¹ Jolly, Karen Louise, The Community of St. Cuthbert in the Late Tenth Century: The Chester-le-Street Additions to Durham Cathedral Library A.IV.19 (Columbus, 2012), 2Google Scholar. For an edition of the whole manuscript, see Thompson, A. H. and Lindelöf, U., eds., Rituale ecclesiae Dunelmensis: The Durham Collectar, Publications of the Surtees Society 140 (London, 1927)Google Scholar; see also Brown, T. J., ed., The Durham Ritual: A Southern English Collectar of the Tenth Century with Northumbrian Additions, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile 16 (Copenhagen, 1969)Google Scholar. The Collectar proper is edited separately by Corrêa, Alicia, The Durham Collectar, Henry Bradshaw Society 107 (London, 1992)Google Scholar. In the present article we make use of Jolly's reedition of the additions to the manuscript at 230–359.

Abbreviations:

AM

Treatise “Audiuimus multos,” in Luigi Munzi, ed., Littera legitera: Testi grammaticali latini dell'Alto Medioevo, AION Sezione filologico-letteraria Quaderni, 11 (Naples, 2007), 55–81.

AW

The Alphabet of Words

BCLL

Michael Lapidge and Richard Sharpe, A Bibliography of Celtic Latin Literature, 400–1200 (Dublin, 1985) [cited by no.]

CLA

E. A. Lowe, Codices Latini Antiquiores, 11 vols. (Oxford, 1934–66); Supplement (1971); 2nd ed. of vol. 2 (1972) [cited by vol. and no.]

CPL

Eligius Dekkers, Clavis Patrum Latinorum, 3rd ed. (Turnhout, 1995) [cited by no.]

CPPM

Jan Machielsen, Clavis Patristica Pseudepigraphorum Medii Aevi, IA–B: Homiletica (Turnhout 1990); IIA: Theologica, Exegetica; IIB: Ascetica, Monastica (Turnhout, 1994) [cited by vol. and no.]

RBMA

Friedrich Stegmüller, Repertorium biblicum Medii Aevi, 11 vols. (Madrid, 1950–80) [cited by no.]

Stotz

Peter Stotz, Handbuch zur lateinischen Sprache des Mittelalters, 5 vols. (Munich, 1996–2004) [cited by vol. and section no.]

² On Aldred, see Jolly, Community of St. Cuthbert, 37–70. The Lindisfarne Gospels and their Old English gloss are edited, along with the West Saxon Gospels and Mercian/Northumbrian gloss to the Rushworth Gospels, in Skeat, W. W., The Four Gospels in Anglo-Saxon, Northumbrian, and Old Mercian Versions (Cambridge, 1871–77; repr., Darmstadt, 1970)Google Scholar.

³ Jolly, Community of St. Cuthbert, 355–58; Jolly, “The Process of Glossing and Glossing as Process: Scholarship and Education in Durham, Cathedral Library, MS A.iv.19,” in The Old English Gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels: Language, Author and Context, ed. Cuesta, Julia Fernández and Pons-Sanz, Sara M., Buchreihe der Anglia 51 (Berlin, 2016), 362–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 375; Brown, The Durham Ritual, 51. W. J. Boyd (“Aldrediana XXV: Ritual Hebraica,” English Philological Studies 14 [1975]: 1–57, at 51) calls the text “an alphabetical list of words relating to sin and salvation”; Sarah Larratt Keefer calls it an “Abecedarial Meditation on Sin and Redemption” (Manuscripts of Durham, Ripon, and York, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, no. 14 [Tempe, AZ, 2007], 48)Google Scholar; Gneuss, Helmut and Lapidge, Michael (Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts [Toronto, 2014], 183)CrossRefGoogle Scholar refer to it as an “alphabet of names and words with religious interpretations.” Though our MS K heads the work “Sermo de Adam,” this title is simply based on the opening words and does not accurately convey its contents.

