The ‘Galba Psalter’ (London, British Library, Cotton Galba A. xviii) is a pocket-sized (128 × 88 mm.), early-ninth-century Carolingian book, perhaps made in the region of Liège, that was originally decorated with only ornamental initials. By the early tenth century the manuscript had reached England, where an Anglo-Saxon scriptorium added two prefatory quires (1r–19v) containing a metrical calendar illuminated with zodiac signs, KL monograms and single figures (pls. IX–X), and five full-page pictures. Two miniatures of Christ and the saints on 2v and 21r (pls. X–XI) preface the calendar and a series of prayers respectively, and three New Testament pictures marked the customary threefold division of the Psalms. Facing Ps. I was a miniature of the Nativity (pl. XII), now detached from the manuscript and inserted into an unrelated book (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson B. 484, 85r). The Ascension on 120v (pl. XIII) prefaces Ps. CI. A third picture before Ps. LI has been lost, but almost certainly it represented the Crucifixion. The placement of an image of this theme between the Nativity and the Ascension would have been appropriate from a narrative standpoint, and some later Anglo-Saxon and Irish psalters preface this psalm with a full-page picture of the Crucifixion. Obits for King Alfred (d. 899) and his consort Ealhswith (d. 902) provide a terminus post quem for the calendar and the coeval illumination. The Insular minuscule script of the calendar indicates a West Saxon origin during the first decade of the tenth century. On the grounds of the Psalter's style and later provenance, the additions were very likely made at Winchester.

The document printed below, an early- or mid-seventeenth-century copy of a hitherto unrecorded charter of 963 by which King Edgar granted 5 hides at Ballidon in Derbyshire to a certain Æthelferth (see pl. XIV), came to light early in 1983 among some manuscripts on temporary deposit at the Staffordshire Record Office. It is published by kind permission of the depositor. The account of the provenance of the charter and of the history of the estate, which follows, is the work of one author (D.A.J.), whilst another (N.P.B.) is responsible for the edition and the topographical analysis, and the third (M.G.) has contributed the discussion of the place-name forms.

The editio princeps of the works of the Venerable Bede was published in 1563 by Johann Herwagen the Younger († 1564) in Basel; the edition had been begun by his father, the well-known printer and publisher, Johann Herwagen (†1557), who was active first in Strasbourg, then in Basel, and was a friend and associate of Johann Froben. In his edition of Bede's De temporum ratione and De natura rerum, Herwagen printed glosses on these two works under the name of Byrhtferth of Ramsey along with Bede's texts. To date, no manuscript of these glosses has ever been found, so our knowledge of them depends entirely upon Herwagen's edition.

Julian Brown's famous analysis of what he termed the Insular system of scripts marked out a number of routes, now well trodden, through the debris of undated and unlocalized manuscript material from the pre-Viking-Age British Isles. Ever since, the best hope for students of palaeography seeking to date and localize examples of early Insular minuscule has been to follow Brown's classification and identify them as Type A or B, Northumbrian or Southumbrian, and Phase I or II. Brown's schema, however, offered orientation rather than a map. As with any typology, it depends on a very few fixed points, themselves unusual because of their lack of anonymity: gospelbooks from Ireland and Northumbria dated by the survival of rare colophons, manuscripts connected with St Boniface which show the operation of a unique editorial mind. Although Brown's system has been successfully applied to the output of scriptoria whose influences, practices, connections, even locations remain mostly unknown, complications inevitably arise. This article concerns one of them, the recycling in Phase II of a type of minuscule displaying the cursiveness and capriciousness characteristic of Phase I: Type B minuscule as illustrated by the script of St Boniface.

It has been recognized that in late Anglo-Saxon England one writer, Wulfstan the Cantor, knew the poems of Venantius Fortunatus well, but hitherto no manuscript of Fortunatus's poetry of English origin or provenance in this period has been known. The discovery of a leaf of such a manuscript in a collection of fragments at Badminton set me enquiring. It has turned out that there is more manuscript evidence than I expected to find.

The embroidered hanging known as the Bayeux ‘Tapestry’ was an obvious candidate for inclusion in an Anglo-Saxonists' conference titled ‘Imagined Endings, Borders, Reigns, Millennia’. Almost certainly constructed in English workshops for a Norman master, the ‘Tapestry’ illustrates a chronological period that begins with the final years of Edward the Confessor's reign and ends with the closing of the Anglo-Saxon era. The physical termination of the ‘Tapestry’ is missing, but this does not preclude the imagining of it, usually as a scene showing the accession of William the Conqueror to the English throne, a new reign and a new, Norman, era.

In August 1939 I drove from Cambridge with Hector and Nora Chadwick to see the Sutton Hoo dig. Phillips and Chadwick had never met and both were slightly apprehensive. The encounter turned out to be a great success. As we were leaving Chadwick said to Charles ‘It's the grave of King Rædwald you know. I've no doubt of that.’

