The twentieth biennial meeting of the Society took as its general theme ‘Contributions’. Featured were five keynotes, fifty-five regular papers and four project reports. 152 persons registered for the conference.

When Aldhelm came to compose a collection of Latin riddles in the late seventh century, the riddle was already an established literary genre in Greek and Latin. Although Aldhelm’s main source was the Latin Aenigmata of Symphosius, he introduced a number of innovations that transformed the genre. To account for these innovations, it has been suggested that Aldhelm also knew and was influenced by Greek riddles, which are otherwise unattested in Anglo-Saxon England. This article first reviews the evidence for Aldhelm’s knowledge of Greek riddles, especially in his Aenigma 32 about a writing tablet. It then argues that the peculiar features of Aenigma 32 were not derived from Greek riddles but rather from the Hisperica famina, a work that Aldhelm very likely knew. His transformation of the genre therefore can be accounted for by his use of Latin sources available in seventh-century England without appealing to speculative Greek ones.

The Irish Computus Einsidlensis (CE) of c. 700 contains a reference to a certain Theodore. This article makes the case that this Theodore should be identified with Theodore of Tarsus, archbishop of Canterbury from 668/9 to his death, 690, on the basis of comparison not only with other contemporary Latin versions of the same argumentum, but also Byzantine computi. The passage under discussion represents the only known computistical tract that can with confidence be ascribed to the famous Canterbury school under Theodore and Hadrian. From the evidence provided, it appears that Theodore learnt this algorithm while studying in the Byzantine Empire and introduced it through his teaching to his Canterbury audience; his Irish students brought it to Ireland, from where it got popularised on the Continent through Willibrord.

The late seventh century was a particularly active period of legal writing in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms: three royal decrees, two church council decrees and a number of royal diplomas have survived. This article aims to show that this unusual period was characterised by innovation and experimentation. A key part of the argument is that the form of Anglo-Saxon royal laws changed from the early to the late seventh century due to influence from the form of church council decrees. Other external influences on royal law are also detected. The article introduces the closely connected group of kings and ecclesiastics who were involved in law-making and it places Anglo-Saxon legal production in a wider context of legal learning, by looking at the kinds of legal texts that were known, studied and used in Anglo-Saxon England and especially by this period’s many travellers and expats.

This paper re-examines Bede’s reference to urbs Giudi for previously overlooked clues that may help to identify the location of this elusive fortress, somewhere in, on or near the Firth of Forth in what is now eastern central Scotland. After considering Bede’s abilities as a geographer, it assesses and challenges the persistent suggestion that urbs Giudi was on an island. It then analyses the implications of Bede’s use of Latin in medio sui and sinus by comparing these terms with other examples in Bede’s writings and elsewhere. This points to the importance of secondary and elliptical, rather than literal, senses of in medio sui and sinus respectively. The outcome of this is that urbs Giudi was located neither ‘in the middle of’ the Firth of Forth, nor ‘halfway along’ it, but further inland, on the Links of Forth, the meandering section of the Forth Estuary. This excludes all previously proposed locations for urbs Giudi with the exception of one, Stirling.

In early medieval England, the ringing of bells served a wide range of functions. This article argues that a detailed understanding of bells and their everyday use can help to explain the intricate narratives and elaborate language of three Latin and Old English riddles. The first, the late antique ‘Riddle 80’ by Symphosius, describes a dinner bell and the idle chatter of a drunken party. The second, Tatwine of Canterbury’s ‘Riddle 7’, presents a funeral bell hanging in a tower as a deposed emperor who is hung and beaten. The third, the well-known ‘Exeter Riddle 4’, presents an everyday monastic bell as if it were an obedient monk, and it casts their relationship as interdependent and symbiotic. The bell solution has been heavily disputed. However, when the riddle is read alongside the rich context of monastic culture, and with careful attention to linguistic detail, this solution is confirmed.

The total hidage of land in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the Hwicce at its greatest extent appears to have been halved at an unknown date between the eighth century and the late eleventh. The article examines the relatively small number of surviving original texts of charters and leases which relate to land both in that kingdom and in all other parts of the kingdom of the Mercians into which it was at length subsumed. With other apparent instances of major hidage reductions having been found thereby elsewhere in the latter area, the article then argues that they were all effected either by the West Saxon kings of England in the course of the tenth century or, arguably more likely (even though the evidence is meagre), at a much earlier date by Mercian kings following the piecemeal enlargement of their kingdom by the absorption of formerly independent neighbouring polities.

This article provides an analysis and edition of newly discovered fragments of an Old English glossed psalter in the Regional Archive of Alkmaar, the Netherlands. These fragments once belonged to the same ‘N-Psalter’ as fragments earlier found in Cambridge (Dietz 1968), Haarlem (Derolez 1972), Sondershausen (Pilch 1997; Gneuss 1998) and Elbląg (Opalińska et al. 2023). The article provides analyses of the language and textual affiliations of the Old English gloss and aims to reconstruct the provenance of the fragments and the N-Psalter as a whole. The annotated edition includes appendices with collations of the Latin and Old English texts of other extant glossed psalters.

