensburg provenance); pp. 167
and 486 (no. 141: early Monte Cassino provenance), cf. Wollasch, Kaiser und Knige, pp. 12-13.
338
Schramm and Mtherich, Denkmale, pp. 156-9, 161, 165, 167-8 and 484-6 (nos. 110-12, 114-18,
123-4, 136 and 142: contemporaneous production); pp. 155-6, 158, 161-2 and 484-5 (nos. 108, 113,
125, 127 and 128: books of ninth- or tenth-century origin). For Henrys re-use of older manuscripts as a
form of spolia, see Garrison, Ottonian Imperial Art, pp. 124-55 and 165-71. The interaction with
Carolingian models is exemplified by the reverence accorded to Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek,
Clm 14000 (Codex Aureus of St Emmeram; court school of Charles the Bald, 870), the gospel book
produced under the patronage of Charles the Bald, which had been present at Regensburg since s. ix
ex
.
The volume received restoration work in s. x
4/4
under Abbot Ramwold, and was a major source of
inspiration for Regensburg artists, the depiction of Charles the Bald (5v) providing a model for the
enthroned representation of Henry II (11v) in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 4456
(Sacramentary of Henry II, Regensbury, 1002 x 1014): Schramm and Mtherich, Denkmale, pp. 134-
5, 157, 480 and 484 (nos. 52 and 111); Hoffmann, Buchkunst I, 293-4. See W. J. Diebold, The Anxiety
of Influence in Early Medieval Art? The Codex Aureus of Charles the Bald in Ottonian Regensburg,
Under the Influence: the Concept of Influence and the Study of Illuminated Manuscripts, ed. J. Lowden
and A. Bovey (Turnhout, 2007), pp. 51-64; Suckale-Redlefsen, Prachtvolle Bcher, pp. 57-60;
Garrison, Ottonian Imperial Art and Portraiture, pp. 138-55. For other aspects of the Carolingian
volumes influence, see K. Hoffmann, Das Herrscherbild im Evangeliar Ottos III (clm 4453), FS 7
(1973), 324-41 and plates XXI-XXXII, at 324 and 328-9; Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination I,
61-2 and 160, and II, 99 and 150-1; Cohen, The Uta Codex, pp. 138-57. These images of enthroned
male rulers provide an important context for the prefatory image of Emma in the principal manuscript
of the Encomium Emmae reginae: see above, p. 25.
339
Lawson, Cnut, pp. 121 and 136-8, cf. 134. Cf. also Deshman, Christus Rex et Magi Reges, pp. 151-
9 Gerchow, Prayers for King Cnut, pp. 225-30; Keynes, The Liber Vitae of the New Minster, pp. 36-
7.
340
Wollasch, Kaiser und Knige, p. 14; Hoffmann, Buchkunst I, 15. For the suggestion that Paris,
Bibliothque Nationale de France, lat. 8851 (Sainte-Chapelle Gospels: Trier, s. x
ex
; given to La
Sainte-Chapelle, Paris, by Charles V of France in 1379) may have reached West Frankish royal hands
as the gift of a German emperor in s. xi
1/2
, see C. Nordenfalk, Miniature ottonienne et ateliers
captiens, Art de France 4 (1964), 44-59, at 47-8.; cf. Schramm and Mtherich, Denkmale, pp. 148
and 482-3 (no. 83); Hoffmann, Buchkunst I, 483.
341
Gaignires Gospels; the book was a royal gift to Fleury, where it had been produced. R. Recht, The
Carolingian Empire and its Legacy, The Grand Atelier: Pathways of Art in Europe, 5th-18th
62
Franciareinforced his new-found status on a international stage, namely, his
membership of a wider group of European rulers charged with Frankish-style
ecclesiastical leadership.
Cnuts gifts to English churches must be seen in the continuing context of
liturgical commemoration in respect of English kings. The earlier royal programmes of
commemoration may well have continued, while Cnuts personal confraternity was
prominently recorded at Christ Church, Canterbury, and the New Minster.
