The Long Ninth Century and the Prose of King Alfred’s Reign

The two parts of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge Manuscript 173 (CCCC 173) present something of a historical puzzle. The first part of the manuscript contains the earliest copy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (hereafter Chronicle), known as the A Text, written around 900.¹ This part of the manuscript, which also contains a slightly later copy of the Laws of Kings Alfred and Ine, asserts the importance of King Alfred (871–899) and plays a key role his literary legacy: the famous program of education and translation that he describes in a letter that circulated as a preface to the Old English (OE) translation of Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care.² The second part of the manuscript contains a variety of Latin texts, including Caelius Sedulius’s biblical epic the Carmen Paschale, letters, other poems, and versions of the Sibylline prophecies. These date to the eighth and the end of the ninth centuries and were glossed extensively in the tenth.³ This part of the manuscript reflects a level of Latinity that troubles Alfred’s claim that Latin learning had fallen off almost completely in England.⁴ While the easiest solution to this puzzle is that the two parts of the manuscript are unrelated, one of the scribes of the Chronicle restored a section of the second part, presumably when he was working on the Chronicle around 900. Although some scholars have continued to treat the two parts of the manuscript separately, this scribe connects them and plausibly places both in late ninth- or early tenth-century Winchester.⁵

The next most obvious solution is that the evidence of Latin learning found in the second part of CCCC 173 skips the period of decline that Alfred describes—part of it is earlier—but where, when, and how did the Chronicle scribe in question get his education? The scribe’s work suggests that he knew enough to restore the text himself, that he had access to another copy of the text, or both. These possibilities, in turn, may indicate that the issue may be more complex than Alfred suggests.

Such questions have preoccupied many scholars in the past century. Alfred’s authorship and influence have also been the subject of a prolonged and active debate.⁶ One reason is that Alfred’s biographer, Asser, tells us that Alfred learned Latin miraculously late in life—an assertion whose hagiographical tone has given some scholars pause.⁷ But these debates have also persisted because of gaps and contradictions in the historical evidence. Variations in the language and style of early OE prose texts further trouble the idea that Alfred had control over all the texts produced during or immediately after his own reign. Finally, scribal interventions, that is, changes made over time as manuscripts were copied, also indicate that the manuscripts in which these texts survive are later copies of older originals. As such, they may tell us as much, if not more, about their ninth- and tenth-century contexts as they do about their origins—hence the ongoing debates about Alfred’s role and program. Problematically, the scrutiny of Alfred has been so intense that it has sometimes eclipsed the study of the works themselves.

CCCC 173 provides an excellent centerpiece for a discussion of early OE prose and its relationship to Latin learning, because it illustrates the complex historical, paleographical, and textual questions that characterize early OE prose. Looking more closely at CCCC 173 in the context of a re-examination of the OE prose texts that have historically been associated with Alfred’s program—in their manuscript contexts and in relation to the variety of Latin broader sources that they reflect—sheds new light on these questions. Specifically, the evidence suggests that some Latin learning survived the Viking invasions and that vernacular prose existed in England prior to Alfred’s reign; the relative political stability brought about by Alfred and his successors fostered scholarship and book production. The rich variety of learned OE prose that survives from the early tenth century may therefore be best understood as having roots independent of and possibly earlier than Alfred. Earlier OE prose developed and changed in the late ninth century, then reached its culmination during the reign of Edward (899–924) and archiepiscopacy of Plegmund (890–923).

In addition to the Chronicle and the law codes I have mentioned, the OE prose texts that can be dated to the ninth or early tenth centuries are the Life of St. Chad,⁸ the Life of St. Guthlac,⁹ the Martyrology,¹⁰ a version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History (OE Bede),¹¹ translations of Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care and Dialogues,¹² Augustine’s Soliloquies,¹³ Orosius’s Seven Books of History against the Pagans (Orosius),¹⁴ Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy (OE Boethius),¹⁵ and the Prose Psalms (Psalms).¹⁶ A variety of unplaced prose homilies also belong to the early OE prose period and some of the texts preserved in the Blickling Homiliary.¹⁷ Of these, only the translations of the Pastoral Care, the Soliloquies, and the Psalms are considered to be the work of Alfred.¹⁸ While the Lives of Chad and Guthlac have been accepted as earlier in origin, the dates of the others are the subject of debate. The main problem, as Henry Sweet noted in 1871, is that “the only written works of Alfred which are preserved in contemporary manuscripts are the Pastoral Care and the Orosius,” but Janet Bately has shown that the Orosius, despite its early date, cannot have been translated by Alfred.¹⁹ Christine Rauer has argued that the OE Martyrology may predate Alfred, Malcolm Godden and Susan Irvine have argued for the independence of the OE Boethius, and my study argues for an independent Mercian origin for the OE Bede.²⁰

Before looking at some of these texts in detail, some background is necessary. Following a brief account of early English history, this essay provides an overview of key issues surrounding questions of Alfred’s authorship and educational program, as well as of early OE prose. In light of these contexts, I discuss several early OE prose texts and CCCC 173 to elucidate the complex, learned nature of the OE prose of the “long ninth century,” which includes the prose of Alfred’s reign.²¹

Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (History) provides the best and earliest source for Anglo-Saxon history to 731.²² Bede composed his account of the arrival of the Germanic tribes around 449 CE, and their conversion in the late sixth and early seventh centuries, during a first “golden age” of Anglo-Saxon art and learning in the north. Viking raids, which began with attacks on major monastic centers like Lindisfarne and Jarrow in 793, led to large-scale invasions and settlement by 865. In addition to the loss of life, books, and works of art, there were substantial political and demographic changes. Between 865 and 937, as Peter Hunter Blair reminds us, “the political system … perished through the disintegration or destruction of the several once independent kingdoms upon which that system had rested, and its place was taken by the single kingdom of England.”²³ This happened in stages. Before the Viking attacks, the tribes that would become the English were frequently at war among themselves. For example, the boundaries of Northumbria in Bede’s day were fortified against the Mercians, who gained political and cultural predominance on the island during the eighth century. This period, known as the Mercian “hegemony,” played a crucial role in the transmission of learning and culture between Jarrow and the next “golden age” of Anglo-Saxon England in post-Alfredian Wessex. At the peak of their power, the Mercians controlled a wide range of territory, including London and Canterbury.

