Copyright

By

Christopher Charles LeCluyse

2002
 The Dissertation Committee for Christopher Charles LeCluyse
Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation:

Sacred Bilingualism: Code Switching in Medieval English Verse

Committee:

___________________________
Mary Blockley, Supervisor

___________________________
Thomas M. Cable

___________________________
Mark R. V. Southern

___________________________
Almeida Jacqueline Toribio

___________________________
Marjorie Curry Woods
Sacred Bilingualism: Code Switching in Medieval English Verse

by

Christopher Charles LeCluyse, B.A., M.A.

Dissertation

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of

the University of Texas at Austin

in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements

for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

The University of Texas at Austin

May 2002
 UMI Number: 3114768

Copyright 2002 by
LeCluyse, Christopher Charles

All rights reserved.

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 Sacred Bilingualism: Code Switching In Medieval English Verse

Publication No. ____________

Christopher Charles LeCluyse, Ph.D.

The University of Texas at Austin, 2002

Supervisor: Mary Blockley

Throughout the Middle Ages, English poets produced works alternating English

and Latin, a practice known as code switching. Studying how these macaronic poems

integrate languages reveals the practices and values of medieval bilinguals in ways

that monolingual texts cannot. This study examines bilingual verse from linguistic,

literary, and social perspectives, demonstrating how linguistic alternation functioned

within sentences, texts, and communities.

Starting with three Anglo-Saxon poems that alternate Old English and Latin,

this study characterizes code switches within a generative syntactic framework. Only

three switches in the Anglo-Saxon poems violate the Functional Head Constraint

(FHC), which stipulates that functional elements and their complements should share

the same language and that code-switched constituents must occupy positions

sanctioned by both languages. These ungrammatical switches generally occur when

poetic factors displace the complement of a functional head. Code switching allowed

Anglo-Saxon poets to evoke the origins of neighboring texts and to emulate liturgical

works introduced during the prestigious Benedictine Reform.

iv
 After the Conquest, macaronic poetry became especially popular during the

fifteenth- and sixteenth centuries in the form of bilingual carols. More than two-

hundred such carols can be classified into twelve types according to the degree to

which they integrate English and Latin. In most cases, poetic conventions actually

encourage grammaticality by confining code switches to line boundaries. As in the

Anglo-Saxon poems, the sixteen ungrammatical switches in the carols typically occur

when poetic constraints override linguistic ones. Comparing code switches in carols from

the Middle- and Early Modern English periods demonstrates writers’ increasing

preference for overtly connecting ideas on the model of Latin and French texts.

Performing and transmitting these carols helped form a distinctly bilingual

community that persisted even as the Reformation radically altered its membership.

Despite these sweeping changes, the inherently public and social nature of carol

performance remained an ideal means for bilinguals to reify their identity, in part by

representing sacred figures as bilinguals like themselves. The combined methodologies

exhibited here thus lay the groundwork for future studies of code switching in medieval

texts as both a mark of social identity and a means of language change.

v
 Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: Code Switching in Anglo-Saxon Poetry 7

1.1 Anglo-Saxon Macaronic Poems 7

1.1.1 “The Phoenix” 9
1.1.2 “A Summons to Prayer” 12
1.1.3 “Aldhelm” 14
1.2 Grammatical Conditions on Code Switching 17
1.2.1 Kinds of Language Mixing: Borrowing, Insertion, and Alternation 17
1.2.2 The Functional Head Constraint 22
1.3 Code Switch Sites in Anglo-Saxon Macaronic Poems 25
1.3.1 Grammatical Code Switches 29
1.3.2 Ungrammatical Code Switches 31
1.4 Code Switching as an Indicator of Latin Competence 40

Chapter 2: Textual and Social Motivations for Code Switching in 42

Anglo-Saxon Macaronic Poetry

2.1 Code Switching to Evoke Textual and Authorial Sources 43

2.2 Code Switching to Evoke the Liturgy 52
2.2.1 The Macaronic Poems as Products of the Benedictine Reform 54
2.2.2 Correspondences Between the Macaronic Poems and Tropes 55
2.2.3 Correspondences Between the Macaronic Poems and Hymns 70

Chapter 3: Macaronic English Carols: Sources and Structure 78

3.1 Multilingual Poetry After the Norman Conquest 78

3.2 The Macaronic English Carol 82
3.2.1 Provenances of Manuscripts Containing Macaronic Carols 85
3.3 Categorizing Carols According to Degree of Language Alternation 89
3.3.1 Type A: Isolated Latin Borrowings 91
3.3.2 Type B: Single Latin Line or Latin Throughout a Single Stanza 92
3.3.3 Type C: Latin and English Burden in an Otherwise English Carol 93
3.3.4 Type D: Latin Burden, One Line Repeated as a Cauda 95
3.3.5 Type E: Latin and English Burden, Latin Line Repeated as a Cauda 96
3.3.6 Type F: English Burden, Varying Latin Caudae 97
vi
 3.3.7 Type G: Latin Burden, Varying Latin Caudae 98
3.3.8 Type H: Latin and English Burden, Varying Latin Caudae 99
3.3.9 Type I: Latin Burden, Two Latin Lines per Stanza 101
3.3.10 Type J: Latin and English Burden, Two Latin Lines per Stanza 103
3.3.11 Type K: Latin Burden, Three or More Latin Lines per Stanza 105
3.3.12 Type L: Latin and English Burden, Three or More Latin Lines 107
per Stanza

Chapter 4: Code Switching in Medieval English Carols 112

4.1 Distinguishing Borrowing from Code Switching: The Problem of 112

“High-Reference” Phrases
4.2 Poetic Influences on Grammaticality 116
4.3 Ungrammatical Switches in the Carols 119
4.3.1 After a Determiner 120
4.3.2 After a Complementizer 122
4.3.3 After Modals 122
4.3.4 After Coordinating Conjunctions 124
4.4 Code Switch Sites in Carols of Types F through L 127
4.5 Stylistic Motivations for Code Switching Differences in the Carols 135

Chapter 5: Macaronic Carols in a Community of Practice 140

5.1 Caroling as a Practice 142

5.2 Carols in Community 154
5.2.1 Textual Communities as Communities of Practice 156
5.3 Membership in the Bilingual Caroling Community 158
5.3.1 Carolers Inside and on the Periphery: The Problem of Lay Literacy 159
5.3.2 The Community of Bilingual Carolers during the Reformation 164
5.4 Reifying Bilingualism in the Carols 168

Implications for Further Study 176

Appendix: Macaronic Carols by Type 179

Bibliography 180

Vita 194

vii
 Introduction

The canon of English literature has long been a monolingual affair, bounded and

stocked by works written entirely in English, be it Old, Middle, or Modern. Although

historians of the language have from the beginning admitted the influence of other

languages on English (particularly Latin, Norman and Franconian French, and Old

Norse), literary scholars have been slow to study works that bring together the various

languages used on the isle of Britain. Those works that combine languages broadly

labeled macaronic have often been rejected as neither fish nor fowl, unsuitable for

inclusion in the canons of either Latin or vernacular texts

This trend seems to be gradually changing for prose works of the later Middle

Ages. Medievalists have paid increasing attention to texts from the thirteenth through

sixteenth centuries that combine English and Latin: medical texts in Linda Voigts s

work, legal and business documents in Laura Wright s, and sermons in Sigfried

1
In this study I use macaronic neutrally to denote works that include words from more than one
language, with none of the disparagement connoted in the word s early usage. The term macaronic
was coined by Teofilo Folengo (1491—1544) to describe Latin poetry that incorporated Italian words
with Latin inflections (Wehrle vii). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Folengo was most
likely citing the title of Tifi Odasi s Macaroneae (c. 1490). Both of these authors equated the mixture
of languages in their works with doughy foodstuffs: Odasi called his poetry gnoccolosa (gnocchi-like),
and Folengo explained in the second edition of his Liber macaronices (1521) that the name of the style
came from macaroni, quoddam pulmentum farina, caseo, botiro compaginatum, grossum, rude, et
rusticanum (a certain pottage made from flour, cheese, and butter thick, crude, and rustic)
( macaronic ). In keeping with the qualities he ascribed to this dish, Folengo stipulated that the
sentiments [of such poems] must be gross, vulgar, and obscene (Wehrle xi). Although in time the
term macaronic came to be applied to works of all sentiments, involving any juxtaposition of
languages, the negative connotations of the word persisted in the usage of some critics. Wenzel
summarizes the derivation of the term macaronic and briefly summarizes examples of macaronic
English poetry before contrasting them with the macaronic sermons of his own study (1—12). Wehrle
recounts writers and critics application of the term from the sixteenth through the early twentieth
centuries (xi—xxxvii).
1
Wenzel s. 2 Each of these studies has turned up an impressive number of multilingual

documents enough, according to Wright, to challenge the traditional notion that the

standardization of English occurred in a monolingual vacuum, free from the influence

of Latin and French. Most of these studies introduce the linguistic phenomenon of

code switching, a bilingual speaker s alternation between languages in the same

utterance. They generally use that term only in its broadest sociolinguistic sense,

however: none look at the syntax of code switching as described in an ever-growing

number of linguistic studies.3

Moreover, while some scholars of later macaronic texts acknowledge bilingual

poems from Anglo-Saxon England, the last lengthy study to address the combination

of languages in works from the Old, Middle, and Early Modern English periods was

William Otto Wehrle s The Macaronic Hymn Tradition in Medieval English

Literature, a dissertation published in 1933. Subsequent scholarship such as that

of Rossell Hope Robbins, Richard Leighton Greene, and David Jeffrey has treated

macaronic poems from the Middle English period but only in the context of larger

discussions of medieval English lyric poetry.4 None of these scholars has continued

Wehrle s juxtaposition of early and late medieval poems, and none Wehrle

included has analyzed the linguistic structure of these poems.

2
These scholar s relevant studies are included in the bibliography.
3
Two emerging scholars who have approached code switching in medieval texts in a linguistically
sophisticated fashion are Elaine Rebecca Miller, who studies multilingualism in documents produced
by fifteenth-century Spanish Jews, and Mary Catherine Davidson, who approaches code switching in
medieval English legal and poetic texts from a discourse perspective. Titles of their studies are
included in the bibliography.
4
See pp. 70—81 and p. 82, n. 9, for a discussion of Jeffrey s work.
2
 In this study, I will try to fill the seventy-year void in scholarship by bringing

together macaronic poems written across a six-hundred-year span of medieval

English history. The following chapters will serve as snapshots of linguistic, literary,

and social practice at two crucial junctures in the English Middle Ages: at one end,

the late-tenth- and early-eleventh centuries, at the other, the fifteenth and early-

sixteenth. A summary of macaronic poetry composed between these two periods

begins Chapter 3. Though separated chronologically, the macaronic poems studied

here share much: the regular alternation of English and Latin in highly regulated

verse forms, the incorporation of liturgical material into extraliturgical poetic settings,

and the use of code switching to signal membership in bilingual speech communities.

By applying a generative syntactic analysis of language alternation to medieval

English poetic works, I will not only characterize written code switching in each era

but also compare code-switching practice among eras, revealing how developments in

English syntax, poetic conventions, and written style play out in the poems. Changes

in English syntax altered how the language could interact with Latin within bilingual

utterances. Examined within a diachronic framework, written code switching thus

becomes a means of studying language change.

As this study will show, the writers of macaronic poems, by operating within

formal poetic restrictions, produced much more regular and artificial code switches

than those occurring in spoken discourse but nevertheless maintained the grammatical

integrity of those switches with the ease expected of fluent bilinguals. The poems

written forms and structural features in fact amplify rather than distort the grammar of
3
code switching, drawing attention to the process itself by alternating languages in a

regular and highly predicable fashion. In the few instances of ungrammatical switches

between English and Latin, poetic constraints often supercede linguistic ones, as the

need to maintain meter, alliteration, or rhyme overrides grammatical principles.

The interplay of syntactic and poetic structure in these bilingual works reminds

us that linguistic and literary concerns are not mutually exclusive. Nor must a more

rigorous approach to the formal properties of macaronic medieval poems distract us

from their social function or their place in the development of the English language.

As Elizabeth Traugott and Suzanne Romaine convincingly argue, style as

polysemous as various scholars definitions of it can be is an ideal focus for the

problem of projecting from the present to the past and developing an interdisciplinary

framework for socio-historical linguistics (11). Far from being limited to literary

texts or representing only deviations from spoken usage, style, they argue, is in fact a

property of all language use, whether spoken or written, and a consideration of it is

quintessential to understanding language usage in historical texts (8—12).5 Studying

exactly how Latin and English interact in these texts therefore gives us a more

detailed understanding of the bilingual communities in which they circulated and the

linguistic habits of those communities. To account for the literary and the social as

well as the linguistic, I will alternate chapters detailing the what of code switching in

the poems with chapters explaining the why. That is, detailed analyses of where

5
Susan M. Wright applies such considerations of style to syntactic analysis in her article On the
Stylistic Basis of Syntactic Change.
4
languages alternate will be followed by discussion of how the macaronic poems in

question reflect contemporary religious and literary movements. Consideration of

these influences will in turn demonstrate how macaronic poetry allowed writers and

their audiences to claim membership within particular bilingual communities, from

the Benedictine monasteries reformed before the Norman Conquest to the much more

diffuse constellation of clerics, religious, and lay people who enjoyed reading and

singing macaronic carols up to and even after the Reformation.

Comparing the portrayal of borrowing and code switching in macaronic poetry

with that in better-known works by Chaucer and Langland (a topic treated at the end

of Chapter 5) proves to be instructive to our understanding not only of medieval

bilingualism but also of medieval English literary studies as a whole. Literary

scholars may be quite familiar of Chaucer s use of Latin to satirize pretentious layfolk

or corrupt clerics (for example, Chanticleer s mistranslation of Mulier est hominis

confusio in the Nun s Priest s Tale , ll. 4353—56) and Langland s incorporation of

Latin scriptural phrases for more edifying purposes. These canonized depictions of

bilingual phenomena reinforce the notion of Latin and the vernacular as separate and

unequal languages, however. Consequently, literary critics are unused to considering

code switching as a means of signaling membership in a bilingual community or of

presenting bilingual registers as prestigious is their own right.

By engaging in a kind of disciplinary code switching between linguistic and

literary studies , I hope to show how these oft-neglected works embody a variety of

important developments in medieval English language and literary culture. Because

5
these poems bring together the complete range of linguistic, textual, and social

influences at work in medieval England, they do not deserve to slip through the

disciplinary cracks. They are in fact English literature in the fullest sense.

6
 Chapter 1: Code Switching in Anglo-Saxon Poetry

1.1 Anglo-Saxon Macaronic Poems

Although scholars generally divide the poetry surviving from the Anglo-Saxon
period into Latin and vernacular corpora, a number of Anglo-Saxon poems include
Latin elements in otherwise Old English contexts. A search through the forty-eight
“minor” poems contained in volume six of the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records uncovers
upwards of seventy Latin words, most of them names of months and saints.1 “The
Seasons for Fasting,” for example, explains that people should fast “on †ære ærestan

wucan lengtenes, / on †am mon†e †e man Martius / geond Romwara rice nemne∂”

(during the first week of Lent, in the month that one calls March throughout the
kingdom of the Romans) (ll. 48–50). Still other works, most notably the freely
adapted liturgical texts grouped as the Benedictine Office, alternate a line of Latin
with several lines in Old English. None of the aforementioned poems entail much
linguistic integration, however. Those poems containing isolated Latin words use the
foreign terms as momentary borrowings and may even draw attention to their foreign
origins, as the example above shows. Likewise, poems translating liturgical texts
generally restate each Latin element before substantially amplifying it in the
vernacular. This and similar linguistic juxtapositions may more properly be
considered translation phenomena—in effect Latin glosses that have been
incorporated into vernacular texts.
In contrast to those poems that bring Old English and Latin together only
superficially, three surviving works—“The Phoenix” (in its closing ten lines), “A

1
For more on the kinds of Latin words borrowed in the poems and how those words are inflected,
see the studies by Otto Funke and Peter Baker. Helmut Gneuss relates Old English words borrowed or
loan-translated from Latin to manuscript glosses in “Anglicae linguae interpretatio: Language Contact,
Lexical Borrowing and Glossing in Anglo-Saxon England.”
7
Summons to Prayer,” and “Aldhelm”—alternate strings of words in either language

within sentences. Previous scholars seem to have been caught short by this linguistic
alternation and have not proceeded to address substantively how the poems’ creators
went about switching languages and why they would choose to do so. Those scholars
who have not dismissed the multilingual character of these texts outright have
focused primarily on how the Old English vernacular is peculiarly elevated by
juxtaposing it with Latin, whether for spiritual effect or as a virtuosic flourish. A

typical comment is Leslie Whitbread’s pronouncement that “all three specimens may
be called mere exercises in ingenuity and in the literature of display” (“The Old
English Poem Aldhelm,” 197–98).
Such dismissals overlook the fascinating interplay between languages in the
poems, which goes far beyond the borrowings and glosses found in other Anglo-
Saxon texts. Unlike the translations on which most scholarly accounts of bilingualism
in Anglo-Saxon England focus, these works portray bilingualism in its most overt
manifestation: code switching.2 Studying these poems, then, illuminates how writers
went about switching languages in texts written for monastic audiences and demonstrates
how bilingualism itself could be a topic of vital interest within such communities.
Before treating the language alternation in these poems in a more substantive
and linguistically informed manner, I will explain their manuscript contexts,

2
Studies of linguistic interaction between Old English and Latin by and large focus on the processes
Anglo-Saxon translators used to render and modify Latin material; see, for example, Anne Savage’s
and Brian Shaw’s articles on “The Phoenix,” discussed below. As a translator and grammarian, Ælfric
has been a frequent focus of discussion of bilingualism (for example, in Connie Eble’s brief sketch).
Ælfric did not display his bilingualism by code switching in the manner of the Anglo-Saxon macaronic
poems, however. Switches between Old English and Latin in his Grammar, for example, are instead
made to cite Latin texts or to translate Latin words and phrases into Old English. Ælfric also borrows
Latin grammatical terms and literally translates other terms as Old English calques (for example, Old
English foresetnyss for Latin praepositio [Zupitza 10.15]). My thanks to Glenn Davis for providing
this last example.
8
reproduce and translate the texts themselves, and summarize previous treatments of

the inclusion of Latin in these works.

1.1.1 “The Phoenix”

“The Phoenix,” a poem of 677 lines in modern editions, is written on ff.

55v–65v of Exeter Cathedral Library 3501, referred to in Anglo-Saxonist circles as

the Exeter Book. This late tenth century manuscript contains nearly a fourth of the

surviving corpus of Old English poetry (Ker 152). The origins of the Exeter Book are

unknown, but textual scholars have proposed several places of origin. The leading

theory, reviewed by Richard Gameson, posits this famous manuscript as the product

of a reformed Benedictine monastery at Glastonbury or Christ Church, Canterbury

(135–85). Patrick Conner argues, however, that the codex may have originated at

Exeter, based on its similarities to five other manuscripts with Exeter connections.

Although Gameson counters Conner’s analysis by arguing that the features the Exeter

Book shares with the other manuscripts do not necessarily indicate a common Exeter

origin, he concedes that given the obscure early history of the Exeter Book, even

Glastonbury and Christ Church, Canterbury, “are little more than educated guesses” (179).

In its first section, “The Phoenix” describes the appearance, travels, and life

cycle of the mythical bird—a description largely derived from the Carmen de ave

phoenice by the second-century poet Lactantius. In the second section, the Anglo-

Saxon poet added Christian elements to Lactantius’ pagan poem and further expanded

9
upon it by allegorizing the phoenix as a type of the good Christian. This moral lesson

closes with the following bilingual passage:3

(1) “The Phoenix,” ll. 667–77

Hafa∂ us alyfed lucis auctor
†æt we motun her merueri
goddædum begietan gaudia in celo,
†ær we motum maxima regna
671 secan ond gesittan sedibus altis,4
lifgan in lisse lucis et pacis,
agan eardinga alma letitiæ,
brucan blæddaga, blandem et mitem
geseon sigora frean sine fine
676 ond him lof singan laude perenne
eadge mid englum. Alleluia.

[The Author of Light has delivered us so that we might here deserve to acquire through good
deeds joys in heaven, where we might seek out the greatest kingdoms and sit in high seats,
live in the joy of light and peace, possess the pleasant dwelling of happiness, enjoy the
harvest days, see the mild and gentle Lord of Victories without end, and sing him praise in
eternal exultation, blessed among the angels. Alleluia.]

Although “The Phoenix” is the most thoroughly studied of those poems that

alternate Old English and Latin, its macaronic ending has received relatively little

attention. Most scholars focus on the ways in which the poem translates and expands

upon Lactantius’s Carmen de ave phoenice (Krapp and Dobbie xxxiv–xxxv). Anne

Savage, for example, contextualizes the poet’s translation in the bilingual atmosphere

of Anglo-Saxon monasteries, arguing that “bilingual poets were engaged in the

3
The text for “The Phoenix” is from Blake 63 (cf. the edition by Krapp and Dobbie 112–13). I have
omitted Blake’s macrons and changed his punctuation as indicated. Texts for “The Summons to
Prayer” and “Aldhelm” are from Dobbie 69–70 and 97–98. I have altered some punctuation and
italicized Latin words. All translations are my own.
4
Here I follow Krapp and Dobbie’s punctuation on the grounds that the most straightforward
translation of gesittan is its modern derivation, “sit,” and that the ablative case of sedibus altis
indicates the place where the sitting is done. Blake places a comma after gesittan, translating the word
as “occupy” and reading maxima regna as its object (87).
10
process of translating themselves to themselves, from a Latin embodying Christianity

in familiar terms to the vernacular, also embodying Christianity in familiar terms”

(123). Savage explains that by adding new material to the source text and by

departing from the original story to introduce the themes of exile and solitude so

popular in Old English poetry, the poet recast the Latin poem culturally, allowing

readers to relate to its subject more immediately (131; 133–34). Savage does not

mention the poem’s macaronic coda, however—a curious omission since the bilingual

passage overtly demonstrates how the bilingual poet “translated himself to himself.”

Like Savage, Brian Shaw focuses primarily on explicating the poet’s

modification of Lactantius’ original. By demonstrating how source material in the

first half of “The Phoenix” corresponds to commentary in the second half, Shaw

shows how the poem recasts Lactantius’s material in a more Christian light and how

it relates the various aspects of the phoenix to Christ and his resurrection. Unlike

Savage, though, Shaw does draw attention to the macaronic ending, noting that it

“relies for a degree of heightened feeling on the use of Latin … and the liturgical

echoes” (178). Shaw does not explain, however, what this “heightened feeling”

entails or what these liturgical echoes are. In Chapter 2, I will make the

correspondences between the macaronic poems and liturgical texts explicit by

demonstrating how the poems’ Latin phrases draw on the vocabulary of

contemporary tropes and hymns.

11
1.1.2 “A Summons to Prayer”

Another macaronic work similar to the end of “The Phoenix” in its execution is

“A Summons to Prayer,” found on pp. 166–67 of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

201.5 This compendious manuscript brings together a variety of works, including

other poetry, a partial Old English translation of the Regularis concordia, numerous

homilies, and an Old English prose version of Appolonius of Tyre. Ker dates the

section that contains the Regularis concordia and “A Summons to Prayer” to the

beginning of the eleventh century (82–90). Although the manuscript’s place of origin

is uncertain, Dobbie reviews arguments in favor of Worcester, while Whitbread in his

later articles prefers a Christ Church, Canterbury, origin (Dobbie lxix–lxx; Whitbread,

“The Old English Poem Judgment Day II” 637).

“A Summons,” reproduced and translated below, follows “Judgment Day II” (a

translation of Bede’s De die judicii) and another poetic section commonly called “An

Exhortation to Christian Living.”

(2) “A Summons to Prayer”

ˇænne gemiltsa∂ †e, N., mundum qui regit,
∂eoda †rymcyningc thronum sedentem
a butan ende * * *
saule †inre * * *
5 Geunne †e on life auctor pacis
sibbe gesæl∂a, salus mundi,
metod se mæra magna uirtute,
5
Whitbread emphasizes the similarity between the two poems’ execution and textual structure
(“Notes” 127–28). For convenience, “A Summons to Prayer” is presented and discussed here
following the traditional editorial assumption that the two sections preceding it in the manuscript,
“Judgment Day II” and “The Exhortation for Christian Living,” are separate poems. See, however,
Section 2.1, where I argue that “A Summons” should in fact be considered part of a larger work that
includes all three poems.
12
 and se so∂fæsta summi filius
fo on fultum, factor cosmi,
10 se of æ†elre wæs uirginis partu
clæne acenned Christus in orbem,
metod †urh Marian, mundi redemptor,
and †urh †æne halgan gast. Uoca frequenter
bide helpes hine, clemens deus,
15 se onsended wæs summo de throno
and †ære clænan clara uoce
†a gebyrd bodade bona uoluntate
†æt heo scolde cennan Christum regem,
ealra cyninga cyningc, casta uiuendo;
20 and †u †a so∂fæstan supplex rogo,6
fultumes bidde friclo uirginem almum,
and †ær æfter to omnes sancti
bli†mod bidde, beatus et iustus,
†æt hi ealle †e unica uoce
25 †ingian to †eodne thronum regentem,
æcum drihtne, alta polorum,
†æt he †ine saule, summus iudex,
onfo freolice, factor aeternus,
and he gelæde luce perhennem,
30 †ær eadige animæ sanctæ
rice resta∂, regna caelorum.
[Then he who rules the world, the power-king of the people sitting on the throne
eternally without end, will have mercy on you, [name], … your soul …. May the
Author of Peace, the great Measurer with great strength grant you the happiness of
blessings in life, the Salvation of the World; and may the truth-fast one, the Son of
the Most High come in aid, the Maker of the Universe, who was by the birthing of a
noble virgin purely born Christ into the world, the Measurer, the Redeemer of the
World, through Mary and through the Holy Spirit. Call frequently, await His help,
the merciful God, who was sent from the highest throne and to the pure one
proclaimed the birth with a clear voice, with good will, that she, living chaste, must
give birth to Christ the King, the king of all kings. And (regarding) you, I, suppliant,
then ask the truth-fast one, pray to the nurturing virgin your desire for help, and
thereafter pray happy-spirited to all the saints, blessed and just, that they all may
with one voice summon you to the Ruler reigning on the throne, the eternal Lord, the
heights of the heavens, that he, the highest Judge, the eternal Maker, may accept
your soul readily and lead it to eternal light, where the blessed, holy souls remain
powerfully, the kingdoms of the heavens]

6
Dobbie sees the manuscript form rogo as incorrect and suggests the imperative roga instead. On
the variant readings of this line and their impact on our interpretation of the underlying syntax, see
below, p. 37, n. 26.
13
 “A Summons to Prayer” has been discussed especially in relation to the

material preceding it in CCCC 201: “Judgment Day II” and “An Exhortation to

Christian Living.” Leslie Whitbread, who devoted a lifetime of scholarship to

studying the manuscript and its affinities with other contemporary homily collections,

noted the textual and thematic similarities among the three poems. Whitbread read the

poem as a final absolution following the call to confession in “Judgment Day II” and

the prescription of penance in “An Exhortation to Christian Living” (“Notes”

126–27). Nevertheless, he dismissed “A Summons” as a “curious little poem” and

considered it to be “on a lower plane of achievement and technical accomplishment”

than the macaronic passage at the end of “The Phoenix.”

Despite these similarities between “An Exhortation to Christian Living” and “A

Summons to Prayer,” Whitbread follows the traditional editorial assumption that the

two are separate texts. Fred C. Robinson, however, shows that these supposedly

separate texts are in fact presented as a single work in the manuscript (“The Rewards

of Piety”). In Chapter 2, I discuss Robinson’s findings in greater detail and relate

them to the function of code switching in “A Summons to Prayer.”

1.1.3 “Aldhelm”

The third Anglo-Saxon macaronic poem, “Aldhelm,” is similar to the previous

two only in its multilingual character. The poem appears in Cambridge, Corpus

Christi College 326 between the Latin text of Aldhelm’s Prosa de virginitate and the

table of chapters for that work. The manuscript is one of five surviving copies of

14
Aldhelm’s treatise produced between the late tenth and early eleventh centuries at

Christ Church, Canterbury, but is the only copy to feature the poem (Ker 107–08;

Brooks 267–70). As the title modern editors have given the poem indicates, the poem

praises Aldhelm (c. 639–709), abbot of Malmesbury and bishop of Sherborne, a

preeminent writer of Anglo-Latin verse and prose. Unlike the end of “The Phoenix”

and “A Summons to Prayer,” the poem “Aldhelm” includes isolated Greek borrowings

(underlined in the text below) and switches languages throughout most of the lines.

(3) “Aldhelm”
†us me gesette sanctus et iustus
beorn boca gleaw, bonus auctor,
Ealdelm, æ†ele sceop, etiam fuit
ipselos on æ†ele Angolsexna,
5 byscop on Bretene. Biblos ic nu sceal
ponus et pondus pleno cum sensu,
geonges geano†e geomres iamiamque,
secgan so†, nalles leas, †æt him symle wæs
euthenia oftor on fylste,
10 æne on e†le ec †on †e se is
yfel on gesæd. Etiam nusquam
ne sceal ladigan labor quem tenet
encratea, ac he ealneg sceal
boethia biddan georne
15 †urh his modes gemind micro in cosmo,
†æt him drihten gyfe dinams on eor†an,
fortis factor, †æt he for† simle
[Thus a holy and just man accomplished in books, a good author, Aldhelm, the noble
poet set me. He was also eminent in the homeland of the English Saxons, a bishop in
Britain. I, a book, shall relate truly, not at all falsely, a toil and a burden with full
meaning and moreover in the mourning [or birth] of fresh affliction, that abundance
was always there for him in aid, alone [or fame] likewise in his homeland, more
often than for one about whom evil is spoken. He whom self-control possesses must
certainly never excuse himself from hardship, but he must always eagerly pray for
support through his spiritual consciousness in the little world, that the Lord might
give him power on earth, the strong Creator, so that he might always henceforth …]

15
 “Aldhelm” is especially challenging to translate because of two difficult

passages containing words that could be either transliterated Greek, like the

unambiguously Greek terms that dot the rest of the poem, or Old English.7 The word

geano∂e, in the seventh line, is unique to this poem; Arthur S. Napier, the poem’s first

modern editor, believed that it was an Old English word akin to Gothic gaunò†us,

“mourning, lamentation,” but Whitbread suggested that it could be a faulty

transliteration of Greek genethle or genete, “birth” (Dobbie 194; Whitbread, “The Old

English Poem Aldhelm” 196). Likewise, æne, in line 10, could be either an Old English

word meaning “alone” or a transliteration of Greek aine, “fame” (Dobbie 194).

Adding to the perplexities of the poem is that it ends in mid-sentence,

prompting critics to assume that the text is incomplete (cf. Dobbie xci, 194;

Whitbread, “The Old English Poem Aldhelm” 193). Fred C. Robinson has tentatively

suggested, however, that the last sentence of the poem could in fact connect the

metrical work to the following treatise, which begins with Aldhelm’s formulaic

salutation to the members of a convent at Barking. As Robinson explains, a verb

meaning “send” was traditionally omitted in such opening formulae. This assumed verb

of sending could be predicated by he at the end of the poem, making for a seamless fit

(and a final code switch) between it and the prose work: “… so that he might always

7
Anglo-Saxon poets writing in Latin likewise showed a predilection for borrowing Greek terms, and
this so-called hermeneutic style was practiced extensively at Canterbury, where “Aldhelm” was
written. See Section 2.1 for a discussion of how the poem’s inclusion of Greek borrowings emulated
contemporary Canterbury style and characterized the writing of Aldhelm himself.
16
henceforth [send] to the most reverend virgins of Christ … his best wishes for perpetual

prosperity” (“The Rewards of Piety” 197–98).

Because of the poem’s textual conundrums and macaronic character, critics

have generally held it in low esteem. Whitbread makes his comment regarding the

Old English macaronic poems as “mere exercises in ingenuity” in the context of

explicating “Aldhelm.” Robinson likewise comments that “the poet’s ambition to

compose a poem in three languages at once exceeded his talents” and denigrates “the

poet’s clumsy flourishes and often uninflected Latin and Greek” (197). Lapidge is

perhaps alone in his positive assessment of the style of “Aldhelm,” which he

describes as “very much in the spirit of contemporary Canterbury” (“The Hermeneutic

Style” 121). The subsequent analysis of where code switches occur in the poem,

however, will show that for all of the poem’s supposed flaws, Latin and Old English in

“Aldhelm” alternate grammatically. As Section 1.4 will explain, the smooth switches

between Latin and Old English in “Aldhelm” suggest that the poet knew Latin quite

well and produced a suitable introduction to his subject’s Latin treatise.

1.2 Grammatical Conditions on Code Switching

1.2.1 Kinds of Language Mixing: Borrowing, Insertion, and Alternation

The regular alternation between languages in the Anglo-Saxon macaronic

poems illustrates an aspect of code switching linguists have noted for some time:

rather than being a random hodge-podge of languages, code switching is a rule-

governed behavior. The Anglo-Saxon poems are, of course, shaped by poetic as well

17
as linguistic principles and are written texts rather than spoken utterances.8 The

conventions of written and poetic discourse, however, simply augment the

fundamental linguistic patterns of code switching. These poems are some of the most

outwardly constrained manifestations of a linguistic practice that cuts across styles

and modes of language use, spoken as well as written.

Determining exactly what rules the code switches in the poems follow is a more

difficult matter, however. Particular Latin and Greek elements favor a variety of

different interpretations. The Latin appositives in “The Phoenix,” “A Summons to

Prayer” and “Aldhelm” (for example, salus mundi and fortis factor) could be

interpreted as Latin insertions into an Old English matrix. In many cases, however,

sequences of words in Old English alternate with sequences in Latin, with neither

language predominating. For example, in the opening line of “A Summons to

Prayer,” “ˇænne gemiltsa∂ †e, N., mundum qui regit,” languages switch between a

Latin noun clause acting as the subject of the sentence (mundum qui regit) and the

Old English verb gemiltsa∂. Still, the Greek words in “Aldhelm” appear to be

borrowings; as Dobbie points out, the poet need not have been fluent in Greek to

incorporate words like ipselos, biblos, and euthenia (xci).9

8
These written texts nevertheless retained aspects of oral composition. See Katherine O’Brien
O’Keeffe’s Visible Song for a thorough discussion of transitional literacy in Anglo-Saxon literature.
While most reviewers have wholeheartedly accepted her argument, John D. Niles faults her for
considering only poetic texts and Peter J. Lucas questions, among other things, her assertion that
manuscript punctuation before the eleventh century did not mark meter.
9
Anglo-Saxon poets apparently obtained such Greek terms by imitating the works of Aldhelm and
Abbo of Germain-des-Prés and by consulting Latin-Greek glossaries (Lapidge, “The Hermeneutic
Style” 114–15). See pp. 50–51, below.
18
 Many linguists subscribe to one of these various interpretations in their studies

of modern bilingual data. Some studies, such as Miwa Nishimura’s study of Japanese-

English code switching and the David Sankoff and his colleagues’ article on so-called

nonce loans in Tamil, favor an insertional model, according to which words from one

language are interpolated into a base or matrix language. Others, such as Carol Pfaff’s

groundbreaking study and that by Hedi Belazi and his colleagues, described in

Section 1.2.2, favor an alternational model, in which neither language predominates.

