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Body and law in late Anglo-Saxon England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe
Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
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Extract

This article explores some textual dimensions of what I argue is a crucial moment in the history of the Anglo-Saxon subject. For purposes of temporal triangulation, I would locate this moment between roughly 970 and 1035, though these dates function merely as crude, if potent, signposts: the years 970×973 mark the adoption of the Regularis concordia, the ecclesiastical agreement on the practice of a reformed (and markedly continental) monasticism, and 1035 marks the death of Cnut, the Danish king of England, whose laws encode a change in the understanding of the individual before the law. These dates bracket a rich and chaotic time in England: the apex of the project of reform, a flourishing monastic culture, efflorescence of both Latin and vernacular literatures, remarkable manuscript production, but also the renewal of the Viking wars that seemed at times to be signs of the apocalypse and that ultimately would put a Dane on the throne of England. These dates point to two powerful and continuing sets of interests in late Anglo-Saxon England, ecclesiastical and secular, monastic and royal, whose relationships were never simple. This exploration of the subject in Anglo-Saxon England as it is illuminated by the law draws on texts associated with each of these interests and argues their interconnection. Its point of departure will be the body – the way it is configured, regarded, regulated and read in late Anglo-Saxon England. It focuses in particular on the use to which the body is put in juridical discourse: both the increasing role of the body in schemes of inquiry and of punishment and the ways in which the body comes to be used to know and control the subject.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 27 , December 1998 , pp. 209 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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References

1 See Lapidge, M., Anglo-Latin Literature, 900–1066 (London, 1993), pp. 36–7.Google Scholar

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4 See, for example, 755 C ‘and his lic lið on Wintanceastre…’; see also 783, 856, 861, 868, 875, MR 918, MR 924, 978, 981, 1016 and 1050. The body makes a different appearance in the Chronicle beginning with the account of Æthelred's reign. See especially ASC 993 and 1006 for brief mention of Æthelred's blinding of Ælfric's son, Ælfgar, and of Wulfgeat's sons, Wulfheah and Ufegeat. At 1014 the C-text notes that Cnut has aristocratic hostages taken by his father mutilated by cutting off hands, ears and noses. See also the murder of Bishop Ælfheah, 1012, where C alone adds ‘hine Þær ða bysmorlice acwylmdon’ to the details of his death by beating.

5 Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Colgrave, B. and Mynors, R. A. B. (Oxford, 1969), I.27, interr. 8 and 9Google Scholar. On the authenticity of the Libellus responsionum, see Meens, R., ‘A Background to Augustine's Mission to Anglo-Saxon England’, ASE 23 (1994), 5–17.Google Scholar

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11 On the politics of inheritance, see Keynes, S., ‘The Æthelings in Normandy’, Anglo-Norman Stud. 13 (1990), 173–205.Google Scholar

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13 The Chronicle of John of Worcester II, ed. Darlington, R. R. and McGurk, P., trans. Bray, J. and McGurk, P. (Oxford, 1995), pp. 522–5Google Scholar. On the use of sources for the reigns of Æthelred and the Danish kings, see Darlington, R. R. and McGurk, P., ‘The “Chronicon ex Chronicis” of “Florence” of Worcester and its Use of Sources for English History before 1066’, Anglo-Norman Stud. 5 (1983), 185–96, esp. 193–4.Google Scholar

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15 Encomium, ed. Campbell, , III.4 (p. 42).Google Scholar

