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⁸ Augustine, , Enarrationes in psalmos 144.13, ed. Dekkers, D. E. and Fraipont, J., CChr SL 40 (Turnhout, 1956), 2098Google Scholar; quoted by Clancy, Thomas Owen and Márkus, Gilbert, lona:The Earliest Poetry of a Celtic Monastery (Edinburgh, 1995), 92.Google Scholar

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¹¹ Meyer, Kuno, Selections from Ancient Irish Poetry (London, 1911), xii–xiii.Google Scholar

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¹⁵ Corráin, Donnchadh Ó, ‘Early Irish Hermit Poetry?’, in idem et al., eds, Sages, Saints and Story Tellers: Celtic Studies in Honour of Professor James Carney (Maynooth, 1989), 251–67, at 254.Google Scholar

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¹⁸ Ibid., lines 25–28.

¹⁹ Ibid., no. 13 (144–45); here, as Godman explained (20),’the nightingale, recalling a series of delicate analogies between Creator and creation, becomes symbolic of the relationship between man and God’.

²⁰ Alcuin, Conflictus veris et hiemis: ibid., no. 14 (144–49); Sedulius Scottus,’Debate of the rose and the lily’: ibid., no. 45 (282–87).

²¹ Scottus,’Plea for patronage’: ibid., no. 46 (286–87).

²² Hugh, Magennis, Images of Community in Old English Poetry (Cambridge, 1996), 147–48.Google Scholar

²³ Genesis A, lines 1512–17, 1560–61: trans. Barrar, Kathleen, ‘A Spacious, Green and Hospitable Land: Paradise in Old English Poetry’, BJRL 86.2 (2004), 105–25, at 112.Google Scholar See also Kabir, Ananya Jahanara, Paradise, Death and Domesday in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Cambridge 2001), 141–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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²⁶ Ibid., lines 140b-143a (197).

²⁷ The Old English Rune Poem, ed. and trans. Maureen Halsall (Toronto, ON, 1981), 92–93 (no. 24).

²⁸ Ibid. 88–89.

²⁹ Matt. 13: 3–9, 18–23.

³⁰ Old English Rune Poem, no. 29, trans. Halsall, 92–93; for commentary, ibid. 160–63.

³¹ Anon, Life of St Cuthbert 2.5, ed. and trans. Colgrave, Bertram, Two Lives of St Cuthbert (Cambridge, 1940), 86–87.Google Scholar

³² Ibid. 3.5 (100–03).

³³ Ibid. 2.3 (80–81). On this incident, see also, in this volume, Olga Gusakova, ‘A Saint and the Natural World: A Motif of Obedience in three early Anglo-Saxon Saints’ Lives’, 42–52.

³⁴ Bitel, Lisa, Isle of the Saints: Monastic Settlement and Christian Community in Early Ireland (Ithaca, NY, 1990; paperback edn, Cork, 1993), 33–34.Google Scholar

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³⁶ Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 4.13 (ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, 372–75).

³⁷ Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum, ch. 67, trans. Dam, Raymond van, Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs (Liverpool, 1988), 91 Google Scholar; quoted by Giselle De Nie, ‘Caesarius of Arles and Gregory of Tours: Two Sixth-Century Gallic Bishops and Christian Magic’, in Edel, Doris, ed., Cultural Identity and Cultural Integration: Ireland and Europe in the Early Middle Ages (Dublin, 1995), 170–96, at 191.Google Scholar

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⁴⁰ A sentiment encapsulated most succinctly in the Old English poem, The Fortunes of Men, which describes the birth of an infant and then states:‘God alone knows what, while the child grows, the winter will bring’ (lines 8—9), going on to list the various different fates that might befall the hapless adult;‘Such things are not man’s to control’ (line 14): Krapp, G. P. and Dobbie, E.V K., eds, The Exeter Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3 (NewYork, 1936), 154.Google Scholar

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⁴³ Bartlett, Natural and Supernatural, 51–70.

⁴⁴ The Annals of Ulster (to AD 1131), s.a. 692, ed. Seán Mac Airt and Gearóid Mac Niocaill (Dublin, 1983), 154—55; also recorded in the Chronnicon Scotorum, Annals of Tigernach and Annals of Clonmacnoise: Aidan Breen and Daniel McCarthy, ‘Astro nomical Observations in the Irish Annals and their Motivation,’ Peritia II (1997), 1–43, at 13.

⁴⁵ Annals of Ulster, s.a. 735 (ed. Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill, 188–89); also recorded in the Annals of Tigernach in the same year: Breen and McCarthy,’Astronomical Observations’, 13.

⁴⁶ Listed and discussed by Breen and McCarthy, ‘Astronomical Observations’, 10–19.

⁴⁷ For this early Irish interest in the workings of nature, see Smyth, Marina, Understanding the Universe in Seventh-Century Ireland (Woodbridge, 1997).Google Scholar

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⁴⁹ Annals of Fulda, s.a. 889, trans. Timothy Reuter (Manchester, 1994), 118.