The kingdom of Mercia fell to Alfred’s grandfather, Ecgbert of Wessex, by 825, but the continued Scandinavian invasions caused the most significant political and demographic changes.²⁴ Northumbria fell to the Scandinavians in 866–867, followed by East Anglia in 869.²⁵ Mercia was also reduced by 874–877, but not completely overtaken. Famously, as recorded in the Chronicle, Alfred and the West Saxons defeated Guthrum and the Danes at the Battle of Edington in 878. This victory led to the establishment of the Danelaw, a large area not subject to English laws, made up (roughly) of Yorkshire, East Anglia, and the central and eastern Midlands. This treaty also initiated a phase of West Saxon predominance over the remaining, much-reduced territory controlled by the English.²⁶

Although Alfred’s historical importance is undisputed, the extent to which Wessex under Alfred was a stable political entity is a matter of debate. Although Simon Keynes sees Alfred as having created a “distinctive polity, for over forty years from the 880s to the 920s,”²⁷ Janet Thorman reminds us that “[h]owever strong and stable West-Saxon rule in the tenth century may have been, the Chronicle makes it clear that no West-Saxon leader was free of rebellion, invasion, treachery, and the pressures of separate interests pursuing opportunistic strategies. West-Saxon hegemony was from the start continuously challenged and reasserted in response to contingent events.”²⁸

Although this is a cursory overview of early English history, the shifting boundaries of political and cultural influence, combined with the limited amount of early evidence, make it difficult to ascertain to what extent and where learning, copying manuscripts, and translating Latin texts into English took place. On the one hand, Michael Lapidge points out that the “grim picture” Alfred paints of all the churches being ravaged and books being burned has been “confirmed by evidence of various kinds. Scarcely a single manuscript written during the period [from] 835–885 survives, and scribes who were employed to copy royal charters during the same period were plainly illiterate, to judge from the substantial number of original, single-sheet charters which have survived.”²⁹ On the other hand, Richard Gameson reminds us that the Vikings attacked communities all across northern Europe and that “such assaults did not invariably mean the loss of the entire book collection, nor the cessation of scribal activity.”³⁰ Gameson observes that Alfred emphasizes the lack of Latin learning over the lack of books, and that Alfred’s program produces books for devotional reading rather than service books. He suggests that Alfred felt “there was still a reasonable number of liturgical books (albeit quite old ones) in his kingdom. The evidence of surviving early manuscripts confirms this, at least in the case of gospel books. The most important books of all seem to have been fairly widespread in ninth-century England.”³¹ Most important, Gameson points out that the struggle to produce and protect books was a problem that confronted most rulers, abbots, and bishops in the early Middle Ages. “Like many others before and after him, Alfred began the work of reconstruction in the midst of chaos and loss.”³²

Alfred was able to begin reconstruction in England because Latin learning had survived in western Mercia, as Michelle Brown and others have emphasized.³³ King Offa of Mercia (757–796) had been actively involved in book patronage, and as Brown states, “some of the finest examples of Anglo-Saxon art were produced south of the Humber under the Mercian ‘hegemony’—the Vespasian Psalter … the Royal Bible, etc.”³⁴ These surviving masterpieces suggest that eighth-century Mercia must have played a key role in the transmission of learning from earlier phases to Alfred’s day. Even Lapidge acknowledges that a “large area of the West Midlands had remained untouched by Viking armies, and a cathedral library at (say) Worcester or Hereford might well have remained more or less intact,” and that manuscripts “were evidently copied from exemplars which had somehow survived the dark years of the ninth century,” but which no longer survive.³⁵ David Dumville has also shown that surviving charter evidence from Mercia indicates that “a better standard of script and overall production obtained in western Mercia through the second half of the ninth century,” which leads him to conclude that “one could argue on this basis for a much less severe decline in educational and scriptorial standards in western Mercia in the late ninth century.”³⁶ After all, Alfred brought the scholars Plegmund, Wærferth, Athelstan, and Werwulf to his court from Mercia.³⁷

Although scholars have long been aware of Mercia’s role in the transmission of learning, there has been continued debate about the existence of a pre-Alfredian school of prose and the extent of Mercian scholarly influence.³⁸ Rudolf Vleeskruyer argued for a pre-Alfredian Mercian school of prose in 1953, but his arguments met with mixed reviews.³⁹ In response, Bately emphasized the problem of evidence: “[G]iven the small amount of material that has come down to us and the manner of its transmission, the terms ‘early Mercian’ in the context of vocabulary virtually means ‘not found in the Orosius or the works of Alfred.’”⁴⁰ Bately provides an important caution against staking large claims on limited evidence and, indirectly, against assuming that all early OE prose must be either Alfredian or Anglian. For example, Godden and Irvine have recently argued that the OE Boethius is independent and from southern England.⁴¹ Fortunately there are new tools available, and scholars including R. D. Fulk and Greg Waite have developed strategies for better understanding the complex evidence. Fulk’s work suggests the existence of early OE prose before Alfred; Waite’s helps us understand why some Anglian features persist while others have been removed.⁴²

The facts that the surviving manuscripts from eighth-century Mercia are biblical or liturgical and that only three manuscripts survive from the middle of the ninth century, while twenty-nine manuscripts written in England survive from the tenth century, mark the extent to which literature blossomed in England in the tenth century.⁴³ It is important to bear in mind that the renewed Viking raids of Ælfric’s later days (1006–1007, 1009–1012) were equally devastating, so that the number of manuscripts that survive from that era can and should be set against the numbers that survive from the earlier century.⁴⁴ These manuscripts make it clear that things had changed in England. Problematically, however, it is also true that only two manuscripts survive from Alfred’s day, only one of which can be associated with him. This small number cautions against the idea that OE prose originates with him. However, the subsequent explosion of literary prose suggests that his program, along with the forty years of relative political stability his reign introduced, were important factors in the history of OE prose. In this manuscript evidence we can read the likelihood that Edward and Plegmund fostered learning and book making after Alfred’s death.

The principal theories that have been put forward to explain the linguistic variety of the texts and to assert the primary importance of Alfred’s program over a Mercian prose tradition have been (1) that the Mercians working at Alfred’s court operated as a team in the king’s name, producing texts of mixed dialectal features and styles of translation; (2) that Mercian features in the surviving manuscripts were introduced by scribes copying West Saxon texts who accidentally introduced words and spelling forms from their native dialect; (3) that the dialect of Wessex varied sufficiently across regions and social classes to explain the mixture found in some texts; and (4) that some writers included elevated or poetic language that has been interpreted as being Anglian, rather than poetic or elevated.