Rather, languages interchange within utterances. These varying models have

substantial psychological implications: whereas the insertional model assumes that

code-switching bilinguals unconsciously treat one language as fundamental, the

alternational model posits that bilinguals switch between two discrete grammars.10

Pieter Muysken has negotiated the differences between these two models of

code switching by treating both as viable alternatives. In his study of the multilingual

speech of various immigrant communities in the Netherlands, he demonstrates that

different groups of speakers seem to favor different code switching strategies.11 For

example, people who speak Chinese as well as Dutch are more likely to insert short

strings of words in one language into extended sequences in the other. By contrast,

bilingual speakers of French and Flemish in Brussels prefer to alternate equally

10
Or, in minimalist approaches to syntax, two manifestations of one underlying grammar.
11
Muysken identifies a third model of code-switching, congruent lexicalization, according to which
particular words find a place in the vocabularies of both languages. As he explains, however, this
notion “more often underlies the study of style shifting and dialect/standard variation, rather than
bilingual language use proper” (“Patterns of Language Mixing” 400). The practice is particularly
common in “cases where word forms are either already identical in the two codes involved or
pronounced in an ambiguous way” (“Patterns of Language Mixing” 401).
19
sizeable sequences in both languages (“Patterns of Language Mixing” 401–02). As

Muysken explains, a variety of factors accounts for such differences, including the

similarities between the languages involved, the speaker’s degree of fluency in the

two languages, community attitudes toward language alternation, and shifts in

language use across generations as immigrants become increasingly acculturated

(“Patterns of Language Mixing” 403–04).

Adding to the complexity of describing linguistic combinations like those in the

Anglo-Saxon macaronic poems is another manifestation of language contact:

borrowing. In addition to the Latin names cited at the beginning of this chapter, we

find a number of isolated Latin words in otherwise Old English poems: for example,

the poem “Christ” in the Exeter Book contains the line “Eala sibbe gesih∂, sancta

Hierusalem” (O peaceful sight, holy Jerusalem, l. 50).12 Although both code switching

and borrowing are superficially similar in that they involve the use of more than one

language in a single utterance, borrowing involves incorporating an isolated word or

phrase into an utterance in another language, while code-switching involves

alternating between two fully-formed linguistic systems.13 Distinguishing borrowing

from code switching is therefore important because, as Carol Pfaff explains, the two

phenomena “are usually construed as making vastly different claims about the

competence of the individual speaker [in that] ‘borrowing’ may occur in the speech of

12
Fred C. Robinson also notes instances where Anglo-Saxon scribes apparently used Latin words in
place of Old English ones in cases where the meter and alliteration of poetic texts would require the
vernacular (“Latin for Old English”).

20
those with only monolingual competence, while ‘code-switching’ implies some

degree of competence in two languages” (295–96).14 The difference between

borrowing and insertional code-switching may only be a matter of degree: whereas

the former generally involves single lexical units, the latter involves phrases

(Muysken, “Patterns of Language Mixing” 399). Borrowings usually fall outside the

scope of alternational models of code switching, however, since such models

generally assume a relatively high degree of bilingual competence. Distinguishing

borrowings from code switches (for example, by distinguishing isolated foreign

words from strings of words in another language) is therefore a necessary first step in

evaluating particular instances of language alternation.

Considering these various approaches to code switching, the alternational model

seems best suited to the data at hand.In studying poems split equally into Old English

and Latin phrases, one would be hard pressed to determine what the base language is,

particularly in sentences like the opening line of “A Summons,” considered above.

The problem of determining a base language plagues studies of later languages as

well, medieval as well as modern.15 According to Suzanne Romaine’s critique, the

13
Romaine thoroughly reviews prevailing explanations of borrowing (51–67) and distinctions
between borrowing and code switching (142–61).
14
Although borrowed words that are used regularly throughout a community, called established
borrowings, may conform to Pfaff’s generalization, the use of borrowings is not limited to
monolingual speakers. Borrowings that occur momentarily in an individual’s speech, called nonce
borrowings, may in fact be employed primarily by speakers who are moderately to extremely fluent in
two languages (Poplack and Sankoff, “Code Switching” 1176; Romaine 67). Moreover, the initiation
of an established borrowing does of course require a bilingual speaker to introduce the word to other
speakers (see Romaine 59–60).
15
Elaine R. Miller reaches a similar impasse in trying to apply Aravind K. Joshi’s insertional model
to Hebrew-Spanish code switching in fifteenth-century Sephardic texts (“Medieval Spanish-Hebrew
Language Switching: A Comparison with Joshi's Constraint”).
21
“residue of indeterminate cases” in studies that seek to determine a base language for

a bilingual utterance often proves such approaches untenable (144). Moreover, as

Romaine asserts, “knowing what the language of a particular clause or sentence is

tells us nothing of the communicative competence of the speaker” (148). That is,

determining that the base language of the first line of “A Summons to Prayer” is in fact

Old English because the verb of that sentence is in Old English does not indicate how

well the writer knew Latin. To avoid such problems and enable further consideration of

how the poems reflect the poets’ Latin competence, I will employ an alternational

model of code switching throughout this study.

1.2.2 The Functional Head Constraint

In their 1994 study of code switching, Hedi M. Belazi, Edward J. Rubin, and

Almeida Jacqueline Toribio explain that previously proposed alternational models of

code switching generally fail to describe actual code switching behavior, either

because these constraints are too restrictive or not restrictive enough (222–28). The

Functional Head Constraint (FHC), on the other hand, describes code switching more

accurately by taking into account the fundamental linguistic distinction between

words that have real semantic content (called lexical heads, the latter term denoting

that they characterize the phrases in which they occur) and those that carry primarily

grammatical meaning (called functional heads). Functional heads include

complementizers such as that in “She said that she studies code switching,”

determiners like the, and modal auxiliaries such as should.

22
 According to the FHC, switching between a lexical head and its complement

(the word that “completes” its meaning, such as the direct object of a verb) is

unrestricted as long as the words occupy positions both languages allow (Belazi et al.

221).16 Such switches include those between an adjective or adverb and the word it

modifies. For instance, since the grammar of French allows certain kinds of adjectives

to follow the nouns they modify, unlike English, the code switch “Voici l’auto rouge

that she might buy tomorrow” would be grammatical but “Voici le red auto … ”

would not. Switching between a functional head and its complement, on the other

hand, is always ungrammatical because it transgresses the syntactic dependency

known as f-selection. To continue with my modern automotive example, while “Voici

l’auto rouge qu’elle might buy tomorrow” would be grammatical because the

languages switch before the functional head might (a modal), the sentence would be

ungrammatical if it contained the switch “that she might acheter demain.” The

formulators of the FHC express the constraint as follows:

The language feature of the complement f-selected by a functional head,

like all other relevant features, must match the corresponding feature of that
functional head (228).

Subsequent studies have confirmed that speakers observe the FHC as they gain

linguistic competence in a second language. Toribio has confirmed that fluent

bilinguals unconsciously switch languages in accordance with the Functional Head

Constraint: when asked to repeat sentences containing switches between functional

16
Belazi et al. derive this last condition from the Equivalence Constraint proposed by Sankoff and
Poplack and incorporate it as a corollary to the FHC.
23
elements and their complements, bilingual speakers would unconsciously replace

ungrammatical switches with grammatical ones (“Spanish-English Code-switching”).

Other studies involving children raised in a bilingual environment and adults learning

a second language likewise show the constraint at work. Bilingual children begin to

switch languages in accordance with the FHC once they have acquired a full

knowledge of the languages’ functional categories (Rubin and Toribio 393).

Similarly, second-language learners become increasingly sensitive to the operation of

the FHC as they gain mastery in the second language (Toribio, “Emergence of Code-

switching Competence”).17

The operation of the Functional Head Constraint will become clearer as we see

it at work in the Anglo-Saxon macaronic poems. As the following section will

demonstrate, most of the switches in the poems are grammatical because they occur

either between sentences or between lexical heads. For example, in “The Phoenix,”

“agan eardinga alma letitiæ” (possess the pleasant dwelling of happiness, l. 673) is

grammatical because the languages switch between two lexical heads: the Old

English noun eardinga and the Latin adjective which modifies it, alma. Both

17
Some linguists have attempted to refute the FHC by presenting evidence that supposedly
contradicts it. Shahrzad Mahootian and Beatrice Santorini, for example, fail to see the constraint at
work in their recordings of spontaneous speech. As Toribio explains in “Emergence of Code-Switching
Competence,” however, their study is methodologically flawed because such data is “incompatible
with linguistic-theoretical modes of inquiry.” Only responses elicited to determine a speaker’s
evaluation of ungrammatical utterances can support or disprove linguistic constraints. Jeffrey
MacSwan does use elicited responses to support his conclusion that switches between a
complementizer and its complement are permissible, but, Toribio contends, overlooks data obtained
from his own subjects indicating that a short pause between the functional head and its complement
makes such sentences more acceptable. Toribio also demonstrates that the counterexamples Miwa
Nishimura offers in Japanese/English Code-switching are borrowings accommodated by Japanese
morphology rather than true code switches.
24
constituents occupy positions sanctioned by the grammars of Old English and Latin,

since both languages allow modifying phrases to come after the words they modify.

The very few switches that violate the Functional Head Constraint do so because they

occur between a functional element and its complement—the case in “se so∂fæsta

summi filius” from “A Summons to Prayer,” in which the switch occurs structurally

between the Old English determiner se (a functional head) and its Latin complement

filius. After characterizing the grammatical switches in the poems, the subsequent

discussion will account for such ungrammatical switches.

1.3 Code Switch Sites in Anglo-Saxon Macaronic Poems

Proper evaluation of the code switches in the poems can occur only after we

have an overall idea of how they integrate Latin and Old English syntax. Most of the

poems’ code switches occur within rather than between sentences (that is, most

switches are intrasentential rather than intersentential). Only six of nearly sixty

switches occur intersententially—a fact attributable to the significant length of the

sentences in the poems. The macaronic coda to “The Phoenix,” for example, is a single

ten-line long sentence. Intrasentential switches between Old English and Latin are

classified in Tables 1 and 2, below. Greek borrowings in “Aldhelm” have not been

included in the tally because they do not constitute genuine code switches, as explained

in Section 1.2.1.

The descriptors used in the first column of each table follow the general format

Sankoff and Poplack use in their formulation of code-switching grammar. The first or

25
only constituent listed in the leftmost column, “Switch Site,” is in the language that

appears first in the title of the table; for example, in Table 1.1, “Verb and

complement” indicates a switch between an Old English verb and its Latin

complement. Switch sites are grouped according to the kinds of constituents they

involve: lexical heads that are necessary for the sentence to be complete (obligatory

constituents), lexical heads that are not obligatory (adjuncts), and functional heads.

The label under “Switch Site” denotes where code switches occur on the most

fundamental syntactic level—not necessarily as they appear in the poem texts. For

instance, in the clause “†æt hi ealle †e unica uoce †ingian to †eodne,” lines 24–25a of “A

Summons to Prayer,” the ablative phrase unica voce adjoins the verb †ingian, whose

object is †e. Even though the languages switch twice in surface linear order, from the

Old English object to the adjunct phrase and back, structurally this is a single switch

between the adjunct and the verb. Here I differ from linguists who regard code

switching as a surface process. Muysken, for example, states that “the evidence

overwhelmingly supports more surface-oriented constraints [on code switching]”

(Bilingual Speech 118). He supports this generalization, however, with only two

examples from earlier studies of Spanish-English alternation that seem to illustrate

borrowing rather than alternational code switching.18 Moreover, by focusing solely on

18
Both examples include English phrasal verbs in otherwise Spanish sentences, the first from
Poplack’s initial study, the second from Carol Pfaff’s article: “Me iban a lay off” (“They were going to
lay me off”) and “Bueno, por qué te hicieron beat up ese?” (“Well, why did they make you beat up that
[person]?”) (Bilingual Speech 118–19). Muysken argues that lay off in the first example would be
blocked if me had not already been moved from its original position to before the verb iban; likewise,
he reads the movement of the subject of the infinitive te in the second example as enabling the
26
the surface linear order of words, Muysken would be hard pressed to explain cases of

alternation that do not involve complete constituents or code-switched utterances that

express the same material in both languages (cf. Romaine 125–26). My analysis of

code switches according to words’ underlying grammatical relationships is ultimately

motivated by the assumptions expressed through the Functional Head Constraint: that

code switching involves the alternation between two discrete linguistic systems and

that the language of a given constituent is therefore indexed before transformational

rules are applied.

Constituent types that are not involved in any code switches are not listed in the

tables. Table 1.2, for instance, does not list switches involving functional heads

because no such switches involving Latin functional heads occur in the poems. The

location of switches is indicated whenever such a distinction is significant. Switches

like that between ll. 669 and 670 of “The Phoenix,” “… gaudia in celo, / †ær we

motum maxima regna secan,” are said to occur “preceding” that relative pronoun or

relative adverb (†ær in this case) to distinguish them from switches that may occur

between the relative and the subject of the following clause. In the case of switches

following Old English functional heads, an asterisk indicates that the switch comes

between the functional element and its complement and is therefore ungrammatical.

Unless otherwise indicated, switches involving adjuncts (for example, “Aldhelm,” l.

2: “beorn boca gleaw, bonus auctor,” from Old English to a Latin appositive) may

inclusion of beat up. This seems to be a chicken-or-egg problem, however, since the movement could
have been triggered by the input of these phrasal verbs from the lexicon.
27
occur either preceding or following the constituent named. Since such modifiers are

neither obligatory parts of the sentence nor functional heads, noting the exact

locations of these switches is not relevant to this study.

The second column in each table indicates the number of switches occurring at

that location in all three poems. The third column expresses this number as a

percentage of all the switches recorded in the table—that is, all switches from Old

English to Latin in Table 1.1, and all switches from Latin to Old English in Table 1.2.

The fourth column expresses the number of switches as a percentage of all the

intrasentential switches in the poems, giving an overall picture of where code

switches tend to occur in the poems. Because of the relatively small number of

switches studied—fifty-nine for all three poems—these percentages are merely

suggestive and make no claims toward statistical soundness.

Table 1.1: Intrasentential Switches Between Old English and Latin

Switch Site Number % OE-Latin % Total

LEXICAL HEADS
Obligatory Constituents
Verb and complement 5 25.0 8.5
Preposition and complement 1 5.0 1.7
Adjuncts
Appositive 5 25.0 8.5
ADV 1 5.0 1.7
Prepositional phrase 1 5.0 1.7
Relative pronoun and preceding 2 10.0 3.4
Relative adverb and preceding 2 10.0 3.4
FUNCTIONAL HEADS
*Determiner and complement 1 5.0 1.7
*Modal and complement 1 5.0 1.7
*Coord. conj and complement 1 5.0 1.7
Total switches 20 100.0 34.0

28
Table 1.2: Intrasentential Switches Between Latin and Old English

Switch Site Number % Latin-OE % Total

LEXICAL HEADS
Obligatory Constituents
Subject NP and VP 5 12.8 8.5
Verb and complement 2 5.1 3.4
Adjuncts
ADJ 4 10.3 6.8
Ablative noun phrase 10 25.6 16.9
Appositive 10 25.6 16.9
Participial phrase 2 5.1 3.4
ADV 1 2.6 1.7
Prepositional phrase 3 7.7 5.1
Interjection 1 2.6 1.7
Relative pro. and preceding 1 2.6 1.7
Total switches 39 100.0 66.1

1.3.1 Grammatical Code Switches

As Tables 1 and 2 show, two-thirds of the code switches in Old English

macaronic poems occur either between Latin adjuncts and the Old English words they

modify or between Latin obligatory constituents and subsequent Old English sentence

elements. Those switches involving adjuncts run no risk of violating the Functional

Head Constraint and are therefore grammatical. The two kinds of Latin adjuncts

featured most frequently in the poems are ablative noun phrases and appositives.

Latin ablative phrases appear in “The Phoenix” (sedibus altis, l. 671, and laude

perenne, l. 676) and throughout “A Summons to Prayer” (magna uirtute, l. 7; uirginis

partu, l. 10; clara uoce, l. 16; bona uoluntate, l. 17; casta uiuendo, l. 19; unica uoce,

l. 24; and the mixed-case luce perhennem,19 l. 29). Latin appositives can be seen both

19
If the scribe of this portion of the manuscript omitted a nasal abbreviation mark over the e of luce,
the phrase may in fact be in the accusative case. Dobbie emends the phrase to “in lucem perhennem (or
perennem),” most likely under the same assumption (185).
29
in “A Summons” (auctor pacis, l. 5; salus mundi, l. 6; factor cosmi, l. 9; Christus in

orbem, l. 11; mundi redemptor, l. 12; clemens deus, l. 14; summus iudex, l. 27; factor

aeternus, l. 28; and regna caelorum, l. 31) and “Aldhelm” (bonus auctor, l. 2 and

fortis factor, l. 17).

By depending heavily on both Latin ablative phrases and Latin appositives, “A

Summons” displays a double convergence of language and poetic form. While the

poem demonstrates the degree to which an Anglo-Saxon verse form could be

modified to include a distinctly Latin phrase type, it also uses Latin appositives to

serve a distinctly Anglo-Saxon poetic purpose.20 The Latin appositives included in the

poems also hearken to similar expressions used in liturgical texts, a connection

explored more fully in Chapter 2.

Switches occurring after obligatory constituents, such as between a subject and

a verb or between a verb and its complement, make up the next largest group of

switches. These switches likewise run no risk of violating the Functional Head

Constraint because they occur after lexical, not functional, heads.21 Here the Latin

and Old English data is almost in complementary distribution: whereas all of the

switches between subjects and verbs occur between a Latin subject and an Old

English verb, all but two of the switches between verbs and their complements occur

20
On the use of apposition for thematic emphasis in Beowulf, see Fred C. Robinson, Beowulf and the
Appositive Style, esp. 68–80. Mary Blockley further explains the syntactic ramifications of apposition
in the poems in two articles, “Apposition and the Subjects of Verb-Initial Clauses” and “Old English
Coordination, Apposition, and the Syntax of English Poetry,” a study incorporated into Chapter 2 of
her book Aspects of Old English Poetic Syntax 55–57. Christopher M. Cain discusses the phonological
adaptation of Latin words in the macaronic poems to serve Old English meter.

30
between and Old English verb and its Latin complement. Specifically, we find the

subject-verb switch “Hafa† us alyfed lucis auctor” in l. 677 of “The Phoenix”; three

others in “A Summons to Prayer,” “ˇænne gemiltsa∂ †e, N., mundum qui regit” (l. 1),

“Geunne †e on life auctor pacis” (l. 5), and “summi filius fo on fultum” (ll. 8b–9a); and

“ne sceal ladigan labor quem tenet encratea” in “Aldhelm” (ll. 12–13a). Of the two

switches between Latin verbs and Old English complements, one occurs in “The

Phoenix”: “†æt we motun her merueri goddædum begietan” (ll. 678–79), in which the

Latin verb merueri takes an Old English infinitive, begietan, as its complement. The

other occurs in “A Summons to Prayer”: “†u †a so∂fæstan supplex rogo fultumes bidde

friclo uirginem almum …” (ll. 20–21), in which the Latin verb rogo takes the Old

English complement †u.22 Switches between Old English verbs and Latin

complements include the following: in “The Phoenix,” “begietan gaudia in celo” (l.

679) and “motun maxima regna secan” (ll. 4–5a); in “A Summons to Prayer,” “scolde

cennan Christum regem” (l. 18), “fultumes bidde friclo uirginem almum” (l. 21); and in

“Aldhelm,” “ne sceal ladigan labor” (l. 12). The one example of a switch between a

preposition and its complement is “to omnes sancti” in “A Summons to Prayer” (l. 22).

1.3.2 Ungrammatical Code Switches

The three ungrammatical code switches in the poems follow Old English

functional heads—a determiner, a modal, and a coordinating conjunction. Identifying

21
In her typology of code switching, based on data from modern Spanish-English bilinguals, Poplack
notes that after intersentential switches, those between obligatory constituents are the most common.

31
and evaluating these switches is somewhat difficult since each switch exposes a

problem in either distinguishing language-contact phenomena or classifying particular

kinds of words as functional heads. Explaining the causes of these ungrammatical

switches is relatively straightforward, however, since all three show the effects of

poetic usage on syntax. In these particular cases, the poets’ efforts to maintain

alliterative strong-stress meter trump grammaticality, producing lines that fit

poetically but fail linguistically.

1.3.2.1 Switch Following a Determiner: [DP se [so∂fæsta summi filius]]

(“A Summons to Prayer,” l. 8)23

The first switch exposing an ambiguity in linguistic classification occurs after a

determiner: “se so∂fæsta summi filius” in “A Summons to Prayer” (l. 8). As explained

previously, here the languages switch at the structural level between the Old English

determiner se and Latin filius, the functional element’s complement. Code switches

following determiners are difficult to distinguish from borrowings because nouns are

frequently involved in code switches and are also the most frequently borrowed

lexical items (cf. Belazi et al. 226–27; Romaine 124–25). In this particular example,

one cannot establish once and for all whether summi filius is simply a Latin

commonplace borrowed for the occasion or a bona fide transfer from Old English to

Latin grammar. Nor, for that matter, can one rule out that the complement of se is

22
On the switch between the modal motun and the anomalous infinitive merueri, see Section 1.3.2.2.
23
In this and subsequent examples, I have identified code switches by (1) bracketing the larger
constituent in which they occur, (2) labeling the functional head, (3) enclosing its complement in an
additional set of brackets, and (4) underscoring the head of that complement.
32
so∂fæsta, used as a substantive (“the truth-fast one”), rather than filius. If summi filius

is not a borrowing and filius is the complement of se, however, then the switch

violates the Functional Head Constraint.

This ungrammatical switch seems to result from the rigorous consistency of

meter, alliteration, and language alternation in the poem.24 The half-line summi filius

conforms to the metrical and alliterative pattern seen throughout the macaronic

poems: as Christopher M. Cain observes, “the alliterating syllable … is almost always

coincident with the onset of the off-verse, as if delaying the primary governing

principle of the verse would present complications” (281).25 To make the job easier,

the poet “circumvented the fundamental differences between stress placement in

Latin and in Old English by choosing words and formulae in which there is no

contradiction between Latin stress assignment and Old English rules of alliteration,”

24
According to the traditional description of Old English meter developed by Eduard Sievers, each
line is composed of two half-lines, or verses, the first of which is sometimes referred to as the on-verse
and the second as the off-verse. Each half-line must contain two stressed syllables, and either or both
of the stressed syllables in the on-verse must alliterate with the first stressed syllable of the off-verse.
Additional aspects of Sievers’ metrical theory concern the number of unstressed syllables in each half-
line and where they can occur; characteristic alternations of stressed and unstressed syllables produce
five different types of half-lines, lettered A through E. See Mitchell, A Guide to Old English 161–67
for a succinct summary of this traditional system.
Mary Blockley and Thomas Cable have since presented a “more adequate theory of meter than that
described by Sievers’ Five Types,” which systematically accounts for the number and location of
unstressed syllables in the half-line:

The meter of Old English poetry is alliterative-syllabic, each verse containing four positions,
which are realized as four syllables or resolved equivalents. There is one optional expansion
of unstressed syllables in either of the first two positions of the verse (273).

Although Cain’s analysis, cited below, operates under the traditional model, my subsequent
discussions of how particular words occupy metrical positions within the half-line follow Blockley and
Cable’s theory.

33
as is the case with the disyllabic summi (Cain 282). Because the second half-line

almost always begins on an alliterating (and therefore stressed) syllable, an unstressed

determiner like se could not occupy a position at the beginning of the off-verse even

if Old English were allowed there. The determiner therefore was relegated to the first

half-line, delaying the arrival of the complement until after the switch to Latin.

1.3.2.2 Switch Following a Modal: [ModP motun [her merueri] (“The Phoenix,” l. 2)

As with the previous example, analyzing the switch in “The Phoenix” between

Old English motun and its Latin complement merueri leads to a conundrum of

classification. The switch is ungrammatical if we consider motun to be a modal,

hence a functional head. Whether Old English possessed true modals is a contentious

issue, however. David Lightfoot argues that although words like motun developed

into true modal auxiliaries in Early Modern English (might, should, and would), they

still possessed a primarily verbal character in Old English (98). Such “pre-modals,”

Lightfoot argues, were fully inflected, took objects, and could occupy the same

positions as other verbs throughout the Old and Middle English periods. Not until the

sixteenth century did they become restricted to auxiliary use. Consequently,

formulating the syntactic category “modal” for Old English would be unmotivated

and anachronistic (Lightfoot viii, 81, 99). According to Lightfoot’s account of

25
By Cain’s count, thirty-seven of the fifty-two alliterating Latin half-lines in the three poems place
the alliterating syllable “in the onset of a disyllabic word, which, of course, must always bear word
stress” (284). On alliteration of Latin and English words in Piers Plowman, see Sullivan 91.
34
English modal formation, therefore, Old English auxiliaries like motun would be

lexical rather than functional heads.

Subsequent researchers, however, have faulted Lightfoot for oversimplifying

the development of English modals. Bernd Heine explains, for example, that

particular auxiliaries may have a range of functions along a continuum he calls the

“Verb-to-TAM [Tense, Aspect, and Modality] chain.” At one end of the continuum

are the full-fledged lexical properties of the verb; at the other, the purely functional

properties of tense and aspect markers like the English past-tense suffix -ed. The use

of particular auxiliaries varies not only among languages and across historical periods

but also among speakers and groups (53–71). Contrary to Lightfoot’s account of the

development of modal auxiliaries, then, modals did not change as a class, nor did they

all go through the same set of processes in the development from fully substantive

verbs to the functional elements they are today (Heine 75). As a result, at any given

period of the language’s history we cannot rule out the functional roles of modals any

more than we can rule out their semantic content. Motun cannot therefore be fully

excluded from the modal category.

Acknowledging motun as a functional head that does not share the language of

its complement, merueri, we are left to puzzle out the idiosyncratic form of that

complement. As Blake explains, the word “contains the ending of the passive

infinitive attached to the stem of the preterite” (86). The editors of the Anglo-Saxon

Poetic Records review a variety of editorial emendations, including meruisse,

meritare, and mereri, but conclude that retaining the manuscript form “seems best in
35
the absence of any convincing emendation” (Dobbie 279-80). Considered from a

descriptive perspective, the puzzling merueri seems to be an attempt to find a single

infinitive for a Latin word that was historically inflected both in the second

conjugation as mereo (in which case the infinitive would be merere) and as the

deponent mereor (for which one would expect the infinitive mereri) (Stelten 161).

The -u- is a vestige of the second-conjugation perfect tense form, merui.

The strange morphology of merueri may show the strains of fitting a Latin word

into a doubly foreign context: first, the linguistic context of a modal phrase, and

second, the poetic context of macaronic alliterative verse. Since Latin indicates verbal

mood through inflection, it has no need for modals. Therefore, the Anglo-Saxon poet

trying to make a Latin verb function as the complement of an Old English modal

would be required to innovate an appropriate form for the verb. The infinitive is a

natural choice, since Latin verbs indicating ability or obligation, such as possum, take

infinitival complements and Old English modals, like their Modern English

successors, do likewise.

This hybrid verb form also indicates the degree to which the poetic structure of

this line overrides a variety of linguistic principles, phonological and syntactic as well

as morphological. To begin with, neither “proper” infinitive form, mereo or mereri, can

occupy an entire half-line—incorporating the -u- of the preterite allows the word to fill

the four mandatory syllables of the verse. To do so, however, the word must be stressed

differently, in what Cain calls “an apparent conflict between prosodic stress and

metrical ictus” (284 n. 30). Although merueri would normally be stressed on the
36
penultimate syllable, Cain suggests that the first syllable might have been lengthened,

as other Latin open syllables in the poems seem to have been, to maintain the proper

verse form (285). Since merueri occupies the second half-line by itself, any head taking

it as a complement must perforce occur in the first half-line, on the other side of the

linguistic divide. Poetic unity seems to have compensated for the linguistic disunity,

though. Not only does the modal motun set up alliteration on m; the inclusion of the adverb

her also creates assonance on u and e and further consonance on r: motun her merueri.

1.3.2.3 Switch Following a Coordinating Conjunction: “[ConjP and [†u †a

so∂fæstan supplex rogo] (“A Summons to Prayer,” l. 20)

Yet a third classificatory crux is manifested in the final ungrammatical switch

occurring in the Anglo-Saxon macaronic poems. In line twenty of “A Summons to

Prayer,” the languages switch between the conjunction and and the head of its

complement, the Latin verb rogo.26 If we consider the conjunction to be a functional

head, this switch violates the Functional Head Constraint.27 Classifying coordinating

conjunctions as functional heads, however, runs counter to traditional grammatical

and older generative notions: although calling coordinating conjunctions functional

26
Editors have cast the inflection of rogo in “A Summons” into doubt, depending on how they
interpret the line and its textual transmission. Dobbie holds that the “correct” form of the Latin verb is
the imperative roga, leading to a translation along the lines of “and you, suppliant, ask the truth-fast
one” (185) Such a reading would make the imperative roga parallel to the imperative bidde in the
following line. Since the subject of the imperative in unexpressed, the pronoun †u according to Dobbie’s
reading would be a vocative—a direct address that is not a part of the fundamental structure of the
sentence.
27
In current theories of generative grammar, the head of a clause is the category I, for “Inflection,”
comprised of features such as a tense, aspect, and number. Most of these features are mapped onto the
verb and indicated morphologically. In the case of two conjoined clauses, the second clause, headed by

37
may not contradict received wisdom, calling them heads is another matter. According

to X-bar theory, heads characterize the phrases in which they occur, projecting their

features to higher levels of linguistic organization. Therefore, by identifying

coordinating conjunctions as functional heads, we posit the Conjunction Phrase as a

unit of linguistic structure that encodes the features of the conjunction itself, requiring

the phrase to interact with other constituents as determined by those features.

Traditional descriptions, on the other hand, treat coordinators as connecting words but

not as heads that govern complements.

The most thorough argument for identifying coordinating conjunctions as

functional heads is put forth by Janne Bondi Johannessen in her study Coordination.

By applying the criteria of Arnold Zwicky, Richard Hudson, and Stephen Abney, she

makes a convincing case for the coordinating conjunction not only as a head (in

accordance with Zwicky and Hudson’s criteria) but also as a functional head (in

accordance with Abney’s). Johannessen notes that coordinating conjunctions

resemble functional heads in the following ways. First, coordinating conjunctions are

a closed lexical class—that is, in the case of English, no other coordinating

conjunctions besides and, or, but, for, and so can be added to the lexicon. Second,

coordinating conjunctions usually are small words that do not receive stress and in

languages other than English can even be added to other words, as in the Latin

conjunctions –que (and) and –ve (or). Third, coordinating conjunctions do not bear

I, is the complement of the conjunction; therefore, a switch between the conjunction and I is
ungrammatical.
38
“descriptive contents”; they indicate linguistic relationships between and among

words that carry meaning rather than express their own semantic value. Finally,

coordinating conjunctions cannot be separated from their complements (in this case,

the second word or clause that they conjoin) (Johannessen, Coordination 74–103).

Citing languages that allow for the verb to agree with the second of two conjoined

subjects (a phenomenon known as partial agreement), Johannessen subsequently

demonstrates that conjunctions are functional heads because they encode the features

of their complements (“Partial Agreement and Coordination”).

Based on Johannessen’s classification, then, a switch between a coordinating

conjunction and the second word or clause that it conjoins violates the Functional

Head Constraint. The switch between Old English and and Latin rogo in the present

example is therefore ungrammatical. As with the previous instances, poetic factors

cause this linguistic division. The complement of and does not occur in the on-verse

because the object of the verb, †a so∂fæstan, fills out that portion of the line

metrically.28 Consequently, the primary constituent of the complement does not occur

until the second half-line, requiring the verbal inflection to be in Latin. The

ungrammatical switch may seem less abrupt, however, because the conjunction and

the verb appear at opposite ends of the line, concealing the mismatch between

functional head and complement.

28
While verb-final order is generally considered to be characteristic of Latin clauses of all types
(with significant stylistic variation), in Old English it is found particularly in clauses introduced by
coordinating conjunctions and other connecting words (Pinkster 168–69; Mitchell, Old English Syntax

39
1.4 Code Switching as an Indicator of Latin Competence

Using the Functional Head Constraint to evaluate the grammaticality of code

switches in the poems gives us some idea of how well the poets knew Latin. As

Shana Poplack argues, the degree of integration of the two languages and the

grammaticality of code switches increase with the competence of the speaker; the

more fluent the speaker is in the languages at his or her disposal, the more likely he or

she will switch languages within rather than between sentences and the more

grammatical those switches are (“Sometimes I’ll Start” 615–16). The high proportion

of intrasentential to intersentential switches and the small number of ungrammatical

switches therefore suggest that the poems were written by people with considerable

fluency in Latin. A larger number of ungrammatical switches may arise in “A

Summons to Prayer” only because it is the longest poem of the three and therefore

presents more opportunities for code-switching errors to occur.

Although the poems display a variety of different kinds of code switches, the

poets’ preferences for switches involving nominals and adjuncts reduce the risk of

their violating the Functional Head Constraint. Such classes of words come with few

syntactic strings attached, making them more likely candidates for switches (cf.

Poplack, “Sometimes I’ll Start” 602–03). Switches between adjuncts and the words

they modify also run little risk of being ungrammatical because they steer clear of

functional boundaries. The poets’ use of appositives, nominals used as adjuncts,

§§905, 3091). The placement of the object †a so∂fæstan between the conjunction and and the verb rogo
is therefore appropriate for both languages.
40
combines the optimal features of both kinds of constituents. Thus, while poetic

conventions seem largely responsible for the few ungrammatical switches in the poems,

poetic strategies also helped ensure the grammaticality of most switches.

The predominant grammaticality of the Anglo-Saxon macaronic poems allows

us to reevaluate their status within the corpus. Rather than being overly ambitious

scraps of bilingual doggerel, they are in fact the products of poets well versed in the

dual modes of literacy in Anglo-Saxon England. As such, they embody the language

contact that had already produced changes in the Old English lexicon and would

continue to have profound impact throughout the language’s history. Having

considered how the poems brought Latin and Old English together at the most

fundamental syntactic level, we may now relate these poems to other texts circulated

within the same monastic communities during the same linguistic convergence.

41
 Chapter 2: Textual and Social Motivations for
Code Switching in Anglo-Saxon Poetry

The study in Chapter 1 allows us to characterize code switching practice in the

Anglo-Saxon macaronic poems and evaluate the poets’ competence in Latin.

Exclusively maintaining such a syntactic focus, however, does not allow us to explain

why the poets switched languages in the first place. To explore the motivations for

poetic code switching, we must turn from the syntactic study of the phenomenon to

pragmatic and sociological considerations. Language, after all, is a means of social

cohesion, and as the work of William Labov demonstrates, “a very important factor in

group identification, group solidarity and the signalling of difference” (Trudgill 12).