16 ‘Unde huiuscemodi tortores canibus deteriores digne omnia dicunt secula, qui non miliciae uiolentia sed fraudium suarum insidiis tot militum honesta dampnauerunt corpora. Quosdam ut dictum est perimebant, quosdam uero suae seruituti mancipabant; alios ceca cupidine capti uendebant, nonnullos autem artatos uinculis maiori inrisioni reseruabant. Sed diuina miseratio non defuit innocentibus in tanto discrimine consistentibus, quia multos ipsi uidimus quos ex ilia derisione eripuit caelitus sine amminiculo hominis ruptis manicarum compedumque obicibus’ (Campbell translates: ‘Hence all ages will justly call such torturers worse than dogs, since they brought to condemnation the worthy persons of so many soldiers not by soldierly force but by their treacherous snares. Some, as has been said, they slew, some they placed in slavery to themselves; others they sold, for they were in the grip of blind greed, but they kept a few loaded with bonds to be subjected to greater mockery). But the divine pity did not fail the innocent men who stood in such peril, for I myself have seen many whom it snatched from that derision, acting from heaven without the help of man, so that the impediments of manacles and fetters were shattered’ (Encomium, ed. Campbell, , III.6, pp. 44–5Google Scholar). John of Worcester reports that 600 men were killed at Guildford s.a. 1036 (The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. Darlington, and McGurk, , p. 522Google Scholar).

17 Encomium, ed. Campbell, , III.6 (pp. 44–7).Google Scholar

18 E.g. Wihtred 10, 13 and 15; but see 26, specifying that a thief caught with the goods may either be killed, sold into slavery or redeemed. The laws are cited from Die Gesetze der Angelsacbsen, ed. Liebermann, F., 3 vols. (Halle, 1903–1916)Google Scholar, I. Compare the Capitulare Haristallense (779), ch. 23: ‘De latronibus ita precipimus observandum, ut pro prima vice non moriatur, sed oculum perdat, de secunda vero culpa nasus ipsius latronis abscidatur; de tertia vero culpa, si non emendaverit, moriatur’ (‘Concerning thieves, we direct that it be attended to in this way, that for the first time he is not to be put to death, but lose an eye, for the second offence let the nose of the thief be cut off, for the third offence, if he does not mend his ways, let him be killed’) (Capitularia regum Francorum, ed. Boretius, A., MGH Leges sec. ii, I (Hanover, 1883), 51Google Scholar).

19 Alfred 25.1 (Liebermann, , Gesetze I, 64).Google Scholar

20 Ine 18 and 37 (Liebermann, , Gesetze I, 96 and 104).Google Scholar

21 Alfred 6 and 6.1 (Liebermann, , Gesetze I, 52).Google Scholar

22 Alfred 32 (Liebermann, , Gesetze I, 66).Google Scholar

23 Alfred 35–35.6 (Liebermann, , Gesetze I, 68).Google Scholar

24 See Alfred 45.1, 49-49.1, 66.1 (Liebermann, , Gesetze I, 78, 80 and 84Google Scholar). Compensation is double for visible wounds.

25 II Athelstan 14.1 (Liebermann, , Gesetze I, 158Google Scholar).

26 Liebermann, , Gesetze I, 238Google Scholar: ‘And the decree of our lord and his councillors is that Christian men should not be condemned to death for all too small offences. But friðlice punishments are to be otherwise devised at the need of the people, and God's handiwork and his own purchase which he bought so dearly should not be destroyed for small offences.’ For friðlice to describe punishments that keep the criminal within the ‘frið’ (= ‘life-sparing’), see English Historical Documents c. 500–1042, ed. Whitelock, D., Eng. Hist. Documents I, 2nd ed. (London, 1979), p. 443, n. 1.Google Scholar

27 VI Athelstan 1.1 specifies the death penalty for any thief over twelve years of age who steals anything over twelve pence (Liebermannn, , Gesetze I, 173).Google Scholar

28 English Historical Documents, ed. Whitelock, , p. 443, n. 1.Google Scholar Whitelock's reference to ‘penas salvandi’ here is slighdy misleading, since Wulfstan, while specifying a range of penalties, is referring to the efficacy of punishment itself. See below, pp. 217 and 226, n. 55.