Anglian is a family of OE dialects that has two branches: Mercian and Northumbrian. Alfred’s dialect was early West Saxon (eWS); the bulk of surviving OE literature is in the late West Saxon (lWS) dialect, which became the literary standard during the tenth and eleventh centuries. Some examples of Anglian features are related to spelling and phonology, such as o for a before nasal consonants; ē for eWS īe; absence of syncope in the present tense of some verbs; and breaking in seolf instead of WS self, sylf. There are also words not found in WS that occur in Anglian texts, like acweðan (say), bewerian (warn), gen (yet), and semninga (suddenly).⁴⁵ Much of the controversy that arises about early OE prose relates to the mixture of dialects in the earlier texts and the problem that most texts do not show a development from eWS to lWS; rather, they show a shift from Anglian to lWS—which is not what we would expect if OE prose, as Michael Alexander puts it, “was called into being by a decision of Alfred, king of Wessex.”⁴⁶

The first theory, which is closely linked with the next two, is grounded in surviving documentary evidence indicating that Alfred brought together a team whose members included scholars from the Continent, plus the group from Mercia listed above. At a roundtable about the authorship of the OE Bede in 1892, Frances March asserted that the idea of “translation” by the king implied teamwork: “[I]t has been known, stated, and understood that King Alfred, who had all kinds of business on hand, was helped by his [b]ishops and scholars to make his translations, and the process by which it was done implies that he did not create the translation word by word, so to speak, but that he listened to, looked over, corrected, approved, or recomposed at his pleasure the work of his co-laborers.”⁴⁷ This remains a popular position. If the team worked this way, it seems logical that Mercian dialect elements entered the texts because of the team’s influence.

Keynes persuasively argues that Alfred’s court fostered a mixed social and literary milieu. He demonstrates that Alfred’s court brought West Saxons and Mercians into close proximity, beyond the presence of the small group of advisers. According to Keynes, “it should be clear from the above [evidence] that in the 880s and 890s King Alfred’s court would have been positively crawling with Mercians.”⁴⁸ Keynes’s evidence, derived from a combination of coins and charters, deepens our understanding of cultural interaction between Wessex and Mercia—that is, between two groups that had been ethnically related, but had existed as separate kingdoms in separate regions until brought together in the face of the Viking attacks, under Alfred, who was “cast not simply or exclusively as ‘king of the West Saxons’ but, in a formulation calculated to be inclusive of a wider combination of peoples, as ‘king of the Anglo-Saxons.’”⁴⁹ The mixed cultural milieu Keynes articulates presents a viable backdrop that could explain how the dialect(s) of Wessex might have varied. Some scholars see such evidence as sufficient to explain the varied language of early OE prose more generally and to maintain that the whole range of texts traditionally associated with Alfred remains in his sphere of influence.⁵⁰

The problem, however, as Fulk demonstrates regarding the law codes and anonymous homilies, is that the surviving textual evidence does not always support these otherwise plausible theories. More specifically, Fulk shows that the Anglian features in lWS texts are not the result of Mercian scribes copying lWS texts and accidentally introducing Mercian features. According to Fulk, “we have no certain knowledge of any such regional variety, while we do have very plain evidence that some texts produced by Mercians were routinely Saxoni[z]ed as they were recopied.”⁵¹ Although he warns against discarding theories of regional and social variety altogether, he points out that if the dialect variations we see in the manuscript texts were the result of cultural and linguistic interaction, “we should instead expect that the kinds of scribal change that are detectable would not be so unidirectional, but that there would be a constant flux of both additions and deletions of Anglian features.”⁵² The fact that we see the consistent deletion of Anglian features suggests that the scribes deliberately removed them.

While Fulk acknowledges the ongoing debate, he asserts that “there has developed over the years a degree of consensus—chiefly among linguists rather than literary scholars—that there must have been a Mercian tradition of writing in the vernacular before the rise of Wessex in the course of the ninth century or at least some anonymous [lWS] prose must derive from Mercian originals,”⁵³ because there is “abundant evidence in the texts for the continual elimination of Anglian features as they were recopied, and no reliable evidence for the addition of such features over time.”⁵⁴ The OE texts in which we see this process taking place are the OE Bede, the Dialogues, the Lives of Chad and Guthlac, the Martyrology, some of the law codes, and a range of anonymous homilies.

Fulk’s work, which has been overlooked by many literary scholars, advances the case for a tradition of earlier prose writing in the Anglian dialect. However, it does not explain why some lWS scribes retain some arguably Anglian words but not others. Greg Waite’s recent work on the OE Bede suggests an answer to this problem by tracing patterns of what he calls “dialect accommodation” in the manuscripts of the OE Bede.⁵⁵ Waite identifies a series of “carefully crafted semantic systems” in the text, whereby the OE Bede either corresponds closely to Bede’s semantic emphases or compresses a multivalent semantic field in Latin into the same number of OE words. These systems not only explain why Anglian forms survive in the latest manuscripts of the OE Bede, but also demonstrate a close affinity between the OE Bede and the glossing tradition in early England. The implications of Fulk’s and Waite’s linguistic scholarship have not yet been brought to bear on other early OE prose texts, but when brought together they break new ground in helping to explain the dialectal varieties and complex evidence found in early OE prose.

So, despite the fact that only two manuscripts survive from King Alfred’s reign, the analyses of dialect transmission and accommodation by Fulk and Waite allow us to posit a more varied and longer history of vernacular prose in early England and to see King Alfred’s program as an important part of the ongoing development of early OE prose. This development was most likely interrupted in the middle of the ninth century, though learning continued in the part of Mercia that remained free of Viking attacks. While these lexical and dialectal arguments do not demonstrate the existence of one unified school or pinpoint a date, they make good sense of the complex evidence found in early OE prose that has long troubled the story of its Alfredian origins. The additional fact, as Rohini Jayatilaka demonstrates, that some of the translations associated with Alfred’s program contain evidence that their authors were familiar with a wide range of learned Latin sources, also suggests that Alfred may have been engaging in a bit of self-fashioning when he cast himself in the role of educational reformer in a land devoid of Latin learning. Given the state of England at the time, he may have been genuinely unaware of some surviving pockets of learning. There is no evidence, for example, that he knew the OE Bede. The sections of the Chronicle drawn from Bede’s Latin show no relation to the OE Bede.⁵⁶ Nor do we find overlap between the shared sections of the OE Bede and the Orosius, or the Dialogues.⁵⁷ Looking more closely at some of these early OE texts, especially OE Bede, the Dialogues, the Pastoral Care, and the Psalms, in relation to their language, sources, and content, not only demonstrates the rich variety of early OE prose and the high levels of Latin and vernacular learning embodied therein, but also allows us to see how relevant these texts remain to English culture as they are transmitted to later audiences. In these contexts, we can see that the historical puzzle that seems to surround CCCC 173 is no puzzle at all.

