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257 Penitential Nakedness and the Junius 11 Genesis Janet S. Ericksen n injunction in an Old English guide for assigning penances , the “Scrift boc” usually tagged as of “Pseudo-Egbert,” asserts that “Ceorle ne gedafena∂ †æt he his wif æfre nacode geseo” (“it is not right for a man that he ever see his wife naked”). 1 Despite its potential impracticality and peripheralseeming status in a list of more dramatic moral transgressions, the restriction is not alone among Anglo-Saxon texts in identifying nakedness as both the focal sign of sin and part of an encouragement to confess and receive penance. The illustrated Old English Genesis narrative in Oxford, Bodleian Library Manuscript Junius 11, usually known by the conventional titles of its two parts, Genesis A and Genesis B, as well as at least two Old English anonymous homilies corroborate the penitential. In early Anglo-Saxon law, as Mary Richard’s essay indicates, “the unclothed, wounded body . . . conveyed the evidence of a crime and the means to determine restitution.”2 In a vernacular poetic narrative, a homily, and a penitential handbook, nakedness itself, rather than the marks upon the naked body, is a sign of sin and a demonstration of the clothing that confession and 1 Robert Spindler, ed., Das altenglische Bussbuch (sog. Confessionale pseudoEgberti ) (Leipzig, 1934) XIV.17.a, p. 182. The OE survives in three manuscripts , CCCC 190, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 121 and Laud Misc. 482; for discussion of the attribution, name, and date of the contents, see Allen J. Frantzen, The Literature of Penance in Anglo-Saxon England (New Brunswick, NJ, 1983), pp. 133-36. The same injunction appears in the twelfth section, “Of Matters Relating to Marriage,” in the Penitential of Theodore, for which see John T. McNeill and Helena M. Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance (New York, 1938, 1990), p. 211, #31, as well as pp. 24348 on the Pseudo-Egbert penitential. 2 See Mary P. Richards, “The Body as Text in Early Anglo-Saxon Law,” in this collection. A Janet S. Ericksen 258 penance might provide. The language of the penitential restriction expressly recalls Adam’s recognition of Eve’s nakedness , and though the homilies do not directly evoke the Fall, the persuasive power of nakedness in the homilies and the penitential remains inextricably tied to the Genesis narrative, to the ramifications of that first recognition of nakedness. Indeed, the most developed evidence for a perception in Old English of nakedness as a penitential motif occurs in Genesis A and B, where a remarkably vivid verbal and visual emphasis on nakedness accompanies the inclusion of Adam and Eve’s repentance. The Fall story, particularly as it appears in these two Old English poems, offers a quite precise originary narrative moment for an explicitly penitential view of nakedness in Anglo-Saxon England, one that allows the good Christian little room for bare bodies and unconfessed sin. The Junius 11 Genesis narrative, like the homilies, uses literal nakedness to emphasize the need for figurative clothing and defines part of that clothing as confession and penance. 3 The dramatic presentation of penance in the poem and the more directly dogmatic connection of nakedness to penance in the penitential and the homilies imply the potential usefulness of multiple approaches to the same topics in conveying church 3 The majority of the surviving Old English references to nakedness stem from the New Testament vision of Judgment Day offered at the end of the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:31-46. Of these, most focus on the duty of each person to clothe the poor; this is one means of working towards salvation on Judgment Day. The connection between nakedness on Judgment Day and clothing the soul by such actions as giving garments to the poor is a related trope in Old English religious literature. One of the best articulations of this is in the first Dialogue of Gregory, in the story of Boniface: “While he was still at home with his mother, he would sometimes leave the house and later return without his coat or even without his shirt, for, as soon as he saw anyone in need of clothes, he would give up his own. By divesting his body in this way, he wished to clothe his soul in the sight of God with merits for heaven.” Gregory I, Dialogues, trans. Odo John Zimmerman , Fathers of the Church 39 (New York, 1959), p. 40. Wærferth’s translation of the Dialogues includes the story, describing...

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