⁴ For the special cases of X and Y, see the edition below.

⁵ Jolly, Community of St. Cuthbert, 172, 197–99.

⁶ Thompson and Lindelöf, Rituale, xx. Jolly similarly suggests that “the poem [sic] is difficult to trace to a single source and is unique to Aldred, conceivably even an original composition,” though she also notes that “its overall tenor makes it likely another Irish-derived text” (Community of St. Cuthbert, 197).

⁷ On Quire XI, see Jane Roberts, “Aldred: Glossator and Book Historian,” in The Old English Gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels, ed. Julia Fernández Cuesta and Sara Pons-Sanz, 56–57. Roberts suggests that the outermost bifolium of this quire (fols. 77 and 88), which includes AW, “might have been supplementary.”

⁸ For a detailed listing with editions of all of these texts, see Jolly, Community of St. Cuthbert, 280–359.

⁹ For a comprehensive overview of patristic and early-medieval lists of Hebrew and Greek letter names and their Latin equivalents, see Alan Griffiths, “A Family of Names: Rune-names and Ogam-names and Their Relation to Alphabet Letter-names,” 2 vols. (PhD diss., Leiden University, 2013), Volume 2, Tables, esp. 6, Table 2, “List of Texts with Examples of Interpretations of Greek and Latin Letter-names, and Some Alphabet Poems.” See also idem, “Some Curious Interpretations of Letter Names in Seven Greek Alphabets: Stretching the Bounds of a Tradition,” in Limits to Learning: The Transfer of Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Giliberto, Concetta and Teresi, Loredana (Leuven, 2013), 109–22Google Scholar; and Kees Dekker, “Alphabets in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts,” ibid., 80–108, with reference to AW as an “abecedarian riddle” (83 n. 7).

¹⁰ Jolly, Community of St. Cuthbert, 197–98, 215; so too Roberts, “Aldred: Glossator and Book Historian,” 57. The term “alphabet list,” used earlier by Jolly in her article “Prayers from the Field: Practical Protection and Demonic Defense in Anglo-Saxon England,” Traditio 61 (2006): 119 Google Scholar n. 76, is less problematic.

¹¹ See Carey, John, King of Mysteries: Early Irish Religious Writings (Dublin, 1998), 29–30, 147Google Scholar (in relation to “Altus prosator” and “Audite omnes amantes”); Orchard, Andy, “‘Audite omnes amantes’: A Hymn in Patrick's Praise,” in Saint Patrick, a.d. 493–1993, ed. Dumville, David N. (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1993), 154–55Google Scholar; Orchard, Andy, “The Verse-Extracts in the Collectanea,” in Collectanea Pseudo-Bedae, ed. Bayless, Martha and Lapidge, Michael, Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 14 (Dublin, 1998), 90Google Scholar (in relation to a Hiberno-Latin poem on the Day of Judgment); idem, The Poetic Art of Aldhelm, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 8 (Cambridge, 1994), 47; Richter, Michael, Bobbio in the Early Middle Ages: The Abiding Legacy of Columbanus (Dublin, 2008), 65Google Scholar (in relation to the “Versus de Bobuleno abbate”); Lapidge, Michael, “A Seventh-Century Insular Latin Debate Poem on Divorce,” Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 10 (1985): 13Google Scholar; Cathasaigh, Tomás Ó, “The Literature of Medieval Ireland to c. 800: St. Patrick to the Vikings,” in The Cambridge History of Irish Literature, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 2006), 12–13 Google Scholar.