The OE Bede provides a salutary launching point for a discussion of early OE prose, because it exhibits the linguistic processes described above, has played a key role in the historical debates, and illustrates many of the characteristics of early OE translations.

Our knowledge about the origins of this text remains limited. It survives in five manuscripts and three excerpts copied from the late ninth to the late eleventh centuries.⁵⁸ It was translated anonymously into the Mercian dialect of OE sometime in the ninth or early tenth centuries. Although Bately argues that we cannot place the OE Bede in the ninth century, Godden suggests it may be “a few decades or half-century earlier” than the earliest manuscripts.⁵⁹ The bulk of the text was translated by one main translator, though parts of book III survive in a separate translation on one group of manuscripts (C, O, and Ca); the preface and chapter headings may have been translated by two others. The fact that the earliest surviving evidence is a leaf from sometime between 890 and 930 containing three carefully copied excerpts suggests that the text was in circulation long enough before the turn of the century for scribes to excerpt important passages. The fact that these excerpts, along with two substantial manuscripts of the OE Bede, survive from the late ninth or early tenth centuries is striking. Because this is a century from which zero copies of the Latin original survive in England, the existence of several copies of the OE Bede suggests that it played a key role in the dissemination of the text in tenth-century England.

As Dorothy Whitelock has shown, the main translator of OE Bede substantially abridges Bede’s History.⁶⁰ He shortens the descriptions of England and Ireland, cuts out most of the Roman and foreign history, and entirely eliminates Bede’s account of the Pelagian heresy and his excerpts from Adomnán’s descriptions of the Holy Land. He removes only part of Bede’s account of the Easter controversy. He also eliminates almost all of the papal correspondence, although one letter, Gregory’s Responsiones, is moved from the end of book I to the end of book III. He abridges books I and V most radically, though he retains Bede’s otherworldly visions in book V. He transmits books III and IV (which contain accounts of English saints) almost in their entirety. The overall effect of these changes allows E. Gordon Whatley to group the OE Bede with the Dialogues and Martyrology as texts that are “hagiographic in content but collective in form.”⁶¹

Sweet first questioned the association of the OE Bede with Alfred in 1876, because of its “un-English” word order.⁶² In doing so, he essentially opened the debate about Alfred’s authorship. Miller presented more substantial evidence against Alfred’s authorship of the OE Bede in his 1890 edition, by demonstrating that the dialect of the original translation is Mercian. This is clearest in the vocabulary and spelling of the two oldest manuscripts. Independent analyses by several other scholars substantiated Miller’s arguments.⁶³ Although the text continues to be associated with Alfred’s circle by some scholars, it has also served as one of the key sources for information about the Mercian dialect.

Although Bede’s translator abridged his source, his translation style is famously literal and Latinate, though he is also known for adding word pairs to his source.⁶⁴ The literal nature of the translation may result from its “evolutionary” status; that is, from its position between the early work of glossators and the more fully developed prose written after the reign of Alfred and during the reforms of Edgar. In the process of copying the text, Anglo-Saxon scribes adapted it, so that it survives as a mixture of Anglian and lWS forms and spellings. They also altered some of the Latinate syntax, either not understanding it or attempting to update it.⁶⁵ All of the surviving manuscripts show some degree of West-Saxonization. Much of the vocabulary of the OE Bede is built from common-stock vocabulary, which probably increased the legibility of the text in later Anglo-Saxon England. But it also contains some obscure dialectal words and words from the glossing tradition, which suggests that the translator was working in a sophisticated intellectual milieu.

History was one of the most important genres in early England, though the concept of history then differed from our understanding of history today. In the early Middle Ages, Roger Ray explains, history dealt with veritas, but what could be understood as “truth” included things plausible from a Christian perspective, because “the Bible inculcated a vision of reality that intermingled divine and human agendas.” ⁶⁶ We see this clearly in Bede’s work, along with the Dialogues, the Orosius, and the Chronicle. Such “intermingling,” apparent in Bede’s miracle stories, led some post-Enlightenment scholars to criticize him, but more recently, scholars including Ray and the present author have argued that the miraculous formed an important part of Bede’s Christian worldview.⁶⁷ In Bede’s understanding, God still actively intervened in human history. An example from the OE Bede in which King Oswald raises a cross on the field of battle demonstrates these intermingled agendas. Not only does Oswald emerge victorious as king of Northumbria, but Bede reveals that the place of victory was divinely foreshadowed, and the cross manifested healing powers:

& æfter geearnunge his geleafan þæt heo heora feond oferswiðdon & sige ahton. In þære gebedstowe æfter þon monig mægen & hælo tacen gefremed wæron to tacnunge & to gemynde þæs cyninges geleafan. Ond monige gen to dæge of þæm treo þæs halgan Cristes mæles sponas & scefþon neomað & þa in wæter sendað & þæt wæþer on adlige men oððe on neat stregdað oðþe drincan syllað & heo sona hælo onfoð. Is seo stow on Englisc genemned Heofenfeld. Wæs geo geara swa nemned fore-tacnunge ðæra toweardan wundra, forðon þe þær þæt heofonlice sigebeacen aræred beon scolde, & þær heofonlic sige þam cinge seald wæs & þær gen to dæge heofonlic wundor mærsode beoð.

[And as his faith deserved, they defeated their enemies and won the victory. Afterwards at this place of prayer many marvels and holy signs were performed in token and memory of the king’s faith. And at the present day still many take chips and shavings from the wood of this holy crucifix and put them in water and sprinkle them on sick men or cattle, or give it to drink and they are at once cured. The place is called in English “Heavenfield.” It was of old so named, foretokening the future wonders, because there the heavenly trophy should be reared and there victory from heaven was given to the king, and still at the present day miracles are celebrated there.]⁶⁸

From the perspective of Bede and his translator, Oswald’s victory manifests his sanctity and the divine authorization of his rule. The place had already been called Heavenfield, but only Oswald’s piety allowed the true meaning of the place-name to manifest itself. This foretokening marks the extent to which Bede models the History on the divine plan articulated by the Bible. The fact that splinters from the cross heal sick men and cattle asserts the salutary benefits of Christian kingship for the people and their wealth. Because the OE Bede ventriloquizes Bede’s repeated declaration that miracles still happen there today, it pulls the episode forward from Oswald’s time to the ninth century and beyond.