Moreover, as John Gumperz argues, in many cases “the motivation for code

switching seems to be stylistic and metaphorical rather than grammatical,” for by

switching languages, speakers group utterances into “contrastable units” and provide

additional contextual meaning (72). Bilinguals therefore switch languages just as

monolinguals switch registers or dialects: for expressive, rhetorical and pragmatic

purposes (Gumperz 89–90; Romaine 161). Although attitudes toward code switching

vary from community to community,1 the practice can be a means of positive group

identification (Romaine 169-70). Gumperz and other sociolinguists base their

1
For example, in a study of Spanish-English bilinguals from southern California, Toribio finds that
even people who regularly switch languages in conversation may dislike the behavior. On one extreme
was a respondent who felt that code switching “reflects a deterioration or inadequate mastery of both
languages” (“Spanglish” 127). Other respondents felt more comfortable code switching but noted that
they did not find the practice to be aesthetically pleasing and that it bothered them when people switch
languages (“Spanglish” 118, 133). By contrast, Spanish-English bilinguals in other parts of the country
express more positive attitudes toward code switching, as Shana Poplack shows in her study of Puerto
Rican bilinguals living in New York (“Contrasting Patterns of Code-switching”).
42
characterizations of code switching on the speech of modern speakers, but their ideas

also clarify the motivations of Anglo-Saxon bilinguals for alternating between Old

English and Latin in their writings.

As the ensuing discussion will demonstrate, the bilingual poets who switched

between Old English and Latin in “The Phoenix” and “A Summons to Prayer” and

additionally borrowed Greek terms in “Aldhelm” alternated languages to underscore

the poems’ relationships to other texts and to signal their own membership in a

prestigious community. The switches between Old English and Latin and the isolated

Greek borrowings in “Aldhelm” allude to the textual and authorial origins of

adjoining monolingual works and connect the poems with the liturgies whose

celebration constituted the primary focus of Anglo-Saxon monastic life. Making these

liturgical connections enabled the poets to position their own works within the textual

community of southern English monasteries reformed in the tenth century.

2.1 Code Switching to Evoke Textual and Authorial Sources

In addition to their macaronic content, the coda to “The Phoenix,” “A Summons

to Prayer,” and “Aldhelm” are similar in that they are placed near texts that either

translate Latin or present it untranslated. 2 The coda to “The Phoenix” follows that

poem’s translation and expansion of Lactantius’ Carmen de ave phoenice. “A

Summons to Prayer” occurs one page after “Judgment Day II,” an Old English

translation of Bede’s De die judicii. And “Aldhelm” comes just before its namesake’s

2
Robinson makes a similar observation in “The Rewards of Piety” 196–98.
43
Prosa de virginitate. The linguistic alternation in all three poems points toward the

origins, whether textual or authorial, of adjoining texts. In the first two poems, the

inclusion of Latin in an otherwise Old English context evokes the Latin sources

translated in previous verses. In “Aldhelm,” conversely, the inclusion of Old English

and Greek in an otherwise Latin context characterizes the author of the treatise that

follows the poem.

The coda to “The Phoenix” and “A Summons to Prayer” are similar in their

placement and textual function. In “The Phoenix,” the translated description of

the phoenix’s cycle of migration, nest-building, immolation, and rebirth is followed

by new material explaining the allegorical importance of the creature and its

relevance to the Christian life. The ending of the poem enjoins the reader to apply the

preceding material to his or her own life, moving beyond commentary to a first-person

recognition of God’s gifts and a prayer for continued blessings in the hereafter.

A progression like that in “The Phoenix” takes place in the grouping of

“Judgment Day II,” “An Exhortation to Christian Living,” and “A Summons to

Prayer.”3 These three works are closely related, recorded as they were by the same

scribe and placed on successive pages in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 201

(Dobbie lxix–lxx). Fred C. Robinson argues that “An Exhortation” and “A

Summons” are in fact one work, which he calls the Rewards of Piety. As he explains,

3
Whitbread also observed the similarity between the sections of “The Phoenix” and the poems in
CCCC 201, but considered “An Exhortation to Christian Living” and “A Summons to Prayer” to be
separate “postscripts” or “supplements” to “Judgment Day II” rather than parts of a single,
thematically unified work (“Notes on Two Minor Old English Poems” 127–28; “The Old English

44
although editors have traditionally presented “An Exhortation” and “A Summons” as

separate poems, the two supposedly distinct works are grouped together in the

manuscript. As Robinson observes, the macaronic section begins with a capital not

much bigger than the one marking the final section of “An Exhortation” (“The

Rewards of Piety” 194; Harlow pl. 24).

Cohesive as the Rewards of Piety may be, it is not textually or thematically

isolated from the preceding translation of Bede’s De die judicii. Rather, these works

function as a group with its own distinct program. “Judgment Day II” is separated

from “An Exhortation to Christian Living” by a prose rubric announcing “Her enda†

†eos boc †e hatte!inter florigeras. †æt is on englisc betwyx blowende †e to godes

rice!fara† …” (Here ends this book, which is called Inter florigeras, that is in English

“among the flowering [ones]” who journey to God’s kingdom) (Harlow pl. 23.5). The

same theme is immediately picked up in “An Exhortation,” which as Robinson points

out, echoes the words blowende and rice in its second line (“The Rewards of Piety”

199 n.7). Moreover, in the opening proposition of “An Exhortation,” “Gif †u wille †æt

blowende rice gestigan,” the demonstrative †æt refers deictically to the heavenly

kingdom described in “Judgment Day II” and mentioned in the rubric. “An

Exhortation” immediately develops on the vision of paradise presented in “Judgment

Day II” by shifting from depiction of the blessed life to instruction on how to obtain it.

Poems of the Benedictine Office” 48–49; “The Old English Poem Judgment Day II and Its Latin
Source” 646).
45
 The “Judgment Day II”-Rewards of Piety grouping closes with the macaronic

“A Summons to Prayer,” which asks God to bless the penitent so that he or she may

attain the eternal reward promised and explained in the previous sections. Here again,

manuscript layout reflects the thematic unity of the texts. The final words of “A

Summons,” regna caelorum, are spaced more widely than any of the lines of

“Judgment Day II” or “An Exhortation,” so that regna takes up about a third of a line

and caelorum occupies an entire line by itself, followed by a blank row.4 The end of

the macaronic section is therefore set off more noticeably from the following text

(“The Lord’s Prayer II”) than any of the previous, supposedly separate texts are from

each other (Harlow pl. 23.5–25).

If we consider these three conventionally divided works to form a whole, then,

we see that just as in “The Phoenix,” an Old English translation of a Latin work is

followed by an explanation and application of that work’s theme to the moral life and

a macaronic closing that relates the preceding material directly to the reader or

listener. Whereas “The Phoenix” brings the point home by shifting to the first-person

plural, “Hafa† us alyfed lucis auctor,” “A Summons to Prayer” relates the preceding

lessons to its audience even more directly: “Îænne gemiltsa† †e,” followed by a

prompt for the name of the person so addressed.

By switching between Old English and Latin at the ends of these programmatic

groupings, the poets manifested the Latinity that inspired their works in the first

4
Robinson notes blank space between “Judgment Day II” and “An Exhortation,” but none of the lines
between these texts are entirely blank (“The Rewards of Piety” 194; Harlow pl. 23.5).
46
place—the Latin poems of Lactantius and Bede. I do not mean to suggest, however,

that the Latin elements in “The Phoenix” are direct borrowings from the Carmen de

ave phoenice, nor that “A Summons to Prayer” quotes De die judicii.5 Rather, the

relationship between the Latin in the macaronic poems and that of the source texts is

iconic, representing the fact of Latinity. Had Latin not been used in the poems, the

translations they follow would appear no different on the surface than texts conceived

and written entirely in the vernacular. The macaronic endings thus function as

linguistic colophons: by switching from Old English to Latin, they announce the

Latin origins of the preceding sections.6 I will explain further how the macaronic

passages interpret these Latin sources in Section 2.2.2, which demonstrates how the

multilingual verses exhibit the interpretive strategies of contemporary liturgical texts.

The remaining Old English macaronic poem, “Aldhelm,” speaks of origins in a

different way. It introduces the Prosa de virginitate, proceeding into Aldhelm’s own

preamble to his Latin work. Unlike “The Phoenix” and “A Summons to Prayer,”

which introduce Latin into an otherwise Old English context, “Aldhelm” brings

Old English and Greek into Latin surroundings. Since the Prosa de virginitate is not

translated but in the original language, “Aldhelm” does not foreground the Latinity behind

an adjoining translation as the macaronic coda to “The Phoenix” and “A Summons to

5
Whitbread does note that some of the Latin in “A Summons to Prayer” translates expressions found
in “An Exhortation to Christian Living” (“Notes” 129). These similarities may arise, however, because
“An Exhortation” adopts the same Latin liturgical vocabulary as the macaronic ending. In Sections
2.2.2 and 2.2.3, below, I examine how “A Summons to Prayer” employs this liturgical vocabulary; see
p. 65, n. 22.
6
Whitbread states more generally that each macaronic ending “might by its use of Latin round off
the structure with some show of symmetry” (“Notes” 128).
47
Prayer” do. Instead, “Aldhelm” evokes the author of the treatise and adopts salient elements

of his style, personifying the creator of the manuscript’s primary text.

The poem expresses considerable pride in Aldhelm’s nationality. He

is described as an æ†ele sceop, a particularly Anglo-Saxon poetic function, and as

“ipselos on æ†ele Angolsexna, byscop on Bretene” (eminent in the homeland of the

English Saxons, a bishop in Britain, l. 3-5a).7 “Abundance” (Euthenia) is said to have

come to his aid more often “æne on e†le”—either “alone in his homeland” or, if one

reads æne with Napier as Greek ainh, “fame in his homeland” (Dobbie 194).

The poet’s construction of that homeland is worth pausing to consider, since it

is a prime example of what Benedict Anderson terms an “imagined political

community.” Although Anderson’s account of the formation of national identity

presents the nation as a modern phenomenon, Kathleen Davis demonstrates that the

same nation-making processes Anderson and others ascribe to the modern world were

also at work in England at least as early as the ninth century.8 The double

characterization in “Aldhelm” of the subject as “ipselos on æ†ele Angolsexna” and

“byscop on Bretene” manifests one such nation-making process. An ideal entity is

conflated with a real location as the name of a people, Angolsexna, is juxtaposed with

the name of a place, Bretene.9 Consequently, as Davis explains, “place and people

7
On the denotation of Angolsexna, see n. 8, below.
8
Davis explains the construction of national identity in Alfred’s famous preface to Gregory’s
Pastoral Care. Nicholas Howe, writing before the publication of Anderson’s Imagined Communities,
examines similar processes at work in Exodus and Beowulf.
9
The poem is unique in its use of the term Angolsexna—a search through the Dictionary of Old
English Corpus reveals that no other vernacular poem from the period does so. Originally formulated
48
become indissociable” (620–21).

Another strategy of national formation is evident in the poem’s portrayal of a

past in which one figure, Aldhelm, distinguishes himself as both poet and ecclesiast

throughout the æ†el Angolsexna. Such a remembrance of a past ideal “not only posits

the nation as a preexisting, homogenous entity, but also authorizes the contemporary

nation in terms of apparently intrinsic, timeless characteristics” (Davis 622, her

emphasis). As a result, the poem’s depiction of Aldhelm tells us less about the

political reality of the poet-bishop’s own time than it does about the political

imaginings of late-tenth- and early-eleventh-century England. This political vision of

a unified English kingdom was enabled in part by the monastic reform movement that

made possible the production of the manuscript containing “Aldhelm.” Through the

production of such manuscripts, the reform fostered “the perception of a national

culture” sanctioned and in many cases enabled by the monarchy (Davis 627).

The geographical and historical placement of Aldhelm in the poem is

corroborated by the inclusion of Old English in a predominantly Latin setting.

Although the use of Old English is not in itself sufficient to establish Aldhelm’s

national identity, it is an additional means of characterizing Aldhelm as an English

product. As such, the incorporation of Old English points to both the national and

creative origins of the treatise that follows the poem.

by continental Latin writers to distinguish the Saxons of England from those living on the continent,
the term had “become rare by the later tenth century” and did not reenter common usage until the
sixteenth. The use of Anglo-Saxon to refer to all of the Germanic inhabitants of early medieval
England, regardless of their continental origins, is a modern innovation (Reynolds 398).
49
 If switching between Latin and Old English helps indicate Aldhelm’s

nationality, the inclusion of Greek emulates the style Aldhelm was known for—one

enthusiastically copied by Anglo-Latin writers, particularly during the Benedictine

Reform. As Michael Lapidge explains, Aldhelm was one of the original exemplars in

England of the so-called hermeneutic style of Latin writing, which featured the

frequent use of Greek borrowings, archaic Latin words, and neologisms

(“Hermeneutic Style” 105). Aldhelm was one of the principal authors studied in

Anglo-Saxon schools and attracted especial interest for his novel use of language

(Lapidge, “Hermeneutic Style” 112–13). During the Benedictine Reform, writers

advanced this style in their own works and made frequent use of Greek loanwords;

indeed, proponents of the hermeneutic style, as Lapidge observes, “include virtually

every known tenth-century Latin author or work which has survived, [with] only one

notable exception: Ælfric,” who purposefully rejected the style for the sake of clarity

(“Hermeneutic Style” 139).

The poem “Aldhelm” was produced at Canterbury, an active center not only for

the reform movement but also for the promulgation of the hermeneutic style (Ker

107–08; Brooks 267–70; Lapidge, “Hermeneutic Style” 111). Although Aldhelm’s

writings were studied all over England, that tenth-century writers at Canterbury

should emulate his works was especially apt because he himself studied there almost

three centuries earlier. Adherents to the hermeneutic style at Canterbury include Oda

and Dunstan (both archbishops of Canterbury and leaders of the reform), and Oda’s

student Frithegod, who in turn taught the reformer Oswald (Lapidge, “Hermeneutic
50
Style” 111). Like Aldhelm himself, later practitioners of the style need not have had a

fundamental knowledge of the Greek language to incorporate such borrowings.

Rather, they derived Greek words from the writings of Aldhelm as well as from

Greek-Latin glossaries, which provided the Greek words used in the poem “Aldhelm”

(Lapidge, “Hermeneutic Style” 115–121).10 In fact, a fragment of such a glossary

appears in the same manuscript as “Aldhelm” and the Prosa de virginitate, along with

the first seventeen lines of another work studied as a model of the hermeneutic style,

the third book of Bella Parisiacae urbis by Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés

(Lapidge, “Hermeneutic Style” 113–114). By incorporating Greek borrowings, then,

the “Aldhelm” poet matched the style of the manuscript’s principal text—a style

widely adopted in contemporary Canterbury—and characterized the writing of

Aldhelm himself.

Since, as I explained at the beginning of this chapter, code switching can serve

as a means of group identification in communities that value the practice, the

language alternation in the poems ultimately fostered connections among speakers as

well as texts. The bilingual poets who produced “The Phoenix” and “A Summons to

Prayer” did so in part to signal the Latin origins of the preceding vernacular

translations; however, they did so in a way that promoted their identity as bilingual

speakers. By switching languages, these poets could be seen, like Aldhelm, as both

10
Lapidge locates all of the Greek terms used in “Aldhelm” in Georg Goetz’s Corpus Glossariorum
Latinorum (Leipsig: B.G. Teubner, 1888). He acknowledges that Goetz’s compilation “gives only an
approximate notion of what words might have been found in a [tenth-century English] glossary”

51
“æ†ele sceop” and “bonus auctor,” expressing a confluence of languages that their

monastic audiences could admire and with which they could identify.

2.2 Code Switching to Evoke the Liturgy

Just as the incorporation of elements in various languages connects the

macaronic poems with neighboring texts, it also connects them on a larger scale with

the textual community that produced the manuscripts themselves, one brought

together by the reform of Benedictine monasticism starting in the mid-tenth century.11

As part of the same movement, liturgical texts previously unknown to England were

introduced from the continent: the chants of the Mass were expanded by adding new

lyrics and melodies called tropes, while a new repertoire of hymns was incorporated

into the daily cycle of liturgies known as the Divine Office.12 Comparison of the

Latin elements in the poems with these liturgical texts reveals a number of striking

because the Corpus brings together dozens of glossaries, many of which were produced after the tenth
century (“Hermeneutic Style” 115).
11
The beginning of the Benedictine Reform is conventionally dated to Dunstan’s appointment as
abbot of Glastonbury in 940 or 943. Dunstan became archbishop of Canterbury in 959 or 960, the first
of a series of archbishops from reformed monasteries (Foot 179; Brooks 258). Dunstan’s disciple
Æthelwold in turn spread the reform to Winchester during his tenure as bishop there (c. 963–984).
Seminal surveys of the reform include Knowles, The Monastic Order in England 18–62; Stenton,
Anglo-Saxon England 433–69; and Symons’ introduction to his edition of the Regularis concordia. For
a discussion of the proliferation of Latin and vernacular works during the reform, see Lapidge,
“Schools, Learning and Literature” 31–48.
12
Although the practice of troping is believed to have originated on the continent in the late-eighth-
and early-ninth centuries, the earliest surviving tropes date from a century later. The trope continued to
be a vital liturgical genre until around 1150, and particular kinds of tropes persisted well into the
thirteenth century. Planchart summarizes the early development of the trope and thoroughly traces the
relationships among tropes from English and continental manuscripts (1: 131–291). On the impetus for
troping, see van Deusen 165–200. The subsequent development of the trope genre, particularly in
France, is traced by Fassler in Gothic Song. On the introduction of the new hymn repertoire to
England, see Section 2.2.3.
52
correspondences on a functional as well as a lexical level; that is, the poems not only

sound, but also behave like liturgical texts.

Although several scholars have noticed a similarity between the Latin in the

poems and Latin liturgical texts, they have not explained such correspondences in

detail. For example, as mentioned in Chapter 1, Brian Shaw notes that the macaronic

ending to “The Phoenix” “relies for a degree of heightened feeling on the use of Latin

… and the liturgical echoes” but explains neither what this “heightened feeling”

entails nor what these liturgical echoes are (178). Leslie Whitbread similarly notes

that “For Latin (and Greek) phrases the author of ‘Aldhelm’ seems to have drawn on

liturgical texts” and that “the same may be true of some of the Latin in the ‘Summons.’”

Whitbread cites the Canon of the Mass and Matthew 8:2 and 10:7 as analogues for “A

Summons” and suggests that “Aldhelm” may have drawn on contemporary hymns, but

he does not specify what hymns inform the poems’ Latin elements (“Notes” 129).

In the subsequent discussion, I will explain in much greater detail how the

poems borrow from liturgical texts not only by adopting the vocabulary of tropes and

hymns but also by interpreting neighboring texts in the manner of tropes. The poems’

incorporation of the liturgical vocabulary is most obvious in the various epithets for

God they contain. But on a more fundamental level, the poems act as tropes by

developing the meaning of adjacent authoritative texts through the various modes of

scriptural exegesis. Thus, just as the bilingual poets who wrote the macaronic

passages cited the language of both eucharistic and official liturgies, they employed

the hermeneutic strategies of liturgical texts to extract figurative meaning from literal
53
accounts—in the case of “The Phoenix,” of the mythical bird’s life cycle; in the case

of “A Summons to Prayer,” of Judgment Day; and in the case of “Aldhelm,” of the

writer’s creation of his Prosa de virginitate. Moreover, by highlighting the lexical and

stylistic similarities of their own works to tropes and hymns, these poets

demonstrated that their works were part of the prestigious textual community created

by the reform movement.

2.2.1 The Macaronic Poems as Products of the Benedictine Reform

As explained in Chapter 1, the three poems that interweave Old English and

Latin are all found in manuscripts produced between the late-tenth- and early-

eleventh centuries, the period of the monastic reform initiated by Dunstan in the 940’s

and promulgated by his disciples Æthelwold and Oswald. The places of origin

identified or proposed for the manuscripts containing the poems were all reformed

monastic houses. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 201, which contains “A

Summons to Prayer,” bears the strongest link to the reform since it appears along with

the partial Old English translation of the Regularis concordia, the English redaction

of the Benedictine Rule compiled by Æthelwold at Winchester.13 Worcester, where

CCCC 201 may have originated, was reformed in 961 by Oswald (Lapidge, “Schools,

Learning, and Literature” 31). The various places of origins proposed for the Exeter

13
In addition to Æthelwold’s implementation of the reform at Winchester, two of Dunstan’s
successors as archbishop also had direct Winchester connections: Æthelgar, elevated to the
archbishopric in 988, was a disciple of Æthelwold and the first abbot of the reformed New Minster at
Winchester; Ælfheah, succeeded Æthelwold as bishop of Winchester in 984 and was consecrated as
archbishop in 1008 (Brooks 278–79).
54
Book—Exeter, Glastonbury, and Christ Church, Canterbury—were likewise reformed

houses. Exeter itself was reformed in 968, when King Edgar commissioned a group

of monks from Glastonbury, the starting point for Dunstan’s reform efforts, to

reestablish Benedictine practices there (Conner 29–30). Exactly when Christ Church,

Canterbury (where “Aldhelm” was produced and “A Summons to Prayer” may have

been recorded) changed from a priory of secular clergy to a reformed Benedictine

community is uncertain, but the earliest documentary evidence indicates that monks

occupied the priory by 1020 (Brooks 256). Although the poems, particularly “The

Phoenix,” may have been composed before the manuscripts were compiled, their

strong affinity with liturgical texts introduced to England during the second half of

the tenth century and recorded in contemporaneous manuscripts suggests that they

were produced during the reform.14

2.2.2 Correspondences Between the Macaronic Poems and Tropes

Not long before the manuscripts containing these poems were compiled,

Æthelwold introduced tropes to England as part of his larger reforms of Benedictine

liturgy, most likely according to the liturgical practices of the reformed monastery of

14
Based on his codicological study of the Exeter Book, Patrick Conner argues that the part of the
manuscript containing “The Phoenix” was composed before the English reform and derived its
inspiration from continental models (148–59). Since the reform movement on the continent began
almost a half century earlier, however, with the founding of Cluny in 910, English monastic poets
writing before the reform of their own communities could very well have based their poems on those
of poets in reformed continental houses. Even if the poet of “The Phoenix” modeled his work on a
continental poem composed before the Cluniac reform, this pre-reform model could have still drawn
on the language of tropes and hymns, since the development of tropes and the expansion of the hymn
corpus into the New Hymnal were well underway by the ninth century. On the beginnings of the
reform at Cluny, see Knowles, Monastic Order 28–30.
55
Fleury.15 His efforts are attested in three collections of tropes, the two so-called

Winchester Tropers (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 775 and Cambridge, Corpus

Christi College 473) and a later manuscript partially included in London, British

Library, Cotton Caligula A xiv. The Oxford manuscript dates from around 1050, but a

rubric and other textual references indicate that it is a copy of a manuscript composed

between 978 and 986, very close to the period when the Regularis concordia was

disseminated (Planchart 1: 11). The Cambridge manuscript has conventionally been

dated to around the middle of the eleventh century. Alejandro Enrique Planchart

convincingly argues, however, that the order of tropes in the manuscript and its

connections with Wulfstan the Cantor’s Vita Æthelwoldi suggest a date between 996

and 1006 (1: 26–33). The manuscripts, Planchart concludes, therefore “probably

reflect directly the Winchester liturgical customs at the time of St. Æthelwold” (1:

11). These dates also make the Winchester Tropers contemporaneous with those

manuscripts that contain the macaronic poems.

The British Library troper postdates both the Winchester Tropers and the

poems, having been compiled around 1050 (Planchart 1: 50). Although the troper is

missing numerous folios, Planchart deduces that it “apparently contained virtually the

whole of the Winchester repertory, conflated with other continental tropes and a large

number of unica” (1: 49, 55–60). The two fragments with which the troper is

15
Fleury was a regular point of contact between reformers in England and those on the continent.
Æthelwold, unable to visit Fleury himself, sent representatives there to study the community’s
observance of the Benedictine rule and its performance of plainchant. Æthelwold’s fellow reformer
Oswald spent eight years at Fleury before becoming bishop of Worcester, and advisors from Fleury

56
currently bound—a twelfth-century troper and a collection of Old English saints’

lives—suggest Canterbury origins because both fragments mention saints particularly

venerated there (Planchart 1: 47). Planchart therefore maintains a Canterbury origin

for the eleventh-century troper based on this contextual evidence and its inclusion of

tropes from the Winchester repertory, no doubt adopted through ecclesiastical

commerce between Canterbury and Winchester (1: 47–50). Following his usage, I

will hereafter refer to Cotton Caligula A xiv as the Canterbury Troper.

The tropes in these manuscripts embellish parts of the Mass by setting new texts

to preexisting melodies, by adding newly composed chants to the beginnings of

preexisting ones, and by interpolating new texts and melodies within established

chants. For example, whereas the basic text of the Agnus Dei is a threefold invocation,

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem

[Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Lamb of
God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Lamb of God, who
takes away the sins of the world, grant us peace],

a trope found in both Winchester Tropers varies each petition by adding new text (in

keeping with Planchart’s catalog, italicized words are those of the original chant):

Quem Iohannes in deserto praedicavit, ovans et dicens, ecce:

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
Qui sedes ad dexteram patris, solus invisibilis rex: miserere nobis.
Rex regum, gaudium angelorum, deus: miserere nobis.
Lux indeficiens, pax perpetua, omniumque redemptio, eia:
miserere nobis (Planchart 2: 237).

attended the Council of Winchester to aid in the drafting of the Regularis concordia. See Knowles,
Monastic Order 39–61ff. for an account of how continental reforms were emulated in England.
57
 [You whom John preached in the desert, rejoicing and saying, “Behold the Lamb of
God, who takes away the sins of the world,” have mercy on us. You who sit at the
right hand of the father, the one unseen king, have mercy on us. King of kings, joy of
angels, God, have mercy on us. Unfailing light, eternal peace, and redemption of all,
eia, have mercy on us.]

These kinds of additions are labeled differently in the tropers depending on which

parts of the Mass they modify: whereas tropes to proper portions (the Introit,

Offertory, and Communion, whose texts change depending on the occasion) are

generally labeled tropi, additions to the Gloria, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei are called

laudes.16 Modern musicologists also distinguish among different kinds of tropes;

some, for example, call new texts set to newly composed melodies tropes but those

set to existing melodies prosulae (Bjork 2–3). Tropes to the Alleluia form a special

class generally referred to as sequences, although some scholars distinguish between

the melody of such an addition (the sequence proper) and its text (called a prosa or

prose) (cf. Fassler). For the sake of simplicity, however, I will refer to all

modifications to Mass chants apart from the Alleluia as tropes and to modifications of

the Alleluia as sequences.

Comparing the Latin phrases in the macaronic poems to texts in the Winchester

and Canterbury Tropers reveals how much the poems resemble tropes in their style

and function as well as their vocabulary. Like many tropes, the poems alternate

16
For example, in the Oxford Troper, tropes to the propers of feasts celebrating virgin saints are
rubricated “TROPI IN NATALE DE VIRGINIBUS” (“Tropes on the birthday of virgins”), those for
the Sanctus begin “INCIPIUNT LAUDES AD DULCIA CANTICA SANCTUS” (“Here begin laudes
to the sweet songs ‘Sanctus’”), and those for the Agnus Dei begin “INCIPIUNT LAUDES
RESONANT QUAE DULCITER AGNUM QUI VENIENS PECCATA PIUS TULIT IMPIA
MUNDI” (“Here begin the laudes which sweetly express the Lamb who, in coming, mercifully took
away the wicked sins of the world”) (Planchart 2: 18, 19, 20). Interestingly, like the texts it introduces,
this last rubric tropes the Agnus Dei.
58
languages. Like the tropes, the poems introduce and conclude preexistent

authoritative texts and combine modes of scriptural interpretation in explaining those

texts. Most apparently and perhaps most significantly, the poems and the tropes also

employ a remarkably similar Latin vocabulary. After analyzing the textual, stylistic,

and interpretive features that “The Phoenix,” “A Summons to Prayer,” and

“Aldhelm” share with the tropes, I will demonstrate how the poems employ the Latin

lexicon that tropes inherited from hymns, the ultimate source of this vocabulary.

Many of the Winchester and Canterbury tropes challenge the prevalent

scholarly notion that the combination of languages in “The Phoenix,” “A Summons to

Prayer,” and “Aldhelm” was a rare phenomenon particular to marginal texts. Like

these poems, a number of the tropes are themselves macaronic, alternating between

Latin and Greek. For example, the following Kyrie trope, which appears three times

in the Winchester Tropers, alternates Greek, grecized Hebrew, and Latin epithets for

the three persons of the Trinity. In the manner of a glossary, many of the Greek and

Hebrew terms are followed by Latin synonyms. A rubric in the Oxford Troper

acknowledges the trope’s linguistic alternation by stating “PERSONAT HAEC

LYRICIS VARIATA PRECATIO LINGUIS” (“This prayer, varied by lyric

languages, proclaims …”) (Planchart 2: 18).

Adoneus kyrius, dominus, kyrion, Christeleison: Kyrieleison

Hel, sother, salvator, messias, Christus, unctus, rucha, pneuma: Christeleison
Spiritus sile apostolus, missus pontifex: Kyrieleison
Speculator, miserere, domine, nobis, eia,
omnes dicite: kyrius kyrion, Christeleison: Kyrieleison (Planchart 2: 241).17
17
I have omitted internal repetitions from the text.
59
 [Lord Adonai, Lord of lords, Christ have mercy: Lord, have mercy. God, savior,
savior, messiah, Christ, anointed, breath, spirit: Christ, have mercy. Spirit who has
been sent (?), pontiff envoy: Lord, have mercy. O watchman Lord, have mercy on us;
eia, let everyone say “Lord of lords, Christ, have mercy. Lord have mercy.”]

Other tropes borrow isolated Greek epithets such as theos ymon, “our God,” into an

otherwise Latin context, much in the manner of “Aldhelm.”

As discussed earlier in relation to the Greek borrowings in “Aldhelm,” the

inclusion of Greek loanwords in this trope manifests the hermeneutic style popular

throughout the history of Anglo-Latin writing but especially cultivated during the

reform. In addition to the tropes, other Latin writings from Winchester display what

Michael Lapidge terms a “predilection … for the grecism” (“Hermeneutic Style” 139,

123–29). By alternating languages, the poets who wrote the macaronic poems

therefore adopted not only the style of the tropes but also the larger stylistic

movement of which the tropes themselves were a part. Rather than writing outside the

literary mainstream, bilingual poets participated in it to a degree that writers of

monolingual vernacular texts could not.

The macaronic poems’ relation to neighboring texts additionally demonstrates

their affinity with tropes. As explained previously, all three macaronic passages either

conclude larger works or introduce them; the core of each of these works is a

preexistent Latin text, either translated or in the original language. Particular kinds of

tropes likewise introduce or conclude preexistent, authoritative material. Tropes for

the Introit, the introduction to the Mass, generally precede the established chant, acting

as an introduction to an introduction. On the other end, Alleluia tropes set new lyrics to

60
the closing melodic run of the praise song, allowing that conclusion to be sung to a

complete text rather than on the final -a. In time, such tropes became sequences, stand-

alone pieces bridging the Alleluia and the gospel.18

As we have already seen, the poems’ combination of languages at important

textual junctures calls attention to the sources of neighboring material. To explain the

significance of these adjoining texts, the poems resort to all four patristic modes of

scriptural interpretation.19 The progression between the sections of “The Phoenix”

and the “Judgment Day II”-“Exhortation to Christian Living”-“Summons to Prayer”

grouping runs the entire gamut of medieval exegesis, here applied to the Latin source

texts that underlie both works. Both poems begin with the literal (the presentation and

expansion of the translated texts) and then proceed to allegorical or tropological

readings (explanation of “The Phoenix” as a type for Christ and the exhortation to

moral behavior inspired by Bede’s vision of the Last Judgment, respectively) before

closing in the anagogical mode with a final look forward to the joys of a blessed

afterlife. Both the end of “The Phoenix” and “A Summons” signal this shift from

explication to praise and prayer by appealing directly to the audience, as mentioned

previously.

18
Fassler traces the development of the sequence from a trope of the Alleluia to an independent
liturgical form (38–43, 47–57).
19
The classification of scriptural signification into four “senses” is most closely associated with
Augustine and Gregory, but can be traced to Clement of Alexandria and Origen. These four modes
include the historical or literal, what the actual words of the text mean; the allegorical, how the text
metaphorically relates the tenets of Christianity; the tropological, how the text reflects precepts of
moral behavior; and the anagogical, how the text reveals the ultimate purpose and outcome of creation
De Lubac comprehensively treats the origins and development of the four senses of scripture. See also
Evans 67–71, 114–22.
61
 “Aldhelm” likewise runs through a variety of interpretational modes, in this

case applied both to Aldhelm’s life and to the Prosa de virginitate: the literal account

of the treatise’s creation (“Thus a holy and just man accomplished in books, a good

author, Aldhelm, the noble poet set me,” ll. 1–3) is followed by a tropological

extraction of moral instruction from Aldhelm’s example (“He whom self-control

possesses must certainly never excuse himself from hardship, but he must always

eagerly pray for support through his spiritual consciousness in the little world,” ll.

11b–15) and an anagogical look forward to the blessings the fortis factor will bestow

on the righteous (ll. 16–17a). The treatise proper then shifts back into the tropological

mode with its instruction on living chastely.

These combinations of exegetical modes strongly resemble the hermeneutical

methods of tropes and sequences. Scholars have long acknowledged that these

liturgical additions interpret the chants they embellish, much as a grammatical or

scriptural gloss interprets a particular lemma (cf. Fassler 20). Developing this idea,

William T. Flynn argues that medieval clerics equated liturgical troping with the

notions of trope employed in grammar, rhetoric, and poetics. Just as tropes in

classical and medieval rhetoric involve embellishing an argument through the use of

ornamental language, liturgical tropes involve embellishing set chants through the use

of newly composed words and music. Liturgical troping, therefore, allowed for “an

interplay between the liturgy and scripture and ultimately provided a means of

scriptural interpretation and commentary within the liturgy” (Flynn 15–16, 48–51).

Drawing on the work of Nancy van Deusen, Flynn observes that sequences interpret
62
scripture by combining the various senses, facilitating the liturgical and exegetical

transition they make from an anagogical praise song (the Alleluia) to a literal Gospel

reading (53–54).20 Such tropes therefore offered the poets who wrote “The Phoenix,”

“A Summons to Prayer,” and “Aldhelm” a ready exemplar for the varied

interpretational strategies of their own texts.

The comparisons I have made so far focus on how the modus operandi of the

poems resembles that of the tropes. The poems connect with these liturgical texts

most directly and most literally, however, in their numerous Latin epithets for God. In

“The Phoenix,” God is called lucis auctor (creator of light, l. 667) while “Aldhelm”

refers to the Divinity as fortis factor (strong creator, l. 17). Such epithets are

particularly prevalent in “A Summons to Prayer,” in which God and Christ are

additionally referred to as auctor pacis (creator of peace, l. 5), salus mundi (Salvation

of the World, l. 6), summi filius (Son of the Most High, l. 8), factor cosmi (Creator of

the Universe, l. 9), mundi redemptor (Redeemer of the World, l. 12), clemens deus

(merciful God, l. 14), Christum regem (Christ the King, l. 18), summus iudex (highest

Judge, l. 27), and factor aeternus (eternal Maker, l. 28). Mary is renamed in the same

poem with the epithet uirginem almum (kind virgin, l. 21).