¹² Compare especially the abecedarian litany edited by Niels Krogh Rasmussen, “An Early ‘Ordo Missae’ with a ‘Litania Abecedaria’ Addressed to Christ (Rome, Bibl. Vallicelliana, Cod. B. 141, XI. Cent.),” Ephemerides Liturgicae 98 (1984): 198–211 at 200: “A rchangelorum eternitas / B onitas patriarcharum / … / Z elus et corona martyrum.” Rasmussen (209–10) draws attention to several Irish “symptoms” in this litany. For examples of abecedarian structure in Irish prose composition, see Dooley, Ann, “The Gospel of Nicodemus in Ireland,” in The Medieval Gospel of Nicodemus: Texts, Intertexts, and Contexts in Western Europe, ed. Izydorczyk, Zbigniew (Tempe, AZ, 1997), 389–92Google Scholar. One wonders whether AW might be in some way related to the “alphabets” (abgitir) said to have been written by Irish saints, including Patrick, as manuals of instruction for their pupils. It is, however, difficult to tell whether such texts were actually organized according to the letters of the alphabet or, like the Apgitir chrábaid (“Alphabet of Piety”), were “alphabets” only in the figurative sense of providing basic and necessary instruction. See McNamara, Martin and Sheehy, Maurice, “Psalter Text and Psalter Study in the Early Irish Church (A.D. 600–1200),” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy Section C 73 (1973): 206 n. 7Google Scholar; Cuív, Brian Ó, “Irish Words for ‘Alphabet,’” Ériu 31 (1980): 104–5Google Scholar; Hull, Vernam, “ Apgitir chrábaid: The Alphabet of Piety,” Celtica 8 (1968): 44–89 Google Scholar. The exact nature of Patrick's “alphabets” has been a matter of debate. Various evidence and interpretations may be found in Márkus, Gilbert, “What Were Patrick's Alphabets?” Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 31 (1996): 1–15 Google Scholar; Caoimhín Ó Dónaill, “A Poem in Praise of St. Patrick,” in Teangeolaíocht na Gaeilge XIII, ed. Ailbhe Ó Corráin and Malachy Ó Néill (Uppsala, 2014), 13–14 (where the alphabets are equated with “spiritual writing”); and Barbet-Massin, Dominique, “Le rituel irlandais de consécration des églises au Moyen Âge: le témoignage des sources irlandaises et bretonnes,” Annales de Bretagne et des pays de l'Ouest 118 (2011): 7–39 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (where it is argued that two Latin alphabets were written on the ground during an Irish rite of the consecration of churches).

¹³ Chardonnens, Lászlo Sándor, “Mantic Alphabets in Medieval Western Manuscripts and Early Printed Books,” Modern Philology 110 (2013): 340–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 342.

¹⁴ For an example, see ibid.

¹⁵ Förster, Max, “Zwei kymrische Orakelalphabete für Psalterwahrsagung,” Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 20 (1936): 228–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 240 n. 6; Chardonnens, “Mantic Alphabets,” 345–46.

¹⁶ Chardonnens, “Mantic Alphabets,” 346. See also Lászlo Sándor Chardonnens, “The Old English Alphabet Prognostic as a Prototype for Mantic Alphabets,” in Secular Learning in Anglo-Saxon England: Exploring the Vernacular, ed. idem and Carella, Bryan, Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 69 (Amsterdam, 2012), 233–36Google Scholar, where it is suggested that AW and an unrelated Old English alphabetical text in London, British Library, Cotton Titus D. xxvi “served as prototypes for the mantic alphabets that emerged in the twelfth century.”

¹⁷ Transcribed by Holder, Die Reichenauer Handschriften, 1:433–34.

¹⁸ Anastasijević, Dragutin, Die paränetischen Alphabete in der griechischen Literatur (Munich, 1905)Google Scholar. Of these, 32 are poems and 4 are prose texts. See also Vetschera, Rudolf, “Zur griechischen Paränese,” Jahresberichte des k. k. deutschen Staatsgymnasiums in Smichow 1911 und 1912 (Smichow, 1912), 24–29 Google Scholar and 33.

¹⁹ Bischoff, Katalog, 2:271 (no. 3319). On the dialogue material in Clm 19410, see Wright, Charles D., The Irish Tradition in Old English Literature, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 6 (Cambridge, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 63 and n. 80.