342
Yet the
book-giving was also entwined with Cnuts more specific dealings with the English
church on his assumption of power. At the forefront was a strategy of beneficence
towards the landholding of certain churches, previously under pressure due to problems
of expropriation and high taxation in the latter part of thelreds reign: a strategy
seemingly encouraged by Archbishop Lyfing.
343
A second focus was the appointment of
thelnoth as Lyfings successor in 1020. Probably the son of thelmr, the south-
western ealdorman in the latter part of thelreds reign, and thus grandson of the
historian thelweard, thelnoth represented a favourable choice for Christ Church
since he was a monk and dean of the community.
344
The appointment gave Cnut the
opportunity to bolster his relationship with the southern archiepiscopal see; this in turn
connected with efforts at Christ Church to assert the monastic identity of the community
and the houses possession of a range of privileges. A third dimension was the securing
of close relations with Wulfstan, archbishop of York, representing an important element
of political and intellectual continuity from thelreds rule.
345
Cnuts letter to the
English, as preserved by Wulfstan, emphasized the new kings commitment to uphold
the rights of God. Fourthly, Cnuts gifts invoked the deeper West Saxon tradition of
generosity to the church, encapsulated by the memory of thelstan and Edgar. This was
symbolized, above all, by the generosity to Christ Church and the New Minster, but
Cnut and Emma are known to have given rich treasures and relics to a wide range of

Centuries, ed. R. Recht, with C. Prier-dIeteren and P. Griener (Brussels, 2007), pp. 76-97, at 82-3,
with 272-3 (no. II.29); Nordenfalk, Miniature ottonienne et ateliers captiens, pp. 49-53; Hoffmann,
Buchkunst I, 51-2; Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination I, 53.
342
For Christ Church, Canterbury, see above, pp. 51 and 53; for the New Minster, see Gerchow, Prayers
for King Cnut, pp. 222-35; Keynes, The Liber Vitae of the New Minster, pp. 35-7 and 79-80. Cf.
Keynes, An Abbot, an Archbishop, pp. 180-9, for recent use of liturgical commemoration under
thelred.
343
Brooks, Canterbury, pp. 287-90; Lawson, Cnut, pp. 126-9; Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ
Church, Canterbury, pp. 218-19; cf. also Keynes, The Liber Vitae of the New Minster, pp. 34-5.
344
Brooks, Canterbury, pp. 290-5, cf. 278-9; Lawson, Cnut, pp. 148-9l; Brooks and Kelly, Charters of
Christ Church, Canterbury, p. 219.
345
Lawson, Cnut, pp. 61-3, 88-9, 126, 128-9, 135 and 139; D. Whitelock, Archbishop Wulfstan:
Homilist and Statesman, TRHS 4th ser. 24 (1942), 25-45; P. Wormald, Archbishop Wulfstan:
Eleventh-Century State-Builder, Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, ed. Townend, pp. 9-27.
63
English churches.
346
Some of the other de luxe manuscripts of the age might well have
been connected with this context.


CONCLUSIONS

One may conclude by observing the need to integrate all available evidence for royal
book ownership, in particular by comparing surviving books with what is known to
have been lost, and by taking account of misleading silences in particular categories of
eidence. When taken as a whole, the evidence is considerable for book ownership and
for close interaction with books by later Anglo-Saxon kings and their families. The
practice was fundamentally reliant on the royal household, as a place of learning and
education also intimately associated with the production of charters and other
documents. Indeed, a strong case can be made for a continuous tradition of personal
learning within the West Saxon royal dynasty, extending from the mid ninth century to
the eve of the Norman Conquest, and including the period of Anglo-Danish rule.