Glyn Daniel (address given at the funeral of Charles Phillips at Teddington on 2 October 1985)

The writings of John Cassian (c. 370–c. 435) circulated widely through the Middle Ages, not least in Anglo-Saxon England. They are commonly assumed by scholars to have been fundamental to the formation of western monasticism, yet it is worth examining the nature and extent of their usage a little more closely. The following discussion considers this usage in Anglo-Latin sources between the later seventh century and the mid-eighth.

Walter Walter Goffart 31 Temple Court New Haven, CT 06511203 787 4120 In closing the preface to the ‘Historia Ecclesiastica’ Bede mentions the possibility of disputed truth, refers to ‘common report’, and invokes the, or a, ‘vera lex historiae’, literally, ‘true law of history’. Oddly, Bede seems to be disclaiming responsibility for his mistakes. These lines continue to be ‘a crux much commented upon’. Bede clarifies the meaning of this ‘law’ in four passages featuring the adverb ‘simpliciter’. They allow us to see that the ‘truth’ he sometimes departs from is not the opposite of ‘error’, but simply reflects an historian's duty to convey what everyone at a particular time believed to be true.

Rhetoricians, orators, and public speakers of all stripes, if asked the question, which Greek or Roman deity they should invoke in case of need, would surely answer ‘Hermes’ or ‘Mercury’. Members of this profession who also read early Latin-Old English glossaries might therefore be surprised to learn that the deus oratorum was none other than Priapus! This came as good news to me as one who occasionally looks for novel ways to arouse an audience. However, as I reflected further on the meaning of Épinal Glossary 10v32, my expectations wilted. Oratorum must be a simple error for hortorum, ‘of gardens’. Priapus may be fecundus, but he is not facundus.

Part II provides a list of all conjectures and emendations accepted in at least one edition of Beowulf published from 1950 onwards. It thus adds to part I the readings which have been proposed since 1857. The list is intended as a survey only. No context is given for readings proposed by 1857, since that was done in part I, at pp. 253–74. For readings proposed since 1857 the immediate context is given where necessary, but it is assumed that an edition of Beowulf will be used in conjunction with the list. Following the main section, tables 1–8 indicate the origin of each reading, identified by its line number. Each table corresponds to one of the categories I–VIII used in part I and defined there at p. 250. Tables 9 and 10 and the figure accompanying table 10 present the statistics on which the conclusions stated in part I, at pp. 250–1, are based. Appendix I lists addenda and corrigenda to part I. Appendix II presents some conjectures or emendations which were proposed by 1857 but which have not found favour with any editor from 1950 onwards. The items concern places in the text where a majority of editors from 1950 onwards believe that there are defects.

Writing a little before the year 1000, Ælfric in a homily on the Feast of the Circumcision (1 January) had this to say about the beginning of the year:

We have often heard that men call this day ‘the day of the year’, as if this day were foremost in the year's circuit; but we find no explanation in Christian books, why this day is accounted the beginning of the year. The old Romans, in heathen days, began the year's circuit on this day; and the Hebrew people at the vernal equinox; the Greeks on the summer solstice; and the Egyptian nations began the reckoning of their year at harvest. Now our reckoning begins, according to the Roman institution, on this day, for no religious reason, but for the old custom. Some of our servicebooks begin on the Lord's Advent; yet it is not on that account the beginning of the year.

It would be a truism among Anglo-Saxonists to say that we depend for our knowledge of a fair proportion of pre-Conquest literary and historical texts on the labours of scholars active in the sixteenth, seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Among the many important texts which were casualties, for example, of the Cotton fire on 23 October 1731, and for which we now depend on early modern transcripts and printed editions, one thinks immediately of Asser's Life of King Alfred and of the poem on the battle of Maldon (in Cotton Otho A. xii), of manuscript G of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (in Cotton Otho B. xi), and of Ealdorman Æthelweard's Chronicle (in Cotton Otho A. x). Should one choose to venture into the realm of Anglo-Saxon charters, the importance of antiquarian transcripts of manuscripts now lost becomes ever more apparent. The most spectacular addition to the corpus of charters made since the publication of Professor Sawyer's catalogue in 1968 arose from the examination of a sixteenth-century cartulary of Ilford Hospital preserved at Hatfield House, which proved to contain the texts of eleven pre-Conquest charters derived ultimately from the archives of Barking abbey in Essex; of course this manuscript is an ‘original’ cartulary, as opposed to an antiquarian transcript, but it serves here as a salutary reminder of the treasures which may lurk as yet unidentified in libraries and archives throughout the country. Other ‘discoveries’ include a seventeenth-century copy of a charter by which King Edgar granted an estate at Ballidon, in Derbyshire, to his thegn Æthelferth, Sir Henry Spelman's extracts from a lost cartulary of Abbotsbury abbey, and notes made by the jurist John Selden from a charter-roll formerly preserved in the archives of St Paul's Cathedral in London.

By the end of the Anglo-Saxon period six feasts of the Virgin were celebrated in England; this large number represents an honour granted to no other saint. The feasts in question – the Purification, Annunciation, Assumption, Nativity, Presentation in the Temple and Conception – did not originate in England, however. Before turning to the English evidence, therefore, it is necessary to consider the background of Marian feasts at Rome and elsewhere in the context of the development of ritual from the seventh century to the eleventh.