²⁰ The scribal correction recorded by Brunhölzl (see next note) in his apparatus, “k pit (?) kartigine” is likely for “k kaput kartigine.”

²¹ Brunhölzl, Franz, ed., Studien zum geistigen Leben in Passau im achten und neunten Jahrhundert, Abhandlungen der Marburger Gelehrten Gesellschaft 26 (Munich, 2000), 61–62 Google Scholar.

²² It is very likely that more such parenetic alphabets occur in early-medieval monastic and scholastic miscellanies but perhaps have often not been itemized by cataloguers. In the Catalogue général of BNF manuscripts (3:92) the parenetic alphabet in lat. 2796 is not mentioned within a partial description of “Tableaux, notes et fragments de comput”; in Susan A. Keefe's summary list of the contents of the manuscript (A Catalogue of Works Pertaining to the Explanation of the Creed in Carolingian Manuscripts, Instrumenta patristica et mediaevalia 63 [Turnhout, 2012], 313) our text is similarly hidden in the entry “fol. 68r–101v = computus and computisical matter.”

²³ Notker's treatise on the litterae explains T by “Trahere vel tenere debere testatur” ( McGee, Timothy J., The Sound of Medieval Song: Ornamentation and Vocal Style according to the Treatises [Oxford, 1998], 180CrossRefGoogle Scholar); critical edition by Froger, Jacques, “L’Épître de Notker sur les ‘lettres significatives,’” Études grégoiriennes 5 (1962): 23–71 Google Scholar, text at 69–70. See generally Huglo, Michel, “Les recherches sur les litterae significativae au XXe siècle,” in Sine musica nulla disciplina … Studi in onore di Giulio Cattin, ed. Bernabei, Franco and Lovato, Antonio (Padua, 2006), 163–74Google Scholar; Kohlhäufl, Josef, “Die tironischen Noten im Codex Laon 239: Ein Beitrag zur Paläographie der Litterae significativae,” Musicologica Austriaca 14–15 (1996): 133–56Google Scholar.

²⁴ For fremitus, see Eugène Cardine, Gregorian Semiology (Sablé-sur-Sarthe, 1982), 224.

²⁵ On the notae iuris, see Mommsen, Theodor, “Notarum laterculi,” in Grammatici latini 4 (Leipzig, 1864), 265–352 Google Scholar. The list of notae in the additions to the Durham Collectar is edited in Jolly, Community of St. Cuthbert (n. 1 above), 329–38.

²⁶ Munzi, Luigi, ed., Littera legitera: Testi grammaticali latini dell'Alto Medioevo (Naples, 2007)Google Scholar.

²⁷ Bischoff, Katalog 3:455 (no. 6928), where the dates given are ix¹, and ix^3/4 or ix^4/4. For the contents, see A.-V. Gilles-Raynal et al., Les manuscrits classiques latins de la Bibliothèque Vaticane 3,2: Fonds Vatican latin 2901–14740 (Paris, 2010), 591–95.

²⁸ Munzi, Littera legitera, 66.

²⁹ First edited by Munzi, Littera legitera, 95–117. The text was edited again by Richard M. A. Marshall (“Studies on the ‘Ars Grammatici Sergi{li}i’ with an Edition,” Journal of Medieval Latin 20 [2010]: 227–30), who seems not to have known about Munzi's earlier work. The nature of the text's relationship with the Ars Sergilii has been a matter of debate, and it is very likely not by the same author as the Ars; see Marshall, “Studies,” 167 n. 1; Munzi, Luigi, “La singolare Ars Sergilii: note in margine a un'edizione recente,” Incontri di filologia classica 13 (2013–14): 49–83 Google Scholar, esp. 56–58. For the date, see Bischoff, Katalog, 2:44 (no. 2155).