These frequent sacred invocations recall a similar usage in the tropes. Since two

parts of the Mass ordinary, the Kyrie21 and the Agnus Dei, already included repeated

20
Relating the four senses of scripture to liturgical tropes, van Deusen observes that the similarity
between the terms trope and tropological is by no means accidental, since “tropes which most closely
conformed to the analogical-tropological modus of interpretation were most widely circulated” (166).
21
For a list of extant manuscripts containing Kyrie tropes and a discussion of the tropes’ textual and
musical forms, see Bjork.
63
petitions to God, troping them often involved magnifying these petitions by renaming

the Deity with various epithets not in the original texts, as seen in the Agnus trope

given above and in the following Kyrie trope from the Oxford Troper:

Kyrie Rex genitor ingenite, vera essentia: eleison.

Kyrie Luminis fons et rerum conditor: eleison.
Kyrie Qui nos tuae imaginis signasti specie: eleison.
Christe Lux oriens, per quem sunt omnia: eleison.
Christe Qui perfecta es sapientia: eleison.
Christe Die forma humanae particeps: eleison.
Kyrie Spiritus vivifice, vitae vis: eleison.
Kyrie Expurgator scelerum et largitor gratiae,
Petimus propter nostras offensas noli
nos relinquare, O consolator dolentis animae: eleison
(Planchart 2: 250).
[Lord, king, uncreated creator, true essence: have mercy. Lord, source of light and
creator of things: have mercy. Lord, who has marked us in the likeness of your
image: have mercy. Christ, light of dawn, through whom all things are: have mercy.
Christ, who is perfect wisdom, have mercy. Christ, partaking by day in the human
form, have mercy. Lord, life-giving spirit, life of life: have mercy. Lord, cleanser of
sins and giver of grace, we ask you not to abandon us because of our offenses, O
comforter of sorrowing spirits: have mercy.]

The epithets for God in this trope—among them rex genitor, luminis fons, rerum

conditor, lux oriens, and vitae vis—superficially resemble the Latin epithets in the

macaronic poems. A more detailed survey of the tropes, however, reveals that many

of the Latin phrases in the poems echo these liturgical texts verbatim.

The following table lists Latin elements from the macaronic poems that also

appear in the tropes, sometimes with variations of case or word order—a difference I

will address later. The first column lists a phrase from a particular poem, indicated in

parentheses as P for “The Phoenix,” S for “A Summons to Prayer,” and A for

“Aldhelm.” Subsequent columns give the corresponding phrase in the Winchester and

64
Canterbury Tropers, the kind of trope in which that phrase occurs, and the incipit of

that trope. As can be seen, although some of the poems’ Latin elements do in fact

correspond verbatim to epithets in the tropes, similarities between the Latin

vocabularies of the poems and the tropes are not limited to epithets; nor are the

liturgical texts bearing such similarities limited to the epithet-rich tropes of the Kyrie

and Agnus Dei or indeed to the Mass ordinary.22

Table 2.1: Lexical Correspondences Between Macaronic Poems and Tropes

Phrase in Poem Phrase in Trope Trope Type Incipit MSS23

Christum regem (S) rex Christe Offertory Corporibus te delectant Bo, Ca
203
Christe rex Kyrie Pater creator omnium Bo 257
Christe rex Kyrie Kyrie salve semperque Bo 252*
clara uoce (S) clara uoce Kyrie Kyrie rex sempiterne Bo 251*
clemens Deus (S) Deus clemens Gloria Quem glorificant sancti angeli Bo 304
laude perenne (S) laude perhenni Gloria Patri aeterno Bo 292*
laude perhenni Gloria O siderum rector Bo 288
luce perhennem (S) lux perhennis Kyrie Cunctipotens genitor deus CC, Bo
247
mundi redemptor (S) mundi redemptor Kyrie Lux et origo lucis Bo 252
sanctus et iustus (A) iustus atque sanctus Agnus Dei Cui Abel iustus CC, Bo
326
sine fine (P) sine fine Introit Omnipotens petimus pia CC, Bo,
Ca 181

22
Whitbread cites Old English phrases from other poems in CCCC 201 that correspond to some of
the Latin phrases from “A Summons to Prayer”: clara uoce, clænre stefne (“Gloria I” l. 37); clemens
deus, rumheort hlaford (“Lords Prayer II” l. 63); luce perhennem, ece leoht (“An Exhortation to
Christian Living” ll. 35, 73). He argues that the Latin in these cases “is an attempt to translate phrases
current in contemporary O.E. religious verse, especially those in the poems surrounding the ‘Summons’
…” (“Notes” 129). Given the evidence from the liturgical texts, however, I think it much more likely that
these Old English phrases themselves adopt and translate the liturgical vocabulary that “A Summons”
presents in its original language; all three expressions appear in the tropes, as shown in Table 2.1.
23
Bo indicates Bodley 775; CC indicates CCCC 473; and Ca indicates Cotton Caligula A xiv.
Numerals following the sigla indicate the page of the trope text in Planchart, vol. 2. An asterisk
designates a work as unique to that particular Anglo-Saxon troper.

65
 sine fine Communion Virginis antique sceleri CC, Bo,
Ca 224
sine fine Introit Postquam factus homo CC, Bo,
Ca 151
sine fine Introit Omnibus ecce piis CC, Bo,
Ca 186
sine fine Introit Quos mea perpetuo CC, Bo,
Ca 187
sine fine Kyrie Pater creator omnium Bo 257
sine fine Kyrie Kyrie rex sempiterne Bo 251*
salus mundi (S) salus mundi Introit Hodie natus est nobis CC, Bo
142
virginem almum (S) alma virgo Introit Adest alma virgo parens CC, Bo,
Ca 176

As Table 2.1 shows, the poem that most frequently echoes the trope vocabulary is “A

Summons to Prayer”—not surprising since this poem, the longest of the three,

presents the most opportunities to include Latin and appears in a manuscript so

strongly associated with Winchester.

Still more Latin elements in the poems do not echo the tropes directly but come

close to doing so. For example, lucis auctor in “The Phoenix” resembles origo lucis

in a Kyrie trope. Whereas “A Summons to Prayer” has mundi redemptor, the Introit

trope “Ecclesiae sponsus illuminator” and the Sanctus trope “Pater ingenitus” have

orbis redemptor (Planchart 2: 70, 323). Likewise, unica uoce in “A Summons” recalls

una uoce, which appears in the Offertory trope “Ab indignatione et ira furoris,” the

Communion trope “Laus, honor, virtus,” and the Kyrie trope “Christe redemptor,

miserere nobis” (Planchart 2: 215, 228, and 254). The poems glancingly cite the trope

vocabulary in numerous other instances as well.

I have listed these correspondences not to suggest that the poets directly quoted

specific tropes in their macaronic works but rather to demonstrate the degree to which

66
both the poems and tropes share a lexicon marked by a relatively small set of terms:

significations and attributions for God and Christ (deus, rex, iudex, redemptor and

clemens, summus), abstractions (lux, pax), and stock expressions denoting the eternity

and unity of heavenly praise (sine fine, laude perhenni, una uoce). The stock

expressions and designations for God ultimately derive from scripture and the

traditional (non-troped) chants of the Mass. The abstractions, however, are a feature

the macaronic poems and the tropes share with texts from outside the eucharistic

liturgy, namely the hymns sung as part of the Divine Office. As the following

subsection will explain, while the writers of the macaronic poems incorporated the

same sorts of terms into their own works, they varied these abstractions in telling ways.

Largely derived from continental sources, the Winchester and Canterbury

Tropers share much in common with trope collections from throughout northwestern

Europe and Norman Sicily. Gunilla Iversen has identified certain thematic elements

common to tropes composed at Winchester, Durham, Arras, Cambrai, Le Mans, Saint

Magloire, and Saint Evroult. Among these shared elements is the frequent naming of

God with abstract epithets like pax, lux, and sapientia—the same sorts of abstractions

that appear not only in the troped Agnus Dei and Kyries cited previously but also in

the Anglo-Saxon macaronic poems (compare these terms with lucis auctor and lucis

et pacis in “The Phoenix” and auctor pacis in “A Summons”).24 As Iversen

demonstrates, this common use of abstractions recalls a similar practice in earlier

liturgical sources, including texts from the Gallican liturgy. Naming God with

67
abstract epithets is not original to these liturgical sources, however, as they

themselves reflect a centuries-old tradition first found in patristic hymns and poems,

such as those of Ambrose and Ennodius, and promulgated in the religious poetry later

composed by Rhabanus Maurus, Florus of Lyons, and Sedulius Scotus (Iversen 24–31).

In the next subsection I will explain in greater detail how the macaronic poems,

like the tropes, adopt the vocabulary of hymns recorded in hymnals produced in

England during the Benedictine Reform. Before doing so, however, I will consider

two final points of difference between the poems and the tropes. First is the difference

in how words are ordered in “A Summons to Prayer”: while “A Summons” has

clemens Deus, the Gloria trope “Quem glorificant sancti angeli” has Deus clemens.

Such syntactic inversion makes the Latin elements conform to Old English word

order. Whereas in Latin an attributive adjective like clemens would typically follow

the noun it modifies, in Old English the adjective would come before the noun

(Mitchell, A Guide to Old English §159). Joseph Crowley has noted a similar

tendency in London, British Library, Royal 2. A. xx, a glossed prayer book compiled

at Worcester two centuries before CCCC 201. While Old English glosses of the same

texts in other manuscripts preserve the Latin word order, the Royal glosses

consistently postpone attributive adjectives (Crowley 126ff.). Crowley takes this

inversion as a sign that the glossator “was probably an Englishman of … limited

education and not regular monastic background” presenting the glossed prayers to

“laypeople or less-than-well-educated religious persons” (151, 123).

24
Note, however, that the abstractions in the poems do not name God directly. See below, p. 70.
68
 In “A Summons to Prayer,” however, such inversion helps the switches between

languages conform to both poetic and linguistic constraints. Following Old English

word order facilitates the code switch by making the syntaxes of the two languages

more equivalent. As David Sankoff and Shana Poplack first observed, code switches

are more likely to occur where the syntaxes of the languages involved are congruent

(“A Formal Grammar for Code Switching”). Pieter Muysken subsequently notes that

alternational code switching is more likely to occur between languages that are

typologically similar, as explained in Chapter 1 (“Patterns of Language Mixing”

401–04). Ordering Latin adjectives within noun phrases according to Old English

conventions—while still placing Latin noun phrases where Old English grammar

allows—therefore creates a local equivalence between the languages that helps make

the linguistic alternation possible.

A second difference between the poems and the liturgical texts is that although

the poems incorporate some of the same abstract nouns used to refer to God in the

tropes and hymns, they generally avoid naming God solely with an abstraction. The

following trope of the Agnus Dei, for example, includes much of the same imagery of

God reigning in heaven as “A Summons to Prayer”:

Agnus dei qui tollis peccata mundi miserere nobis.

Qui sedes in solio residens per saecula regnans, miserere nobis.
Tu pax, tu pietas, bonitas, miseratio clemens, miserere nobis.
Singula discutiens, dum sederis arbiter orbis, miserere nobis (Planchart 2: 328).
[Lamb of God, who take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Who sit remaining
on the throne, reigning throughout the ages, have mercy on us. You peace, you kindness,
goodness, merciful compassion, have mercy on us. Examining every single thing when you
sit in judgment (lit. “when you will have sat [as] judge”) of the world, have mercy on us.]

69
 The third line of this trope includes a string of abstract epithets: pax, pietas,

bonitas, and miseratio clemens. By comparison, in “A Summons to Prayer” God is

called auctor pacis rather than pax—“creator of peace” versus peace itself—and

clemens deus rather than miseratio clemens—“merciful God” versus “merciful

kindness.” Likewise, numerous tropes and hymns refer to God as lux, but “The

Phoenix” has lucis auctor. In fact, of all the Latin nouns used to designate God in the

poems, only one, salus mundi, is an abstraction. In other cases, the abstract terms

appear as genitives or adjectives modifying a concrete agent noun like auctor or

factor. As Iversen observes, the tropes generally do the opposite by expanding an

abstract epithet with a genitive or adjectival modifier (for instance, lux lucis [“light of

light”] or pax vera [“true peace”]) (26). Prosodic factors no doubt influenced this

point of difference, since inflecting single-syllable nouns like lux and pax in the

genitive allowed them to fit Old English meter, as discussed in Section 1.3.2.1.

Subordinating abstractions to concrete designations for God, however, contradicts the

poems’ otherwise trope-like vocabulary and manner.

2.2.3 Correspondences Between the Macaronic Poems and Hymns

Celebration of the Divine Office was and continues to be an integral part of

Benedictine life, and almost every liturgical hour included the singing of a hymn. The

singing of hymns and other sacred music was so prevalent in Anglo-Saxon monastic

life that during the summer, as Mary Berry calculates, a Winchester monk would

have sung for eleven hours each day on average (151). The prevalence of hymns in

70
monastic life, moreover, makes it all the more likely that monastic authors would

recall them in tropes and other compositions.25

Those hymns sung as part of the Office in Anglo-Saxon England can be found

in eight surviving manuscripts from the tenth and eleventh centuries, items K1

through K8 in Helmut Gneuss’s “Liturgical Books in Anglo-Saxon England and their

Old English Liturgical Terminology.” These manuscripts incorporate hymns from the

New Hymnal repertory, developed on the continent during the ninth century and most

likely introduced to England as part of the Benedictine Reform (Gneuss, Hymnar

55–74; Wieland 5–7). Because two of these hymnals (Rouen, Bibliothèque

Municipale, 231 [A 44] and Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg. lat.

338) are neither available in print nor collated in Gneuss’s Hymnar und Hymnen im

Englischen Mittelalter, I will exclude them from the present study. The six remaining

hymnals are listed below according to the order in which they will be discussed;

preceding each manuscript’s shelf number is its siglum and, in parentheses, the item

number Gneuss assigns it in his handlist of liturgical manuscripts.

B (K3) London, British Library, Addit. 37517

D (K2) Durham, Cathedral Library, B III 32
H (K7) London, British Library, Harley 2961
V (K4) London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian D xii
J (K1) London, British Library, Cotton Julius A vi
C (K6) Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 391

25
See Gatch 341–62 on the sources used to reconstruct the Office as it was practiced during the
reform period and the relevance of such liturgical study to the interpretation of Ælfric’s homilies and
of Old English literature in general.
71
 B and D date from the same period as the Winchester Tropers and the

manuscripts containing the Anglo-Saxon macaronic poems. The former, called the

Canterbury Hymnal, shares the same manuscript as the Bosworth Psalter and dates

from the second half of the tenth century. The latter, called the Durham Hymnal,

dates from the first half of the eleventh century (Gneuss, “Liturgical Books” 119).26

Both manuscripts were written in Canterbury and therefore reflect practices particular

to the community that produced “Aldhelm” and possibly the Exeter Book.

H and V, both compiled in the middle of the eleventh century, assign hymns to

the same hours and feasts as B and D. The former, in the manuscript known as the

Leofric Collectar, originated at Exeter while the latter possibly originated at Christ

Church, Canterbury (Gneuss, “Liturgical Books” 119). Gneuss proposes in his study

of the hymns that the order shared by B, D, H, and V was formulated at Christ

Church, Canterbury, modeled on hymnals from Ghent (Hymnar 69–74).

J may have originated at Christ Church, Canterbury, and dates from the middle

of the eleventh century; C can be traced to Worcester and is possibly the latest of the

six, dating from around 1065 (Gneuss, “Liturgical Books” 119). J and C differ from

the other four in the hours to which they assign particular hymns. According to

Gneuss, since many of the hymns in J and C are assigned to the same hours in the

Regularis concordia and Ælfric’s Letter to the Monks of Eynsham, their order was most

likely formulated at Winchester on the model of a hymnal from Fleury (Hymnar 69–74).

26
B and D have been edited by Wieland and Stevenson, respectively. Korhammer edits the Old
Testament (known as “monastic”) canticles in B, C, D, J, and V but not the hymns proper.
72
 The provenances of these hymnals trace the same network of reformed houses

that produced not only the tropers but also the macaronic poems, a network

connecting the ecclesiastical centers at Winchester and Canterbury as well as linking

them to communities at Exeter and Worcester. It therefore comes as little surprise that

the poems echo the hymns as much as they do the tropers, and in certain

circumstances echo only the hymns. The following table shows the direct

correspondences between the poems and the hymns and indicates the manuscripts in

which those hymns can be found. I have cited hymns from B and D by their page

numbers in Wieland’s and Stevenson’s editions, and separated the Canterbury group

of hymnals from the Winchester group with a semicolon.27 The collation of B, C, D,

J, and V is from Table II in Gneuss’s Hymnar, to which I have added those hymns

found in H according to Dewick and Frere’s index (Gneuss, Hymnar 60–68; Dewick

and Frere 650–52). Gneuss also compares the contents of the hymnals with the hymns

designated in Ælfric’s Letter to the Monks of Eynsham, cited as Ae below.

Table 2.2: Lexical Correspondences Between Macaronic Poems and Hymns

Phrase in Poem Phrase in Hymn First Line of Hymn MSS
Christum regem (S) rex Christe Tibi Christe splendor patris B 73, D 114,
H, V; C, J
Christe rex Iesu redemptor omnium B 127, D
137, H, V;
C, J
clara voce (S) vox clara Vox clara ecce intonat B 58, D 37,
H, V; Ae, C, J
laude perenne (P) perhennes laudes Audi redemptor gentium B 62, D 38,
H, V; Ae, C, J
lucis auctor (P) lux et auctor Christe sanctorum decus atque virtus B 80, D 69,
H, V; C, J

27
Wieland in turn cites the hymns in B by their number in Dreves and Blume’s Analecta hymnica.
73
mundi redemptor (S) mundi sator et redemptor Alleluia dulce carmen B 69, D 55,
H, V; Ae, C, J
mundi redemptor Auctor salutis unicus B 86, D 79,
H, V; Ae, C, J
salus mundi (S) mundi salus Christe redemptor omnium B 60, D 39
sine fine (P) sine fine Iam rutilat sacrata dies et splendida B 64, D 47,
valde H, V; C, J
sine fine Christe caelorum habitator alme D 143
sine fine Christe sanctorum decus atque virtus B 80, D 69,
H, V; C, J
sine fine O pater sancte mitis atque pie D 145; J
virginis partu (S) partus virginis Audi redemptor gentium B 62, D 38,
H, V; Ae, C, J
partum virginis Veni redemptor gentium D 43, H, V;
Ae, C, J

As was the case with the tropes, several of the Latin elements in the poems

partially resemble phrases from the hymns without matching them word for word.

Some of these near echoes are listed in the following table.

Table 2.3: Near Lexical Correspondences Between Macaronic Poems and Hymns
Phrase in Macaronic Poem Phrase in Hymn First Line of Hymn MSS
alta polorum (S), regna regna polorum Ecce iam noctis tenuatur umbra B 28, D 8, H,
caelorum (S) V; Ae, C, J
blandem et mitem (P) mitis atque pie O pater sancte mitis atque pie D 145; J
lucis auctor (P) lucis creator Lucis creator optime B 32, D 13,
H, V; Ae, C,
J
mundi redemptor (S) redemptor saeculi Iesu redemptor saeculi B 33, H
redemptor gentium Veni redemptor gentium D 43, H, V;
Ae, C, J
redemptor gentium Iesus refulsit omnium D 48, H, V;
Ae, C, J
salus mundi (S) omnium salus Audi redemptor gentium B 62, D 38,
H, V; Ae, C,
J
summus iudex (S) iuste iudex Nox atra rerum contegit B 46, D 23,
H, V; C, J
iudex omnium Hymnum canamus domino B 91, D 87,
(gloriae) V; Ae, C, J
unica uoce (S) voce simul una O pater sancte mitis atque pie D 145; J

74
 A comparison of Tables 2.2 and 2.3 with Table 2.1 shows that the poems share

some Latin phrases with both the tropes and the hymns: Christum regem, clara uoce,

laude perenne, mundi redemptor, salus mundi, and sine fine. Moreover, most of the

hymns containing these phrases appear in all six of the hymnals, demonstrating that

the poems draw upon a hymn repertory equally broad as that referenced in the tropes.

The wide distribution of the hymns recalled in the poems and the correlation between

Winchester and Canterbury as loci of both hymn and trope production make it all the

more likely that monastic audiences would appreciate the liturgical resonance of the

poems’ Latin phrases.

As was the case with the tropes, the poems in several instances invert the word

order prevalent in the liturgical vocabulary by placing Latin words in a more typically

Old English sequence: clara voce for vox clara and virginis partu for partus virginis.

The latter example exhibits another tendency Crowley observes in the glosses from

London, British Library, Royal 2. A. xx. Where Latin would usually place the

genitive after the noun it modifies, the glosses place the genitive in its common Old

English position, before the noun (126 ff.). The poetic reasons for such inversions are

even clearer here; following Old English word order allows laude to alliterate with lof

in the first half-line (“Phoenix,” l. 676) and salus to alliterate with sibbe and gesæl∂a

(“A Summons,” l. 6). Moreover, bringing Latin syntax in line with that of Old

English once again facilitates alternating the two languages by creating a local

equivalence between them.

75
 Some expressions in the poems, however, do not show such parallels with the

tropes and instead hearken only to the hymn tradition. Specifically, all three

macaronic poems use the word auctor—“The Phoenix” and “A Summons to Prayer”

to refer to God (lucis auctor, auctor pacis), and “Aldhelm” to refer to the man

himself (bonus auctor). Whereas none of the tropes refer to God as auctor, the

appellation is found frequently in hymns, in which God is called not only lux et

auctor, as seen in Table 2.2, but also auctor humani, auctor omnium, auctor saeculi,

auctor salutis unicus, and salutis auctor.28 Although God is not referred to as auctor

in the Vulgate Bible, Sedulius used the term in his alphabetic hymn “A solis ortus

cardine,” found in both the Canterbury and Durham Hymnals. The macaronic poets

therefore connected their works to a specifically hymnic tradition by calling God

auctor. Designating the Deity not only as a creator but as an author befits poems so

overtly about the business of connecting texts from both within and without the

liturgy. The “Aldhelm” poet’s use of bonus auctor to name his subject conveys all the

more praise given the sacred associations of the designation auctor in the hymns.

These multiple points of contact and between the macaronic poems and

liturgical texts situate the bilingual identity of the poets squarely within the

Benedictine Reform. In this context, code switching was a means of drawing attention

to recent liturgical innovations as well as claiming membership in a bilingual

28
These terms are found in the hymns “Christe sanctorum decus angelorum” (B 108, D 116, H, V;
C, J), “Ad cenam agni providi” (B 87, D 82, V; Ae, C, J), “A solis ortus cardine” (B 65, D 50, H, V),
“Auctor salutis unicus” (B 86, D 79, H, V; C, J), and “Christe redemptor omnium, ex patre” (B 60, D
39, H, V; Ae, C, J), respectively.
76
community. Had the poets not switched languages and instead used only Old English,

the liturgical elements would neither stand out linguistically nor reproduce the words

as they were uttered in their original ritualistic settings. Moreover, by incorporating

the language and practice of both the tropes to the Mass and the hymns of the Divine

Office, these poets bridged the two types of liturgies that defined their monastic lives.

Using code switching to connect texts within manuscripts and within communities

therefore facilitated ways not only of interpreting but also of living.

77
 Chapter 3: Macaronic English Carols: Sources and Structure

3.1 Multilingual Poetry After the Norman Conquest

Following the Norman Conquest, the reformed Benedictine communities that

produced the Anglo-Saxon macaronic poems witnessed a remarkable diversification

both in the languages of ecclesiastical and secular administration and in the new

orders founded by subsequent continental reforms. The English church came under

the control of French-speaking abbots and bishops, and, in the two centuries

following the Conquest, members of the old monastic order were joined by their

austerely reformist brethren, the Cistercians, as well as by regular clergy of a new

type: the mendicant orders of Augustinian, Dominican, and Franciscan friars.1

Macaronic poetry continued to be composed, now predominantly according to

imported Romance conventions rather than those of Anglo-Saxon strong-stress meter,

and expressed the changing linguistic and ecclesiastical scene. In the process, such

multilingual verses found an increasingly broad audience as they were disseminated

by members of religious communities and ultimately emulated in the widely popular

genre of the carol.

1
Although William the Conqueror was not able to appoint Normans to the various English abbacies
as quickly as he was to English bishoprics, a year after his death only one Anglo-Saxon abbot
remained (Knowles, Monastic Order 106, 111). Among the new monastic orders to arrive in Britain
were the Cistercians, whose first settlement on the island was made around 1114 in western Wales;
their first establishment in England occurred July 1124 in Lancashire (Knowles, Monastic Order 227).
The first community of Carthusians was established at Witham in 1180 (Knowles, Monastic Order
383). Operating alongside these monastic orders but in a much more public role were the Augustinian
canons, communities of which began to proliferate during the first half of the twelfth century
(Knowles, Monastic Order 140–42). The first mendicants in England were the Franciscans, who arrived
in 1224, fourteen years after their rule was officially approved (Knowles, Religious Orders 1: 130, 128).
78
 Although multilingual poets writing in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries

continued to compose works alternating English and Latin, they also incorporated

Anglo-Norman French into the mix.2 Their efforts are attested in manuscripts that

contain works alternating French with Latin or English, as well as combinations of all

three languages. One of the earliest English-Latin works from the period is found in

London, British Library, Egerton 613, written in a thirteenth-century hand different from

that of the surrounding Anglo-Norman material (Greene 299).3 The first stanza reads

(1) Of on that is so fayr and bright,

Velud maris stella,
Brighter than the dayis light,
Parens et puella,
Ic crie to the; thou se to me;
Leuedy, preye thi Sone for me,
Tam pia,
That ic mote come to the,
Maria (Greene no. 191 B a).
[Of one that is so fair and bright, like a star of the sea, brighter than the light of day,
a parent and a girl, I cry to you (that) you see to me. Lady, pray to your son for me,
so loving, that I may come to you, Mary.] 4

Nearly contemporary with this poem are others that switch between French and

Latin. The following example is the beginning of a Marian hymn found in London,

British Library, Harley 978, a manuscript dating from the mid-thirteenth century and

home to the famous canon “Sumer is icumen in” (Schofield 86):

2
David Jeffrey and Brian Levy note that few Anglo-Norman lyrics (macaronic or otherwise) have
survived from the twelfth century because Anglo-Norman rulers of the time employed continental
French and Occitanian troubadours almost exclusively (2).
3
Carol Harvey seems to have been unaware of this lyric, much less the Anglo-Saxon macaronic
poems, when she asserted that “it is in the later poetry of the Anglo-Norman period that the English
language is used for the first time in macaronic compositions” (75).
4
With the exception of the translation to Example 2, all translations are my own.
79
 (2) Ave gloriosa
Duce creature,
Mater salvatoris
Virgine Marie,
Ave speciosa
Chaste, nette e pure
Virgo, flos pudoris,
E sanz vilenie (Jeffrey and Levy 106). 5
[Hail, full of glory: sweet creature, mother of the Savior, Virgin Mary. Hail, lovely
one: chaste, clean, and pure virgin, flower of modesty and without fault (Jeffrey and
Levy 107).]

Developing a thesis first proposed by Carleton Brown and maintained by

Rossell Hope Robbins, David Jeffrey argues that most of the manuscripts that contain

Anglo-Norman lyrics (Harley 978 included) were compiled for use by mendicant

preachers.6 According to this view, the Franciscans, encouraged to illustrate doctrine

by drawing on popular songs and motivated by the example of St. Francis to be

ioculatores Dei (jongleurs or minstrels of God), were particularly active in compiling

such collections (Jeffrey and Levy 3–6). As a result, Jeffrey argues, starting in the

early thirteenth century the Franciscans were instrumental in introducing various

forms of lyric poetry to England after continental Franciscan practice (The Early

English Lyric 69–90).

5
Jeffrey and Levy label this poem as a “Macaronic Ave Maria,” but the terms gloriosa and speciosa
are found in the hymn “Ave regina caelorum” (Paroissien Romain 278). Other Latin elements in the
poem are either newly composed or derived from a variety of other Marian hymns and antiphons.
6
The major exception Jeffrey and Levy note is Harley 2253, which contains the Harley Lyrics (4).
This collection, compiled between 1314 and 1325, includes three macaronic works: the French and
Latin “Song Against the King’s Taxes” (Coss 182–87), the French and English “Mayden moder milde”
(Brook 66–8; Jeffrey and Levy 41), and “Dum ludis floribus” (Brook 55; Jeffrey and Levy 248), a
poem that switches between Latin and French in each line for the first four stanzas and then ends by
switching between Latin, French, and English.
80
 Subsequent scholars have taken issue with the Franciscan hypothesis, however,

observing that no manuscript dated earlier than the 1300’s shows definite signs of

Franciscan ownership (Coss lviii–lix n. 94; Frankis 179). What indications thirteenth-

century manuscripts do contain point to other kinds of users. Harley 978, to return to

the previous example, lists the dates of death for abbots at the Benedictine monastery

of Reading and seems to have been kept there (Coss lvi; Frankis 176). Another

manuscript that contains only Anglo-Norman texts (London, Lambeth Palace 522)

originated at the Benedictine abbey of St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, but pays tribute to

the new mendicant orders in its illustrations. Preceding each major work is a

depiction of either the contemplative or the active life. Whereas the figures shown in

contemplation are in general Benedictine monks, those in active service (preaching)

are Dominican and Franciscan friars (Frankis 177). Without denying the role of the

Friars Minor in popularizing and spreading lyric works in the fourteenth century,

then, we may acknowledge the involvement of other religious and indeed of lay

people in the same enterprise.7

Although thirteenth- and fourteenth-century manuscripts contain a number of

macaronic works,8 the most substantive body of Latin-English macaronic verse did

not emerge until the fifteenth century, when bilingual poetry became increasingly

7
See Frankis on the lack of evidence for mendicant involvement prior to the fourteenth century
(179–183) and indications of lay ownership (183–84).
8
Other manuscripts from the period that contain macaronic poems include Oxford, Bodleian Douce
137 (Jeffrey and Levy 233), Harley 913 (Coss 210–12), Reg. 12. C. xiii (Coss 251–253), and
Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates art. 21 (the Auchinleck Manuscript) (Coss
253–58).
81
popular (Jeffrey, “Early English Carols” 213; Wehrle 64). By that point, the poetic

form known as the carol had caught hold in England and quickly lent itself to

bilingual expression.

3.2 The Macaronic English Carol

The bilingual carols written in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries continue

the general linguistic patterns of earlier macaronic works (for example, switching

languages between, rather than within, lines) but fit those patterns into a distinct

stanzaic form. The defining characteristic of the carol is its burden, a chorus sung

before the first stanza and between the stanzas thereafter (Greene xxix, xxx–xxxi;

Bukofzer 121).9 Works in other languages written in a similar refrain form include the

Latin cantilena and the Italian ballata (Greene cix–cxvii; Jeffrey, The Early English

Lyric 131–33).10 The carol was originally sung to accompany a ring dance: the burden

by the dancers themselves, and stanzas by a soloist or small group (Bukofzer 119). In

time, however, carols became too musically complex for dancing, so that by the

9
The carol’s straightforward textual form does not always indicate an equally straightforward
musical one. As Manfred Bukofzer explains, “in spite of its stereotyped literary structure the carol
could be set to music in various ways” (122). Although some of the carols recorded with music exhibit
the syllabic text setting and simple refrains we associate with modern Christmas carols, many were set
to complex polyphonic arrangements. For example, “The best song as hit semeth me,” a bilingual carol
in London, British Library, Addit. 5665 sets the burden and stanzas to intricate melismatic lines in
close counterpoint. The burden itself is sung twice each time it occurs, the first time by two voices and
the second time by three voices (Stevens 103). The disparity between the meter of the poetic text and
the rhythm of the music to which it is set makes guessing the musical character of carols recorded
without musical notation extremely difficult, if not impossible. Jeffrey ignores this disparity when he
concludes that the meter and poetic form of James Ryman’s carols, written around the same time as
those in Addit. 5665 and recorded without music, suggest that they were set to the melodies of familiar
Latin hymns (based on, for example, the “jolly, almost boisterous” rhythm of one of Ryman’s carols
[“Early English Carols” 219]).

82
fifteenth century the genre included multi-voice part songs and poems intended to be

read rather than sung (Bukofzer 122).

Richard Leighton Greene’s exhaustive collection of medieval English carols

to 1550, without which the present study would not be possible, contains almost five

hundred lyrics conforming to this pattern. More than two hundred of these works

incorporate Latin to some extent. The following fifteenth-century carol, recorded in

Cambridge, St. John’s College S. 54, is typical of those that alternate languages to a

significant degree:11

(3) Now Jhesus, rector anime,

Ne cademus sustine.
[1]
God, that all this world has wroghth
And with his precius blod hath both,
Of us synfull men haue thoute;
Ne cademus sustine.
[2]
Thou arth Lord that mad all thyng,
For all grace is in this geuyng;
Thou saue us fro the fendes fowndyng,
Defensor noster, Domine.
[3]
We haue iii enemys qwere that we wende:
The werd, the flesch, and the fende;
Thou saue us from him, that we not shende;
Incidiantes reprime.
[4]
In all oure leue wyll we are here.
We haue but wo, trauyll, and care,

10
For other similarities between the form of the English carol and that of continental dance songs,
see Greene liii–lxiii.
11
All carol texts are from Greene’s collection. I have omitted his editorial indications for
emendations and have set Latin words in italics.
83
 Mete, drynke, and cloth—we haue no more
Pro nostri graui opere (Greene no. 274).
[Now Jesus, Ruler of the Soul, support us lest we fail. [1] God, who has made all this
world and has bought it with his precious blood, have thought of us sinful men;
support us lest we fail. [2] You are the Lord who made all things, for all grace is in
this gift. Save us from confounding by the fiend, our defender, O Lord. [3] We have
three enemies wherever we go: the word, the flesh, and the fiend. Save us from them,
that we may not disgrace ourselves; keep us from meeting them. [4] We are here out
of our entire free will. We have only woe, travail, and care, food, drink, and
clothing—we have no more because of our grievous deeds.]

As the above text demonstrates, medieval carols were sung on occasions other than

Christmas. Although the Christmas season and the feast days that fell within it were

indeed popular occasions for carol singing, carols also celebrated other feast days

throughout the year, offered ethical and catechetical instruction, and accompanied

decidedly secular forms of merry-making. A look through the categories to which

Greene assigns these compositions illustrates this point: alongside “Carols of the

Nativity” and “Carols of Religious Counsel” are works he designates “Satirical,”

“Convivial,” “Amorous,” and “Humorous.”

The final Latin line wrapping up each quatrain of this carol, called a cauda,

accentuates the stanzaic form. Such Latin caudae were typical of macaronic poems

composed in the fifteenth century (Wehrle 65). As the classification system

developed later in this chapter will make clear, Example 3 resides at the more

macaronic end of the language alternation spectrum because it not only switches

languages in the burden but also includes new Latin material at the end of each

stanza. Although some carols contain even more Latin and switch more frequently

within sentences, most contain far less, anything from a single Latin word borrowed

84
into an otherwise English carol to an unvarying Latin refrain repeated at the end of

each stanza.