The passage contains Anglian words and expressions, including sceafþon, gen to dæg, and geara. In terms of style, the OE Bede follows its source closely, though it does add some word pairs. Bede himself doubles the tokens and memories of the king’s faith, but the OE doubles “monig mægen & halig tacen” for Bede’s “uirtutes sanitatum” [miracles of healing]. It also doubles the “sponas & scefþon.” In following Bede closely throughout the translation, the OE Bede signals that Bede himself is authority enough for a history of Anglo-Saxon England.⁶⁹ Wærferth’s translation of Gregory’s Dialogues treats its source similarly. Although these translations have been criticized as “slavish,” their loyalty to their sources achieves one of the main goals of translation, which is to transport a text into the target language. Since both Asser and Alfred discuss translating Latin either word by word or sense by sense, debate over this question was apparently as lively in Anglo-Saxon England as it is today.⁷⁰ The fact that some of the later translations draw on a range of Latin learning to enhance their source texts becomes a distinguishing factor among some of the early OE prose translations.

Evidence from Asser’s Life of Alfred indicates that Wærferth translated Gregory’s Dialogi (593) at King Alfred’s command sometime after 884, which makes the OE Dialogues the earliest of the translations that can be connected to Alfred’s court.⁷¹ Wærferth, bishop of Worcester from around 872 to 915, was one of the teachers Alfred brought from Mercia. Consequently, study of his translation of the Dialogues has focused primarily on language and style, rather than on content.⁷² David Johnson and Kees Dekker’s studies provide the main exceptions to this trend.⁷³ One reason scholars may have prioritized the study of language and style is that the earliest manuscript evidence of the Dialogues is over a hundred years after the estimated date of composition, and some of the manuscripts differ substantially from each other. Because the text has not been edited since Hans Hecht’s 1900 edition, establishing a good critical text has taken priority.⁷⁴ The text survives in three manuscripts and one fragment.⁷⁵ Fascinatingly, the first half of the Dialogues in one manuscript was written in the beginning of the eleventh century, and the second part about forty years later by a different scribe; another contains a heavily revised version of books I and II, which David Yerkes has studied in detail.⁷⁶

The number of surviving manuscripts suggests that the Dialogues were popular in early England. However, although Asser describes Wærferth’s style as being “intelligent,” and “very polished,” scholars today disagree about his competence as a translator of Latin.⁷⁷ Although Wærferth’s Latin source may have been corrupt, Yerkes nevertheless regards Wærferth’s translation as “excellent.” ⁷⁸ In contrast, although Godden acknowledges that Wærferth’s source may have been corrupt, he sees Wærferth’s translation as inferior, attributing the differences between the manuscript texts to scribal dissatisfaction with Wærferth’s work.⁷⁹ Johnson interprets the scribal evidence differently, reading the different stages of copying as signs of value. He argues that the monks at “Worcester took great pains to complete the manuscript,” which he sees as “underscor[ing] the importance it held for the center,” where Wærferth was bishop and in which it was copied.⁸⁰ Bately agrees that Wærferth’s style “is relatively sophisticated.” She demonstrates that he “employs a wide variety of clause types” and tends to replace subordinate constructions with coordinate ones. Although Wærferth sometimes adds alliteration and word pairs, his translation tends to be quite literal. Like the translator of the OEB, he often mimics Latin constructions.⁸¹

Another possible reason for scholarly emphasis on language and style may be that the text contains many miracles. Until recently, as J. M. Petersen points out, Gregory’s Dialogi have been treated as “an aberration of an otherwise noble mind.”⁸² Reactions to his miracle stories have been similar to the hostility with which the miracles in Bede’s History have been met by post-Enlightenment scholars.⁸³ Relative silence in response to Wærferth’s transmission of miracles is unsurprising in these contexts. However, as Dekker and Johnson have shown, Petersen’s re-evaluation of Gregory’s historical situation has allowed scholars to better understand these issues and to compare the social and political strife of Gregory’s day with Alfred’s situation.⁸⁴ Both leaders saw the need to present inspiring stories to bolster the Christian faith among believers troubled by hard times and to convert nonbelievers. For Wærferth, miracles were “a logical continuation of the miracles of Christ and the apostles.”⁸⁵ In fact, the OE Dialogues can be read as a Christian compilation of the lives of great men and women, a rendering of history in exemplary form. Wærferth’s preface indicates that he sees Gregory’s work as providing instruction about how to live, and he adds a sentence to Gregory’s preface in which he exhorts his readers to follow these examples.⁸⁶

The dialogue form, which was popular in early England, depicts teaching and learning, with Gregory explaining Christian history and the miracles of virtuous men and women to his student, Peter. Peter questions Gregory’s account, allowing Gregory to explain, dramatizing the process of developing a Christian understanding. In book II, for example, which focuses on the miracles of St. Benedict of Nursia (480–543), Gregory tells the story of a madwoman being cured in a cave where Benedict had lived. Peter questions why miracles occur where saints are not; Gregory explains that saints work miracles where “infirm minds” most doubt their presence.⁸⁷ In Wærferth’s unidiomatic translation:

þær þa halgan martyras licgað in heora lichaman, nis nænig tweo þæt hi magon manige fortacnu æteowian & hi eac swa doð & hi cyðað unarimedlice wundru þam þe hie secað mid clænum mode. Ac forþon hit mag beon tweod fram tyddrum & unstrangum modum, hwæþer hi syn þe ne syn þær andwearde us is to gehyrenne, þær hit cuþ is þæt hi ne beoð na self on heora lichaman ac þær is nydþearf þæt hi æteowian maran wundru, þær þæt tydre mod tweoð be heora andweardnesse;

[where the holy martyrs lie in their bodies, there is no doubt that they may manifest many miracles and they also do so, and they reveal innumerable wonders to those that seek them with a clean mind. But because it may be doubted by frail and weak minds whether they are or are not present there for the purpose of hearing us, it is moreover necessary that they manifest more wonders where frail minds doubt their presence, where it is well known that they are not themselves in their bodies].⁸⁸

In this passage we see Wærferth adding a word pair, “tyddrum & unstrangum,” for Gregory’s “infirmia,” and alliteration. One of many possible examples, this passage demonstrates the paradox of divine presence in the face of its ostensible absence. In the cave, which is still a pilgrimage site in Subiaco, Italy, we also see the possibility of extending miracles beyond the geographical limits of Rome or the Holy Land, as well as the pulling forward of events in time. Although Gregory was writing in 593, he indicates that this happened “recently,” which Wærferth imitates with “niwan.” Overall, this passage demonstrates a faithful translation reporting the power of a saint to heal even where he is not—which bodes well for the faithful who live far from shrines and relics, whether in Italy or England.