29 ‘There are in these times secular judges who for a small crime condemn men immediately to death, thinking of no account the admonition of the apostle, saying “Punish and do not put to death.” Indeed, the culprits ought to be punished by various means, they ought to be charged and not immediately killed, but be saved through punishments, lest their souls, for which the Lord himself suffered, be undone in eternal punishment. Some by chains and whips, others, however, ought to be bound by hunger and cold; let others, losing at the same time skin, hair and beard, suffer disgrace shamefully; others should be restrained still more sharply; that is, let them lose a body part, namely an eye or ear, a hand or foot, or some other member.’ For a facsimile, see A Wulfstan Manuscript containing Institutes, Laws, and Homilies. British Museum Cotton Nero A. i, ed. Loyn, H. R., EEMF 17 (Copenhagen, 1971).Google Scholar The text is printed with small differences in Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics, ed. Fehr, B., Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa 9 (Hamburg, 1914Google Scholar; repr. Darmstadt, 1966), 245 from Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 190. Nero A. i, CCCC 190 and 265 are part of a complex of manuscripts identified by Dorothy Bethurum as containing Wulfstan's ‘Commonplace Book’: see her ‘Archbishop Wulfstan's Commonplace Book’, PMLA 57 (1942), 916–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 II Cnut 53 (Liebermann, , Gesetze I, 348).Google Scholar

31 II Cnut 30–30.1 (Liebermann, , Gesetze I, 332 and 334), 30.4Google Scholar: ‘And on the second occasion there is to be no other remedy, if he is guilty, but that his hands, or feet, or both, depending on the deed, are to be cut off’; 30.5: ‘And if, however, he has committed further crimes, his eyes should be put out and his nose and ears and upper lip cut off, or he should be scalped, whichever of these they may decide who must make the judgement; thus one can punish and also save the soul.’ Cf. Leis Willelmi 40, ‘Prohibemus, ne pro parvo forisfacto adiudicetur aliquis homo morti; sed ad plebis castigacionem al[i]a pena secundum qualitatem et quantitatem delicti plectatur. Non enim debet pro re parva deleri factura, quam ad ymaginem suam Deus condidit et sanguinis sui precio redemit’ (‘We forbid that for a small offence a man may be condemned to death, but for the correction of the people let another punishment, according to the quality and gravity of the crime, be exacted. Nor, indeed, should anyone be destroyed for a small offence, whom God made in his image and redeemed at the cost of his blood’) (Liebermann, , Gesetze I, 516Google Scholar). For juridical mutilation in the reign of Henry I, see Hollister, C. W., ‘Royal Acts of Mutilation: the Case Against Henry I’ Albion 10 (1978), 330–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 The present published state of Lantfred's text is unsatisfactory. The partial text in Acta SS., Iul. is incomplete and is supplemented (though not perfectly) by Sauvage, E. P., ‘Sancti Swithuni Wintoniensis episcopi translatio et miracula auctore Lantfredo monacho Wintoniensi’, AB 4 (1885), 365–410.Google Scholar A complete edition by Michael Lapidge is forthcoming in Winchester Studies 4.2. Citations of the text as well as translations in this article are from Lapidge's edition and are keyed to Acta SS and AB for ease of reference. On Lantfred's training at Fleury, see Carley, J. P., ‘Two Pre-Conquest Manuscripts from Glastonbury Abbey’, ASE 16 (1987), 197–212, at 210.Google Scholar

33 One should not overlook the economic and political advantages to the shrine in having a resident powerful healer, and Lantfred's text repeatedly notes the critical proximity of Swithun's body: e.g., ‘ad sancti praesulis corpusculum deferrent’ (Acta SS text, ch. 6), ‘cupiens accedere ad sanctum Christi famuli corpusculum’ (Acta SS, ch. 15), ‘in qua quiescebat sanctus corpore Christi praesul’ (Acta SS, ch. 23), ‘ad templum illud in quo corpus sancti presulis venerabatur’ (Acta SS, ch. 24). Examples could be multiplied. The intersection of monastic and royal interests in Swithun and the Old Minster are illustrated by the making of a sumptuous reliquary for the saint's remains. Wulfstan Cantor describes the splendid reliquary in which part of the saint's body was kept, fabricated by order of King Edgar from materials including silver, gems and 300 pounds of gold (Frithegodi monachi breuiloquium uitae beati Wilfredi et Wulfstani Cantoris narratio metrica de sancto Swithuno, ed. Campbell, A. (Zurich, 1950), pp. 141 and 143).Google Scholar See also Quirk, R. N., ‘Winchester Cathedral in the Tenth Century’, ArchJ 114 (1959), 28–68, at 41–2Google Scholar; and Biddle, M., ‘Felix Urbs Winthonia: Winchester in the Age of Monastic Reform’, Tenth-Century Studies, Essays in Commemoration of the Millennium of the Council of Winchester and Regularis Concordia, ed. Parsons, D. (London, 1975), pp. 123–40 and 233–7, at 136.Google Scholar