3.2.1 Provenances of Manuscripts Containing Macaronic Carols

As was the case for thirteenth- and fourteenth-century poetry collections,

manuscripts containing macaronic carols were compiled by an impressive variety of

religious and lay people. Macaronic carols from medieval England are recorded in

forty extant manuscripts, fragments, and early print books from a remarkably broad

range of sources throughout England and Wales.12 Twenty-one of these sources can

be traced with at least some degree of certainty to specific religious communities or

lay users.

One of the largest collections of these works (Cambridge, University Library,

Ee. 1. 12) was written by the Franciscan James Ryman and compiled by him in 1492,

but his is the only macaronic carol manuscript with definite Franciscan origins

(Jeffrey, “Early English Carols” 210–11).13 All other manuscripts traceable to

particular religious communities were the work of monastic (that is, non-mendicant)

orders or of secular clergy. Three manuscripts containing macaronic carols (London,

British Library, Sloane 2593; Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ashmole 1393; and

Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates 19.3.1) come from Benedictine

12
By comparison, Greene’s compilation draws on 103 sources, indicating that nearly two-thirds of
those manuscripts, printed books, and fragments contain only monolingual carols. (Many monolingual
carols, however, are found in sources that contain other kinds of texts in Latin and French.)
13
Ryman, a member of the Franciscan community at Canterbury, was ordained as an acolyte and a
subdeacon in 1476. His impressive corpus of 166 carols constitutes almost one fourth of those extant,
and 77 of his works are macaronic (Little 4; Jeffrey, “Early English Carols” 210–211).
85
houses (Greene 306–07, 316, 332).14 A manuscript and a two-leaf fragment in the

British Library (Egerton 3307 and Additional 40166) most likely come from

Cistercian communities (Greene 300–01, 311).15 A sizeable collection of poems in

Bodleian Douce 302, including five macaronic carols, was written by the Augustinian

canon John Audelay (Greene 317).16 Even the hermits of the Carthusian order seem to

have been involved in macaronic caroling: London, British Library, Lansdowne 379

contains a single macaronic carol as well as the prayers of a member of the London

Charterhouse (Greene 304–05). Although this sample excludes manuscripts that

contain only monolingual works, it offers sufficient evidence to challenge Greene’s

generalization that “the mendicant friars, and particularly the Minorites, were

probably the most active group of carol-writers and carol-singers” (clvi–clvii).

Communities of secular clergy at cathedrals, minsters, universities, and parish

churches also went enthusiastically about the business of recording bilingual carols.

One British Library manuscript, Harley 3300, contains a carol largely in English but

with the refrain Sanctus alongside documents from the ecclesiastical court at Exeter

(Camargo 104–08). The Ritson Manuscript, also in the British Library (Addit. 5665),

includes nineteen macaronic carols and may also be an Exeter product (Greene

307–08).17 Worcester Cathedral and the college church of Beverley Minster have

14
Facsimiles of several pages from the Bodleian manuscript can be found in Stainer 1: xxvi–xxviii,
transcribed in 2: 61–65.
15
The carols in Egerton 3007 are recorded with music, edited in Stevens, Mediæval Carols.
16
The contents of this manuscript are available in Whiting’s edition. According to references within
the manuscript, completed in 1426, Audelay resided at Haghmond Abbey, near Shrewsbury. By the
time the manuscript was compiled, Audelay was both blind and deaf (Whiting xiv–xv).
17
Stevens, Early Tudor Songs and Carols, includes the music from the Ritson Manuscript pieces.
Exeter converted from a Benedictine community to a college of secular canons in 1050 (Knowles and
86
been identified as places of origin for two important carol manuscripts in the

Bodleian—Arch. Selden B. 26 and Eng. Poet. e. 1, respectively (Greene 314–15,

318).18 Wydmundus London, a cleric-in-training at Oxford in the 1480’s, recorded

two macaronic carols in his schoolbook, now Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College

383 (Greene 324–25). Finally, evidence of interest in macaronic carols among parish

clergy outside of England can be found on the back of an indenture dated August 8,

1471, for the rental of a church in Llanguollo, Wales (Bridgwater, Somerset, Town

Hall, Bridgwater Corp. Muniments 123) (Greene 330).

The popularity of macaronic carols outside these religious communities is

attested by sources created by and for lay users. Two manuscripts known to have

been owned by lay aristocrats—Yale University Beinecke 365 and London, British

Library, Addit. 31042—are normally studied for other texts they contain, but each

also includes a macaronic carol.19 Another source contains texts strongly suggesting

aristocratic ownership: the macaronic carol in London, Lambeth Palace, Lambeth 306

is included alongside the Brut, courtly poems, hunting texts, and “a list of the retinue

of Edward III at Calais” (Greene 312–13). Merchants also collected carols that

alternate languages: two manuscripts in the British Library’s Harley collection (nos.

Hadcock 330). In addition to its Exeter connections, the Ritson Manuscript is also linked to Henry
VIII, whose own composition, “Passetyme with good cumpanye,” appears twice in the manuscript
(Stevens, Early Tudor Songs and Carols xvii, 338).
18
Music for the carols in Arch. Selden B. 26 is available in Stevens, Mediæval Carols.
19
The Yale manuscript, conventionally known as the Book of Brome, contains the mystery play
Abraham and Isaac and was owned by the Cornwallis family, who resided at Brome Manor in Suffolk
(Greene 335). Like many manuscripts in which macaronic carols are found, it is a commonplace book,
containing everything from saints’ lives to business records. The British Library manuscript, known as

87
4294 and 5396) include merchants’ accounts (the latter in the same hand as that of the

carols), and Oxford, Balliol College 354 contains thirty-four bilingual carols as well

as a staggering variety of texts collected by the London grocer Richard Hill starting

around 1508 and continuing until 1536 (Greene 303, 320–21; Parker, Commonplace

Book 48–49).20

Suggesting a still broader audience for macaronic carols are those that appear in

printed collections published in the sixteenth century. Three of the print sources for

the carols in Greene’s compendium contain bilingual works: a single leaf printed by

Wynkyn de Worde in 1521 (Bodleian Rawlinson 4to. 598 [10]), a four-leaf fragment

from a book possibly printed by William Copland around 1550 (Bodleian Douce

Fragments f. 48), and a pamphlet collection now at the Huntington Library in San

Marino, California (Greene 339–41). The one complete pamphlet in the Huntington

collection is Christmas carolles newely Inprynted, produced by Richard Kele between

1542 and 1546 (Greene 340; Reed liv).21 Three of the carols in the Huntington

collection are variants of carols found in earlier manuscripts—Cambridge Ee. 1. 12

(James Ryman’s compilation), Egerton 3307, and Balliol 354 (Greene 43, 54, 220).

Fragmentary though they are, these printed collections indicate that macaronic carols

continued to find an audience even after the Reformation—a point I address in

Section 5.3.2.

the London Thornton Manuscript, has been studied for the romances and alliterative poetry it contains
and was owned by a variety of northern English recusant families (Thompson 5–7).
20
Most of the contents of Balliol 354 appear in Dyboski’s edition. Parker includes a detailed
inventory of the contents of the manuscript and speculates on the interests and life of its compiler.

88
3.3 Categorizing Carols According to Degree of Language Alternation

Having described the variety of sources in which macaronic carols are found,

we may now take a more detailed look at how these lyrics alternate languages. To lay

the groundwork for further linguistic study, I will first generate a more specific

system of classification to describe bilingual carols and distinguish them from each

other. This system will separate those carols with the highest degree of language

alternation from those that do not include much Latin or that simply repeat the same

switches between Latin and English. In Chapter 4, I will analyze where languages

alternate in those carols, evaluate those switches according to the Functional Head

Constraint, and explain how changes in the locations of code switches over time

reflect contemporary developments in English written style.

For the purposes of this study, macaronic is a variable term. While many

scholars use macaronic to describe any texts that include words in more than one

language, some works are more macaronic than others. The degree of language

alternation in a given carol can be determined according to the following criteria,

considered in sequence:

(a) whether Latin elements are borrowings or code switches,

(b) whether code switches occur between or within sentences,
(c) whether code switches occur between the burden and the stanzas, within
the burden itself, or within stanzas,
(d) whether Latin in stanzas repeats material from the burden, and finally,
(e) how many switches occur within each stanza.

21
Reed includes a facsimile of all three of these print sources. Greene observes, however, that
Reed’s bibliographical description of the Huntington collection is incomplete and inaccurate (340–41).
89
 These criteria address the nature, frequency, and variety of language alternation in

the carols and allow us to compare the language alternation in a particular carol with

that of others. By evaluating carols accordingly, we may place them on the continuum

of language mixing first considered in Section 1.2: from borrowing and insertion to

full-blown linguistic alternation. In general, if a carol contains only borrowings, it is

less macaronic than one that contains code switches. A carol that switches languages

frequently and incorporates a greater variety of Latin phrases is more macaronic than a

carol that does not switch with as much frequency or variety. According to these

criteria, carols can be classified into twelve descriptive types, ranging from least

macaronic (Type A) to most macaronic (Type L).22 The following list describes each of

these types and indicates how many carols of that type can be found in Greene’s

edition. The Appendix specifies which carols conform to each of these types.

Carol Type No. in Greene

A Isolated Latin Borrowings 8
B Single Latin Line or Latin Throughout a Single Stanza 8
C Latin and English Burden in an Otherwise English Carol 21
D Latin Burden, One Line Repeated as a Cauda 69
E Latin and English Burden, Latin Line Repeated as a Cauda 35
F English Burden, Varying Latin Caudae 19
G Latin Burden, Varying Latin Caudae 5
H Latin and English Burden, Varying Latin Caudae 21
I Latin Burden, Two Latin Lines per Stanza 12
J Latin and English Burden, Two Latin Lines per Stanza 7
K Latin Burden, Three or More Latin Lines per Stanza 2
L Latin and English Burden, Three or More Latin Lines per Stanza 2

22
William Otto Wehrle, interested in matters of poetic form rather than linguistics, classified the
carols according to where Latin appeared in each stanza. His system, for example, distinguishes a
quatrain with a Latin fourth line (his Type A, “The Macaronic Cauda”) from one with a Latin second
line (his Type M, “Latin Second Line in Quatrain Stanzas” (65–89, 163–64). For my purposes, however,
both forms are identical because both involve the same degree of language alternation. Consequently,
several of my categories cut across his classificatory lines.
90
3.3.1 Type A: Isolated Latin Borrowings

As mentioned above, some carols contain only a few Latin words in an

otherwise English context. Such carols, hereafter designated Type A, are the least

macaronic according to criterion (a), above. Often the Latin words are borrowed

directly from liturgical sources and designate either abstractions or sacred epithets (an

interesting parallel with the Anglo-Saxon macaronic poems discussed in Chapter 2),

as in the following stanza from an Epiphany carol by James Ryman.23

(4) Nowe this tyme Rex Pacificus

Is man become for loue of vs,
And his name is called Jhesus,
The Sonne of God and King of Blis (Greene no. 130).
[Now at this time the Peaceful King has become man out of love for us, and his
name is Jesus, the Son of God and King of Bliss.]

This single borrowing, Rex Pacificus, constitutes the only Latin in the six-stanza carol.

Still other borrowings in Type A carols occur within reported speech, again

usually borrowed from scriptural or liturgical sources.24 For example, one stanza from

a sixteenth-century carol in London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian A. xxv begins

(5) The ritche and the pore ther title did reherse:
The pore clamed heauen throughe his pacient havour;
He saide, “Beati pauperes,” and further the verse;
The riche man by ritches thought hym in favour,
For who was so ritche as was our Saviour? (Greene no. 95)
[The rich and poor uttered their titles: the poor claimed heaven through his (Christ’s)
patient behavior (or possession); he said “Blessed are the poor” and the rest of the verse.
The rich man thought that he was in favor because of his ritches, but who was as rich as
our Savior was?]

23
On the similar use of Latin epithets and abstractions in Piers Plowman, see Sullivan 93 and 97–98.
24
Linguistic changes after verbs of speech have also been noted among modern bilinguals (cf.
Gumperz 75–84; Romaine 162).
91
Numerous carols similarly quote Gabriel’s “Ave” to Mary at the Annunciation and her

response, “Ecce ancilla Domini,” returning to English after those memorable words.25

Although such carols can be called macaronic in that they involve a mixture of

languages, their paucity of Latin material and the fact that they generally include

simple borrowings rather than code switches make them the least macaronic carols in

the corpus. Many other carols contain borrowings, especially after verbs of speaking

such as saide in Example 5, but can be classified as more macaronic types by virtue

of code switches that occur elsewhere.

3.3.2 Type B: Single Latin Line or Latin Throughout a Single Stanza

In carols of Type B the Latin material goes beyond isolated borrowings to

include a single line of Latin or several code switches between English and Latin

within a particular stanza. For example, one of James Ryman’s Christmas carols ends

after fifteen English stanzas with

(6) Aduent is gone; Cristemas is cume.

Be we mery now, alle and sume.
He is not wise that wille be dume
In ortu Regis omnium (Greene no. 3).
[Advent has gone; Christmas has come. Let us be merry now, all and some. He is not
wise that will be silent at the birth of the King of all.]

This closing line involves a code switch between the prepositional phrase In ortu

Regis omnium and the preceding verb phrase, wille be—not simply a single borrowed

word. Similarly, a fifteenth-century carol by John Audelay ends after eight English

stanzas with a series of code switches:

25
Examples include Greene nos. 172a, 248, and 253.
92
 (7) Mater, ora Filium
That he wyl affter this outlere
Nobis donet gaudium
Sine fyne for his merce (Greene no. 311).
[Mother, pray to the Son that he will after this exile may (sic) give us joy without end
out of his mercy.]26

In Type B carols, stanzas containing Latin generally come at the end of the work—a

miniature of the pattern studied previously in “The Phoenix” and “A Summons to

Prayer.”27 Such carols entail a much more substantive integration of Latin and

English than the single-word borrowings of Type A carols; according to criteria (a)

and (d), the carols contain code switches rather than borrowings and may alternate

languages several times within a particular stanza. However, although English and

Latin are more thoroughly integrated in one particular stanza, code switches do not

occur elsewhere, making these works less macaronic than carols that alternate

languages throughout.

3.3.3 Type C: Latin and English Burden in an Otherwise English Carol

Some carols switch between Latin and English in the burden but nowhere else.

Burdens from these carols, those of Type C, typically consist of two lines, the first in

English, the second in Latin, as in a fifteenth-century carol from Cambridge, Trinity

College O. 3. 58:

(8) Now may we syngyn as it is,

Quod puer natus est nobis (Greene no. 19).
[Now we may sing as it is, that a child is born for us.]

26
See Section 4.3.3 for an explanation of this ungrammatical switch.
27
Examples of such carols in Greene’s collection include nos. 93, 148 B, and 239.
93
A few carols, however, reverse this arrangement, as in the burden to another fifteenth-

century carol in Bodleian Ashmole 189:

(9) Quid vltra debuit facere

That Lorde that dyed for the and me? (Greene no. 333).
[What more must he do, that Lord who died for you and me?]

Still others have four-line burdens that are mostly Latin with a few words or a line of

interpolated English, as in this carol from a pamphlet grouped with Richard Kele’s

Christmas carolles newely Inprynted. As in Example 5, the code switch here involves

a verb of speech, signaling a change in discourse:

(10) Gaudeamus synge we

In hoc sacro tempore;
Puer nobis natus est
Ex Maria virgine (Greene no. 157 A).
[Let us rejoice, we sing, in this holy time; a child is born for us out of the virgin Mary.]
In performance, the burden of Type C carols would of course repeat, making for

multiple code switches before and/or after each stanza, depending on where the

switches occur in the burden. These carols keep syntactic integration to a minimum,

however. Although the burden may itself contain an intrasentential switch, the

switches between the end of the burden and each stanza would by and large occur

between sentences (a distinction observed in criterion (b)). The Latin elements also

do not vary, making carols of Type C more macaronic than carols that do not switch

as often (according to criterion (d)) but less macaronic than carols with a greater

amount and variety of Latin.

94
3.3.4 Type D: Latin Burden, One Line Repeated as a Cauda

By far the largest group of macaronic carols are those that start with a Latin

burden and repeat one line or a word of that burden as a cauda to each stanza, an

arrangement I will term Type D. Notable examples (still performed today even

outside of early music circles) include “Gabriell of hye degree” (Greene no. 238 C),

which in one of its earliest versions carries the burden “Noua, noua, ‘Aue’ fit ex

‘Eua’” (News! News! ‘Ave’ is made from ‘Eve’) and repeats Noua at the close of each

stanza, and the Agincourt Carol, the burden and first stanza of which are given below.

(11) Deo gracias Anglia

Redde pro victoria.
Owre kynge went forth to Normandy
With grace and myght of chyualry;
That God for hym wrought mervelusly,
Wherefore Englonde may calle and cry,
“Deo gracias” (Greene no. 426).
[Give thanks to God, England, for victory. Our king went forth to Normandy with
grace and strength of cavalry; God worked that for him marvelously, wherefore
England may call and cry, “Thanks be to God.”]

Dozens of Type D carols are preserved in the collection of James Ryman’s works,

and several can be found in manuscripts and printed books from the sixteenth century.

Interestingly, almost all surviving carols that include a burden entirely in Latin

repeat at least some of the burden in subsequent caudae.28 Modern editions of the

carol texts such as that in Example 11 obscure the fact that in performance, the

repetition of the burden would entail multiple code switches: a switch after the Latin

28
Only two carols from Greene’s collection, nos. 1 and 2, feature Latin burdens without Latin caudae.
Carols can include Latin caudae without having a Latin burden, however. See Type G, below.
95
burden, when the language changes to English for the bulk of each stanza, and again

before the Latin cauda to each stanza. As in carols of Type C, however, code

switches generally occur between sentences and do not vary, features that make such

carols less macaronic than those containing intrasentential switches.

3.3.5 Type E: Latin and English Burden, Latin Line Repeated as a Cauda

Carols of Type E switch between Latin and English in their burdens and then

repeat at least part of the Latin from the burden at the end of each stanza. This pattern

is illustrated by the following burden and stanza from one of James Ryman’s carols:

(12) The Sone of God is man become

Pro salute fidelium.
The Sonne of God and King of Blis,
Whoos joye and blis shall neuir mys,
Of a pure mayde man become is
Pro salute fidelium (Greene no. 62).
[The Son of God has become man for the salvation of the faithful. The Son of God
and King of Bliss, whose joy and bliss shall never fail, has become man of a pure
maiden for the salvation of the faithful.]

As in carols of Type C, the burden may also reverse the arrangement seen in Example

12, beginning with Latin rather than English. Although some Type E carols repeat the

burden text twice or follow the two-line burden with a single Latin tag line, none have

the four-line burdens seen in a few Type C carols, such as Example 10. The Latin line

in the burden of Type E carols augments the number of switches and often occurs

intrasententially. The repetition of the same Latin elements as caudae, however,

places carols of Type E near the middle of the macaronic continuum—more

96
macaronic than those carols that do not switch within the burden but less than those

that introduce new Latin material at the end of each stanza.

3.3.6 Type F: English Burden, Varying Latin Caudae

With the five surviving carols that have English burdens but end each stanza

with a different Latin cauda, an arrangement hereafter designated Type F, we begin

to see the variety of code switches that makes these and subsequent types of carols

especially appropriate for linguistic scrutiny. Perhaps one of the best known examples

of a Type F carol is the fifteenth-century “There is no rose of swych vertu,” set to

new music by Benjamin Britten in his Ceremony of Carols. This carol’s Latin

caudae, originally from the prosa “Laetabundus” attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux,

also appear in several other carols (Greene xcviii).

(13) There is not rose of swych vertu

As is the rose that bare Jhesu.
[1]
There is not rose of swych vertu
As is the rose that bare Jhesu;
Alleluya.
[2]
For in this rose conteynyd was
Heuen and erthe in lytyl space,
Res miranda.
[3]
Be that rose we may weel see
That he is God in personys thre,
Pari forma.
[4]
The aungelys sungyn the sheperdes to:
“Gloria in excelsis Deo.”
Gaudeamus.
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 [5]
Leue we all this worldly merthe,
And folwe we this joyful berthe;
Transeamus (Greene no. 173).
[There is no rose of such virtue as is the rose that bore Jesus. [1] There is no rose of
such virtue as is the rose that bore Jesus. Alleluia. [2] For in this rose was contained
both heaven and earth in a little space, a wonderful thing. [3] By that rose we may
see well that he is one God in three persons, equal in form. [4] The angels sang to the
shepherds, “Glory to God in the highest.” Let us rejoice. [5] Let us leave all this
worldly mirth and follow this joyful birth; let us depart.]

Looking back on the previous three carol types, we note an interesting distinction.

Unlike carols with bilingual burdens (Types C and E), almost all carols with entirely

Latin burdens (Type D) include Latin caudae. Carols of Type F, however, include

Latin caudae without featuring Latin in their burdens. Thus, whereas invariable

caudae, as in Types D and E, generally repeat material from the burden, variable

caudae, as in Type F, need not hearken back to previous Latin material. These changing

Latin elements therefore become a means of developing the carol text, contributing new

meaning to each stanza rather than repeating previously stated ideas. Moreover, because

Type F carols do not repeat the same Latin elements at the end of every stanza, the

change of language before each cauda constitutes a unique code switch.

3.3.7 Type G: Latin Burden, Varying Latin Caudae

Type G carols include Latin burdens and end each stanza with new Latin

material. The “Boar’s Head Carol,” the singing of which is still a tradition at Queen’s

College, Oxford, is a prime example of Type G. The following version, from a quarto

leaf printed in 1521 by Wynkyn de Worde, conforms to the Type G pattern in all but

the last stanza. Modern versions of the carol (from 1718, 1811, and 1921) end the
98
third stanza with a Latin cauda that makes explicit reference to Queen’s College

(Greene 379–381).

(14) Caput apri differo,

Reddens laudes Domino.
[1]
The bores heed in hande bring I,
With garlans gay and rosemary;
I pray you all, synge merely,
Qui estis in conuiuio.
[2]
The bores heed, I vnderstande,
Is the chefe seruyce in this lande;
Loke, where euer it be fande,
Seruite cum cantico.
[3]
Be gladde, lordes, both more and lasse,
For this hath ordeyned our stewarde
To chere you all this Christmasse,
The bores heed with mustarde (Greene no. 132 B).
[I bring out the boar’s head, giving thanks to the Lord. [1] I bring the boar’s head in hand,
with gay garlands and rosemary; I pray all of you, sing merrily who are at the banquet. [2]
The boar’s head, I understand, is the best observance in this land. Look, wherever it may be
found, serve it with a song. [3] Be glad, lords, both great and small, for our steward has
ordained this to cheer you all this Christmas: the boar’s head with mustard.]

The variability of the Latin caudae in carols of Type G contributes to the earlier

characterization of carol types in Section 3.3.6. Carols with Latin burdens (Types D

and G) almost always have Latin caudae, and invariable caudae such as those in carols

of Types D and E generally repeat Latin material from the burden. In some carols with

entirely Latin burdens, however, these Latin lines do vary, as evidenced in Example 14.

3.3.8 Type H: Latin and English Burden, Varying Latin Caudae

Carols of Type H switch languages within the burden and incorporate new Latin

99
material at the end of each stanza. The relationship between carols of Types G and H

is therefore much like that between those of Types D and E, with the salient

difference that the caudae in carols of Types G and H vary from stanza to stanza. One

interesting example of a Type H carol from around 1500, recorded in Huntington

Library HM 147, encompasses the entire twelve days of Christmas, celebrating a

different feast day of the Christmas season in each stanza. The Latin in the burden

quotes the hymn for Christmas matins, Christe redemptor omnium, and the Latin

cauda to the second stanza quotes an antiphon for the feast of St. Stephen (December

26) (Greene lxxxvi, civ).29 Such Latin phrases therefore cite the texts of the Divine Office

even more directly than those in the Anglo-Saxon macaronic poems do, linking the carol to

specific liturgical pieces rather than evoking a more general vocabulary.

(15) Welcum, welcum, welcum,

Christe, redemtor omnium.
[1]
Now ys cum owre Saueowre,
And now hathe Mary borne a flowre,
To all this wordill a great soccowre,
Celi terreque Dominum.
[2]
Now be the Juys fallen in fyghte
Of Seynt Stevyn, that nobull knyghte;
Because he sayde he saw a syghte,
Lapidauerunt Stephanum.
[3]
Seynt Johan, that was a martyr fre,
On Chrystes lappe aslepe lay he;
Of hevyn he saw the preuete;
29
The feasts celebrated in the other stanzas are those of the Nativity (December 25), St. John the
Apostle (December 27), the Holy Innocents (December 28), Saint Thomas of Canterbury (December
29), and Epiphany (January 6).
100
 Aduocatur conviuio.
[4]
Erode, that was so full of syne,
Let sle the childryn of Israel kyn
Of two yere age and eke withyn
In Bethlehem conviuio.
[5]
Seynte Thomas, that was a marter good,
Ther came knyghtes bothe ferse and woode;
They steryde his brayne and schede his blode;
Sic passus est martyrrium.
[6]
There came three knyghtes with rache presens,
Offryde golde, myrre, frankeandsence;
Offryng with grete honnowre and reuerens,
Adorauerunt puerum (Greene no. 9).30
[Welcome, welcome, welcome, Christ, redeemer of all. [1] Now our savior has
come, and now Mary has given birth to a flower, a great help to all the world, the
Lord of heaven and earth. [2] Now the Jews have fallen in battle because of Saint
Stephen, that noble knight; because he said he saw a vision, they stoned Stephen. [3]
Saint John, who was a noble martyr, lay asleep on Christ's lap; he saw the secret of
heaven; he is called to the banquet. [4] Herod, who was so full of sin, allowed to be
slain the Israelite children of two year's age and even younger in Bethlehem at
banquet. [5] To Saint Thomas, who was a good martyr, there came fierce and crazed
knights; they stirred his brain and shed his blood; thus he suffered martyrdom. [6]
There came three knights with rich presents, offered gold, myrrh, frankincense;
offering with great honor and reverence, they worshiped the child.]

Because languages switch within the burden and before the new material that ends

each stanza, carols of Type H are the most macaronic of those that whose stanzas

contain a single Latin line.

3.3.9 Type I: Latin Burden, Two Latin Lines per Stanza

Unlike the previous kinds of carols, carols of Type I incorporate two lines of

30
Among the textual problems in this version of the carol are the repetition of convivio in stanzas
four and five and the repetition of knyghtes in stanzas five and six. In both cases, the second usage

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Latin per stanza and thus switch between English and Latin more frequently. This

pattern is more common in works from manuscripts produced in the second half of

the fifteenth century and afterwards but is also seen in some carols recorded earlier in

the fifteenth-century.31 While the second Latin does not vary in earlier carols of this

form, later carols show more variety. Below, for example, is a carol from Bodleian

Arch. Selden B. 26, dated to the middle of the fifteenth century (Greene 314). Each

stanza contains a varying Latin second line and an unvarying Latin fourth line that

repeats the first half of the burden.

(16) Ave domina,

Celi regina.
[1]
Worshyp be the birth of the,
Quem portasti, Maria,
Both in boure and in cite;
Aue domina.
[2]
For thorwe oure synnes we were forlorne,
Infernali pena,
But nowe shal vs saue that thou hast borne
Aue domina.
[3]
Almyghty Godys wyl hit was,
Felix fecundata,
That vppon the shal lyght his grace;
Aue domina.
[4]
Yblessed be thou, maide mylde,
Que semper es amica

does not make sense. Greene notes that “the substitution [of knyghtes] for ‘kings’ may be merely a
copyist’s error” but offers no explanation for the repetition of convivio (344).
31
For example, British Library, Sloane 2593, which contains one carol with two lines of Latin per
stanza, has been dated to the first half of the fifteenth century (Greene 306). British Library, Egerton
3307, which contains two such texts, dates from around 1450 (Greene 299).
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 Bytwene mankynd and the Chylde;
Aue domina.
[5]
Lady, quene of paradyse,
Mater Dei electa,
Thou bare oure Lorde, that hye Justyse;
Aue domina.
[6]
With merthe and alle solempnite
Nato canunt omnia;
Thou berde of ble, welcome thou be;
Aue domina (Greene no. 179)
[Hail Lady, queen of heaven. [1] May your (Christ’s) birth be worshiped, whom you
carried, Mary, both in the home and in the city; hail, Lady. [2] For we were lost
through our sins by hellish punishment, but now he whom you have borne will save
us; hail, Lady. [3] It was almighty God’s will, happy fertile one, that his grace should
light upon you; hail, Lady. [4] May you be blessed, mild maiden, who are always a
friend between mankind and the Child; hail, Lady. [5] Lady, queen of paradise, mother
chosen by God, you bore our Lord, that high justice; hail, Lady. [6] With joy and all
solemnity, all sing to your son; you bride of bliss, may you be welcome; hail, Lady.]

In later Type I carols, new material in the second Latin line of each stanza adds to the

variety of the code switches. Other Type I carols may switch to Latin in the first and

third line or in the first and fourth.

3.3.10 Type J: Latin and English Burden, Two Latin Lines per Stanza

Type J carols switch to and from Latin not only twice in each stanza but also in

the burden. The majority of extant Type J carols date from the second half of the

fifteenth century (none are attested, however, in Ryman’s work). At least one Type J

carol was recorded around 1450, in Egerton 3307. Variants of this carol appear in two

other fifteenth-century manuscripts, and a fragment of the carol is written on binding

strips in Bodleian Bodley 77 (Greene 12–14; 348–49). Greene notes that with the

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exception of the line “Consors paterni luminis,” from an Epiphany hymn, and Mary’s

“Ecce ancilla Domini,” the Latin is original to this carol (349).

(17) Almyghty Jhesu, Kyng of Blysse,

Assumpsit carnem virginis;
He was euer and euer ys
Consors paterni luminis.
[1]
Holy Chyrch of hym makyth mynd:
Intrauit ventris thalamum;
Fro heuen to erth to saue mankynd
Pater mandauit Filium.
[2]
To Mari com a messenjer
Ferens salutem hominum,
And sche answerd with myld steuen,
“Ecce ancilla Domini.”
[3]
Thorow the myght of the Holy Gost,
Palacium intrans vteri,
Aboun al thyng meykness is best
In conspectu Altissimi.
[4]
Thre kynges apon the twelfth day,
Stella micante preuia,
To seyk Our Lord thai toke the way,
Baiulantes munera.
[5]
A ster beforn the kynges ay:
Primus rex aurum optulit;
He ys God and Lord verray:
Secundus rex thus protulit.
[6]
He was namyd the thyrd kyng
Incensum pulcrum qui tradidit;
He vs al to blysse bryng
Qui cruce mori voluit (Greene 23 C).32

32
Incensum in the last stanza, as Greene notes, “should be ‘myrrham’” (349).
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 [Almighty Jesus, King of Bliss, takes on the flesh of a virgin; he was always and
always is a sharer of the Paternal light. [1] The holy Church brings him to mind: he
entered the bridal chamber of the womb; from heaven to earth to save mankind the
Father commissioned the Son. [2] A messenger came to Mary bearing the salvation
of humanity, and she answered with a quiet voice, “Behold the handmaiden of the
Lord.” [3] Through the power of the Holy Spirit entering the palace of the womb,
meekness is best above all things in the sight of the Most High. [4] Three kings upon
the twelfth day, a shining star leading, they took the way to seek our Lord, bearing
gifts. [5] A star (was) always before the kings: the first king offered gold. He is God
and true Lord: the second king presented incense. [6] He was named the third king who
gave over beautiful incense. May He bring us all to bliss who chose to die on a cross.]

Carols of Type J are the most macaronic of those carols operating within the

traditional confines of the carol form: quatrain-long stanzas with code switches

typically between, but not within, lines. Some carol writers produced even more code

switches, however, by going beyond these restrictions, either by writing stanzas more

than four lines long or by switching languages within the lines themselves.

3.3.11 Type K: Latin Burden, Three or More Latin Lines per Stanza

Carols of Type K, with Latin burdens and at least three Latin lines in each

stanza, are late and rare developments in the carol form: two were written by James

Ryman in the late fifteenth century and the other is recorded in the Ritson

Manuscript. One of Ryman’s carols, which tells of the Three Kings’ journey to

Bethlehem and Joseph and Mary’s flight into Egypt, has three Latin lines per stanza,

but each stanza ends with an English and Latin refrain that repeats a Latin line from

the burden, as can be seen from the excerpt below.

(18) Ortus est Sol Iusticie

Ex illibata virgine.
………………………………………
[5]
Warned they were, these kinges thre,
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 In sompnis per Altissimum
That they ayene no wyse should go
Ad Herodem nequissimum.
Hym worship we nowe borne so fre
Ex illibata virgine.
[6]
Not by Herode, that wikked knyght,
Sed per viam aliam
They be gone home ageyn full right
Per Dei prouidenciam.
Hym worship we nowe borne so fre
Ex illibata virgine.
[7]
Joseph fledde thoo, Mary also,
In Egiptum cum puero,
Where they abode till King Herode
Migrauit ex hoc seculo.
Hym worship we nowe borne so fre
Ex illibata virgine. (Greene no. 127).

[The Sun of Justice has risen from an unblemished virgin. [5] These three kings were
warned in dreams by the Most High that they should by no means go back to the
most wicked Herod. Now we worship him born so nobly from an unblemished virgin.
[6] Not by Herod, that wicked night, but by another way they have gone home again
most truly by the providence of God. Now … virgin. [7] Joseph then fled, as well as
Mary, with the child into Egypt, where they stayed until King Herod departed from
this world. Now … virgin.]

The Ritson Manuscript carol, in which King Herod again plays a starring role, has

three lines of Latin per stanza but does not repeat Latin from the burden:

(19) Sonet laus per secula

Innocentum gloria.
Sonet laus per secula
Innocentum gloria.
[1]
Dic, Erodes impie,
What awayleth thy cruellis
In uincules pro sanguine?
Iputte in payne with grete dysstresse,
Adiuuat te milicia?

106
 [2]
Membra figi tenera
Thou gauest thy comowndement,
Matrem tenens viscera.
Thy hope thou losste and thyn entent,
Sternit dum milicia.
[3]
Reus nunc extinguere
Infynyte and most of pyte,
Verens regnum perdere,
In sorwe and woo thy see ys dyghhte;
Vixit Dei milicia (Greene no. 109).
[Let praise resound throughout the world, the glory of the Innocents.
[1] Say, impious Herod, what do your cruelties avail, in chains for
bloodshed? Put in pain with great distress, does your army help you?
[2] That the young limbs be pierced, you gave your commandment, that the
mother clutch her innards. You lost your hope and your desire, as your
army scattered. [3] Now to expire guilty, exceedingly and most piteous,
fearing to loose your kingdom, your realm is given to sorrow and woe; the
army of God lived.]

Both of these examples demonstrate that although carols of Type K depart from the

quatrain stanza typical of so many other macaronic carols, they observe a similar

linguistic protocol by switching between lines but not within them and by alternating

lines of Latin and English. Type K stanzas may begin in either English or Latin,

however, and Latin lines need not always be followed by English ones: each stanza in

Example 19, for instance, proceeds directly from the fifth Latin line to the Latin burden.