While Alfred’s preface to the Pastoral Care is one of the most studied OE texts, the main text of the Pastoral Care itself may be the least studied in terms of content and style; its language has been studied extensively.⁸⁹ The OE version, which is based on a lost Insular manuscript of Gregory’s Liber Regulae Pastoralis (ca. 590), survives in seven OE manuscripts or fragments and one early modern transcription.⁹⁰ The oldest, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Hatton 20, dates to 890–897 and contains Alfred’s famous prefatory letter. Sweet’s 1871 edition is still the most widely available one. Dorothy Horgan has shown that Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 12, which dates to the second half of the tenth century, preserves more archaic readings than the other manuscripts. These suggest that it was either copied from an exemplar older than any manuscript than now survives, or that the scribe deliberately introduced the archaisms.⁹¹

The earliest of Alfred’s translations, the Pastoral Care is, as Richard Clement observes, “also the most securely placed of the king’s genuine works.”⁹² Its place early in Alfred’s career as translator may explain some of the negative assessments of its quality. C. L. Wrenn disparages it as being “without any literary merit,” while William Brown acknowledges that “the Pastoral Care is not a distinguished piece of work.”⁹³ Taking at face value the king’s prefatory claim that he worked with his team of translators, Brown posits that “[w]hen Alfred, with the help of his clergymen, had understood the Latin the best he could, and could most clearly interpret it, he translated it into English.” Brown continues, “Although he frequently shows no interest in reproducing the subtle logic … [Alfred] manages, on the whole, an accurate restatement of the fundamental teaching.”⁹⁴

Analyzing the process by which Alfred and his team produced the Pastoral Care, Clement argues that Alfred’s “single authorial point of view” remains apparent throughout the work.⁹⁵ Although Clement acknowledges that “we know from Asser that Alfred was a novice at reading, much less translating Latin,” Alfred nevertheless retained control.⁹⁶ For Clement, Alfred managed the work by making changes that would improve clarity, modify doctrine, or reflect “authorial idiosyncrasies.” He provides an overview of Alfred’s vocabulary, his expanded introductions to biblical quotations, and provides tables of scribal variations. Clement focuses on editorial principles and authorship rather than content, though he claims that Alfred softens some of Gregory’s harsher doctrines regarding sin.⁹⁷ As with concerns about Wærferth’s Latin source, Clement warns against judging the accuracy of Alfred’s translation against print editions of Gregory’s Latin based on continental manuscripts, because some passages that appear to be mistakes by Alfred may have been present in his insular copy of a Latin text.⁹⁸

Not all assessments of Alfred’s Latinity are so negative. For example, although Wærferth was one of Alfred’s teachers, Bately has shown that Alfred does not merely imitate Wærferth’s style: “The achievement of Alfred and the author of Orosius was to break loose from the more rigid constraints of that tradition.”⁹⁹ More recently, Ray Moye has elaborated Allen Frantzen’s argument that scholars have judged Alfred’s work unfairly and has expanded Clemoes’s idea that Alfred owes a debt to vernacular poetry.¹⁰⁰ Where Clemoes discusses aspects of Alfred’s core vocabulary, Moye focuses on his style. He suggests that oral poetry and transitional literacy formed Alfred’s aural/oral cultural contexts.¹⁰¹ According to Moye, Alfred “freely manipulated the wording of the original and inserted details to create new effects,” using ring structure, alliteration, and wordplay to transform and adorn Gregory’s Latin. In one example, Moye demonstrates how Alfred translates Gregory’s musical imagery and enhances it with alliteration. Gregory describes how a priest must be able to touch the hearts of his subjects (their corda), just as a musician plays chords, chordæ, to touch the hearts of his listeners. In the OE, Moye points out that Alfred uses the verb styrian to mean both “to move the strings of an instrument” and “to stir up, to excite.” He imitates Gregory’s wordplay and enhances it with alliteration, so that the priest stirs the minds of his subjects “mid anre lare & mid mislicum manungum” [with one doctrine and with various admonitions].¹⁰²

Moye’s treatment of Alfred’s poetic style sheds light on some of the king’s possible composition and translation strategies; Jennifer Morrish has also demonstrated that Alfred used a range of Latin sources in his preface, including Bede, Isidore of Seville, and Chrodegang of Metz.¹⁰³ Alfred also expanded references to the Bible throughout, probably for clarification. One of the few scholars to treat the main text of the Pastoral Care, Nicole Discenza discusses its representations of leadership as part of the “Alfredian social imaginary.”¹⁰⁴ For Discenza, Alfred’s translation articulates a vision of what his society is, making the work relevant to contemporary audiences.

The text is unapologetically Christian and didactic; chapters admonishing slaves and subjects to obey their masters remind us that Alfred and Gregory’s notions of social and political order differed significantly from those that prevail in the Western world today. But Alfred also uses Gregory’s work to paint a fascinating portrait of human nature, offering advice to guide priests, rulers, and teachers in their dealings with their students and subjects. After laying out the characteristics needed in those who teach and rule (wisdom, humility, discretion, and sympathy, among others), Alfred follows his source in offering advice on how to deal with different kinds of personalities, whether quarrelsome or peaceful, stubborn or inconstant, shameless or modest. Aesthetics aside, the Pastoral Care describes a wide range of human behaviors and offers advice for dealing with them, revealing insights into human behavior still relevant today. For example, Alfred advises his priests to admonish impatient people to “bridle” [bridligen] their minds, because agitation can lead to unconscious or involuntary actions.¹⁰⁵

Other passages may present more of a challenge to twenty-first-century audiences, but reveal a grounding in patristic modes of reading. Chapter 48 in Sweet’s edition contains guidance regarding people who do not rightly understand the laws of scripture in contrast to those who do—but who refrain from teaching because of humility. This chapter mixes surgical and medical imagery with Gregory’s famous use of light imagery, then adds biblical references to harming the pregnant women of Gilead. Alfred renders Gregory’s violent imagery faithfully, contrasting the proper use of a surgical knife with the use of knives to kill. He creates an image whereby lack of proper understanding turns wine into poison and a healing tool into a destructive weapon:

Ða sint to manianne þe þa æ ryhtlice ne ongietað ðætte hie geðencen ðætte hie ðone halwyndan drync ðæs æðelan wines ne gehwierfen him selfum to attre, & ðæt isen ðæt hie men mid lacnian sculdon, ðæt hie mid ðæm hie selfe to feore ne gewundigen, ðylæs hie mid ðy tole ðæt hale lic gewierden þe hie sceoldon mid ðæt unhale awegaceorfan.