The flyleaf to the Tollemache Orosius (London, British Library, Add. MS 47967, 1r) which includes a vine-scroll panel, symbols of the four evangelists, and several smaller notes and sketches, constitutes one of the most extensive sequences of manuscript marginalia to survive from Early Medieval England. Its iconographical complexity is compounded by the inclusion of a sequence of sixteen runes that has long puzzled runologists. This article offers a contextual interpretation of the Tollemache Orosius runic sequence informed by the wider corpus of English runica manuscripta and the particular iconographical, literary and manuscript context in which the runic note appears. Elucidating the link between the runes and the surrounding imagery helps to unravel the iconographical scheme of the flyleaf, centred on the Vineyard of the Lord. It also provides an insight into the reception of the Old English Orosius in late-tenth-century Winchester and the importance of the layered meaning of the vinea domini motif for both monastic communities and the secular church.

The witness-list to a charter of Edgar the Peaceable, now lost but quoted by William Somner, designated Eadgifu, Edgar’s grandmother, as in Cantia etiam gubernator. Although doubts about the authenticity of Somner’s source are now unlikely to be resolved, a study of Eadgifu’s life and comparison with contemporary cases of shire administration and female secular power show that, at least in theory, the claim that she was governor of Kent is more credible than it may seem.

In studying medieval societies, etymology can help us to understand words and their uses. Names, too, can be interpreted as having their own meanings. Moreover, between the Carolingian era and the Gregorian reform, clerics and monks belonged to increasingly distinct categories of society. As these assertions were often true in early medieval England, it is legitimate to ask whether the names of ecclesiastics were affected. Implicit norms affect the choice of their names, which seem less varied than those of the aristocrats. Their names, although belonging to the same culture as the ecclesiastics themselves, were often Latinised or accompanied by specific titles. Sometimes the name was changed when someone became a cleric (cloister name); sometimes double names were adopted; sometimes a child’s name reflected his parents’ intention for him to be an ecclesiastic (clerical name). The aim of this article is to assess the role of these practices in ninth- to eleventh-century England.

The recorded corpus of Agnus Dei pennies made or found in England has been augmented by three further specimens. The first two (below, [1] and [2]) are imitations of the type, probably minted in Scandinavia but uncovered in England. The third (below, [3]) is a specimen of the original English issue, representing a previously unrecorded mint-place (Dorchester, in Dorset). The new coins are presented in turn, showing how each in its own way refines important aspects of the wider understanding of the Agnus Dei coinage.

The purpose of this article is to provide a synoptic view of what Patrick Wormald has aptly called the ‘rather odd’ history of Wulfstan scholarship. In doing so, it will also consider how our understanding of Wulfstan and his writings has been shaped by the historical reliance on stylistic analysis, both as an objective instrument to reconstruct his canon and as a methodological practice subject to personal biases, ideological trends and historical circumstances. Beginning with a discussion of ways that the study of Wulfstan’s style has framed our understanding of both his canon and authorial identity, this article then traces the evolution of Wulfstan scholarship from the sixteenth century to the present. It will conclude with a brief discussion of one of Wulfstan’s least-studied works, the homily On Various Misfortunes (Be mistlican belimpan), to suggest some possible avenues for future study.

Before the sixteenth century the religious houses had been the chief repositories of learning in England. With the Henrician religious revolution, however, their stability became threatened and what survived and what was destroyed has greatly influenced our views of the intellectual culture of the English Middle Ages. It is for this reason that the writings of the royal agent John Leland are so important to our understanding of the crumbling world he was witnessing.

In the years shortly before the suppressions Leland examined the contents of many libraries, listing titles of what he saw where. When in 1535 he began the compilation of his De uiris illustribus, he made use of these titles, the notes he had taken, and often the manuscripts themselves. The De uiris illustribus was compiled in two stages and the changes he made as he discovered further materials are significant. His evolving thoughts on Asser and his writings thus provide an illuminating case that throws light on his bio-bibliographical enterprise.

Scholars in recent decades have critiqued the notion of Old English as a poetry of iron: evoking a hypermasculine, primitive past, the metaphor is emblematic of outdated practices in the field. This article builds upon these critiques, while showing that they oversimplify the metaphor’s function in disciplinary history. Part I traces desires and unknowns in the nineteenth century that made iron embody Saxon poetry’s primitive artlessness. From these struggles, Part II turns to draw forth a counter-narrative, in which Bosworth’s metaphor of the hammering smith served to clarify difficulties of metrical knowledge c.1825. Part III then situates a later extension of iron imagery in the potentialities of late nineteenth-century iron architecture. Examining the challenges that early scholars faced helps us better perceive the literary, linguistic, and political ramifications of their solutions. Spotlighting the metaphor’s changing relationship to beauty versus utility also points forward, as we imagine new metaphors that might once more be productive for conceptualising poetic structure.

Who is the woman in The Wife’s Lament? This essay makes her out to be St Radegund (c. 520–587), deaconess of Sainte-Croix in Poitiers. Reevaluating the narrative syntax mainly of the first half of this poem, the argument finds not the one man conventionally taken to be the woman’s lover or husband in this poem, but four male subjects there whose actions fit the stories of Radegund’s cousin Amalfrid, her husband Clothar, her unnamed but murdered brother, and lastly Lord Jesus. The poet’s main sources are argued to be the two Vitae of St Radegund and the poems of Venantius Fortunatus (c. 530–c. 609), mostly his (and possibly also her) lament De excidio Thoringiae (c. 568). The essay finally claims that The Wife’s Lament is related to the winileodos banned by Charlemagne in 789, and that it was composed in this period as an elegiac riddle for St Radegund.