3.3.12 Type L: Latin and English Burden, Three or More Latin Lines per Stanza

Two carols can be considered the most macaronic in the corpus because they

switch languages not only in the burden but also between or within more than two

lines per stanza. Even this small sample shows more stylistic variety than those of

Type K. One carol, not surprisingly by James Ryman, is in part a paraphrase of

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Regina coeli laetare, one of the Marian antiphons sung during the Easter season

(Greene civ–cv). Ryman doubled the usual quatrain carol stanza, producing eight-line

stanzas with four lines of Latin in each:

(20) Regina celi, letare

With God and man alsoo,
Quem meruisti portare
Withowten peyn and woo.
[1]
Regina celi, letare,
For Crist, thy Sonne so dere,
Quem meruisti portare
With gladde and joyfull chere,
Nunc te gaudet amplexare
In blisse, thatt is so clere,
Et corona coronare
As quene withowten pere.
[2]
Resurrexit, sicut dixit,
Thy Sonne Jhesus so fre,
Quem gens seua crucifixit
And naylde vppon a tre.
Mortem uicit et reuixit,
And them with him toke he
Quos amara mors afflixit
In blisse with hym to be.
[3]
O Maria, flos uirginum,
Most fayre and sweete, iwys,
Velud rosa vel lilium
Whoys blossome schalle not mys,
Funde preces ad Filium,
Bothe God and man thatt ys,
Pro salute fidelium
That he may graunt us blisse (Greene no. 218).
[Queen of Heaven, rejoice, with God and man as well, whom you deserved to bear
without pain and suffering. [1] Queen of Heaven, rejoice, for Christ your son so dear,
whom you deserved to bear with a glad and joyful mood now rejoices to embrace
you in happiness that is so bright and to crown you with a crown as queen without
equal. [2] He rose again, just as he said, your son, Jesus, so noble, whom his people

108
 crucified and nailed upon a tree. He conquered death and lived again and took with
him those whom bitter death afflicted to be with him in bliss. [3] O Mary, flower of
virgins, truly most fair and sweet, like a rose or a lily whose blossom shall not fail,
secure our prayers to the Son, who is both God and man, for the salvation of the
faithful, that he may grant us bliss.]

This carol clearly illustrates how code switches can be shaped by prosodic

conventions. Within each stanza, lines in the same language rhyme, English lines

with English and Latin lines with Latin—a particular challenge for the poet to sustain

over eight lines. Other writers were not able to manage linguistic and prosodic

concerns as effectively, as the discussion in Chapter 4 of ungrammatical code

switches will show.

The other Type L carol is a lament on mortality found in Balliol 354. It contains

the same number of code switches per stanza as the previous carol but arranges those

switches quite differently, switching within rather than between lines in a fashion

reminiscent of the Anglo-Saxon “Phoenix” and “A Summons to Prayer.” Its burden

states, “Terribilis mors conturbat me” (Terrifying death disturbs me), a reworking of

“Timor mortis conturbat me” (The fear of death disturbs me). The latter line from the

Office for the Dead appears in several other carols as well as in John Lydgate’s poem

of the same name and in William Dunbar’s “Lament on the Makaris” (Greene 441).

(21) Alas, my hart will brek in thre;

Terribilis mors conturbat me.
[1]
Illa iuventus that is so nyse
Me deduxit into vayn devyse;
Infirmus sum; I may not rise;
Terribilis mors conturbat me.
[2]
Dum iuvenis fui, lytill I dred,
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 Set semper in sinne I ete my bred;
Iam ductus sum into my bed;
Terribilis mors conturbat me.
[3]
Corpus migrat; in my sowle
Respicit demon, in his rowle;
Desiderat ipse to have his tolle;
Terribilis mors conturbat me.
[4]
Christus se ipsum, whan he shuld dye,
Patri suo his manhode did crye,
“Respice me, Pater, that is so hye;
Terribilis mors conturbat me.”
[5]
Queso iam the Trinyte,
“Duc me from this vanyte
In celum, ther is joy with the;
Terribilis mors conturbat me” (Greene no. 372).

[Alas, my heart will break in three. Terrifying death troubles me. [1] That time of
youth, which is so foolish, lead me away into vain contrivance; I am ill, I may not
rise. Terrifying death troubles me. [2] When I was young, I feared little, but always in
sin I ate my bread. Now I have been led into my bed; Terrifying death troubles me.
[3] The body departs; in my soul a demon looks at his list; he himself desires to have
his toll. Terrifying death troubles me. [4] Christ himself when he had to die, his
humanity cried to his Father, “Look down on me, Father, who is so high; terrifying
death troubles me.” [5] Now I ask the Trinity, “Lead me from this vanity into heaven,
where there is joy with you; terrifying death troubles me.”]

Although no other surviving carols switch within lines as frequently as this lament,

macaronic songs and poems of other forms do, from the Anglo-Saxon poems studied

in Chapter 1 to sixteenth-century works like the part-song “Up I Arose,” in the Ritson

Manuscript.33

33
This part-song, a pastourelle in which the narrator tells of meeting a woman who laments her
pregnancy, begins “Up Y arose in verno tempore and found a maydyn sub quadam arbore that dyd
complayn in suo pectore, saying ‘Y fele puerum movere’” (“Up I arose in springtime and found under a
certain tree a maiden who complained in her breast, saying, “I feel the child move’”) (C. Miller 160, 244;
Stevens, Tudor Songs and Carols 19).
110
 This survey of the various types of macaronic carols not only illustrates the

diversity of their forms but also makes it possible to distinguish those carols that

involve a substantive degree of language alternation, Types F through L, from those

that either limit Latin material to a single word, line, or stanza or repeat the same

Latin line in successive stanzas, Types A through E. Characterizing and evaluating

code switching in these less macaronic carols would produce inaccurate—not to

mention unrewarding—results: since Types C through E bring back the same Latin

again and again, in many carols the same code switch occurs multiple times. Only in

carols of Types F through L do switches vary from stanza to stanza. I have therefore

chosen in the subsequent chapter to limit my analysis to carols of these types. As the

chart in the Appendix shows, however, the corpus of bilingual carols is sufficiently

large that even focusing on the most macaronic yields sixty-five works for closer

study. After describing where Latin and English alternate within sentences in these

works, I will place code switching in the carols in its linguistic, historical, and social

context. The following chapters will illustrate a threefold diversity, as the variety of

forms macaronic carols take parallels the variety of code switches within them and

the various communities that utilized these bilingual compositions.

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 Chapter 4: Code Switching in Medieval English Carols

The period during which extant macaronic carols were recorded, extending

from the early fifteenth century through the middle of the sixteenth century,

fortuitously coincides with the transition from Middle to Early Modern English.1

Analyzing where code switches occur in the most macaronic carols—those of Types

F through L—therefore allows us to generate a composite image of how linguistic

alternation in the carols changed along with the English language and its usage. After

addressing whether the Latin phrases cited in the carols can in fact be considered code

switches, I will analyze how often and where language alternation occurs in the

carols. Comparison of carols written during the Middle and Early Modern English

periods will expose differences in code switching practice, marking the development

of a more hypotactic written style.

4.1 Distinguishing Borrowing from Code Switching: The Problem of “High-

Reference” Phrases

As explained in Chapter 1, isolated Latin words that appear in otherwise

English contexts bear all the hallmarks of borrowings. For example, the following

verse from London, British Library, Lansdowne 379, written around 1500, includes

isolated Latin nouns:2

1
Historians of the language date the beginning of Early Modern English to around 1500 in
recognition of a variety of convergent technological, political, and cultural as well as linguistic
developments. The years leading up to and immediately following the turn of the sixteenth century saw
the introduction of the printing press to England (1476), the coronation of Henry VIII (1509), and the
beginning of the Renaissance and the Reformation (Fennell 2, 135; Lass 1, 6). During the same period,
the English language underwent the phonological change known as the Great Vowel Shift, in addition
to lexical and syntactic changes such as those mentioned on p. 138, n. 22 (Lass 11–12).
2
Compare this usage with the similar incorporation of Latin abstractions in Piers Plowman,
identified by Sullivan (97–98).
112
 (1) A mervelus thyng I hafe musyd in my mynde:
Howe that Veritas spronge owghte of the grounde,
And Justicia for all mankynde,
From heuen to erthe he cam adowne (Greene no. 94).
[I have considered a marvelous thing in my mind, how Truth sprang out of the ground
and Justice for all mankind. From heaven to earth he came down.]

The carol writer borrowing veritas and justicia need not have been fluent in Latin any

more than a modern art critic noting that a painting possesses “a certain élan” need be

fluent in French. Most borrowings are indeed nouns such as those in the carol—a fact

corroborated by Shana Poplack, David Sankoff, and Christopher Miller’s study of

French-English bilinguals in the Ottowa-Hull region of Canada (62–65).

Although these isolated Latin words are easy to label as borrowings, entire Latin

phrases quoted in numerous other carols are harder to classify. For example, the

phrase “a solis ortu cardine” (at the foremost rising of the sun), from a Christmas

hymn sung at Lauds, is found in five macaronic carols. Greene lists numerous carol

lines similarly quoted from Latin hymns, prosae, and antiphons in tables that, in his

words, “make no claim to exhaustiveness” (lxxxv n. 3). May we therefore conclude

that because the Latin phrases derive from outside sources, these elements are simple

borrowings? Carol writers who were familiar with the phrases could have borrowed

them without understanding them word for word, much as Christmas carolers today

can sing “Gloria in excelsis Deo” and even understand what it means without

knowing that Deo is in the dative case. If we do consider the Latin phrases in the

carols to be borrowings, however, we cannot study them as the products of speakers

who knew Latin well enough to speak or write it fluently. Under this assumption,

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macaronic carols become a collection of commonplaces assembled by writers who

could appreciate the significance of the Latin they were borrowing but could not fully

understand it. How we classify the Latin elements in the carols therefore determines

the depth of analysis we can employ.

Consideration of the pragmatic function of these Latin elements and the way in

which they were integrated with English suggests that they are in fact code switches.

As Mary Catherine Davidson argues in her study of multilingual compositions from

medieval England, one of the primary purposes of works containing previously

composed Latin elements is the “accommodation of pre-existing texts.” Switches to

these elements, which she calls high-reference phrases, are linguistically marked, but

this markedness does not make them ungrammatical (“Code-Switching and Switching

Code”).3 Instead, the linguistic marking afforded by code switching either signals a

shift in interpretational strategy (as in the case in some medieval legal records) or, in

a move Davidson calls “switching code,” marks the switcher as a member of a

prestigious group (a strategy at work in Piers Plowman) (“Code-Switching and

Switching Code”).

Moreover, although the high-reference phrases in the carols did not originate

with the writer, he or she would require advance knowledge of Latin to integrate them

grammatically with English, as is so frequently the case. For example, the following

3
The inclusion of such high-reference phrases in many cases reverses the process of troping
discussed in Chapter 2. Instead of new text being incorporated into an existing composition, phrases
citing various preexisting texts are incorporated into a new work. Some carols, however, are like tropes
in that they augment liturgical texts with newly composed material. Many of James Ryman’s carols,

114
stanza from a sixteenth-century carol in Balliol 354 contains two Latin lines from

liturgical sources:

(2) The holy brest of chastyte

verbo consepit Filium,
So browght before the Trinite
Vt castytatis lyllyum (Greene no. 52).

[The holy breast of chastity conceived the Son through the Word, brought so before
the Trinity as a lily of chastity.]

According to Greene, “verbo consepit Filium” comes from the same hymn for

Christmas Lauds as does “a solis ortu cardine,” mentioned above, and “castytatis

lyllyum” comes from the prosa for the Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary (lxxxviii,

xcvii). Consepit in the first Latin phrase is predicated by the English subject brest. In

the second Latin phrase, “castytatis lyllyum” is the object of a preposition (ut) not in

the prosa. The sense of the sentence is not complete without the Latin. To integrate

the Latin so thoroughly with the English, the writer would therefore have to have

been reasonably competent in both languages—enough to recognize that the English

brest could take the third-person singular consepit as a verb and that the Latin

preposition ut could take the dative noun phrase found in the prosa. The thorough

integration of the two languages and the writer’s demonstrable knowledge of Latin

grammar precludes these phrases’ being simple loan words.4 Many other carols that

draw on preexisting liturgical texts show a similar comprehensive combination of

for example, translate and develop traditional hymns and antiphons such as the Magnificat and the Te
Deum and include phrases of untranslated Latin from the sources.
4
Those carols that in part translate preexisting Latin hymns likewise suggest that the writer would
have had to have been fluent in Latin to switch grammatically from the original Latin to the English
translation (or to combine an existing vernacular translation with the Latin text).
115
English and Latin syntax and switch languages in the wide variety of ways detailed in

the next section. Such evidence supports interpreting shifts to and from these high-

reference phrases as code switches rather than borrowings.

4.2 Poetic Influences on Grammaticality

Occurring with predictable regularity every second or fourth line, the switches

in the most macaronic carols may seem overdetermined when compared to the much

less regular switches occurring in some medieval English sermons.5 However,

evaluated according to the Functional Head Constraint (FHC), the code switches

occurring in the entire corpus of macaronic English carols are overwhelmingly

grammatical. Of the hundreds of switches occurring in over two hundred macaronic

carols, only the sixteen analyzed below violate the FHC. Although this trend bears

witness to carol writers’ bilingual abilities, these bilinguals were also helped along by

the form of the carol itself, whose prosodic conventions actually favor grammatical

code switches.

The formal conventions of macaronic carols encourage the grammaticality of

code switches in that carol lines tend to comprise complete phrasal or clausal

5
Wenzel identifies forty-three medieval English sermons that fully integrate English and Latin
within sentences. The spontaneity of code switches in some of the most macaronic sermons (relative to
the more regular switching in the carols) can be seen in the following passage from a sermon in
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 649, written in the early fifteenth century (Wenzel 160):
Domini gouernoris most eciam be merciful in punchyng. Oportet ipsos attendere quod of stakis
and stodis qui deberent stare in ista vinea quedam sunt smo†e and li∑tlich wul boo, quedam sunt
so stif and ful of warris quod homo schal to-cleue hom cicius quam planare (Wenzel 274).

116
constituents and languages generally do not switch within lines. A given carol line

may consist of an entire prepositional phrase or a subordinate clause. For instance, in

Example 16 from Chapter 3, almost every Latin line is a complete adverb clause

(“Que semper es amica”), independent clause (“Nato canunt omnia”), appositive or

ablative phrase (“Felix fecundata”, “Infernali pena”), or exclamation (“Ave

Domina”). Since phrases begin and end at the line boundaries and languages do not

generally switch until a new line begins, an ungrammatical code switch within the

phrase is highly unlikely. This principle can be seen at work in the following stanza from

James Ryman’s paraphrase of “Regina celi laetare,” quoted in full at Example 20 in the

previous chapter.

(3) Resurrexit, sicut dixit,

Thy Sonne Jhesus so fre,
Quem gens seua crucifixit
[ConjP And [naylde vppon a tre]].
Mortem uicit et reuixit,
[ConjP And [them with him toke he
Quos amara mors afflixit
In blisse with hym to be]].
[He rose again, just as he said, your son, Jesus, so noble, whom his people crucified
and nailed upon a tree. He conquered death and lived again and took with him those
whom bitter death afflicted to be with him in bliss.]

Two lines begin with the coordinating conjunction and functional head and, which in

both cases receives the first weak stress of the iambic line and takes a complement

that fills out the rest of the line (“naylde vppon a tre” in the first case and “them with

[The lord governors must also be merciful in punishing. They should take notice that of the stakes and
supports that should stand in this vineyard, some are smooth and will easily bend, others are so stiff
and so full of obstinacy that a man will split them sooner than straighten them out (Wenzel 275).]
117
him toke he” in the second).6 A code switch between and and its complement would

be ungrammatical, but such a switch is impossible in both cases because the

languages do not change until that important functional boundary is safely past.

Those ungrammatical switches that do occur tend to result from complex

phrasal structures that traverse the line break, resulting in a functional head in one

line and a switch before that head’s complement in the next. The third line in this

stanza from a fifteenth-century carol to St. John the Evangelist in Bodleian Eng. poet.

e. 1 begins with and, just as the two lines in the previous example do, but in this case

the head of the conjunction’s complement (the inflection of the second conjoined

clause) does not arrive until after the line has ended and the languages have switched:

(4) O most nobble of euangelystes all,

Grace to owr Maker for vs thou call,
[ConjP And [off sweteness celestyall
Prebe nobis pocula] (Greene no. 104).

[O most noble of all evangelists, request grace from our Maker for us, and serve us
goblets of celestial sweetness.]

The phrase “off sweteness celstyall” obscures where the conjunction’s complement

begins on the most fundamental structural level. Whereas the phrase would normally

occur after the word it modifies, pocula, here has been displaced before the verb,

prebe. As was the case in the Anglo-Saxon macaronic poems, poetic aims here

counter grammaticality; the same phrase that allows the line to fit into the carol’s

meter and rhyme scheme also delays the arrival of the complement’s head until the

final Latin line. In such instances (detailed in the following section), the form of the

6
For a discussion of coordinating conjunctions as functional heads, see Section 1.3.2.3.
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carol contradicts the grammar of code switching rather than reinforcing it.7

The linguistic patterns of particular carol types also make ungrammatical

switches more or less likely. A carol type that incorporates less Latin or does not vary

what Latin it has runs less risk of violating the FHC. Carols of Types I, J, K, and L,

on the other hand, increase the risk of ungrammatical code switches because they

include two or more lines of Latin in each stanza, increasing the likelihood that

languages will switch after a functional head. Most of the ungrammatical switches in

the corpus therefore occur in the most macaronic carols.

4.3 Ungrammatical Switches in the Carols

A survey of the code switches in over two hundred macaronic carols uncovers

sixteen switches that violate the FHC: one switch after a determiner, one after a

complementizer, two after modals, and twelve after coordinating conjunctions. No

switches occur after other kinds of functional heads, such as quantifiers or negators.

The following subsections describe switches after each kind of functional head.

Interpreting the following code switches as ungrammatical results to a large

extent from examining the underlying grammatical relationships of words, a point

first addressed in Section 1.3. As the code switch in Example 4 (“And off sweteness

celestyall / Prebe nobis pocula”) demonstrates, where a code switch can be said to

7
The grammatical effects of poetic conventions on code switching are by no means limited to
medieval English carols. Pieter Muysken has noted similar processes at work in modern bilingual
songs that switch between Quechua and Spanish. Some of these songs depart from normal Quechua
word order by placing Spanish direct objects after Quechua verbs. Muysken suggests that these
counter-examples can be explained “through appealing to requirements of rhythmic structure specific
to the genre of bilingual songs” (Bilingual Speech 118).
119
occur depends on the focus one takes. According to the surface linear order, the code

switch occurs between English celestyall and Latin prebe. Since these words are

syntactically unrelated—the first is an adjective modifying sweteness and the second

is a verb—the switch cannot violate the FHC (applied at surface level). Seen in light

of underlying syntactic properties, however, the switch occurs between the

conjunction and and the head of its complement, prebe, and is therefore

ungrammatical. Linguists such as Muysken who see code switching as a surface-level

phenomenon may therefore interpret most of the switches I label ungrammatical as

artifacts of my linguistic assumptions. They would also find among the switches I

treat as grammatical a number that would no doubt violate the constraints they favor.

Acknowledging this possible difference of interpretation, I will continue to analyze

and evaluate switches according to their overarching linguistic structure. As the above

example shows, this approach places greater restrictions on grammaticality and

acknowledges the fundamental principles of linguistic organization informing the

Functional Head Constraint. It also compensates for surface-level alterations in word

order writers may have made for poetic purposes.

4.3.1 After a Determiner

The carols contain only one switch after a determiner, found in a fifteenth-

century Type I carol from London, British Library, Sloane 2593. The switch occurs in

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the carol’s first stanza and is identified below.8

(6) Saluator mundi, Domine,

Fader of Heuene, blyssid thou be;
Thou gretyst a mayde with [DP on [“Ave,”]]
Que vocatur Maria (Greene no. 86).
[Savior of the World, Lord, Father of Heaven, may you be blessed; you greet with an
ave a maiden who is called Mary.]

As explained in Section 1.3.2.1, code switches after determiners like on (ModE an)

are problematic because they are indistinguishable from borrowings (Toribio,

“Speaking in Tongues”). Doubly complicating matters, the complement of the

determiner, ave, is linguistically marked not only because it is reported speech, one

step removed from the speaker, but also because it is an interjection used as a noun

phrase. If these marked features lead us to read ave as a borrowing, the true code

switch does not begin until the following line with the relative clause “Que vocatur

Maria,” which although grammatical seems displaced since it modifies mayde rather

than ave. Classified as a code switch, the change of language at ave is indeed

ungrammatical, however poetically expedient it may be to evoke the Annunciation as

directly as possible and to maintain the rhyme scheme. In either case, this example

contradicts the pattern established in most other carols because the change in

language comes before rather than after the line break.

8
As in Chapter 1, I have identified code switches by (1) bracketing the larger constituent in which
they occur, (2) labeling the functional head, (3) enclosing its complement in an additional set of
brackets, and (4) underscoring the head of that complement.
121
4.3.2 After a Complementizer

Another ungrammatical switch occurs in a Type D carol by James Ryman.

Although every stanza in that carol ends with the same cauda, “Saluator mundi natus

est,” which repeats the second line of the burden almost verbatim, this final line is

introduced differently each time and thus varies in its grammatical function. In the

second stanza, given below, that repeated clause occurs after the complementizer that,

violating the FHC:

(7) To the sheperdes keping theire folde

On Cristemas nyght an aungell tolde
[CP That [in Bethelem with bestes bolde
Saluator mundi natus est]] (Greene no. 81).

[To the shepherds keeping their flock on Christmas night, an angel said that in
Bethlehem among brave beasts the Savior of the World was born.]

Unlike the previous example, this one includes adjunct phrases between the

complementizer and the head of its clausal complement, the inflection of the verb natus

est. As explained previously, this pattern also holds for most of the subsequent

ungrammatical switches, in which functional heads are likewise followed by adjunct

phrases that delay the arrival of the complement head until after the code switch.

4.3.3 After Modals

Two ungrammatical switches in the carols occur after modal auxiliaries and

demonstrate different strategies for assigning a Latin complement to an English

modal—a situation previously considered for Old English in Section 1.3.2.2. One

switch, from a sixteenth-century Type H carol to St. John the Evangelist in Balliol

122
354, pairs a English modal with a Latin infinitive—the same inflection one would

expect had the complement been in English.

(8) As he [Christ] in his passion to his dere moder

Toke the for her keper, her son, and his brother,
Pray that owr hartes [ModP may [most of all other
Jhesum semper amare]] (Greene no. 105).
[Since he during his Passion took you to his dear mother as her keeper, her son, and
his brother, pray that our hearts may always love Jesus most of all others.]

The other switch occurs in the fifteenth-century Type B carol by John Audelay cited

in the previous chapter at Example 7; in the last stanza, an English modal takes a

Latin verb inflected in the present subjunctive.

(9) Mater, ora Filium

That he [ModP wyl [affter this outlere
Nobis donet gaudium
Sine fyne for his merce]] (Greene no. 311).
[Mother, pray the Son that he will after this exile (may) give us joy without end out
of his mercy.]

One would expect the Latin verb following a modal to be in the infinitive form, as it

is in Example 8; such a choice would fit the meter just as well since dare, like donet,

is a trochee. Instead, the tense and mood of the verb are contradictorily indicated both

by the English future tense indicator wyl and by the present subjunctive inflection of

donet. The grammaticality of the switch is thus suspect on morphological as well as

syntactic grounds. Even in this case, however, the interposition of the adjunct

prepositional phrase affter this outlere and the Latin dative nobis obscures the FHC

violation by separating the modal from the ungrammatical verb.

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4.3.4 After Coordinating Conjunctions

Most of the code switches that violate the FHC occur after coordinating

conjunctions. As explained in Chapter 1, although coordinating conjunctions are

generally not thought of as taking complements in traditional and early generative

approaches to language, more recent linguistic theories categorize them as functional

heads, making a switch between a conjunction and its complement ungrammatical.

Rather than presenting every such code switch, the following is a representative

sampling of each conjunction involved in an ungrammatical switch: English and, for,

and but and Latin sed.

Six of twelve switches following coordinating conjunctions occur after and, as

in the following stanza from a fifteenth-century Type G carol in Bodleian Arch.

Selden B. 26:

(10) Oure synne to slee he toke the way

Into the worle fro heuyn riche blysse,
[ConjP And [therefore bothe nyght and day
Resultet terra gaudiis]] (Greene no. 33).

[To slay our sin, he took the way into the world from the joy of the Kingdom of
Heaven, and therefore both night and day the earth echoes with joys.]

The same carol contains a similar switch in the previous and the following stanzas;

likewise, a Type K carol by James Ryman contains two switches after and in

neighboring stanzas (Greene no. 75). Only one carol, quoted in Example 4, contains

an isolated switch after and. All of the switches after and interpolate adjuncts

between the conjunction and the verb of its complement clause, filling out the line as

well as camouflaging the ungrammatical switch.

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 A different pattern predominates among the four switches that occur after for,

which is generally followed immediately by the subject of the complement clause.

The burdens of two fifteenth-century Type H carols in Bodleian Eng. poet. e. 1 contain

the following ungrammatical switch:

(11) Now be we glad and not to sad,

[ConjP For [verbum caro factum est]] (Greene no. 38).
[Now let us be glad and not too solemn, for the Word was made flesh.]

Here the use of for allows the memorable quote from the Gospel of John to fill out the

iambic tetrameter line but makes the switch ungrammatical. The disjunction does

draw attention to the quote, however, raising the possibility that this violation of the

FHC is itself a literary device.9

Unlike switches after for, those after English but and its Latin equivalent sed

return to the predominant pattern by following the conjunction with modifying

material. Switches after both contrast words occur only once apiece in the corpus of

medieval English carols, and both appear in carols from the Early Modern period.

The first switch of this kind occurs in one of James Ryman’s many adaptations of the

closing Vespers hymn Te Deum laudamus. The carol incorporates new Latin material

in the second line of each stanza but repeats “Te Deum verum laudamus” as a cauda,

combining features of Types D and J. In the fourth stanza, the English introduction to

the repeated Latin clause creates an ungrammatical switch:

9
Toribio notes a similar practice in modern Spanish-English poetry, in which some ungrammatical
code switches seem to be made intentionally to draw attention to the act of code switching (“Speaking
in Tongues”).
125
 (12) By day and by nyght, as it is ryght,
A laude tua non cessamus,
[ConjP Butte [with the tyght of alle oure myght
Te Deum verum laudamus]] (Greene no. 294).
[By day and by night, as it is right, we do not cease from your praise, but with the
guidance of all our strength, we praise you, true God.]

Even though the conjunction butte and the verb laudamus occupy opposite ends of

the clause in linear surface order, the switch is ungrammatical since it occurs between

a functional head and its complement.

The Latin analogue to the ungrammatical switch in Example 12 appears in the

Type L carol on mortality discussed in Chapter 3, the second stanza of which is

reproduced below.

(13) Dum iuvenis fui, lytill I dred,

[ConjPSet [semper in sinne I ete my bred;]]
Iam ductus sum into my bed;
Terribilis mors conturbat me (Greene no. 372).
[When I was young, I feared little, but I ate my bread always in sin; now I have been
lead into my bed; terrible death disturbs me.]

This is the only switch after a Latin conjunction in the carols, and it conforms to the

pattern seen throughout the ungrammatical switches by including two modifiers, the

Latin adverb semper and the English adverbial prepositional phrase in sinne, after the

conjunction. The ungrammatical switch in this case is the result of a linguistic and

poetic domino effect: each line comprises a complete clause, but languages switch

within each line; by conjoining the first two clauses, the carol writer practically

necessitated an ungrammatical switch.

126
 Since, contrary to this last example, most of the ungrammatical switches in the

carols occur after line breaks, prosodic factors could have made these switches

acceptable to the poets writing them. Modern evidence suggests that speakers do not

note as great a disjunction when a pause occurs after the functional head. For

example, two Spanish-Nahuatl speakers surveyed by Jeffrey MacSwan noted that a

brief silence between a complementizer in one language and its IP head in another

made the sentence more acceptable (241).10 The aural (and visual) disjunction

between the end of one poetic line and the beginning of another could have marked

such a pause. In carols set to music, such a disjunction would have been even greater

since each poetic line corresponds to a separate musical phrase.11 Such prosodic

factors could therefore have helped ameliorate ungrammatical switches much as

intervening adjunct phrases obscured faulty switch sites.

4.4 Code Switch Sites in Carols of Types F through L

Having considered violations of the FHC occurring in the entire corpus of

medieval English carols, we may now analyze the grammatical switches occurring in

the most macaronic works. As mentioned in the description of various carol types,

code switches in carols of Types F through L are particularly suitable for study

because these carols do not generally contain repeated material. Although some carols

10
MacSwan goes on to conclude that switching between a complementizer and its complement is
therefore not prohibited by any code switching constraint. As Toribio explains, however, MacSwan
must overlook the speakers’ responses in order to reach this conclusion (“Emergence of Code-
switching Competence”).
11
All of the songs in Stevens’ Mediæval Carols, derived from those manuscripts that record carols
with music, follow this pattern.
127
of Types D and E do alter the syntactic function of a repeated cauda by introducing it

in different ways, in most carols the function of a repeated cauda generally does not

vary from stanza to stanza, constituting in essence a single code switch made several

times. A dependable characterization of where switches occur in the carols requires

that the switches themselves vary, to avoid artificially inflating the number of

switches under consideration. Since even the most macaronic carols repeat Latin

material, I have tallied code switches before such repetitions only once apiece,

producing the most conservative count of switches to Latin.

To isolate diachronic differences in code switching practice, I have divided the

sample into two groups: one comprising carols dated in Greene’s collection up to

1492, the date given in the colophon to James Ryman’s collection, and another

comprising carols dated after 1492 through the sixteenth century. The two groups

thus roughly divide, however arbitrarily, into carols that contain Middle English and

those than contain Early Modern English, conventionally understood to begin around

1500. Since the dates for most of the carol manuscripts have not been pinpointed to a

particular year in the fifteenth century, the first group conservatively comprises all

carols found in manuscripts dated generally to the fifteenth century, including those

dated to the second half, and the second group comprises only those from manuscripts

with definite dates on or after 1492.

Tables 4.1 through 4.4 below summarize where code switches occur in carols of

Types F through L. The first two identify switches from English to Latin, the other two

from Latin to English. As with the tables in Chapter 1, the constituent indicated in
128
Column 1 is in the language named first in the title (that is, Middle English in Table

4.1, Early Modern English in Table 4.3, and Latin in Tables 4.2 and 4.3). The number

of code switches occurring in a particular part of the sentence (Column 2) is factored as

a percentage both of the total switches treated in that table (Column 3) and of all

intrasentential switches in carols of Types F through L from that period (Column 4).

Table 4.1: Intrasentential Switches between Middle English and Latin12

Switch Site Number % ME-Latin % All
LEXICAL HEADS
Obligatory Constituents
Subject NP and VP 8 11.0% 3.1%
V and complement13 22 30.1% 8.6%
Preposition and complement 1 1.4% 0.4%
Adjuncts
Appositive 1 1.4% 0.4%
Direct Address 2 2.7% 0.8%
Participial phrase 2 2.7% 0.8%
Prepositional phrase 11 15.1% 4.3%
Adjunct infinitive phrase 1 1.4% 0.4%
Interjection 2 2.7% 0.8%
Subord. conj. and preceding 4 5.4% 1.6%
FUNCTIONAL HEADS
*Det and NP 1 1.4% 0.4%
*Mod and V 1 1.4% 0.4%
Coord. conj and preceding 9 12.3% 3.5%
*Coord. conj and complement 8 11.0% 3.1%
Total switches 73 100% 28.6%

12
Eighty-two switches in Middle English carols occur between sentences.
13
Fourteen of these switches occur between a verb of speech and its complement.
129
Table 4.2: Intrasentential Switches between Latin and Middle English
Switch Site Number % Latin-ME % All
LEXICAL HEADS
Obligatory Constituents
Subject NP and VP 4 2.2% 1.6%
V and complement 2 1.1% 0.8%
Adjuncts
ADJ 7 3.8% 2.7%
Genitive NP 3 1.6% 1.2%
Dative NP 2 1.1% 0.8%
Ablative NP14 24 10.4% 9.4%
Appositive 19 10.4% 7.5%
Direct Address 20 11.0% 7.8%
Participial phrase 18 10.0% 7.1%
Prepositional phrase 47 25.8% 18.4%
Interjection 20 11.0% 7.8%
Relative pro. and preceding 14 7.7% 5.5%
Subord. conj. and preceding 2 1.1% 0.8%
Total switches 182 100% 71.4%

As the data in Tables 4.1 and 4.2 show, Latin elements are the structural loci of

almost three-fourths of the code switches in the most macaronic fifteenth-century

carols. Most of these Latin elements (69 percent of all intrasentential code switches)

are adjuncts, particularly prepositional, ablative, and participial phrases; appositives

and nouns of direct address; and interjections.15 In other words, most of the Latin

elements describe or otherwise limit Middle English material. The next largest group

of code switches (12.1 percent) occur after obligatory Middle English constituents,

especially between Middle English verbs and their Latin complements; in these

instances, Latin and Middle English are much more closely intertwined, since

elements in both languages are necessary for the completeness of each sentence.

14
Five of these switches occur before an ablative absolute.
15
A very fine line separates switches before or after interjections from those involving nouns of
direct address since many Latin direct addresses are preceded by an exclamation of greeting or by an
invocation such as O or Ave.
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Switches before Middle English adjuncts are a fraction of their Latin counterparts:

only 9.1 percent of switches involve Middle English elements that modify Latin

material. A still smaller group (7.4 percent) of switches entail Middle English

functional heads. Unlike the ungrammatical switches discussed in Section 4.3, almost

half of these switches are grammatical since they occur before the functional heads in

question. The smallest group of code switches (2.4 percent) occur after obligatory

Latin constituents and tend to fall between subjects and verbs rather than between

verbs and their complements— opposite the trend for switches after obligatory

Middle English constituents.

