Anglo-Saxon Studies

Reviews Anglo-Saxon Studies ROBERTA FRANK Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies Presented to Peter Clemoes on the Occasion of His Sixty-fifth Birthday. Edited by Michael Lapidge and Helmut Gneuss Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985. xiv, 459. iIIus. $69.50 This handsome volume, meticulously presented, is not a typical Festschrift. The usual adjectives - uneven, unfocused, unwieldy - do not apply. The fourteen essays in honour of Peter Oemoes (founder of Anglo-Saxon England and recently retired from his post as Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Cambridge) are without exception models of erudition and thoughtful scholarship. As if quality alone would not guarantee a noteworthy book, the editors managed to elicit from their contributors articles of a surprising unity of scope and temper. The volume has two parts. The first examines the composition of monastic and private libraries and the variety of texts available in them. The second looks at the sources of particular texts and touches on problems of transmission, reception, and interpretation. There is much here to admire and adopt outright, much to learn from and ponder. The collection marks an advance in our understanding of the mental world of pre-Conquest England. A review can only hint at the breadth of learning offered by the individual studies. Four articles take up the first two hundred pages. Peter Hunter Blair's posthumous 'Whitby as a Centre of Learning in the Seventh Century' makes claimsfor the importance ofthat monastery on thebasis of the numberofbishopsit trained, its association with Credmon, and the synod that took place there in 664. Michael Lapidge's 'Surviving Booklists from Anglo-Saxon England' is a magisterial review of thirteen booklists and inventories that record the contents of Anglo-Saxon libraries or gifts of donors to these libraries. Helmut Gneuss in 'Liturgical Books in Anglo-Saxon England and Their Old English Terminology' collects and explains the Old English terms for the various types ofliturgical books and provides a briefintroduction to the contents and preservation ofAnglo-Saxon copies of these books as well as a preliminary inventory of extant manuscripts. These two articles will become standard reference works. The longest piece in the volume has the shortest title. Simon Keynes's readable and wide-ranging 'King UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 56, NUMBER 3, SPRING 1987 462 ROBERTA FRANK Athelstan's Books' identifies and describes a group of manuscripts, written mainly on the continent, that came into the king's possession; the author underlines the importance of Athelstan's reign in the continuing revival of learning initiated by King Alfred. The ten articles that form the second part of the volume are shorter but no less weighty. Patrick Sims-Williams's 'Thoughts on Ephrem the Syrian in Anglo-Saxon England' hears echoes of that Greek Father's exotic voice in the surviving prayer books of the early Anglo-Saxon period. J.E. Cross's 'On the Library of the Old English Martyrologist' discusses books named in or identifiable as sources of the anonymous ninth-century vernacular text. Michael Korhammer in 'The Orientation System in the Old English Orosius: Shifted or Not?' replies with a resounding nay, dismissing the theory ofan Old Scandinavian orientation system that moved all the cardinal points forty-five degrees clockwise as 'inconsistent, impracticable and historically improbable' (p 268). M.R. Godden's'Anglo-Saxons on the Mind' says important things about the treatment of 'mind' and 'soul' in Anglo-Saxon writings, and illustrates the complex relationships between psychological ideas and linguistic expression. D.G. Scragg's 'The Homilies of the Blickling Manuscript ' explores the physical make-up of this collection and the degree and nature of its overlap in content with other manuscripts. Susan Rankin in 'The Liturgical Background of the Old English Advent Lyrics: A Reappraisal' uncovers a liturgical basis for the unusual arrangementof these poems. M.McC. Gatch's 'The Office in Late Anglo-Saxon Monasticism' is a masterful survey that manages to be both a bibliographical guide to the field and a persuasive argument that JElfric's Old Testament writings are an adaptation of materials from the monastic devotional life to the devotional life of laymen and non-monastic clergy. E.G. Stanley...