[Those who do not understand the law rightly are to be admonished not to turn the salutary draught of noble wine into poison for themselves, and not to wound themselves mortally with the lancet with which they should cure men, lest they destroy the sound flesh with the instrument that should cut away the unsound.]¹⁰⁶

The mixed metaphors here are jarring, but perhaps they are meant to be. That wine can be turned into poison by lack of understanding presents an inversion of Christ’s miracle of turning water into wine. Turning an instrument of healing into one of death compounds the sense of danger that improper interpretation brings to the soul. Scripture gives the mind the light of understanding, as Alfred tells us, like a lantern gives light at night. To misunderstand a text and to cling to one’s misunderstanding is to do violence to oneself as much as the text.

For those who seek to obscure a right understanding and to confirm their own “unrighteousness” [unryht], Alfred follows Gregory in citing Amos 1:13: “They cut open the pregnant women of Gilead, to strengthen their boundaries.” This represents for Alfred the slaughter of the minds of believers, because Gilead represents the church, and the pregnant women signify the souls who bring forth proper understanding in due time. The images of violence against pregnant women and their unborn children, which Alfred describes as “grievous errors” [hefiglices gedwolan], are strikingly awful, but probably not gratuitous. As Carolyn Dinshaw and Brian Stock observe, the opposition between the letter and the spirit as articulated by Paul, “For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor. 3:6), becomes a key principle of Christian literary interpretation via Jerome, Augustine, and Isidore of Seville.¹⁰⁷ The text becomes the figurative veil that must be stripped away to reveal the inner truth. Similarly, in Against Jovinian, Jerome compares pagan literature to the captured foreign bride (Deut. 21:10–13), who must be cleansed by “cutting away and shaving off all in her that is dead, whether this be idolatry, pleasure, error or lust.”¹⁰⁸ As Dinshaw demonstrates, this passage articulates a patristic mode of reading in which the text is gendered female. This patristic mode of reading, which requires stripping or penetrating the text to extract its inner meaning, becomes generalized to reading more broadly and is transmitted from its late antique roots through the Middle Ages from Augustine to Alfred, then on to Petrarch, Dante, and Chaucer.¹⁰⁹ Though problematically gendered, it contextualizes the violent image of “cutting open” pregnant women. Not only do the women symbolize souls here, but the text as something that must be “unveiled” properly rather than treated perversely or with violence: “when heretics with perverse doctrine slay the minds of believers,” they mutilate and slaughter the text (the woman) and the proper fruits of that text (the unborn children), in the interest of self-aggrandizement. The graphic nature of the image renders it as memorable as it is offensive, but if Stock is correct that the act of reading correctly as a Christian was also a way to build “a new [Christian] self,” then Alfred is transmitting an image that invokes a complex, patristic metaphor for reading.¹¹⁰ Considering that Alfred liberalizes some of Gregory’s harsher doctrines, the fact that he repeats this harsh image may signal the extremity of his concern about the proper interpretation of scripture. This concern, in turn, may shed light on the king’s commitment, not only to his own Latin literacy, but also to his program of education. Although scholars have paid more attention to Alfred’s preface, a brief look at the Pastoral Care itself suggests that it has much to tell us about the role and function of literature in the early OE period.

Alfred’s translation of the Prose Psalms (Psalms), which survives in one eleventh-century manuscript (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Fonds latin 8824), demonstrates the king’s lifelong interest in the Psalms, his interest in historical interpretation, and the range of learned Latin sources that were (or became) available to him. Differences in approaches to the translation of passages in the Psalms and the Pastoral Care have troubled some scholars, but the close affinity between ideas articulated by both texts suggests that they are linked. Patrick O’Neill argues that the contexts and purposes of these translations differ enough to explain the discrepancies.¹¹¹ There are also close conceptual affinities between the Psalms and the OE Boethius; both of these texts reflect extensive knowledge of the medieval commentary tradition.¹¹² The Psalms allows us to better understand the “intermingled agendas” that characterize much early OE prose.

As O’Neill details in his edition, the Psalms was copied by a monk named Wulfwine, possibly in Canterbury, sometime between 1030 and 1050.¹¹³ The text is based mainly on the Romanum psalter, though some readings agree with the other versions of the psalter in circulation. The OE takes the form of a paraphrase, in a column alongside the Latin, adding an introduction for each psalm. A deluxe manuscript, BnF Lat. 8824, has an unusually tall, narrow format. Decoration includes colored initials for each verse, some of which are gold, and thirteen drawings. It also contains the OE Metrical Psalms, the Romanum psalter, and other religious texts. Because it does not contain glosses, a commentary, or a liturgical calendar, its use as a classroom or service book can be ruled out. The OE text, with its introductions, suggests personal, devotional use; the deluxe nature of the manuscript suggests a wealthy patron. O’Neill concludes that the evidence suggests “older lay readers out of touch with contemporary psalter developments.”¹¹⁴

O’Neill and Bately agree on Alfred’s authorship of the Prose Psalms. Based on word choice and freedom of style, Bately concludes that “behind the translations, or rather renderings, of [the Pastoral Care, OE Boethius, Soliloquies and Psalms], there was one mind at work (although probably never entirely on its own). Given the claims made by prefaces, scribes, Asser and William of Malmesbury, and given the absence of any evidence to the contrary, it is reasonable to conclude that the mind was King Alfred’s.”¹¹⁵ While, as I have mentioned, Godden and Irvine challenge the attribution of the OE Boethius to Alfred, the affinities between the two texts suggest that the king had access to it. The free style and extensive use of other learned sources in both texts reflect the impressive level of Latin learning available during Alfred’s day.¹¹⁶ The OE Boethius drew on wide “reading and familiarity … with classical legend and science.” The translator used “various anonymous Vitae … the Bible, Alcuin’s De animae ratione, and Augustine’s Soliloquies.”¹¹⁷