34 Lapidge, ch. 3; Sauvage, , pp. 393–4Google Scholar: ‘I think that it happened in this way so that the entire populace would know without any doubt that the sick man had been cured by the omnipotent Lord through the merit of the holy bishop Swithun. Accordingly, the sick man himself had deserved to obtain his health because he did not waver in his faith but persevered in his prayers … For we may distinguish three miracles performed through this sick man: the vision of the women, the kindly admonition of the holy father, and the curing of the disease. He is struck down with bodily anguish so that he might acquire strength of mind, since “God chastizeth and he scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.” He is warned that he would require medicine, so that he might first admit and realize that he was diseased through sin; and thus at length he could obtain the Health of his soul, since the omnipotent creator of angels and men does not desire the death of sinners but anticipates the conversion of wicked hearts for the better, so that He will not be compelled to exercise that severe judgement which confers eternal punishment on the wicked. If someone shall thus desire to purify his soul from sin, just as that sick man was cured in his body he will without doubt deserve to inherit the blessedness of the heavenly kingdom.’

35 In the Etymologiae Isidore notes of anima that when it knows, it is referred to as ‘mind’ (‘dum scit, mens est’): Isidori Hispalensis episcopi etymologiarum siue originum libri xx, ed. Lindsay, W. M. (Oxford, 1911), XI.xiii.25.Google Scholar

36 Geary, P. J., Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ, 1978), p. 39.Google Scholar

37 Compare, for example, the post mortem miracle of St John, abbot, who frees a sinner loaded with penitential chains after he begs relief at the monastery of Moutier-Saint-Jean: Acta sanctorum ordinis s. Benedicti, ed. Mabillon, J., 9 vols. (Paris, 1668–1701) I, 641.Google Scholar This miracle is inserted in a ninth-century manuscript of Gregory of Tours's Liber in gloria confessorum, where the sinner is named as a fratricide ‘pro enormitate criminis ferreis circulis alligatus’ (‘fettered with iron rings for the magnitude of his crime’). See Gregorii episcopi Turonensis miracula et opera minora, ed. Krusch, B., MGH, Scriptores rer. Merov. I.2 (Hanover, 1885), 353.Google Scholar Compare the Miracula ss. Floriani et Florentis (Acta SS, Sept. VI, 431–2).Google Scholar

38 See Vogel, C., ‘La discipline pénitentielle en Gaule des origines au ixe siècle’, Revue des sciences religieuses 30 (1956), 1–26 and 157–86, at 10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also his ‘Les rites de la pénitence publique aux xe et xie siecles’, pp. 137–44Google Scholar; ‘Le pèlerinage pénitentiale’, pp. 116–17 and 130–2Google Scholar; and ‘Pénitence et excommunication dans l'eglise ancienne et durant le haut moyen âge’, pp. 16–22, esp. p. 17Google Scholar, all in his En rémission des pechés: Recherches sur les systèmes pénitentiels dans l'église latine, ed. Faivre, A. (Aldershot, 1994).Google Scholar