Table 4.3: Intrasentential Switches between Early Modern English and Latin16
Switch Site Number % EModE-L % All
LEXICAL HEADS
Obligatory Constituents
Subject NP and VP 4 3.5% 1.6%
V and complement17 26 23.0% 10.5%
Preposition and complement 2 1.8% 0.8%
Adjuncts
ADJ 5 4.4% 2.0%
Appositive 1 0.9% 0.4%
Direct Address 10 8.8% 4.0%
Participial phrase 1 0.9% 0.4%
Prepositional phrase 26 23.0% 10.5%
ADV 2 1.8% 0.8%
Adjunct infinitive phrase 3 2.7% 1.2%
Nominal absolute 1 0.9% 0.4%
Interjection 1 0.9% 0.4%
Subord. conj. and preceding 15 13.3% 6.1%
Relative pro. and preceding 5 4.4% 2.0%
FUNCTIONAL HEADS
*Mod and V 1 0.9% 0.4%
Coord. conj and preceding 7 6.2% 2.8%
*Coord. conj and complement 3 2.7% 1.2%
Total switches 113 100% 45.5%

16
Thirty-six switches in Early Modern English carols occur between sentences.
17
Twenty-two of these switches occur between a verb of speech and its complement.
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Table 4.4: Intrasentential Switches between Latin and Early Modern English
Switch Site Number % L-EModE % All
LEXICAL HEADS
Obligatory Constituents
Subject NP and VP 2 1.5% 0.8%
V and complement 2 1.5% 0.8%
Preposition and complement 2 1.5% 0.8%
Adjuncts
ADJ 3 2.2% 1.2%
Genitive NP 1 0.7% 0.4%
Dative NP 1 0.7% 0.4%
Ablative NP18 9 6.7% 3.6%
Appositive 15 11.2% 6.1%
Direct Address 14 10.4% 5.7%
Participial phrase 7 5.2% 2.8%
Prepositional phrase 24 17.9% 9.7%
Adjunct infinitive phrase 3 2.2% 1.2%
Nominative absolute 1 0.7% 0.4%
Interjection 5 3.7% 2.0%
Relative pro. and preceding 20 14.9% 8.1%
Subord. conj. and preceding 14 10.4% 5.7%
FUNCTIONAL HEADS
Coordinating conj. and preceding 10 7.5% 4.0%
*Coord. conj. and complement 1 0.7% 0.4%
Total Latin switches 134 100% 54.1%

Tables 4.3 and 4.4 reveal that code switching in Early Modern English carols

differs markedly from that in carols from the first nine decades of the fifteenth

century. Perhaps most noticeably, code switches entailing English elements and those

entailing Latin elements occur in roughly equal proportions. Although switches

before Latin adjuncts are still the largest group of switches (47.3 percent), they are no

longer a majority. The next largest group of switches now occur before English

adjuncts—at 28.2 percent a threefold increase over the earlier fifteenth-century data.

As was the case in those carols from the Middle English period, switches after

obligatory English constituents still comprise about twelve percent of the total

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intrasentential switches (12.9 percent) and far outnumber switches after obligatory

Latin constituents (2.4 percent). Unlike the earlier carols, however, in which no

switches involved Latin functional heads, the Early Modern carols include as many

involving Latin functional heads as they do English ones (4.4 percent in both cases).

Coordinating conjunctions are the sites of all Latin switches either before or after

functional heads. While almost all of these Latin switches occur before the

conjunctions, one occurs (ungrammatically) after the coordinating conjunction sed, as

discussed in Section 4.3.4.

The marked differences between code switching in the early and late carols is

all the more remarkable given the arbitrary grouping of both samples. Since the data

for Tables 4.1 and 4.2 include any fifteenth century carol that could not be pinpointed

to the last decade of the century, the “Middle English” sample could in fact contain a

number of carols that incorporate Early Modern English. By the same token, Late

Middle English did not become Early Modern overnight; conservative speakers

writing in the early sixteenth century could have retained linguistic features most

individuals no longer employed. Despite the ambiguities created both by the inexact

science of manuscript dating and the fluid nature of linguistic change, however, the

two groups of carols display key differences. Tables 4.5 and 4.6 juxtapose the data

from the previous two tables, bringing these differences further to light.

18
Six of these switches occur before an ablative absolute.
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Table 4.5: Comparison of Switches Between English and Latin as a Percentage
of Total Intrasentential Switches

Switch Site ME-Latin EModE-Latin

LEXICAL HEADS
Obligatory Constituents
Subject NP and VP 3.1% 1.6%
V and complement 8.6% 10.5%
Preposition and complement 0.4% 0.8%
Adjuncts
ADJ 0.0% 2.0%
Appositive 0.4% 0.4%
Direct Address 0.8% 4.0%
Participial phrase 0.8% 0.4%
Prepositional phrase 4.3% 10.5%
ADV 0.0% 0.8%
Adjunct infinitive phrase 0.4% 1.2%
Nominal absolute 0.0% 0.4%
Interjection 0.8% 0.4%
Subord. conj. and preceding 1.6% 6.1%
Relative pro. and preceding 0.0% 2.0%
FUNCTIONAL HEADS
*Det and NP 0.4% 0.0%
*Mod and V 0.4% 0.4%
Coord. conj and preceding 3.5% 2.8%
*Coord. conj and complement 3.1% 1.2%
% of Total Switches 28.6% 45.5%

Table 4.6: Comparison of Switches Between Latin and English as a Percentage

of Total Intrasentential Switches
Switch Site Latin-ME Latin-EModE
LEXICAL HEADS
Obligatory Constituents
Subject NP and VP 1.6% 0.8%
V and complement 0.8% 0.8%
Preposition and complement 0.0% 0.8%
Adjuncts
ADJ 2.7% 1.2%
Genitive NP 1.2% 0.4%
Dative NP 0.8% 0.4%
Ablative NP 9.4% 3.6%
Appositive 7.5% 6.1%
Direct Address 7.8% 5.7%
Participial phrase 7.1% 2.8%
Prepositional phrase 18.4% 9.7%
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 Adjunct infinitive phrase 0.0% 1.2%
Nominative absolute 0.0% 0.4%
Interjection 7.8% 2.0%
Relative pro. and preceding 5.5% 8.1%
Subord. conj. and preceding 0.8% 5.7%
FUNCTIONAL HEADS
Coordinating conj. and preceding 0.0% 4.0%
*Coord. conj. and complement 0.0% 0.4%
% of Total Switches 71.4% 54.1%

A survey of the largest differences between switch sites in the two groups of carols

reveals an important trend. Fewer switches in carols containing Early Modern English

occur before Latin prepositional, participial, and ablative phrases. At the same time,

more switches occur before English prepositions, Latin and English subordinating

conjunctions, and Latin coordinating conjunctions. Carols written during the Early

Modern English period thus depend less on Latin adjuncts than their Middle English

predecessors do. Rather than limiting and relating ideas in English and Latin by using

Latin modifying phrases, the Early Modern carols rely increasingly on coordination

and subordination, which bring together entire clauses. As the next section will

explain, this trend manifests interrelated developments in English written style.

4.5 Stylistic Motivations for Code Switching Differences in the Carols

The increase in code switches before Latin and English subordinating

conjunctions and Latin coordinating conjunctions in Early Modern macaronic carols

is the result of linguistic changes that were at once stylistic and syntactic. During the

fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, English writers emulating Latin and French models

developed a style that made more extensive use of subordination and coordination

than the spoken language did. These stylistic developments affected written English
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syntax as they encouraged the use of conjunctions, classes of words instrumental in

creating complex syntactic structures. Code switching in the carols was directly

affected in the process: not only did these linguistic developments alter the patterns of

code switching; the alternation between languages also foregrounded the newly

developed style.

Throughout the Late Middle English Period, writers made increasing use of

hypotaxis by overtly subordinating ideas (Fischer 287–89). According to John H.

Fisher, this stylistic movement developed between 1420 and 1440 at Chancery, the

center of the English royal bureaucracy throughout the fifteenth century. Fisher

argues that writers at Chancery not only worked to standardize English orthography

by conservatively avoiding phonetic respellings but also wrote in a more hypotactic

style, under the influence of the Latin and French documents they continually copied

(880–87). By 1460, the style had been adopted by professional scribes throughout

England (Fisher 896).19 By the beginning of the sixteenth century, this hypotactic

style gained currency outside of the government bureaucracy as businesspeople,

lawyers, and later educators began to emulate it in their official and private

correspondence (Fisher 891–96).

Written during this proliferation of the Chancery style outside bureaucratic

circles, the later macaronic carols therefore register more code switches before

English subordinating conjunctions like as, because, and that (used to express

19
Here and throughout I cite Fisher’s original 1976 article, which is included with only minor
alterations in his 1997 essay collection, The Emergence of Standard English (36–64).
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purpose).20 Since the clerical writers of macaronic carols would have read (and very

well may have produced) such prose, it is not unreasonable to suggest that they

adopted the same style in their poetic works as well.21 Even if bilingual carol writers

did not consciously mimic Chancery in their poetic works, they could have easily

made the same choice as Chancery writers by adopting the hypotactic style of the

Latin prose works with which they were conversant. Indeed, the carols themselves

illustrate the combination of Latinate and vernacular influences that shaped English

writing, in essence encapsulating moments of language contact.22

The discussion so far has been limited to the increased use of subordination

from the late fifteenth century onward. The use of explicit coordination, however,

was also a hallmark of the written standard developed just before and during the Early

Modern period. As Laura Wright notes in her brief study of the syntax of sixteenth-

century witness narratives, Early Modern English speech was like spoken registers of

Present Day English in that it did not organize utterances according to sentences,

made little or no distinction between coordination and subordination, and in fact did

20
Examples of such switches include “As he ys Lord both day and nyght, Venter puelle baiulat”
(Greene no. 52), “Because he sayde he saw a syghte, Lapidaverunt Stephanum” (Greene no. 9), and
“Of Criste that we may haue a sight Funde preces ad Filium” (Greene no. 201). These switches are
from Balliol 354 (1508–c.1536), Huntington HM 147 (c. 1500), and Cambridge Ee.1.12 (c. 1492),
respectively. Switches before adverbial that occur only in James Ryman’s works.
21
Many records similar to those kept at Chancery were in fact macaronic, for example the Latin-
English accounting records Laura Wright studies in “Macaronic Writing in a London Archive.”
22
In time the English language would acquire a more diversified vocabulary of subordinating
conjunctions. Although the carols themselves do not demonstrate this trend, by the seventeenth century
English subordinators became more specialized in their functions. Causal subordinators diversified as
Old English forms incorporating the conjunction for gave way to more specialized markers (see
Traugott and Rissanen). Temporal subordinators such as after likewise became distinguished from
non-temporal “prepositions” such as unless in the kinds of complements they could take, to the point
that, as Dubinsky and Williams argue, temporal subordinators became complementizers.
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not significantly distinguish between coordinated and noncoordinated sentences (the

presence or absence of coordinators being largely immaterial). Conversely, written

registers, like that employed by a doctor testifying before an ecclesiastical court in

1589, divided utterances into sentences and clearly coordinated and subordinated

ideas (Wright, “Syntactic Structure” 104).23 Such evidence upholds the notion that the

explicit marking of subordination and coordination alike had become a feature of

written English by the sixteenth century.

By adopting these markers of Latinate prose, fifteenth-century writers not only

enabled the further standardization of written English but also facilitated switching

between English and Latin. Patterning English written usage on that of Latin made

the syntaxes of the two languages more alike on a local level. Doing so in turn

enabled bilinguals to code switch at the syntactic sites English and Latin now shared

in common, in accordance with Sankoff and Poplack’s Equivalence Constraint.24

Such newly licensed sites included the explicitly marked subordinating and

coordinating conjunctions favored by the recently developed written style.

23
Wright comes to these conclusions by applying David Crystal’s observations of present-day
conversational speech to sixteenth-century court transcripts. Among his findings, Crystal notes that
modern speech (1) is not organized into discrete sentences, (2) does not meaningfully distinguish
between the conjunctions and and but, and (3) is comprised either of multiple simple utterances
beginning with connecting expressions or of long, complex utterances held together by loose
coordination. Wright finds the same features in a number of witness accounts from sixteenth-century
courts, which though written approximate the spoken register. The doctor’s testimony, however, bears
all the hallmarks of modern written style (Wright, “Syntactic Structure” 104).
24
See p. 23 for a discussion of the Equivalence Constraint, which Belazi et al. incorporate as a
corollary to the Functional Head Constraint.
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 The use of code switching to highlight aspects of written style reminds us that

code switching itself can be employed stylistically—a fact underscored by the various

patterns identified in the previous chapter. What better way to mark distinguishing

features of the written idiom than by switching languages before those features (cf.

Traugott and Romaine 26–28)? Comparing code switching in Middle English and

Early Modern carols thus not only exposes a series of important developments in

English writing, but also underscores the stylistic utility of code switching among

bilinguals over four centuries ago.

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 Chapter 5: Macaronic Carols in a Community of Practice

The previous two chapters have discussed bilingual carols from medieval

England primarily as linguistic and literary artifacts. Carols were not performed and

read in isolation, however, and thus merit study both as expressions of social groups

and as a means of constituting them. Although these works have received little

scholarly attention in recent years, their broad social, geographical, and chronological

distribution make them more representative of medieval culture than many of the

circumscribed texts scholars of medieval literature generally prefer. Considering how

carols—and particularly bilingual carols—functioned within communities therefore

elucidates a common feature of medieval experience and challenges received notions

of language use, linguistic identity, and the value of texts.

I will now return to the remarkably varied array of religious and lay users

identified in Chapter 3 to detail how they could form bilingual identities in part by

writing, performing, and disseminating macaronic carols. I will hereafter refer to this

set of interrelated activities as “caroling” and the people who engaged in these

activities as “carolers.” To describe this network of carolers and the ways in which

macaronic carols allowed bilinguals to give their linguistic identities concrete form, I

will employ the model set forth by Etienne Wenger in Communities of Practice:

Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Wenger draws on a wide variety of theories

concerned either explicitly or implicitly with the ramifications of practice, including

those of anthropologists Jean Lave and Julian Orr, sociologists Pierre Bourdieu and

140
Jürgen Habermas, and psychologist Lev Vygotsky, as well as poststructuralist critics

like Stanley Fish and Michel Foucault (282, 284).

Despite this academic pedigree, Wenger’s ideas have eminently practical

applications. Wenger himself developed his ideas by studying insurance claims

processors, and illustrates concepts throughout his book with examples from that

most bureaucratic of fields. Communities of practice are at work, however, in nearly

every group enterprise conducted over time, be it corporate, academic, religious, or

recreational. And although Wenger generally applies his model to modern situations,

the dynamics he identifies were manifested in pre-modern communities as well.

Subsequent illustrations of Wenger’s concepts and discussion of the production and

circulation of medieval English carols will demonstrate that communities of practice

were just as active in Middle Ages as they are today.

Wenger describes his model as “a social theory of learning” that synthesizes

theories of social structure, situated experience, social practice, and identity (11–15).

Within this theory, he defines practice as “doing in a historical and social context that

gives structure and meaning to what we do” (47). Negotiating meaning through

practice involves the concurrent dynamics of participation and reification: as

members of a community participate in a practice (an involvement that for Wenger

always involves a social component), they generate artifacts that reify the practice

itself as well as the values and assumptions that motivate it (54–62). The medieval

communities that produced the texts treated throughout this study offer numerous

examples of these dual dynamics. Monastic orders, for example, were founded quite
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explicitly to ensure the continuance of various practices—not only of prayer but of

lifestyle, work, and education. To reify such practices, monastic founders produced

rules stipulating how each practice should be carried out, and in the process expressed

a set of spiritual, moral, and theological values. Such reification is necessary to

transmit the practice to others; in fact, we as modern scholars can infer past practices

only through such reifications: the manuscripts and other artifacts left by medieval

people. Additional features of Wenger’s theory will become relevant as I address how

macaronic English carols enabled the formation of a community or practice.

5.1 Caroling as a Practice

Macaronic and monolingual carols were performed in similar social contexts and

often recorded in the same manuscripts. Although three of every five sources Greene

cites contain only monolingual carols, very few of the remaining two-fifths contain

only macaronic ones, and the largest collections include monolingual works alongside

those that alternate languages.1 Moreover, other than in their linguistic alternation,

macaronic carols did not differ from monolingual works in their poetic forms or in their

musical settings, as attested by Stevens’ editions.

The two can be distinguished from each other, however, on the level of

reification. That is, although macaronic carols were recorded and no doubt performed

alongside monolingual compositions, they gave concrete form to a distinct bilingual

identity. After fleshing out caroling in general as a practice, I will identify the aspects

1
See the characterization of carol manuscripts on p. 85, n. 12.
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of that practice that enabled the formation of a community, drawing examples

whenever possible from macaronic texts. I will then focus on the community involved

in the practice of macaronic caroling. Although the continuance of the practice

depended on fluent bilinguals to generate carol texts, I will argue that even those who

were not fluent in Latin could participate by becoming “bilingual in performance.”

Because this community was constituted by practice rather than predetermined social

markers, it could continue even after the Reformation radically altered its

membership. I will then explain how macaronic carols reified a positive conception of

bilingual identity, both by alternating languages in a highly formalized fashion and by

representing sacred figures as code-switching bilinguals.

Throughout its development from a dance song with a single melody line to a

complex multi-voice composition—and, I will argue, even in cases where carol texts

were written to be read, not sung—the carol was a quintessentially public form,

requiring or at least implying the engagement of a group. The social nature of the

carol developed from its origins as a ring dance sung alternately by the dancers

themselves (on the burden) and a soloist or small group outside the circle (on the

stanzas) (Bukofzer 119). Besides the carol texts themselves, scenes of caroling in

contemporary historical accounts and chivalric romances and entries for carol-related

expenses in monastic business records demonstrate that carols were very much a

group enterprise featured at public festivities.

From the texts of both macaronic and monolingual carols we see that the carol

was often part of group celebrations and feasts. That carols were sung or recited in
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groups is clear from the first-person plural viewpoint of many carols, expressed in

both Latin and English—for example, the burden from a Christmas carol in the Ritson

Manuscript reads:

(1) O radix Jesse, supplices

Te nos inuocamus;
Veni vt nos liberes
Quem iam expectamus (Greene no. 1).
[O Root of Jesse, suppliant we call upon you; come to free us, you whom we now await.]

One of James Ryman’s carols likewise comes from the assembly, who bid farewell to

Advent both in the burden and at the end of each stanza with “Farewele fro vs both

alle and sume” (Greene no. 3). The celebratory nature of occasions for caroling is

evident not only from the feast days for which carols were composed, but also from

references to conviviality in the carols themselves. For instance, the Boar’s Head

Carol, presented in Chapter 3 at Example 14, is clearly sung from the standpoint of a

lone singer bringing the dish into a hall, inviting the participation of those “qui estis

in conuiuio” (who are at the banquet). Some carols even set the rules for such group

participation, as in a monolingual English carol that instructs,

(2) Therefore euery mon that ys here

Synge a caroll on hys manere;
Yf he con non we schall hym lere,
So that we be mere allway (Greene no. 10).
[Therefore, let every man who is here sing a carol after his fashion; if he doesn’t
know one, we shall teach him, so that we might always be merry.]

Descriptions of public ceremonies held over a century before most carols were

recorded also indicate the social character of carol performance. For example, the

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Annales Londoniensis describe townspeople attending the coronation of Edward II in

1308 as “coram rege et regina karolantes” (caroling [that is, both singing and

dancing] before the king and queen) (Withington 1: 125). The same annals report that

five years later London fishmongers staged a pageant to celebrate the birth of Edward

III and were likewise “coram regina karolantes” (caroling before the queen)

(Withington 1: 126). These early examples show that the events at which carols were

sung and disseminated brought together people of various occupations and social

classes, including common citizens as well as royalty, and no doubt attendant

aristocracy and bourgeois gentry.

Even after carols became too musically complex for dancing, they remained

songs of public festivity, whether sung at feasts or as processional music (Bukofzer

122).2 The Tudor scholar and playwright Nicholas Udall, in his 1542 translation of

Erasmus’s Apophthegmes, mentions “syngyng merie songes and rymes for makyng

laughter and sporte at marryages, euen like as is nowe vsed to syng songes of the

Frere and the Nunne, with other sembleable merie iestes, at weddynges, and other

feastynges” (qtd. in Reed 78). Two surviving “songes of the Frere and the Nunne,”

which portray a Franciscan in flagrante delicto with a sister religious, are carols. Both

songs come from sixteenth-century sources and have the same burden: “Inducas,

inducas, / In temptacionibus” (Lead us, lead us into temptation)—a parody of the

2
Bukofzer cites formal correspondences between the carol and the processional hymn to support the
use of carols in processions. The fact that he makes this observation right after citing rubrics in the
Ritson Manuscript (London, British Library, Addit. 5665) suggests that his conjecture might also be
based on that manuscript’s inclusion of Latin pieces derived from the Sarum processional. Greene

145
Lord’s Prayer (Greene nos. 461 and 461.1). Udall’s description presents carols as

vital parts of collective celebrations two-and-a-half centuries after the early

fourteenth-century festivities described in the Annales Londoniensis, a span

representing the full duration of the form’s popularity.

Medieval English romances likewise reflect the social nature of carols by

associating them with welcoming ceremonies and banquets. Chaucer’s Knight

mentions caroling alongside feasting as he describes scenes decorating the temple of

Venus: “Festes, instrumentz, caroles, daunces, / Lust and array, and alle the

circumstaunces / Of love” (Robinson ll. 1931–33). In Sir Gawain and the Green

Knight, the Christmastide feasting at Bercilack’s court also includes carols, here

identified more with song than with dance:

(3) Much glam and gle glent vp †erinne

Aboute †e fyre vpon flet, and on fele wyse
At †e soper and after, mony a†el songe∑,
As coundutes of Krystmasse and carole∑ newe,
With al †e manerly mer†e †at mon may of telle
(ll. 1652–6; Vantuono 94).3

[Much splendor and joy shone forth therein, around the fire upon the floor, and in many
ways at the supper and afterwards, many noble songs such as motets for Christmas and
new carols, with all the befitting happiness of which one may tell.]

Such depictions of caroling were still stock features of the romance repertoire a

century later, to the extent that in the prose romance Merlin (recorded in the middle of

the fifteenth century) sung and danced carols are mentioned off-handedly as part of

notes, however, that “the MS. as a whole is not made up of processional music,” undermining
Bukofzer’s assertion somewhat (308).
3
Greene likewise notes this passage (xxviii).
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various celebrations and feasts. For example, when entertaining Kings Ban and Bors,

Arthur and the kings “yede to here euesonge, and than thei yede to soper, and after

begonne the carolles and to speke of the turnemente” (went to hear evensong, and

then they went to supper, and afterwards began the carols and to speak of the

tournament) (Wheatley 138). These examples from the poetry show royalty and

aristocrats as participants in the caroling rather than spectators, a situation opposite

that portrayed in the Annales Londoniensis.

Although the convivial settings evoked by the carols themselves could in many

cases apply to celebrations hosted by either religious or lay persons, the historical and

literary descriptions cited so far portray predominantly lay carolers. Records from

religious foundations, however, indicate that spiritual communities were involved as

much in performing carols as in collecting them. In one telling instance, Greene

relates that the accounts kept by William More, prior of the Benedictine chapter at

Worcester cathedral until its dissolution, list “among the most frequent items of

expense in the years 1518 to 1532 … malmsey and other wines, minstrels and other

entertainment, and singers of carols” (xl). More’s accounts also suggest that the priory

subsequently recorded such carols in manuscripts like Bodleian Arch. Selden B. 26,

compiled at Worcester in the previous century and containing a dozen macaronic

carols. For Christmas 1518, More notes not only a sum paid to “syngars of carralls at

cristmas day at ny∑th” but successive payments to “Richard skryvenar for wryting …

rewarded for carralls” (Greene 315).

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 The fact that a religious house like the Worcester priory hosted banquets at

which carols were sung does not mean that such celebrations were limited to those in

clerical orders. Even celebrations hosted by monasteries and cathedral chapters would

have included lay guests and servants. Major religious houses, after all, were

maintained by a radiating network of ecclesiastical and temporal support. Although a

house may have contained no more than a few dozen core members (Prior More’s

Worcester, for example, held between forty and forty-five monks), that core group

would have been supported by “comparative swarms of household chaplains,

notaries, unattached and would-be chantry priests, scribes, school- and choir-masters

as well as other clerks and literati who formed the clerical underworld of the late

medieval cathedral” (Greatrex 120; Dobson 27). Maintaining those clerics in turn was

an even larger group of lay people—patrons and benefactors as well as servants—and

these supporters in turn obtained goods and services for the community from an array

of tradespeople and provisioners.4 Add to their numbers those who rented lands held

by the religious house, and those in turn who benefited from the house’s spiritual and

educational services, and the community involved in the give-and-take of the

religious foundation’s daily life becomes even larger and more diverse. The members

of such large and disparate communities came closest together during holiday

4
Here I follow R. B. Dobson’s characterization of northern English cathedral chapters. To take one
of the largest examples, Dobson determines that the Benedictine priory at Durham housed
approximately seventy monks (23). Secular clergy there were numerous enough that in the early
fifteenth century Prior John Wessington “could regularly assemble a dozen or more … clerks to
witness his convent’s official acta and judicial appeals” (Dobson 27). As for its lay constituency, the
priory “normally employed a labour-force well over twice its own size,” and “their absolute reliance

148
celebrations and the numerous transactions necessary to prepare for them—the public

occasions during which carols were sung, heard, and passed along.5

Caroling practice as described so far involves only texts set to music, sung at

first to accompany dancing and later by themselves. Before we consider how such

works enabled the formation of a community of practice, there remains the question

of whether poems in carol form were likewise intended for public reception. Even if

one accepts the compelling arguments advanced by M. T. Clanchy that reading in the

Middle Ages was primarily an aural and performative act, poems read alone need not

have been construed as public (267–71, 284–85). The carol was unlike poetic forms

developed entirely in the written medium, however, because of the social nature

imparted in its early days as a dance and retained in its most distinguishing feature:

the burden. This repeating chorus continued to serve a useful purpose for two

centuries after the carol ceased to be a dance form, namely as the vehicle for a public

voice that placed the rest of the poem in a larger textual and social context.

upon an elaborate network of local and not so local provisioning facilities is manifest in every
surviving … account roll” (Dobson 29).
5
The complex nature of such religious communities makes it unwise to apply too broadly Roger
Bowers’s characterization of the carol repertoire in Cambridge, Trinity College, O.3.58:
It seems most likely that [the carols] were conceived and sung as home-made entertainment
… round the firesides of the lodgings and refectories of the vicars choral and singing-men of
the greater secular churches and aristocratic household chapels. Despite their vernacular texts
(albeit commonly interspersed with phrases in Latin), it must be emphasized that … these
carols were by no means the music of the people, but exclusively of the educated and
sophisticated elite (88).
In the popular music history text Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Peter M. Lefferts presents Bowers’s
conjecture out of context as a characterization of all carols (187)—an inaccurate portrayal not only
because it excludes most lay carolers but also because most carol manuscripts come from monastic
communities, not secular churches or aristocratic houses (cf. Greene’s response to a similar statement
by Frank Ll. Harrison regarding London, British Library, Egerton 3307 [300]).
149
 As Lori Ann Garner argues in her comparison of the English carol with

continental refrain forms, burdens served a much more important function than

simply signaling when the group of dancers could join in the action (469–70).

Because the same burdens could appear in more than one carol and could state

general themes outside the particular focus of the stanzas, they linked the carol to

other texts and genres. In the process, the burden set up a larger interpretive context.

For example, a burden could present a traditional proverb explaining the moral of the

stanzas, or a burden normally associated with festive songs could be used to predict

the happy outcome of a story even before it had run its course (as is the case with an

amorous pastourelle Greene numbers 463.1 in his collection) (Garner 478–80). This

contextualizing function proved useful enough to warrant the persistence of the carol

form outside its original musical setting so that “the burdens index[ed] the way in

which the songs as a whole [were] to be received not only by the immediate

audiences in the context of the dance, but also by reading audiences who continued to

understand the still active register” (Garner 470).

The voice of received interpretation—the “moral of the story” so many carols

are designed to impart—is inherently public, requiring the reader to relate the text at

hand to other texts and thus to place him- or herself within a greater textual

community. By conveying that voice, the burdens of carols maintained a public

sphere for the genre even when they were read in private as poems. Just as the first-

person plural pronouns of so many carol texts refer deictically to a larger group of

participants beyond the individual singer, the burden likewise indicates a plural
150
perspective. In this sense, it helps achieve what Benedict Anderson terms unisonance,

“a special kind of contemporaneous community which language alone

suggests—above all in the form of poetry and songs” (145).6 Even if solitary, the

medieval reader of the burden could experience the unanimity and solidarity of sung

and danced burdens, those moments of the carol requiring group participation.

The previous descriptions of caroling practice demonstrate clearly enough how

carols could be passed along orally after people had memorized what they had heard

and how carols, once performed, could be written down for later performance. Since

both books and brains are portable, the transmission of carols was limited only by the

travels of the caroler. Numerous correspondences between carol manuscripts

demonstrate that such transmission occurred frequently. One outstanding example,

Richard Hill’s commonplace book (Balliol 354), contains the texts of nineteen carols

found more or less verbatim in other manuscripts and another sixteen that appear with

more significant variation elsewhere (based on a tally of the contents listed in Greene

320). One macaronic text in this collection, a Type D carol to St. Thomas of

Canterbury with the burden “A, a, a, a, / Nunc gaudet ecclesia” (Ah! Now the Church

rejoices) appears in three other manuscripts: Sloane 2593; Gonville and Caius

College 383; and the two-leaf fragment London, Public Record Office, Chancery

Miscellanea, Bundle 34, File 1, No. 12 (Greene 60–61, no. 114). Taken together,

6
I use Anderson’s term here only for its usefulness in explaining how a group of people, however
separate, can feel united through “imagined sound” (Anderson 145). I do not mean to suggest,
however, that carols were a means of nation-building, in keeping with Anderson’s thesis, nor do I
share his suspicion of those who participate in unisonance.
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these four sources demonstrate the transmission of this carol among both clerics and

lay people of both middle and upper classes, including a London grocer (Balliol 354),

a Benedictine monastery (Sloane 2593), an Oxford choirboy (Gonville and Caius

383), and perhaps an aristocrat (the Public Records Office fragment) (Greene 320,

306, 325, 313).7

Merchants like Hill who supplied the religious houses that produced carol

manuscripts could have been especially active transmitters of carols. As explained in

Chapter 3, two other manuscripts containing macaronic carols (London, British

Library, Harley 4294 and 5396) likewise bear indications that they were owned and

used by merchants (Greene 303, 320–21). Although Hill’s book, unlike the Harley

manuscripts, does not include business accounts, it does contain ample evidence of

his business travels, including a list of dates and locations of English fairs,

geographical descriptions of English parishes, and various lists of weights, coinages,

and taxes for French as well as English locales (Dyboski xxxi–xxxii; Parker,

Commonplace Book 50, 67). Fairs would have been prime opportunities for

7
This last attribution is admittedly based on indirect evidence. In addition to the carol, the Public
Records Office fragment also contains a twelve-line macaronic poem beginning “Pryde pryde wo thou
be mater viciorum” (Pride, pride, woe, you are the mother of vices). The same poem also appears on a
velum strip from the late fifteenth century once kept with the papers of the earls (later dukes and
marquesses) of Ormonde, who resided at Kilkenny Castle, Ireland, from the twelfth until the twentieth
century (Greene 313; Seymour 207). Assuming that the strip was added to the Ormonde collection
around the time it was written, the Public Records Office fragment may have likewise come from a
manuscript owned by aristocrats. When Greene prepared the 1977 revision of his edition, he was
apparently unaware that the Ormonde manuscripts had been donated to the National Library of Ireland
and the Bodleian in the 1940’s. He instead listed the strip’s location as Kilkenny Castle based on
Carleton Brown and Rossell Hope Robbins’s 1943 Index of Middle English Verse (313). Repeated
searches through the National Library of Ireland’s Manuscript Sources for the History of Irish
Civilisation have failed to locate the strip’s present location. My thanks to Dolores Gaffney and Izabel

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merchants and customers alike to hear and exchange carols, since fairs were often

held around the religious feastdays on which carols were sung (for example, Hill

notes a fair “in the wedynsday in esterwek [Easter week] [at] Huchyn” [Dyboski

xxiv; Parker, Commonplace Book 50]). Moreover, even grocers were in the business

of selling books, and books of carols may have well been part of their wares (Thrupp

162; Greene 321).

The shape and size of many carol manuscripts would have also facilitated their

being carried from place to place, especially by people on business. Hill’s manuscript

is a narrow “holster book” (eleven-and-a-half by four-and-a-half inches), a format

commonly used for ledgers and attested in other commonplace books (for example,

Cambridge, Trinity College O.9.38) (Greene 320; Parker, Commonplace Book 38;

Rigg 1). Harley 4396 is even smaller at eight-and-a-half by five inches, and

Cambridge, St. John’s College S. 54 is a slim quire measuring five-and-three-fourths

by four-and-one-eighth inches that “looks as if it had been folded into half its size”

(Greene 303; James and Macaulay 68). This last manuscript also sports an original

vellum cover long enough to wrap around it entirely, a feature that protected the book

in its travels (James and Macaulay 68).

The various aspects of caroling practice, from the public nature of carol

performance to the portability of carol manuscripts, therefore enabled a large and

varied group of people to participate in it. The next section will further explain this

Pennec at Kilkenny Castle for answering my queries concerning the current whereabouts of the
Ormonde manuscripts.
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practice in Wenger’s terms by demonstrating how it helped form a community. In the

case of macaronic carols, the identity engendered by practice could reinforce an

identity based upon linguistic competence. For bilinguals and those who identified

with them, switching languages in carols gave a public face to bilingualism in a

medium designed to express shared values and group solidarity.

5.2 Carols in Community

Practice allows for the formation and maintenance of community in Wenger’s

schema by enabling mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and a shared repertoire

(72–85). To take each of these dimensions in turn, practice first requires participants

not only to interact with each other but also to actively negotiate the meaning of what

they are doing. Since the community is defined primarily by the practice in which it

engages, its members need not have anything in common besides the practice itself;

communities of practice can therefore be very heterogeneous in their social make-up

(Wenger 75–76). Rather than being maintained by continual agreement or similarity

among participants, practices rely on the environmental and situational factors that

enable mutual engagement (Wenger 73–75).

The various factors that made caroling a public group activity ensured mutual

engagement. As explained in the previous section, caroling involved interacting with

other people in the moment of performance, even in cases where carols were read and

not sung. The social heterogeneity of the individuals who engaged in caroling

demonstrates that mutual engagement, and not fundamental similarities in class or

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occupation, kept the practice alive. This heterogeneity was manifested both locally

and globally: locally, in that the feasts and celebrations at which carols were sung

brought together people of differing social backgrounds, and globally, in that

communities and individuals known to have utilized carols differed from each other

in marked ways but shared the practice of composing, recording, reading, and

performing carols. Even in the case of macaronic carols—which because of their

Latin content would supposedly be accessible to fewer people than monolingual

carols were—we see heterogeneous networks of users mutually engaged in

performing and transmitting the same works, as the previous example of Richard

Hill’s commonplace book demonstrated.