³⁰ Edited from the Bern manuscript by Hermann Hagen in Grammatici latini 8 (Leipzig, 1870), 302–5. This version of the text also survives in other early-medieval manuscripts, about which see Munzi, “La singolare Ars Sergilii,” 56–57. For the date, see Bischoff, Katalog, 1:127 (no. 592).

³¹ On the date and composition of the text, see Marshall, “Studies,” 170–84.

³² Munzi, Littera legitera, 119–52; for the date, see Bischoff, Katalog, 2:344 (no. 1642).

³³ Munzi, Littera legitera, 101, 122; Hagen, Grammatici latini 8:302.

³⁴ Marshall, “Studies,” 169.

³⁵ Munzi, Littera legitera, 101.

³⁶ “Aliter” in C, D, I, K, P, V; “Alibi” in M; “Item” in X; see Munzi, Littera legitera, 63–67.

³⁷ pro quid] On pro + acc., see Stotz 9, §12.3.

³⁸ A] As Jolly says, the letter is no longer visible and may be obscured by a stain, but there seems little reason to doubt that it was there or at least that it was supposed to be.

³⁹ cetus] This seems the most natural way to expand the MS abbreviation cet’, although one could perhaps make an argument for cetera. Either would represent an error for cecus or cecatus.

⁴⁰ diabolus] Both here and in the G entry the scribe uses an unusual abbreviation diaƀƀ– for forms of diabolus; it is uncertain how the scribe would spell out the full word.

⁴¹ inducta] Probably originally a scribal variant of induta, with subsequent modification of the E entry by the Karlsruhe scribe or the scribe of his exemplar in order to make sense of the new word as a form of induco. On -ct- for -t-, see Stotz 7, §191.

⁴² atque] sic, for antequam (as Kassel).

⁴³ diabulus] The idea of the devil being Jewish, or of Judaism being demonic, strikes the reader as exaggeratedly anti-Semitic even for a tenth-century Anglo-Saxon, and in fact the reading populus in the Kassel and Karlsruhe MSS reveals diabulus (and, as a result, its accompanying Old English gloss diwl) to be scribal errors. The reading in D has been contaminated from the following sentence, which also starts with a verb ending in -emuit.

⁴⁴ ra[ra]perit] ra- repeated after a line break. The -erit ending for the 3rd person singular imperfect subjunctive is due to the medieval Latin coalescence of ĭ and ĕ, especially in unstressed syllables; see Stotz 7, §14.

⁴⁵ humum] sic, for hamum (more correctly hamus). The apparent a/u confusion needed for the error to arise could in theory be indicative of an exemplar written in Merovingian, Visigothic, or Insular cursive minuscule script, but this evidence is too slim to allow any conclusions to be made.

⁴⁶ tollitus] On tollitus as an analogical past participle of fero/tollo, see Stotz 8, §§120.2, 121.

⁴⁷ de mundum] On de + acc., see Stotz 9, §12.2.

⁴⁸ captus in inimicum] One might perhaps attempt to make sense of this phrase as saying that Christ “the hook” was taken inside (captus) or eaten up by the enemy (inimicum, that is, the devil, hell, Death, etc.), thus allowing the enemy to himself be captured, but it seems more likely that the words are simply garbled.

⁴⁹ caelus] = caelos; see Stotz 7, §40.3.

⁵⁰ portauit mundum per crucem] The phrase does not give impossible sense, but the significantly different K reading adsumpsit mundum saecum ad caelus and the fact that the previous sentence in D also ends in -auit mundum per crucem leads one to believe that at least the words mundum per crucem are an erroneous doubling of part of the S entry.

⁵¹ lex expulserit] These words cause difficult syntax, and lex, hardly an appropriate word with which to begin the X entry, is probably a scribal error for the letter name ecs (but see Commentary). D preserves the better reading here.

⁵² Christus] MS xp̅s.

⁵³ inter tritico] On inter + abl., see Stotz 9, §18.4.

⁵⁴ triticum] Presumably an error for either triticorum or an error for (or orthographical variant of) tritico.