39 See Aronstam, R. A., ‘Penitential Pilgrimages to Rome in the Early Middle Ages’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 13 (1975), 65–83, at 72.Google Scholar Aronstam edits Wulfstan's three letters from Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliothek Gl. Kgl. Sam. 1595. The letters are also printed by Bateson, M., ‘A Worcester Cathedral Book of Ecclesiastical Collections, made c. 1000 A.D.’, EHR 10 (1895), 712–31 at 728 (from CCCC 265).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 ‘Sepe eriam et nos vidimus ipsi parricidas jejuniis macerari vinclisque ferreis quantotiens coartari, ita ut proprio quis circumcinctus ense medius cum quo iracundus perculit, trinisque vinclis adhibitis, uno vinciretur brachio <et> numquam solvi aliquem nisi vera penitentia subveniente sacris solveretur in locis’ (‘We have also often seen that parricides are wasted by fasting and just as often constrained with iron chains — just as one man encircled around his middle with his own sword, with which he had struck while enraged, with triple chains used, was fastened on one arm — and that none is ever released unless he is freed through true penitence undertaken in holy places’) (, Bateson, ‘A Worcester Cathedral Book’, p. 725Google Scholar). Cf. Capitularia Ansegisius II.41, which specifies handing over incorrigible parricides (and some others) to the secular authorities (MGH, Leges sec. II, 1). These capitula occur in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 42, bk I, 47r and 194v, annotated by Wulfstan. See Ker, N. R., ‘The Handwriting of Archbishop Wulfstan’, England Before the Conquest Studies in Primary Sources presented to Dorothy Whitelock, ed. Clemoes, P. and Hughes, K. (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 315–31.Google Scholar See also Capitulare Missorum Generale, item 32 (802) for the homicide within the family: ‘statim se ad penitentiam sibi compositam sumit, et ita ut episcopus eius sibi disponat absque ulla ambiguitate’ (‘he undertakes immediately the penance assigned to him, and just as his bishop arranges, without any equivocation’) (MGH Leges, sec. II, 1). Cf. item 37, where the missi are to take into custody for the good of his soul a criminal who spurns penitence.

41 See Fehr, , Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics, pp.244–5.Google Scholar

42 Vogel, ,‘Le pèlerinage pénitentiale’, pp. 130–1.Google Scholar

43 Lapidge, ch. 3; Sauvage, , p. 395.Google Scholar

44 Lapidge, ch. 34; Sauvage, , pp. 399–401.Google Scholar

45 Edward King and Martyr, ed. Fell, C. (Leeds, 1971), p. 15Google Scholar; Wulfstan's Life of Æthelwold, in Wulfstan of Winchester: the Life of St Æthelwold, ed. Lapidge, M. and Winterbottom, M. (Oxford, 1991), p. 68 (ch. 46)Google Scholar; Osbern's Life of Dunstan, PL 137, 455–74 at 468C–9CGoogle Scholar, and his Life of Ælfheah, PL 147, 584; The Saint of London: the Life and Miracles of St Erkenwald. Text and Translation, ed. Whatley, E. G. (Binghamton, NY, 1989), pp. 116–19 and 217 [Miracle 3]Google Scholar; Rollason, D. W., ‘Goscelin of Canterbury's Account of the Translation and Miracles of St Mildrith (BHL 5961–4): An Edition with Notes’, MS 48 (1986), 139–210, at 188Google Scholar; [H. Hinde], Symeonis Dunelmensis Opera et Collectanea I, Surtees Soc. 51 (London, 1868), 168–70, at 169.Google Scholar

46 Lapidge, M., ‘The Digby-Gotha Recension of the Life of St Ecgwine’, Vale of Evesham Hist. Soc. Research Papers 7 (1979), 39–55, at 44 (ch. 6).Google Scholar

47 Lapidge, ch. 34, Sauvage, , p. 401.Google Scholar Lapidge trans.: ‘He rejoiced that he had escaped/ so great a danger/ as well as the perpetual oblivion/ of either sort of death.’

48 See Wormald, P., ‘A Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Lawsuits’, ASE 17 (1988), 247–81Google Scholar (items 154 and 155).

49 Lapidge, ch. 25; Acta SS, Iul. I, ch. 33–5. Wulfstan Cantor provides the additional detail that the ordeal takes place at the royal vill at Calne (Narratio, II, 306–7Google Scholar). D. Whitelock examines the legal background to the versified version of this story in Wulfstan's Narratio (‘Wulfstan Cantor and Anglo-Saxon Law’, Nordica et Anglica. Studies in Honour of Stefan Einarsson, ed. Orrick, A. H. (The Hague, 1968), pp. 83–92Google Scholar; repr. in her History, Law and Literature (London, 1981)).Google Scholar