To sustain mutual engagement, practice secondly requires a recognition of joint

enterprise. Participants define their goals collectively through a continual process of

negotiation and subsequently hold each other accountable to the goals they have

defined (Wenger 77–82). The enterprise defined by such negotiation is indigenous to

the community, whatever outside pressures may be operating upon it, making the

practice an original response to institutional conditions (Wenger 79). The notions of

goals and accountability may seem too strict when applied to the festive setting of

carol performance, but we have already considered carols that set the terms for the

evening’s entertainment by requiring every individual present to share a carol with

the rest of the assembly. The practice of singing carols on religious feast days

likewise emerged indigenously, as a response to the institutional conditions set by the

church. Although the church established the dates for religious feasts and defined the
155
accompanying liturgical celebrations, carols were employed in less decorous and

more personal convivial settings. The Latin liturgical content of many macaronic

carols can be seen as a subsequent indigenous response, bridging celebrations

conducted inside and outside the church.8

Through the pursuit of a joint enterprise, a practice thirdly produces a shared

repertoire of significations and methods (Wenger 82–84). This repertoire both

“reflects a history of mutual engagement” and enables the creation of new meanings

(Wenger 83). The liturgical tropes discussed in Chapter 2 were quite clearly the

products of such a shared repertoire, as the chants monastic communities accumulated

and performed over time eventually became the kernels of new tropes. So too with

the later carols: not only were carol repertoires shared by various participants, as

evidenced by the numerous correspondences among carol manuscripts, but repertoires

of liturgical texts were adapted to inform both monolingual and macaronic carols. In

both cases, existing bodies of texts recorded current practice but also led to the

creation of new works.

5.2.1 Textual Communities as Communities of Practice

Wenger’s description of communities of practice compares favorably with the

8
In this fashion the carols resemble the Anglo-Saxon macaronic poems, which likewise brought
liturgical language into extraliturgical settings. By “indigenous” here I mean to indicate only that the
impetus for these developments originated within the community of carolers, not that the carol was
inherently a popular folk genre. Although Greene argues for “the ultimately popular character” even of
Latin cantilenae (cxvii) and points to supposed pre-Christian origins of the carol genre (cxxxix), the
performance and certainly the recording of English carols and their continental counterparts was
continuously facilitated by Christian clerics (cf. the performance of the ballata as related by Jeffrey,
The Early English Lyric 131–33).
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notion of textual communities Brian Stock sets forth in The Implications of Literacy

(Wenger himself does not cite Stock, however). A brief consideration of the

similarities between the two kinds of communities will help make Wenger’s theory

more relevant to the Middle Ages, since Stock derives his ideas from the example of

eleventh-century heretical and reformist groups. These groups, Stock argues, arose

with the advent of literate culture in medieval Europe, a development with profound

consequences for social organization (88). Both reformers and heretics constituted

textual communities by being centered on a revelatory text as interpreted by a reform-

minded founder (Stock 90). This textual focus informed the community’s practice,

for, as Stock explains, in “a community developing literate sensibilities,”

previous experience, both social and intellectual … must be rendered

as a “text,” which, at that point, stands as the nexus of thought and
action, whether it exists in written form, or, having been internalized,
is merely presented verbally. … [W]ithin the small group, one’s daily
activities are structured according to such precepts. Behavioural norms
are existential glosses on real or putative documents. They are part of
the movement which binds the text, the speech-act, and the deed (101).

In Wenger’s terms, these groups developed a shared repertoire of written texts and

orally transmitted norms, which reified the practices of the dissenters, held participants

accountable, informed further practice, and thus enabled the community to persist.

Moreover, in keeping with Wenger’s notion that practice can unite individuals that hold

little else in common, Stock notes that “eleventh-century dissenters may not have

shared profound doctrinal similarities or common social origins, but they demonstrated

a parallel use of texts, both to structure the internal behavior of the groups’ members

and to provide solidarity against the outside world” (90).

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 Those who sang and read carols were in no way as embattled as the heretics and

reformers Stock discusses, but they formed a textual community in a similar fashion.

In their case, carols, not revelatory texts, formed the core repertoire of the

community, and the practice of performing, exchanging, and augmenting that

repertoire provided a means of solidarity. With Stock’s model in mind, then, I will

now draw on additional aspects of Wenger’s theory to demonstrate how members of

diverse communities, comprised of both multilingual and monolingual speakers, could

forge a shared identity through the performance and transmission of macaronic carols.

5.3 Membership in the Bilingual Caroling Community

Before establishing the means by which a diffuse community of bilinguals

could express and construct their linguistic identity through macaronic carols, we

must first consider how many people could participate meaningfully in that

community. Meaningful participation did not require every caroler to be fluent in

Latin. As with any community of practice, members varied in their competence and

in their roles within the community, forms of participation Wenger conceptualizes as

“trajectories” (153–5). Fluent and literate bilinguals charted what Wenger terms

“insider trajectories” within the community by virtue of their ability to generate and

record as well as to understand macaronic texts. Among these insiders we may count

the scribes who created carol manuscripts as well as poets like James Ryman and

John Audelay. Those unable to speak or understand Latin occupied “peripheral

trajectories” in the community, but could nevertheless find the carols meaningful by

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virtue of their festive and liturgical associations (Wenger 154). Attending Mass and

the Divine Office regularly would have familiarized monolingual English speakers

with a wide array of Latin phrases associated with particular feasts and prayers. One

need not have “known” Latin to understand that Christmas was ushered in with the

phrase from John’s gospel “Verbum caro factum est” or that proper thanks to God

was rendered with the phrase “Te Deum laudamus.” And like many choral singers

today, monolinguals could learn to pronounce Latin and even understand the general

meaning of the Latin phrases they sang without a formal education in the language.

5.3.1 Carolers Inside and on the Periphery: The Problem of Lay Literacy

The greatest challenge in identifying the core membership of the caroling

community is determining who in medieval England was fluent in Latin. The

geographic distribution of manuscripts containing macaronic carols and the varied

ownership of these manuscripts gives us an idea of that community’s breadth but does

not indicate who besides the compilers of these manuscripts could be considered

bilingual. Since we must depend on written records to ascertain medieval people’s

competence in Latin, we are forced to conflate the abilities to speak and understand

the language with the abilities to read and write it. In picking through this thorny

issue, I will attempt as much as possible to distinguish these various skills, so often

confused in modern discussions of medieval literacy.9

9
Clanchy, following H. J. Graff, notes that “the automatic coupling of reading with writing and the
close association of literacy with the language one speaks are not universal norms, but products of
159
 Since acquisition of Latin literacy was a fundamental part of medieval clerical

education, the problem of determining the size of the late medieval bilingual

community is more acute with respect to the laity. Anecdotal reports of medieval

English lay people learning and speaking Latin are rare because, as M. T. Clanchy,

explains, to medieval writers the categories of literate and laity were mutually

exclusive. The ability to read and write Latin qualified one as clericus, just as the

inability to do so made one laicus, regardless of one’s tonsured state. Before the

fourteenth century, moreover, those whom medieval writers classified as litteratus

were noted for their erudition, not their ability to read or write (Clanchy 226–34).

According to Clanchy, however, the level of Latin competence indexed by the

term litteratus changed with the spread of benefit of clergy in England (233). Before

the fourteenth century, one could establish right to trial in ecclesiastical courts (and

thus escape the death penalty) only by presenting proof of membership in holy orders,

but by the later Middle Ages passing a literacy test was sufficient to establish clerkly

status (Gabel 64–65). The test itself generally involved reading a brief passage from

the Psalter, particularly the first verse of Psalm 51 (Gabel 72–73). 10 By the mid-

fifteenth century, Clanchy argues, increasing numbers of lay people were classified in

court records as literate not because they had necessarily acquired greater proficiency

modern European culture.” By contrast, medieval learners learned to form letters, to sound them out, to
read entire words, and to write them at separate stages in their education (Clanchy 232).
10
Increased use of the Psalter and the Primer for private devotional reading likewise would therefore
have enabled more people—women as well as men—to prove their “clerical” status; see pp. 163–64,
below.
160
in Latin but because the standard for classifying one as clericus had lowered (Clanchy

233; Gabel 82–84).

A failure to register differences between modern and medieval notions of

literacy can lead to an overrepresentation of Latin literacy rates among medieval lay

people. In her influential study The Merchant Class of Medieval London, for

example, Sylvia Thrupp takes the records of medieval ecclesiastical courts at their

(modernly construed) word. By noting that 48 of the 116 witnesses testifying in

ecclesiastical court between 1467 and 1476 were registered as literate and by

comparing that figure with tallies from “two much smaller groups of witnesses in

1373 and 1466,” Thrupp estimates a forty-percent Latin literacy rate for male London

merchants of the late-fourteenth- through late-fifteenth centuries. Thrupp concedes,

however, that “the standards [of Latin literacy] for witnesses may not have been so

high as those set for allowance of benefit of clergy” and presumes “that in most cases

[being registered as literate in ecclesiastical court] meant the ability to read a little

Latin” (156–57). The limited sample size and the specialized nature of the documents,

moreover, preclude this forty-percent figure from obtaining anything close to

statistical accuracy or representing Latin literacy among the general population.11

Even a lower Latin literacy rate among London merchants is of interest, however, since

it indicates a broader knowledge of Latin among the lay population than modern

11
This fact does not seem to hinder recent scholars from unquestioningly adopting Thrupp’s figures,
however. David R. Parker, for example, quotes Thrupp in his 1998 study, The Commonplace Book in
Tudor London.
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scholars conventionally admit and suggests that the merchants who kept manuscripts

containing macaronic carols were not isolated in their familiarity with Latin.

Thrupp’s figures make no account for Latin literacy rates among women, which,

if they followed the trends seen in vernacular literacy during the same period, were

substantially lower. David Cressy estimates that as many as ninety-nine percent of

English women were illiterate during the reign of Henry VII—a figure that dropped

to ninety percent by the time of the English civil war (176). Cressy’s findings,

however, are based on the numbers of signatories in wills and other legal documents

who could write their names. As Clanchy observes, the ability of medieval people to

write or to sign their names did not necessarily correlate with their ability to read

since students acquired these skills at different times (232). The continuation of this

educational trend for hundreds of years afterwards is demonstrated in Margaret

Spufford’s work on literacy in the early modern period.12 Since English schools

became open to girls and women in 1400, fifteenth- and sixteenth-century women

could have followed the trend of many of their male counterparts, attending school

long enough to learn to read the vernacular but leaving before learning to write

(Woods 188, n. 26).

Those women who did not attend school could have nevertheless gained the

ability to read the vernacular and to pronounce Latin through their use of devotional

12
Spufford explains that throughout the seventeenth century, children were taught to read English
before the age of seven, but did not learn to write until later. Since many working-class children
entered the labor force when they were seven, their ability to read is therefore not reflected in their

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texts, namely the Primer and the Psalter. As Marjorie Curry Woods explains, while

the first kind of prayer book was commonly owned by lay women, the latter was

often used by women in holy orders (182–84, 186). Latin versions of these texts were

the most common in fifteenth-century England, and pious laywomen and religious alike

recited or sang from these books regularly. This constant repetition and reinforcement,

Woods argues, made it possible for these women to read the vernacular:

[W]hether these women readers understood Latin or not—and it is clear

that most women in orders and most lay women could not—the ability
to recognize the letters and their sounds could be applied to recognizing
words written in the vernacular. Learning how to pronounce Latin
letters and words was an almost identical process with learning how to
read letters and words in the vernacular (186–87, her emphasis).

The same held true, of course, for men who had learned to pronounce letters in either

Latin or the vernacular: even if they did not understand Latin, they could pronounce

it, and in turn read words in their native language.13

With the foregoing evidence in mind, then, we may assume that the core of the

bilingual caroling community was not limited to clergy and that it could have

included significant numbers of male merchants and other professionals, though

fewer than Thrupp’s forty percent. While few women could have occupied insider

trajectories within the community, more could have taken peripheral trajectories than

ability to write (408–15). See Houston 116–29 for a discussion of the problems of determining literacy
rates throughout early modern Europe.
13
Transferal of pronunciation skills gained in one language to the other would also have been aided
by the phonological similarities between medieval English Latin and Middle or Early Modern English.
As was the case throughout Europe, Latin was generally pronounced after the fashion of the
vernacular—a point modern scholars tend to overlook. See McGee et al. for a detailed consideration of
regional varieties of Latin throughout Europe and a reconstruction of medieval English pronunciation
of Latin (46–64).
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Cressy’s dismally low vernacular literacy rates suggest. Moreover, people who were

able to read the vernacular could also pronounce Latin, allowing them to participate

in bilingual carol performance. Even those who could not understand Latin, therefore,

could participate in the bilingual community of practice and, through performance,

present themselves as bilingual. Although the identity thus constructed did not

correlate with actual linguistic competence, it could allow monolinguals to derive

personal meaning from bilingual carols and to consider themselves part of the

community that valued such works. I will hereafter use bilingual to include members

on both peripheral and insider trajectories, reflecting their participation in the

community rather than their linguistic competence.

5.3.2 The Community of Bilingual Carolers during the Reformation

Considering those who performed, read, and transmitted macaronic carols to be

part of a community of practice helps us explain why these bilingual works continued

to be popular even after the English Reformation radically altered its core membership.

As explained in Chapter 3, the latest carol sources contained in Greene’s collection are

from printed collections published in the first half of the sixteenth century. Two of the

three print sources that contain macaronic carols were printed during and after some of

the most radical reforms, Richard Kele’s Christmas carolles newely Inprynted (in the

Huntington Library) between 1542 and 1546, and the similarly titled Christmas

carolles newely Imprinted (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce Fragments f. 48) around

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1550 (Reed liv; Greene 339–41).14 By the time these collections were published,

religious houses and monasteries had been dissolved (throughout the 1530’s), and

rituals and entire feast days had been abolished (starting in 1541). Around the time the

latter collection was printed, chantries and religious guilds were prohibited (in 1547),

and the Latin Mass was replaced with a eucharistic liturgy entirely in English (in

1549).15 The printed collections thus made macaronic carols available after the feasts

on which carols were sung had been curtailed, Latin had begun to fall out of favor as a

medium of religious expression,16 and the religious communities that previously

recorded and performed so many of the works no longer existed.

The printed medium of these collections suggest that a lay audience who valued

bilingual carols persisted amid these sweeping changes.17 The potential size of that

lay audience is increased by virtue of the black-letter type employed for carol

collections, a matter that returns us to the earlier consideration of lay literacy rates.

Such black-letter publications were accessible to a broader readership than Cressy’s

estimation of literacy in Early Modern England suggests since, as Keith Thomas

argues, sixteenth-century lay people could have read black-letter print without being

14
See Section 3.2.1 for a summary of print sources that contain macaronic carols. Despite their titles,
these publications also contain carols on themes other than the Christmas season. Kele’s collection and
the fragments bound with it also feature carols on Christ’s passion and humorous songs, including one
of the “songes of the Frere and the Nunne” discussed on pp. 146–47 (Greene 340). The Douce
fragment also contains a carol on the Passion amid other texts for Advent (Greene 339).
15
Marsh 18–21 offers a succinct summary of early reform measures. A more thorough-going
account can be found in Duffy, esp. 377–565. Skeeters offers a detailed explanation of how Bristol
responded to the loss of clergy.
16
Marsh relates that during the same period, Latin fell from grace not only within the liturgy but also
in printed texts, so that eventually “the use of Latin all-but disappeared” in “the more accessible forms
of print” (143).

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able to read roman type or handwritten script. The first texts children read in early

modern England—including hornbooks, Psalters, and Primers—were printed in black

letter. Readers used to this “type of the common people” therefore had difficulty

deciphering the roman type we find so legible today. “Black-letter literacy,” Thomas

explains, “in short, was a more basic skill than roman-type literacy; and it did not

follow that the reader fluent in one was equally at home in the other” (99). As in the

medieval period, students learned to write after they had learned to read black-letter

texts, and the hands in which they wrote required advanced technical facility gained

in subsequent stages of their education (Thomas 100). Consequently, many people

could have been able to read printed sixteenth-century carol collections without being

able to read other types and scripts, to write, or even to sign their names.

The establishment of black-print literacy among lay people and the coincidental

suppression of the monasteries caused a profound shift in the constituency of the

bilingual caroling community. The clergy who had formerly occupied the core of the

community were no longer in a position to perform and transcribe carols as part of

their foundations’ regular functions. As a result, lay people assumed greater

responsibility for maintaining the practice, and lay printers to an extent took on the

recording and transmitting functions religious institutions had formerly performed.

This transition was no doubt eased by a substantial appreciation for bilingual carols

among the laity before reformist measures were enacted. Equally vital to the

17
See Marsh 138–146 and Watt (throughout) on the other kinds of printed texts read by lay people
during the Reformation.
166
continuation of the practice were the qualities that had enabled a community to

coalesce around it in the first place: the mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and

shared repertoire that had maintained the community for two centuries and that

persisted despite the radical change in membership.

As with any community of practice, however, the community of bilingual

carolers could not continue amid such drastic alterations without renegotiating the

values their practice embodied. Continuing to sing songs celebrating feasts and

doctrines that had become officially circumspect and to incorporate liturgical material

in a language no longer approved for public worship brought the practice up against

the institutional Church. Carols recorded in early-sixteenth-century manuscripts may

have mounted private resistance to reformist measures—as David R. Parker has

argued regarding the Corpus Christi carol in Balliol 354 (Commonplace Book 64;

“The Act of Supremacy”).18 But the appearance of bilingual carols in print suggests

much more public promotion of Catholic doctrine and practice. Whether we ascribe

the persistence of these works to simple conservatism or to willful opposition,

bilingual carols in print remind us that the Reformation was by no means a quick or a

monolithic process.19

18
The carol (Greene no. 322 A) begins with the burden “Lulley, lulley; lully, lulley; / The fawcon
hath born my mak away” and in successive stanzas reveals a wounded knight bleeding upon a bed,
next to which an inscribed stone reads “Corpus Christi.” Parkes explains how the imagery of the carol
very specifically evokes the decorations of a Lenten Mass, arguing that the carol is a lament over the
revocation of the Mass and Henry’s Act of Supremacy (“The Act of Supremacy” 9). Parkes reasons
that Richard Hill’s “Catholic sympathies,” expressed elsewhere in Balliol 354, motivated his inclusion
of the carol in his commonplace book (The Commonplace Book 64).

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 Although bilingual caroling persisted during the initial decades of the

Reformation, the popularity of carols declined as the religious sentiments they

expressed fell out of favor. Among English Catholics the carol form persisted into the

seventeenth century, as Frank McKay demonstrates in his discussion of Oxford,

Bodleian Library, Eng. poet. b. 5, compiled by the recusant Thomas Fairfax between

1651 and 1657 (37). Ultimately, however, reformers brought about the end of the

carol by attacking “the chief sources of inspiration for the carol-writers”—the

veneration of Mary and the saints and the “mystery of Christ’s birth” (McKay 46). As

the devotional outlook of the songs increasingly raised suspicions that carolers were

“popishly affected,” caroling ceased to be a viable practice (McKay 47).

5.4 Reifying Bilingualism in the Carols

The aspects of bilingual caroling defined above mainly concern participation.

To complete our view of the practice according to Wenger’s model, I will now turn to

the concurrent dynamic of reification. Written texts and melodies are the most

obvious reification of caroling practice: recording songs and poems in concrete form

allowed for their continued performance and the maintenance of the practice as a

whole. Macaronic carols, however, reify bilingualism in particular by capturing both

the what and the who of code switching. In the carols’ regular alternation between

English and Latin, we see a formal realization of code switching practice. Because of

that formal alternation, individuals depicted in the carols are often presented as

19
For more on the development of the English Reformation, particularly among the laity, see Marsh.
168
bilingual themselves. The sacred status of those thus depicted suggests that the people

who wrote and performed the carols considered code switching to be a

prestigious—one might even say sanctified—activity.

We have already seen in Chapter 3 how regular the alternation between Latin

and English is in most macaronic carols. In the pattern typical of Types C through H,

four-line stanzas alternate three lines of English with one line of Latin. This poetically

constrained regularity scarcely resembles examples of spoken code switching

recorded today—or, for that matter, code switches in medieval English prose (see p.

117, n. 5). Precisely in that regularity, however, lies the potential for reification. The

carols reduce what could be a much less predictable and more fluid process to a more

fixed and obvious alternation of languages. Here is code switching expressed in a

most concrete form, presenting moments of bilingualism neatly ranged one after the

other. Bilingual carolers on insider trajectories could find and express in these tidy

code switches the fact of their dual linguistic competence. Once given concrete form,

this reification of bilingualism made it possible for those on peripheral trajectories in

the community to participate as well, thereby investing the entire community with a

bilingual identity.

The regular alternation of languages in turn leads to an additional, more

remarkable reification of bilingualism. Because English and Latin interchange so

regularly, macaronic carols that report a particular figure’s speech may switch

languages in mid-quotation, in effect presenting the figure as a fluent bilingual

speaker. Since most carols commemorate sacred feast days, the speakers portrayed
169
code switching occupy the highest echelons of the medieval sacred hierarchy: angels

announcing Christ’s birth and praising God in heaven, the archangel Gabriel, the

Virgin Mary, and even Christ himself. Such portrayals occur in dozens of carols,

several of which are presented below.

For example, a fifteenth-century Epiphany carol in Sloane 2593 depicts the

announcement of Christ’s birth to the shepherds. Each stanza ends with a Latin line

quoting a different well-known hymn:

(4) The herdes herdyn an aungele cry;

A merye song then sungyn he:
“Qwy arn ye so sore agast?
Iam ortus solis cardine” (Greene no. 122 B).

[The shepherds heard an angel cry; he then sang a merry song: “Why are you so
sorely aghast? Now (is the) the foremost rising of the sun.”]

Likewise, in one of James Ryman’s carols the same angel switches from Latin to

English and back again in a single utterance:

(5) The aungell songe thoo with many moo,

“Gloria in altisimis!
In erth be peas to man also,
Et gaudium sit angelis.” (Greene no. 75).

[The angel sang then with many more, “Glory in the highest! May there be peace on
earth as well as to man, and may there be joy among the angels.]

We are thus led to assume that the angel not only can speak English as well as Latin

but also alternates between the two in conversation. That the Latin elements

paraphrase a Christmas hymn and the scriptural account does not detract from its

being a code switch. Although these high-reference phrase quote pre-existing

material, they are still presented as original to the angel; uttering these memorable

170
lines motivates his own code switch between sentences. Similar instances of angels

code switching between English and Latin high-reference phrases can be found in

other carols on the Nativity as well as several works by James Ryman that paraphrase

the Te Deum (Greene nos. 289.1, 293, 296, 301).

Moving further up the angelic hierarchy, we find eleven carols in which the

archangel Gabriel code switches as he addresses Mary at the Annunciation (Greene

nos. 38, 232 A–B, 234 A–D, 240, 243, 244, 245). Some of these carols contain

bilingual renditions of the Ave Maria’s opening lines, as in this example from a

fifteenth-century carol on the Five Joys of Mary in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Eng.

poet. e. I:

(6) The first joy that came to the

Was whan the aungel greted the
And sayd, “Mary, ful of charyte,
Ave, plena gracia” (Greene no. 232 B).

[The first joy that came to you was when the angel greeted you and said, “Mary, full
of charity, hail, full of grace.”]

Still others incorporate the Marian antiphon Alma Redemptoris mater into Gabriel’s

greeting, as in this carol from Balliol 354:

(7) To her com an angell with gret lyght

And sayd, “Hayle be thou, blessid wyght!
To be cleped thou art right
Alma Redemptoris mater” (Greene no. 234 D).

[An angel came to her with great light and said, “Be well, blessed creature! You are
correctly to be called kind mother of the Redeemer.”]

The same stanza occurs in variant forms in at least three other carols from the

fifteenth century (Greene nos. 234 A–C).

171
 Medieval English carol writers also depicted the Virgin Mary as a fluent

bilingual speaker in her response to Gabriel at the Annunciation. In at least six carols,

Mary switches from English to lines from the Vulgate (Greene nos. 238 B, 239, 240,

244, 245, 248). The following carol, for instance, also from Balliol 354, shows Mary

code switching in her incredulous response to Gabriel’s pronouncement:

(8) Whan Mary, as bryght as crystall ston,

Thes wordes hard, answered anon
And asked how all this myght be done
And sayd, “How so,
Quia virum non cognosco?” (Greene 240).
[When Mary, bright as crystal, heard these words, (she) immediately answered and
asked how all this might be done and said “How so, since I have not known man?”]

Other carols have Mary switch from English to her memorable proclamation, “Ecce

ancilla Domini” (Behold the handmaiden of the Lord) (Greene nos. 238 B, 248)

Finally, the most sacred bilingual speaker depicted in the carols is Christ

himself, shown code-switching as he suffers on the cross and presides over the Last

Judgment (Greene nos. 266, 277, 364, 370, 372). Such is the case in the carol on

mortality recorded with variation in the Bodleian and Balliol manuscripts cited above

as well as Richard Kele’s Christmas carolles newely Inprynted, an analogue to

Example 21 in Chapter 3. In this particular case, Christ’s speech is doubly reported,

since the narrator of the carol hears this account of the Passion from a talking bird:

(9) “Jhesu Cryst, whane he schuld dey,

To hys Fader he gan sey;
‘Fader,’ he seyd, “in Trinyte,
Timor mortis conturbat me’” (Greene 370).

[Jesus Christ, when he had to die, spoke to his Father; “Father,” he said, “in Trinity,
the fear of death troubles me.”]
172
Christ also code switches in a carol on the Last Judgement from Christmas carolles

newely Inprynted, in which he repeats Latin imperatives to the blessed and cursed in

English but denotes in untranslated Latin where each should go.

(10) Glad in hert may they be

Whan Chryst sayeth, “Uenite;
Ye blyssed chyldren, come to me,
Into vitam eternam.
……………………………………
Sory in hert may they be
That hereth this heuy worde: “Ite;
Ye cursed chyldren, go from me,
Into ignem eternum.” (Greene 364).
[Glad in heart may they be when Christ says, “Come, you blessed children, come to
me, into eternal life. Sorry in heart may they be that hear this heavy word: “Go, you
cursed children, go from me, into eternal fire.]

In these carols, then, code-switching not only distinguishes the most sacred

Christian figures but also punctuates the most important moments of Christian

salvation history: the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Crucifixion, the Last Judgement,

and the final vision of God exalted in heaven. The writers of these carols obviously

saw nothing amiss in having the holiest of personages code switch. Otherwise, they

surely could have written the stanzas so that the switches between languages did not

occur in mid-quotation. Nor did they, like other medieval authors and even some

medievalists, privilege Latin as a vehicle for Divine Grace—“a figure of Logos

itself,” as Peter Nolan argues in his discussion of Latin phrases in Piers Plowman

173
(544–45).20 Rather, they presented the vernacular alongside Latin as equally fitting

forms of sacred speech and demonstrated the equality of the two by switching

between them.

By incorporating code switches into the speech of sacred figures, bilingual carol

writers lent prestige to that linguistic behavior and reified the practice in especially

positive terms. If the Latin featured in many of the carols may be considered “high-

reference” because of its liturgical origins, here the speakers themselves are

especially marked. These heavenly figures were thus presented as sharing a linguistic

practice with the much more mundane folk who produced and performed the carols.

This offered those who esteemed bilingualism and valued code switching a special

point of contact with the subjects of the carols, more so than if the sacred figures

spoke only English or only Latin.

This is not to deny that a few carols satirize bilingual clerics by reporting code

switching in speech, as Chaucer does throughout the Canterbury Tales and Langland

does in parts of Piers Plowman (Nolan 541–42). One convivial carol from the fifteenth

century (Greene no. 418.3) portrays a clerkly fox who greets the geese he is about to

terrorize with “Pax vobis,” and the “songes of the Frere and the Nunne” mentioned above

describe clerics who seduce women at prayer times, quoting Latin from the Mass all the

while. Simply satirizing the clergy, however, does not make a work anticlerical or

20
Eamon Duffy succinctly expresses this commonplace: “It was part of the power of the [Latin]
words of consecration that they were hidden, too sacred to be communicated to the ‘lewed’, and this
very element of mystery gave legitimacy to the sacred character of Latin itself, as higher and holier
than the vernacular” (218).
174
suggest that it was written by a lay person: the same bilinguals who validated code

switching in sacred carols may very well have poked fun at it in more raucous works.

By portraying code switching in sacred speech, medieval English carol writers

celebrated and sanctified the multilinguistic identity of their community of practice.

Like the macaronic carol form itself, these portrayals promoted the alternation of

Latin and the vernacular as an appropriate vehicle for the divine Word. By presenting

angels, archangels, and the Mother and Son of God as fellow bilinguals, writers of

macaronic carols advanced their own suitability as messengers of that Word. The

sociable nature of the carol and its widespread popularity ensured that this laudatory

image would reach a broad and varied audience.

175
 Implications for Further Study

Since this study is organized chronologically, its ending coincides with that of

both a popular form of macaronic verse and the medieval period in England. Its

treatment of bilingual texts through combined linguistic, textual, and literary

approaches is only a beginning, however. The multilingual character of both the

Anglo-Saxon poems and the later carols allows one to study them via the same

modern linguistic descriptions of code switching. In the same way, their mutual

incorporation of liturgical language and reification of bilingual practice invites

extending the methodologies of Chapters 2 and 5 to both early and late texts.

Examining how code switches in the carols enact particular discourse functions as

sociolinguists have done in numerous studies of modern bilinguals and as Mary

Catherine Davison and Elaine Rebecca Miller do for other medieval texts would

elucidate the means and motivations of bilingual writers to incorporate high-reference

phrases. Further comparison of bilingual discourse in the Anglo-Saxon poems and in

the carols would illustrate the continuation of trope-like compositional and

interpretive methods outside the liturgy, long after the liturgical trope had ceased to

be a productive genre. And since, as Brian Stock and Etienne Wenger demonstrate,

the circulation of texts is key to the expression of communal identity, their models

could be applied not only to the disparate carolers of late-medieval England, but also

to the bilingual monastic communities of the Benedictine Reform.

The linguistic analyses of Chapters 1 and 4, and the typology of macaronic

carols presented in Chapter 3, demonstrate how bilingual medieval texts embody

176
synchronic and diachronic differences in code switching practice. Comparison of the

carols to other kinds of macaronic texts would identify code switching strategies

specific to writers, genres, and communities. Establishing whether particular

multilingual texts favor borrowing, insertion, or alternation would furnish a medieval

parallel to the trends Pieter Muysken sees at work among modern immigrants to the

Netherlands. Moreover, the same approach could be extended diachronically. The

increase in code switches before conjunctions in later carols, for example, and the

corresponding decrease in switches involving Latin prepositional, participial, and

ablative phrases could signal a general shift from an insertional mode to a more

alternational one. Linking clauses in either language rather than embedding Latin

phrases was perhaps facilitated by the development of Early Modern carol types

involving a greater degree of linguistic integration (Types K and L).

Although the patterns of code switching identified in Chapters 1 and 4 were

explained largely on stylistic grounds, macaronic texts also provide a useful means

for studying language change. We have already seen how bringing English and Latin

together within sentences shaped the syntax of either language locally, as when Latin

elements in the Anglo-Saxon macaronic poems follow a more typically Old English

word order or when English sentences in later medieval works adopt the more

hypotactic structure of French or Latin writing. Additional inquiry of this sort would

turn up numerous other instances of linguistic change. The unexpected morphology

and syntax of some Latin elements in the Anglo-Saxon macaronic poems, for

example, could have resulted from writers adapting Latin linguistic structure, not out
177
of ignorance but as the result of language-contact phenomena still at work in the

speech of modern bilinguals.

While the previous examples demonstrate how code switching influences the

structure of the languages involved, changes in the languages themselves can in turn

affect code switching. Comparison of the switches in bilingual carols with those in

other macaronic texts from the Middle and Early Modern English periods may reveal

language-driven differences in code switching. As the English language changed, the

way that it could switch with Latin also changed: comparing code switches in

multilingual medieval texts across time therefore can reveal historical changes in

English syntax through a process of reverse engineering.

Such comparison can extend to the present day. This study would not be

possible unless we presumed similarities in code switching practice that obtain across

languages and periods. More overt juxtaposition of medieval and modern bilingual

texts and modern bilingual speech would foreground these similarities and display

additional points of difference. The code switches in the verse considered here may

be preponderantly grammatical, for instance, because medieval texts more closely

approximate oral forms of communication. Modern bilingual writers, by contrast,

often violate linguistic constraints as a way to draw attention to code switching itself,

following a written rather than a spoken norm.1 These modern writers may in fact

find useful models in the work of their medieval forebears as they likewise reify their

linguistic identities in writing.

1
This observation was first suggested to me by Almeida Jacqueline Toribio.
178
 Appendix: Macaronic Carols by Type

(Designated by Greene no.; those of Types F—L dated on or after 1492 are underscored.)

A B C D E F
Isolated L 1 L Line / L L & E Burden L Burden, L & E Burden, E Burden,
Borrowings Throughout 1 Repeating Repeating Varying Caudae
Stanza Caudae Caudae
95, 130, 148A, 3, 51, 93, 118, 19, 20, 70, 76, 35A, 49, 60.1, 34, 35B, 45, 14, 26, 33, 36,
172a, 241, 148B, 239, 92, 94, 101 B, 69, 80, 91, 96, 46, 56, 59, 62, 68, 82, 110,
248, 253, 258, 311 126, 140, 125.1, 178, 64, 72, 77, 81, 114, 122C,
322A 152A, 152˚B, 179.1, 194, 103, 125.2, 131, 132, 187,
157A, 168, 196, 197, 198, 138, 185, 186, 188, 189, 201,
169, 265, 312, 199, 200, 195, 215, 204, 232, 461,
319, 333, 335, 200.1, 202, 234D, 245, 461.1
399, 418.3 206, 207, 208, 266, 276, 289,
209, 210, 211, 293, 295, 296,
212, 216, 220, 297, 298, 299,
221, 222, 223, 334, 353, 358,
224, 225, 226, 367, 370, 378
227, 228,
234A, 234B,
234C, 237,
238A, 238B,
238C, 243,
244, 262, 267,
277, 278, 279,
279.1, 284,
285, 286, 287,
288, 289.1,
290, 300, 301,
302, 303, 305,
313, 330, 351,
352, 410, 426,
429
G H I J K L
L Burden, L & E Burden, L Burden, L & E Burden, L Burden, L & E Burden,
Varying Caudae Varying Caudae 2 L Lines per 2 L Lines per 3+ L Lines per 3+ L Lines per
Stanza Stanza Stanza Stanza
122A, 122B, 9, 21, 24, 29, 39.1, 75, 86A, 23A, 23B, 109, 127 218, 372
173, 242, 366 38, 39, 99, 86B, 179, 23C, 31, 52,
100, 104, 105, 191A, 229, 98, 273
119, 176, 230, 275 , 291, 292,
240, 274, 304, 294, 474
307, 364, 369,
375, 457

179
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 VITA

Christopher Charles LeCluyse was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on January

11, 1973, the son of Robert Clifford LeCluyse and Josephine Marie Dragna LeCluyse

of Lenexa, Kansas. After graduating in 1991 from Rockhurst High School in Kansas

City, Missouri, he entered Oberlin College and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in

Oberlin, Ohio. In May 1995, he received a Bachelor of Arts with Highest Honors in

English from Oberlin College, majoring in English and Music Performance (voice).

He entered the Graduate School of the University of Texas in August 1995 and

received a Masters of Arts in English in May 1997. While preparing the prospectus

for this dissertation, he worked as an associate editor at Holt, Rinehart, and Winston,

from June 1998 to August 1999. During his candidacy for the Ph.D., he taught

introductory courses in the Division of Rhetoric and Composition and the Department

of English and worked as a writing consultant and assistant director in the University

of Texas Undergraduate Writing Center.

Permanent Address: 8941 Pflumm Rd., Lenexa, KS 66215

This dissertation was typed by the author.

194