As the first study specifically dedicated to Old English references to nuns, this essay aims to assess how terms for ‘nun’ are used, particularly in the earlier Anglo-Saxon period. Recent research, particularly by Sarah Foot, as will be discussed below, has demonstrated the difficulty of establishing patterns for Old English vocabulary referring to Anglo-Saxon nuns. The lack of standardized monastic rules for earlier female houses and the complex chronological development of any existing monastic rules contribute to this difficulty. One area which has not yet been investigated is the corpus of references to non-Anglo-Saxon nuns, particularly that contained in the Old English translation of Gregory's Dialogues. The picture that emerges from this and other earlier texts is in many ways misogynistic in its connotations. The negativity associated with early literary representations of nuns may well have contributed to a tenth-century shift in the use of the relevant vocabulary.

Old English Vocabulary

One important research area in which the Dictionary of Old English and the Toronto Corpus have made important contributions is the charting of lexical change which occurred during the period in which Old English was in use. One example presenting quite drastic lexical change is the semantic field describing nuns. Old English presents a good range of vocabulary for ‘nun’, the general meaning of which could be defined as a devout woman living communally, having taken vows, and, in some cases, following a rule. The Old English Thesaurus lists munuc, mynecen(u), mynsterfæmne, nunfæmne, nunne, sweostor as belonging to this field. The vocabulary seems to vary greatly in its distribution and number of attestations in the Old English corpus. OE nunne, nonne, is an early loan from post-classical Latin nonna (‘nun’) and seems to have been the most widely used English term for ‘nun’ until the tenth century. Its use is not particularly frequent in the surviving Old English literature, however, with c. 120 occurrences. As the Toronto Corpus shows, what survives seems fairly polarized, with about a third of all attested cases occurring in a single text, Werferth's ninth-century Old English translation of Gregory's Dialogues. A related compound, nunfæmne, survives in the Dialogues only (eight occurrences).

By its very definition, relationship maintenance implies development within intimate relationships. Whether couples are engaging in activities that keep relationships in good repair or even just in existence, the underlying assumption is clear – the natural state of relationships, if left unattended to, is to deteriorate. Once a relationship starts, therefore, romantic partners must engage in a broad array of maintenance strategies to preserve their relationships, though the form and function of these strategies are likely to change as the partners develop across the life course. Despite the clearly developmental concept of relationship maintenance, scholars have argued that the approach to its study has remained relatively static and disproportionately focused on younger, less established couples. The goal of our chapter is to utilize life course theory to consider the extent to which relationship maintenance strategies vary according to the developmental stage of both the relationship and the individuals within it, as well as to explore whether the antecedents and consequences of relationship maintenance may change across the life course. Our review underscores the need for more developmentally oriented research, which could not only advance theory on what relationship maintenance entails but also elucidate why, when, and how partners engage in it.

The text fragment edited below constitutes Manuscript F of the Old English Martyrology. The two text sections have been edited separately before by Heinrich Henel, and were also known to the last editor of the Old English Martyrology, Günter Kotzor, although the latter did not designate the text fragment in Harley 3271 as a distinct manuscript of the Old English Martyrology, probably because the text in Harley 3271 can indeed be interpreted as very faithful quotations from the Old English Martyrology, rather than a witness in its own right. It is, however, noteworthy that in Harley 3271 the two entries are not embedded in another text, but form two items in a longer list of short notes concerned with the topic of chronology, some of which were possibly copied by the same scribe Fa.

The possibility remains that the two short notes on the Beginning of Summer and Winter in Harley 3271 are not excerpts from the Old English Martyrology, but represent one of its sources: in theory, the martyrologist could have derived the information and wording of these entries from a set of Old English notes contained in an earlier encyclopaedic manuscript. A more plausible scenario, however, is that the martyrologist derived the information found in these entries from Bede, De temporum ratione, 35.41–51, a text which he is otherwise thought to have used for other sections concerned with chronology and cosmology; it is also important to note that no further vernacular source texts seem to have been used in the composition of the Old English Martyrology.

Each of the entries below comments on a particular text section, and consists of three parts. The first aims to summarise the sources of each section and comment on the presumed composition; the second provides notes on specific passages and points of difficulty; the third gives a summary bibliography. Within the bibliography, items are ordered according to the extent to which they comment on the entire text section: more wide-ranging items are listed first, and are followed by items commenting on more detailed aspects. The term ‘source’ is used to refer to texts which the martyrologist could have accessed directly or indirectly (in the latter case as an antecedent source, that is, excerpted or quoted from an otherwise unidentified intermediary text).

The notes below are not intended to provide comprehensive biographical information on the saints themselves; this can be found in the standard dictionaries of saints, for example Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, John and Attwater, The Penguin Dictionary of Saints, Kelly, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes, or easily accessible electronic tools, such as the Catholic Encyclopedia. More detailed biographical, literary and historical information on each saint can also be found in Whatley, ‘Acta Sanctorum’, Blair, ‘A Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Saints’, and Caraffa, ed., Bibliotheca Sanctorum. Overlap between the feasts of the Old English Martyrology and other martyrologes and Anglo-Saxon calendars is presented in user-friendly tables in Kotzor, I, 290–300 and 302–11, together with the relevant bibliographical details of such comparative material.

The Old English Martyrology is one of the longest and most important prose texts written in Anglo-Saxon England; it also represents one of the most impressive examples of encyclopaedic writing from the European Middle Ages. Probably intended as a reference work, it experienced more than 200 years of transmission and usage. Its principal aim must have been to educate Anglo-Saxon readers in their cults of native and foreign saints, but it also presents detailed information on time measurement, the seasons of the year, biblical events, and cosmology. Its range is impressive even by modern standards: the text makes reference to roughly 450 historical and legendary characters, covering more than 6000 years of political, ecclesiastical and saintly history, as the events described range from the creation of the world in the year 5199 before Christ to contemporary cosmological phenomena still observed by the author himself. Geographically, the text covers the British Isles to western, central, and southern Europe, the Middle East, Northern Africa, and India. The complete set of data contained in this encyclopaedia is collected in no other surviving literature from the early Middle Ages, although constituent parts of this information can be found in some 250 earlier texts, many of which may directly have influenced the composition of the Old English Martyrology. It is hard to imagine today what difficulties its author or authors must have overcome in the compilation of this knowledge, and even now, in an age where information travels fast and electronically, one is struck by the range and comprehensive nature of this hagiographical database.

What follows below is an edition of Manuscript E, a damaged text fragment of the Old English Martyrology; for further details, see p. 22 above. Because the manuscript is so badly damaged, examination with modern technology is crucial; Celia Sisam was the first to investigate the manuscript under ultraviolet light. For the edition below, a new set of ultraviolet images was produced which turned out to be of higher quality than the images at Sisam's disposal and which have been used to re-examine her readings. Uncertain readings are given in parentheses. Capitalisation, punctuation and subdivision into paragraphs are modern; tironian notes have been expanded throughout (“ond’). The number of dots are intended to represent the number of missing letters, but in cases of longer passages which now appear illegible because of surface damage or truncation of the page, I have not attempted to calculate the number of lost letters. Such passages are here signalled with square brackets and a reference indicating illegibility or missing text. The text contains annotations by what seem to be two hands, here designated Ea and Eb; their contributions are signalled in the apparatus.