⁵⁰ Royal Frankish Annals, s.a. 822, 824, trans. Scholz, Bernard Walter, Carolingian Chronicles (Ann Arbor, Ml, 1972), 110, 117; Astronomer, Life of Louis the Pious, ch. 42.4 Google Scholar, trans. Cabaniss, Allen, Son of Charlemagne: A Contemporary Life of Louis the Pious (Syracuse, NY, 1961)Google Scholar; Ashley, Scott, ‘The Power of Symbols: Interpreting Portents in the Carolingian Empire’, Medieval History 4 (1994), 34—50, at 37.Google Scholar

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⁵³ The earliest comment came from Alcuin, the English cleric at Charlemagne’s court in letters to the king of Northumbria and to the Bishop of Lindisfarne written after the attack in June: trans. Whitelock, EHD I, nos 193–94.

⁵⁴ Annals of Ulster, s.a. 664 (ed. Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill, 134–35).

⁵⁵ Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 3.27, 4.1, 5.24 (ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, 310–11, 328–29, 564–65); cf. Bede, Chronica minora, s.a. 664, ed. Mommsen, T., Chronica minora saec. IV, V VI, VII, MGH AA 12 (Berlin, 1898), 313; Chronica majora, s.a. 664: ibid. Compare also Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, s.a. 664. (MSS A, B and C):‘In this year there was an eclipse of the sun and Eorcenberht, king of the people of Kent died. … And the same year there was a great pestilence’; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, s.a. 664 (MS E):‘In this year there was an eclipse of the sun on 3 May, and in this year a great pestilence came to the island of Britain, and in that pestilence Bishop Tuda died … And Eorcenberht king of the people of Kent died’.Google Scholar

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⁵⁸ McCarthy and Breen, ‘Astronomical Observations’, 28–29.

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⁶³ Astronomer, Life of Louis the Pious, ch. 58.1 – 58.2 (trans. Cabaniss, 112–14).

⁶⁴ Lupus of Ferrières, letter to Altuin, monk at St Alban’s, near Mainz, trans. Regenos, Graydon W., The Letters of Lupus of Ferrières (The Hague,1966), 23 (no. 8).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁶⁶ Astronomer, Life of Louis the Pious, ch. 58.1 – 58.2 (trans. Cabaniss, 112–14).

⁶⁷ Ibid., ch. 62.3 (trans. Cabaniss, 121); Ashley,‘Power of Symbols’, 41–45.

⁶⁸ Caesarius of Arles, Sermon 13, ed. and French trans. Delage, M.-J., Sermons au peuple par Césaire d’Arles, SC 175 (Paris, 1971), 426–27; cited by Bartlett, Natural and Supernatural, 54–55. And compare also Bartlett’s discussion of the sermons of Hrabanus Maurus in the 820s: ibid. 56–58.Google Scholar

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⁸⁵ Adomnán, Life of St Columba 2.44, trans. Sharpe, Richard, Adomnán of Iona: Life of St Columba (London, 1995), 199–200; Flint, Rise of Magic, 187.Google Scholar

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⁸⁸ Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, 2.4, trans. Fouke, W. D., History of the Langobards, by Paul the Deacon (Philadelphia, PA, 1907), 56–58 Google Scholar; quoted in full by Maddicott, J. R., ‘Plague in Seventh-Century England’, P&P, no. 156(1997), 7–54, at 36.Google Scholar

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⁹¹ Gregory, Histories 4.5,31; 5.34:6.14; 8.17 (trans. Lewis, 199–200,225–26,296,346, 449); Maddicott,‘Plague’, 18; McCready, Miracles, 27.

⁹² Adomnán, Life of Columba 2.46 (trans. Sharpe, 203); Maddicott,‘Plague’, 18.

⁹³ Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 4.7–8 (ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, 356–59); Bede, Life of Cuthbert, ch. 27 (ed. and trans. Colgrave, 246–49).

⁹⁴ Maddicott, ‘Plague’, 19–20.

⁹⁵ Bede, Life of Cuthbert, ch. 33 (ed. and trans. Colgrave, 258–61); Maddicott, ‘Plague’, 37–38.

⁹⁶ Calvin B. Kendall, ‘Imitation and the Venerable Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica’, in King, Margot and Stevens, Wesley, eds, Saints, Scholars, and Heroes, 2 vols (Collegeville, MN, 1979), 1: 161–90, at 180; Magennis, Images of Community, 129.Google Scholar

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¹⁰⁰ Gregory, Homilies on the Gospels, book I, homily 1.5, ed. Raymond Etaix, CChr SL 141 (Turnhout, 1999), 9 (trans. Robert Markus, A., Gregory the Great and his World (Cambridge, 1997), 51); cf. Luke 21: 25–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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