Linguistically, the education of members of the dynasty involved a considerable role for
the vernacular, but also, at the very least, the comprehension of simple Latin texts in
such areas as the liturgy and private prayer. In general, one would not expect vernacular
books in royal ownership to have survived, but it remains striking to note the pious
contexts suggested by the surviving books most strongly associated with leading
members of the royal dynasty: namely, the Book of Nunnaminster, probably owned by
Alfreds wife, Ealhswith; and two pocket gospel-books, Bern 671, which it is tempting
to associate with Alfred; and Lambeth Palace 1370, certainly given and quite possibly
owned by thelstan. One might also compare Bodley Lat. liturg. f. 5, the gospel-
lectionary owned by Queen Margaret. Crucially, these practices were part of a wider lay
tradition, as suggested in particular by the careers of bishop thelwold and ealdorman

346
Heslop, Production of de luxe Manuscripts, pp. 156-8 and 182-8; Lawson, Cnut, pp. 135-8.
Comparison might be made with London, British Library, Harley 76 (Bury Gospels: southern
England, s. xi; provenance Bury St Edmunds s. xi
ex
), conventionally assigned to the third or fourth
decades of s. xi, and sometimes seen as relating to Christ Church production and the group of
manuscripts associated with Eadui: Gneuss, Handlist, no. 76; Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, p. 93
(no. 75); see esp. Heslop, Production of de luxe Manuscripts, pp. 153, 172, 175 and 182; Gameson,
Manuscript Art at Christ Church, Canterbury, pp. 207-8 and 211-13; Lawson, Cnut, p. 146. At the end
of s. xi, the gospel-book was at Bury and received copies of documents relating to the abbeys
resistance to episcopal control (137v-141r), including a forged bilingual charter of privileges in the
name of Cnut (S 980). In a detailed study of the manuscript, however, Rebecca Rushforth has made a
convincing case for its production at Bury s. xi
med
: R. Rushforth, The Eleventh- and Early Twelfth-
Century Manuscripts of Bury St Edmunds Abbey, 2 vols. (unpubl. PhD dissertation, Univ. of
Cambridge, 2002) I, 146-58, cf. I, 28-30 for the additions. For these documents and other records added
to books at Bury in the post-Conquest period, see also Faulkner, The Uses of Anglo-Saxon
Manuscripts c. 1066-1200, pp. 159-68 and 170-1; R. Rushforth, The Bury Psalter and the
Descendants of Edward the Exile, ASE 34 (2005), 255-61.
64
thelweard, by the variety of lay contexts indicated for the reception of vernacular
literature in the late Anglo-Saxon period, and by the striking examples of books
bequeathed or owned by members of the lay elite.
The giving of books by kings to religious houses was not an isolated practice but
closely connected to the personal learning of the dynasty. Indeed, one may discern a
continuous tradition of royal book-giving in the later Anglo-Saxon period. In the
thelstan inscriptions and the use of gospel-books by Cnut, the practices of later kings
consciously evoked the gifts given by their predecessors. Behind the two later phases lay
Alfreds seminal actions in distributing copies of the translation of the Regula
pastoralis. In the Alfredian prefaces, the thelstan inscriptions, and, in the case of
Cnut, quite possibly features of the book covers as well as certain qualities of the script
and decoration, one may observe markers identifying books as royal in origin, forming
a specifically royal form of culture then disseminated to the kingdom at large. In
addition to these well documented examples, gifts are also recorded for King Edmund
and King Edgar, suggesting a common form of royal practice. A further uniting feature
was the inclusion of work by royal scribes, strongly suspected in the dissemination of
the translation of the Regula pastoralis, in the thelstan inscriptions, and perhaps even
the acrostics in Bern 671; uncertainties over Eaduis career raise this possibility for
Cnuts case also. The likely contribution of royal scribes provides important evidence
for a degree of intersection between donated books and the royal household. Some
books may well have spent a significant period in royal ownership prior to their
donation, the most suggestive cases being Lambeth 1370, Claudius B. v and Tiberius A.
ii among those given by thelstan, and also the Bern gospel-book, if this too had been
gifted. There is the likelihood of some books being retained in the royal household
across several reigns, though this cannot be conclusively demonstrated; by the same
token, the overall corpus of donated books is unlikely to be representative of books in
royal possession.