50 See Bartlett, R., Trial by Fire and Water: the Medieval Judicial Ordeal (Oxford, 1986), pp. 32–3Google Scholar: ‘It [ordeal] was lex paribilis, or apparens, or aperta - “the manifest proof”. It was a device for dealing with situations in which certain knowledge was impossible but uncertainty was intolerable.’ See also Hyams, P. R., ‘Trial by Ordeal: the Key to Proof in Early Common Law’, On the Laws and Customs of England: Essays in Honor of Samuel E. Thorne, ed. Arnold, M. S. et al. (Chapel Hill, NC, 1981), pp. 90–126, at 111Google Scholar: ‘The spectaculum presented a visible sign “so that the rest seeing this might be freed from their incredulity through God's mercy.” ‘See Liebermann, , Gesetze I, 406–7Google Scholar, (Ordo II.4):‘… et ut caeteri hoc uidentes ab incredulitate sua, te miserante, liberentur’ (‘that the rest, seeing this, might be freed from their disbelief’). The text in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 44, fol. 362, indicates a range of offences and hoped for efficacy: ‘Hac itaque fiducia, exauditor piissime, hoc ferrum … quaesumus, ut per nostram benedictionem santifices, ut, quicumque sacrilegii, furti, homicidii, adulterii quarumque aliarum noxa deprehensus … hoc ferrum … igne calidatum … tangere presumpserit…, indignationis tue incendio in conspectu adstantium ardeat.… ut omnis populus credat te … in hoc iudicio afuisse’ (‘and so with this assurance, most blessed lord who hears our prayers, we beg that you may sanctify this iron through our blessing so that anyone, taken in the crimes of sacrilege, theft, homicide, adultery, or any others, who will have presumed to touch this iron heated by fire, may burn in the flame of your displeasure in the sight of those present, so that all the people may believe that you have been present in this trial') (Liebermann, , Gesetze I, 416Google Scholar).

51 If the slave's crime was theft, pace Whitelock, Flodoald ran the risk of being accused as an accessory (especially since he appeared to know the slave would fail at the ordeal). On the lord as accessory to theft by his slave, see II Æthelstan 3.1 (loss of slave and payment of wergild for the first offence; at the second offence he lost all that he owned); VI Æthelstan 2.1 (death for harbouring a thief). As discussed below, as a foreigner, Flodoald's legal status was problematic.

52 See the Council of Tribur, ch. 22a, in Capitularia regum Francorum, ed. Boretius, A. and Krause, V., MGH, Leges sec. II, 2 (Hanover, 1897), 225Google Scholar; Regino of Prüm, PL 132, 342, and Bardett, , Trial, pp. 31–2.Google Scholar

53 ‘At the aforesaid time and at the command of the glorious King Edgar, a law of great severity was promulgated throughout England to serve as a deterrent against all sorts of crime by means of a dreadful punishment: that, if any thief or robber were found anywhere in the country, he would be tortured at length by having his eyes put out, his hands cut off, his ears torn off, his nostrils carved open and his feet removed; and finally, with the skin and hair of his head shaved off, he would be abandoned in the open fields dead in respect of nearly all his limbs, to be devoured by wild beasts and birds and hounds of the night.’ Lapidge, ch. 26; Sauvage, , pp. 409–10.Google Scholar

54 Whitelock, , “Wulfstan Cantor and Anglo-Saxon Law’, p. 86.Google Scholar The so-called Laws of Edward and Guthrum 10 specify ‘Gif limlæeo lama, þe forworht wære, weorþe forlsten, 7 he æfter þam ðreo niht alibbe, siððan man mot hylpan be bisceopes leafe, se ðe wylle beorgan sare 7 saule’ (‘If a [judicially] maimed and crippled man, who was convicted, has been abandoned, and after three days he is still alive, after that time, with the bishop's permission, one may help him who wishes to save his injured body and his soul’). Whitelock argues persuasively that this law shows Wulfstan's hand and is to be dated 1002–8, i.e. before ÆEthelred. (Councils and Synods, ed. Whitelock, et al. I, 302–3).Google Scholar