The introductions in the Psalms draw on commentaries by Cassiodorus, Jerome, Pseudo-Jerome, Augustine, the Pseudo-Bede Argumenta, and the Glossa Psalmorum ex traditione. Alfred also had access to historical commentaries by Julian of Eclanum and Theodore of Mopsuestia, possibly in excerpted form. O’Neill indicates that Alfred may have had access to these commentaries from a lost Hiberno-Latin psalter commentary, because the fourfold scheme of interpretation presented by the OE introductions “is most likely an Irish invention.”¹¹⁸ Alfred may have gotten this range of sources from the helpers he brought from Mercia or the Continent, from Ireland, or from books “already available on the British mainland.”¹¹⁹ We can see from the sources behind these two works that an impressively wide range of Latin learning informs early OE prose; this in turn allows us to see early OE prose as learned, complex, and in dialogue with the great works of history, religion, and philosophy of the medieval Western world. Or, as Bately puts it regarding the OE Boethius, they “meld … late antique and Christian Latin discourse with Anglo-Saxon elements.”¹²⁰

Alfred tends to focus on historical and Davidic interpretations of the psalms, which suggests that he identifies with David as a king and scholar.¹²¹ Choosing an individual focus over a Christological one also allows audiences to identify with the singer of the psalms, which makes sense if Alfred designed his paraphrases for personal use. Psalm 22, for example, is the well-known psalm beginning, “[t]he Lord is my shepherd.” Alfred’s introduction reads:

Dauid sang þysne twa and twenteogeþan sealm, þa he witegode be Israela folces freodome, hu hy sceoldon beon alæd of Babilonia þeowdome, and hu hi sceoldan Gode þancian þæra ara þe hi be wege hæfdon hamweardes; and eac be his agenre gehwyrftnesse of his wræcsiðe; and ælc þæra ðe hine singð, he þancað Gode his alysnesse of his earfoðum;

[David sang this twenty-second psalm when he prophesied about the freedom of the people of Israel, how thy should be led out from Babylonian slavery, and how they should thank God for the solace they had on their journey homewards; and also about his own homecoming from his exile; and each of those that he sings, he thanks God for his deliverance from his sufferings].¹²²

The emphases on homecoming and return from exile in this passage are striking in Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon context. Not only was Alfred himself temporarily driven by the Danes to hide in “the more inaccessible parts of Wessex,” but Bede’s History famously casts the English as a chosen people coming to their promised homeland.¹²³ Bede modeled his great work as a salvation history, allowing the journey of the Germanic tribes to Britain to parallel the coming of the Israelites to the Promised Land and to signal the promise of heaven. Exile also constitutes a main theme of OE poetry, as in the Exeter Book elegies, The Wanderer and The Seafarer, for example, in which the focus turns from earthly exile to the Christian promise of heaven. While the topics of these psalms range broadly, Alfred’s emphasis on historical and Davidic interpretations allows us to see clear connections to his own recovery in war, as well as the Bedan theme of salvation history. The late date and deluxe nature of the surviving copy of Alfred’s Psalms allows us to see the continued value of these ideas in later Anglo-Saxon England.

The intellectual and cultural milieu articulated through these texts provides a framework for understanding the compilation of CCCC 173. The Anglo-Saxon view of history included biblical history and extended to the future promise of salvation. From the biblical additions at the beginning of the Chronicle, to the Sibylline prophecies of the apocalypse in part two, the bilingual texts preserved in CCCC 173 assert an early English sense of connection with Christian world history, as well as a teleological and moral sense of time.

As Nicholas Brooks points out, the Chronicle “concentrates upon the genealogies of the royal dynasties and upon the reigns and warfare of West Saxon, and later of the English, kings.”¹²⁴ Similarly, Renée Trilling asserts that “texts like MS A of the Chronicle, with its emphasis on the rulers of Wessex and their heroic exploits, remain key tools in understanding how late Anglo-Saxon England understood itself though its relationship to history.”¹²⁵ Scribes added to the Chronicle manuscripts from around 900 until after the Norman Conquest in order to articulate that relationship. But history in an early English sense goes back to biblical beginnings, which may explain why one of the scribes, working around 1100, made more than thirty additions to the Chronicle before 616 in CCCC 173, many of which are biblical.¹²⁶ His additions are in keeping with the sense of history asserted in OE prose demonstrating the symbolic connections between biblical history and the history of England. From the world history of the Orosius to the History and the Chronicle, Alfred and his fellow writers and translators not only show an interest in the known world, they also directly connect their own history to it. The Chronicle interpolations, read in the context of salvation history, allow us to see this scribe reading English history in relation to patristic and biblical structures. In this context, the earlier addition of Sedulius’s biblical epic, the Carmen Paschale, to the compilation also makes good sense, because it pairs the epic deeds of the Anglo-Saxons with those of their biblical forebears. The addition of the Sibylline prophecies echoes the prophesy of Heavenfield and the extension of Bede’s History to the afterlife via the otherworldly visions of book V. Christian history, as we have learned from Bede and Gregory via the OEB, Wærferth, and Alfred, extends beyond the historical present into the Christian future. Alfred’s concerns about education and reading correctly reflect his understanding of patristic teachings and his participation in a learned Christian culture continuous with that of Bede and Gregory.

As we have seen, early English history was not monolithic; rather, there was warfare among the Germanic tribes who became the English. They unified only after extensive raiding and settlements by the Vikings. Between the sixth and tenth centuries, such wars and invasions led to changing political boundaries and shifting cultural influences. These fluid conditions in turn complicate our understanding of the history of early OE prose. People moved; books were copied and destroyed; the English language developed and changed—and insufficient evidence survives for us to trace all of these processes with absolute clarity. While some books and learning survived, debate surrounds most of the central issues, including the dialects of OE, the origins of early OE prose, and levels of Latinity. However, we can see from some of the striking differences in language, style, and content between the two groupings of texts I have discussed—the OE Bede and Wærferth’s translation of the Dialogues on the one hand, and Alfred’s translations of the Pastoral Care and Psalms on the other—that early OE prose was varied and learned, though not always idiomatic and original. Reading beyond Alfred’s prefaces and drawing on scholarship that sheds new light on OE dialects and manuscript transmission reveals that the prose of the long ninth century—from Mercia to Alfred and beyond—forms part of a continuous, intellectual Christian tradition in early England that was in dialogue with the primary texts of the medieval Western world.