The priorities at work in donation are well illustrated by the predominance of
gospel-books, the giving of which had specific associations with kingship, informed by
Carolingian precedents. The subsequent treatment of these volumes suggests that they
held special importance in the eyes of their owners, a numinous quality arising from the
memory of royal donation, which transcended merely physical features of their
construction and decoration. As a sign of the rulers good will towards the recipient
institution, and a symbolic focus for collective memory, the royally given gospel-book
had links with practices of royal liturgical commemoration, also promoted by kings in
the later Anglo-Saxon period; these would have been strengthened if, as seems likely,
such books were physically used within the Mass or in the ordination of bishops. The
most intensive phases of donation, under thelstan and Cnut, appear to have been
65
driven by contemporary political circumstances; both reigns involved contexts of
conquest and consolidation, which placed a premium on the relationship between the
king and the English church, and on the cultivation of favourable relations with
important houses. The giving of gospel-books enabled the expression of claims to
ecclesiastical leadership on the part of the royal donor, involving considerable emulation
of Carolingian patterns and the model of Charlemagne. The posturing had external
dimensions: in giving gifts to churches and rulers abroad, thelstan and Cnut were
engaging in the international display of Frankish-style ecclesiastical leadership.
Audiences included other European rulers pursuing similar strategies of gift and
expression; for thelstan and Cnut, such gifts were a means of reinforcing their prestige
in the post-Carolingian west.
Yet the most important audiences for gift-giving were probably internal, an
interpretation supported by the subsequent reverence shown to royal gospel-books by
their recipients. The practice, emerging in the later Anglo-Saxon period, of entering
documents in gospel-books was probably encouraged by the availability of gospel-books
given by kings. The adding of documents at Christ Church under Archbishop thelnoth
forms a striking link between the gospel-books given to the house by thelstan, namely,
Lambeth 1370 and Tiberius A. ii, and the gospel-book plausibly associated with Cnuts
patronage, Royal 1. D. ix. There are, moreover, further parallels in the adding of
documents to related gospel-books at York and the New Minster, a pattern which
strengthens the case for regarding Royal 1. D. ix, the York Gospels and Grimbald
Gospels as royal gifts. More broadly, the adding of documents also provides strong
evidence for the numinous quality of such royal gifts: namely, that gospel-books
received from kings were regarded, by implication because of their origins, as an
appropriate repository for documents central to the communitys landholding and
memory. The aim was probably not simply that of preserving documentation but rather
endowing it with further spiritual protection; the entering of important documents also
celebrated the special relationship with the king which, through the gift, the community
appeared to have secured. At Christ Church there may have been a direct link with
Cnuts act of depositing freolsas on the churchs altar: the entering of documents here
provided further spiritual testimony of the communitys rights and kings good will.
Across the various contexts which have been identified for royal books, finally,
one may observe the public nature of book use in the royal environment. This extended
beyond what were probably, as in the Chester-le-Street case, elaborate ceremonies of
book donation to the more intimate rituals of the royal household, involving the reading
aloud of vernacular books to court audiences, and the probably conspicuous disciplines
of private prayer. The public nature of book use is further evident in the wider emulation
of certain royal practices by the secular aristocracy, such as the owning and giving of
66
books, and in thelweards case, the patronage and even composition of literary texts;
such emulation extended to the donation of gospel-books by the secular elite by the last
generation before the Norman Conquest. Books in Anglo-Saxon England were valuable,
and valued, partly because they had the capacity to send complex and powerful
messages. The patterns here analysed indicate that, from the ninth century onwards, this
potential was intensively exploited by kings, in ways which had a profound effect on
late Anglo-Saxon elite culture, on the relationship between kings and the English
church, and on many aspects of lay aristocratic life.