55 Keynes, S., ‘A Tale of Two Kings: Alfred the Great and Æthelred the Unready’, TRHS, 5th ser. 36 (1986), 195–217, at 212.Google Scholar Although Keynes is inclined to think that the ‘merciful’ aspect of comprehensive mutilation was in effect at the time of Edgar, that is certainly not the motivation attributed to the legislation by Lantfred and Wulfstan Cantor. Rather, it is Archbishop Wulfstan who transforms the purpose of such punishment from deterrent (‘ad deterrendos quosque malos horribili poena’) to salvation (‘per penas salvandi [sunt]’), refiguring identical punishments as notional mercy. See also Keynes, S., ‘Crime and Punishment in the Reign of King Æthelred’, People and Places in Northern Europe 500–1600: Essays in Honour of Peter Hayes Sawyer, ed. Wood, I. and Lund, N. (Woodbridge, 1991), pp. 67–81, at 72–3.Google Scholar

56 ‘Who was immediately seized by wicked executioners and condemned by the judges to be mutilated in all the aforementioned parts of his body: only the feet of the guiltless man were left him with his life, and the wretched skin of his head was not stripped off him’: Lapidge, ch. 26; Sauvage, , p. 409.Google Scholar

57 Ælfric's Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, W. W., 2 vols., EETS os 76, 82, 94 and 114 (London 1881–1900) I, 440–71, at line 270.Google Scholar In Ælfric's account, the man loses only eyes and ears (lines 267–9).

58 ‘King of all things, look upon me,/ a wretched man guiltlessly mutilated:/ restore my hearing to my wounded ears/ through divine intervention/ or else grant me a speedy death.’

59 ‘I have not read anywhere in the books of holy writ about anyone — except this man — having regained his eyesight who had been blinded to such an extent.’ There is an interesting slippage in the various versions of this statement. In Sauvage's Rouen manuscript (whose text is admittedly lacunose), the sentence reads ‘Hoc namque miraculum in hoc est valde mirandum, quoniam non legimus quempiam cæcatum recepisse lumen oculorum præter hominem istum’ (p. 410), omitting ‘hactenus’ and suggesting that the wonder of the miracle lies in the cure of one who had been blinded (rather than one who had gone blind through illness). Wulfstan Cantor moves ‘hactenus’ with similar result: [O]bstupuit natura, suas quia perdit habenas, hactenus in mundo quoniam sibi talia numquam contingerant, aliquem post lumina prendere uisum caecata, et reducem post nubila cernere lucem, hunc praeter solum, patris medicamine focum (II.507–11).

60 See Skeat, , Ælfric's Lives of Saints I, 458Google Scholar, at lines 276–89.

61 ‘Thus stands the aforesaid law and judgement of the pious king, which he in his benignity had decreed for the common good, that anyone might be able to enjoy his own possessions with an easy heart in full peace without grumbling of loss. Searchers travel the thickets of the woods, and robbers are discovered in shady places, and, mutilated in their limbs, they furnish a spectacle to the people; and terror struck all hearts with fear…’ (II.453–60).

62 Foucault, M., Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, trans. Sheridan, A. (New York, 1978), p. 34Google Scholar; originally published as Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison (Paris, 1975).

63 The Encomium Emmae, ed. Campbell, , p. 46Google Scholar, and the Liber Eliensis, ed. Blake, E. O., Camden 3rd ser. 92 (London, 1962), 160Google Scholar, both report miracles at the ætheling's tomb.

64 For an edition and commentary, see Keynes, S., ‘The Fonthill Letter’, Words, Texts and Manuscripts: Studies presented to Helmut Gneuss on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Korhammer, M. (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 53–97.Google Scholar Keynes's observation,‘… one does not doubt for a moment that behind every oath-swearing lurked every kind of intrigue and abuse’ (p. 75) is apposite. On the date of the Fonthill Letter, see Gretsch, M., ‘The Language of the “Fonthill Letter”’, ASE 23 (1994), 57–102.Google Scholar