Scholarship is divided over whether there existed a tradition of recreational hunting in Anglo-Saxon England, in addition to pragmatic forms of venery, and the extent to which it was altered by the Normans after the Conquest. However, hunting scholarship has hitherto neglected the detailed account of a recreational royal deer hunt in the Vita S. Dvnstani. By analysing this account, which describes a hunt resembling a typically ‘Norman’ chasse par force de chiens, I reassess the evidence for the nature of hunting in laws, charters, and the archaeological record. I posit that the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy hunted in a similar manner to the Normans, and that hunting was a socially inscribed pursuit, legally restricted to the ruling classes long before 1066. This argument supports the definition of the disputed charter term haga (‘enclosure’) in certain instances as an Anglo-Saxon hunting park. Finally, I suggest the existence of a specialized Anglo-Saxon hunting dog developed specifically to hunt large quarry in the ‘Norman’ manner.

Around the years 755–6 Chrodegang, bishop of Metz from 742 to 766 and metropolitan of the Austrasian church since the death of Boniface in 754, compiled a rule for the canons of his own familia in Metz. His paruum decretulum or parua institutio, as he himself called it, contained very few thoughts not already expressed about the spiritual principles and practical organization of those canons who wished to live in a quasi-monastic, celibate community. Indeed, Chrodegang himself made it abundantly clear in the preface to his Regula that he would have had no need to compile his Rule if the writings of the Church Fathers and existing ecclesiastical laws on this subject had been honoured:

Si trecentorum decem et octo reliquorumque sanctorum Patrum canonum auctoritas perduraret, et clerus atque episcopus secundum eorum rectitudinis normam uiuerent, superfluum uideretur a nobis exiguis minimisque, super hac re tarn ordinate disposita aliquid retractari, et quasi quidem noui aliquid dici.

Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys Library 2981 is a large album which Pepys described as ‘My Calligraphical Collection vol. 1’. It contains ‘Original Proofs of Antient Hand-Writing English & Forreign between the Years 700 & 1500’ in the form of fragments from manuscripts pasted down firmly on each of the album's paper pages. Notes are written round the margins of the pages and incorporate ‘the Opinion of that Eminent Critick in re Diplomaticâ, our Country-Man Mr Humphrey Wanley of Oxford, touching the different Ages, Characters & Countrys of ye said Pieces, in Return to my Enquiries from him on that behalf’.

Bede entered Wearmouth–Jarrow at the age of seven and thereafter, he tells us at the conclusion of his Historia ecclesiastica, spent all his life ‘applying myself entirely to the study of the Scriptures’. He goes on, ‘From the time I became a priest until the fifty-ninth year of my life I have made it my business, for my own benefit and that of my brothers, to make brief extracts from the works of the venerable fathers on the holy scriptures, or to add notes of my own to clarify their sense and interpretation.’ Bede's modest remarks preface an impressive list of his own works, which includes commentaries on Genesis, I Samuel, Kings, Proverbs, the Prophets, Mark, Luke, Acts and Revelation, and many other exegetical, didactic and historical volumes. Installed at Jarrow from about 679 until his death in 735, he contributed more than anyone to the intellectual distinction of early-eighth-century Northumbria. At the same time, the twin house of Wearmouth–Jarrow was winning lasting renown for the products of its scriptorium (or scriptoria). Not least among these were the three great Vulgate bible pandects which Abbot Ceolfrith caused to be made, an achievement celebrated by the chroniclers of the house, who included Bede himself. One of these pandects, which we know today as the Codex Amiatinus, was dispatched to St Peter's in Rome in 716, then spent more than 900 years at Monte Amiata in the Appenines, and is now in Florence (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Amiatino 1). The other two were for use in the Wearmouth and Jarrow churches. One of these has been lost without trace, but the second survived in the cathedral priory of Worcester until the sixteenth century, when an entrepreneurial Nottinghamshire family made use of some of its torn-out leaves as document wrappers. Twelve of these, with some fragments of a thirteenth, are now in the British Library under three different shelfmarks (Loan 81, Add. 37777 and Add. 45025).

Aside from its Old English gloss, the Lambeth Psalter has largely been ignored. Yet this manuscript furnishes valuable evidence about Latin learning in late Anglo-Saxon England, specifically at Winchester. And it can lay claim to be the most important surviving witness to psalter scholarship from this period.

To a greater extent than other saints' lives, Guthlac A is a poem about a land dispute. Through contextualizing the central ‘battle for the beorg’ within Anglo-Saxon practices of land tenure, this article shows that Guthlac A represents the spiritual conflict between Guthlac and the devils as a land dispute between unworthy tenants who have been given temporary tenure of the land and a warrior of God who is granted permanent tenure as his reward for faithful service. By portraying the devils' loss of the beorg and Guthlac's acquisition of it through the framework of Anglo-Saxon customs of land-holding, the poem dramatizes replacement doctrine, the teaching that the number of the saved would equal the number of fallen angels and replace them in the heavenly kingdom.