65 See Liber Eliensis, ed. Blake, , ch. 32–3.Google Scholar A. Kennedy gives an important account of legal procedure in ‘Law and Litigation in the Libellus Æthelwoldi episcopi’, ASE 24 (1995), 131–83, at 152–3.Google Scholar

66 Bateson, , ‘A Worcester Cathedral Book’, p. 726.Google Scholar These are extraordinary punishments, better understood as notional retributions rather than expressions of fact. The ‘Apostolic Canons’ in the Dionysio-Hadriana, item 25 (see Ecclesiae Occidentals Monumenta Iuris Antiquissima: Canonum et Conciliorum Græcorum Interpretationes Latinae, ed. Turner, C. H., 2 vols. in 7 pts (Oxford, 1899–1939) I, 18)Google Scholar specifies degradation. Compare the so-called Laws of Edward and Guthrum 3 (showing Wulfstan's hand), which specify wergild or fine for a man in orders who fights or commits theft, perjury or adultery. Similarly, VIII Æthelred 27 (and I Cnut 5.3) specify degradation if appropriate penance is not done. The Penitential of Theodore (Die Canones Theodori Cantuariensis, ed. Finsterwalder, Google Scholar), item 127, specifies degradation for the priest who commits homicide or fornication; item 140 specifies degradation for a priest or deacon taken in fornication, perjury, or theft, but not excommunication (=Apostolic Canon 25).

67 Earlier codes mention the king's moral obligation, but not in terms of individual souls: e.g. Ine Preface: ‘ic … wæs smeagende be ðære hælo urra sawla 7 be ðam staþole ures rices, þætte ryht æw 7 ryhte cynedomas ðurh ure folc gefæstnode … ‘(‘I was thinking about the salvation of our souls and about the security of our kingdom, that right law and right statutes be secured throughout our people’) (Liebermann, , Gesetze I, 88Google Scholar). Similarly Alfred Preface, 49.7 (ibid. I,44 and 46).

68 Foucault, , Discipline and Punish, p. 33Google Scholar: ‘The Middle Ages had organized around the theme of the flesh and the practice of penance a discourse that was markedly unitary’; p. 58: ‘Since the Middle Ages at least, Western societies have established the confession as one of the main rituals we rely on for the production of truth: the codification of the sacrament of penance by the Lateran Council in 1215, with the resulting development of confessional techniques, the declining importance of accusatory procedures in criminal justice, and abandonment of tests of guilt (sworn statements, duels, judgments of God) and the development of methods of interrogation and inquest… All this helped to give the confession a central role in the order of civil and religious powers.’ On the shifting nature and significance of the act of confessing, see Vogel, , ‘Le pèlerinage pénitentiale’, pp. 116–17.Google Scholar Vogel makes it clear that an aveu could be made to a priest or to a senior (i.e. father or mother superior) and was a private matter. L'aveu as such is not sacramental confession.

69 See Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, H. R., 5 vols., RS (London, 1864–9) II, 17–25Google Scholar [Annales Monasterii de Wintonia]. Luard dates the Annales Monastici to about 1200.

70 “My lord … and son. I, the Emma who bore you, before you charged by your people with a crime against you and Alfred, my sons, and charged with conspiracy of infamy and treason with the bishop of this seat, I call upon God today to be witness on my body, that I may perish, if I have committed any of the charges brought against me even in my mind’ (Annales Monasterii de Wintonia, p. 23).Google Scholar

71 ‘St Swithun, help her’ (Annales de Wintonia, p. 23).Google Scholar

72 ‘Lead me … to my son: that he may see my feet and know that I have suffered no harm.’ (Annalesde Wintonia, p. 24).Google Scholar

73 Research on this article was supported by an NEH Senior Summer Fellowship (1997), by a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and by the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, College of Arts and Letters, University of Notre Dame. I should like to thank Ewa Ptonowska Ziarek and Paul E. Szarmach, who read early drafts of the essay and made many helpful suggestions; Patrick Wormald, who permitted me to read in advance the portion on Lantfred in his forthcoming book on Anglo-Saxon law; and Michael Lapidge, who made work on Lantfred immeasurably easier by allowing me to use and cite his forthcoming edition. Needless to say, any errors are mine alone.