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grounds that she ‘spoke so little that we find her words recorded in Holy Scripture only four times’. Above all, women were urged to be obedient. That feminine disobedience would be punished was the constant lesson of such sermons. As John Bromyard, a fourteenth-century preacher, pointed out, all intending husbands faced the risk of a contrary wife. As a warning against such contrariness, he cited the
‘Makometh’ – that he had been a ‘Cristene man’ and might even have ‘ben a pope’, but, frustrated in his ambition, he perverted the scripture and ‘in mysbileue men and wommen broughte’. 23 The anonymous De statu Saracenorum is considerably different. ‘Machometus’ is schooled by a monk (named Bahira), ‘a simple
’s date, but only that the poet and audience share a culture whose origin myths combine these strands. The poet’s careful use of Scripture points both to a reflection on the relationship of the distant to the more recent past, and to an awareness of the layering of universal myth and national history in the Bible. It is unlikely that an Anglo-Saxon poet would have understood myth as anthropologists do, but
unknowingly participate. It is a spolium from the Christian time: the pillar with its accessories can signify the body of Christ in the tomb and resurrected, 48 the complementary meanings of the two-part Scriptures, 49 the Ship of the Church foretold by Noah's Ark, as well as the poem itself. 50 Still, we can observe that the metamorphosing artefact shares some traits with the peculiar byrig created by the Exodus poet. First, it divides the space to protect the people; it contains them, projecting, from above, an extension onto the third
sin of wrath, falling into a rage when Thomas tricks him into receiving a fart in his hand. He ignores the scriptures, travelling ‘with scrippe and tipped staf, contrary to Christ’s injunction to his apostles to take nothing for their journeys, ‘neither staff nor scrip’ (Luke 9: 3), and neglects the example of St Francis, devoting himself to begging to finance a fine stone church for his order despite
grounded in the Scriptures. As with the story, earlier in the book, of the man who unwittingly circumnavigated the globe and returned close to his own home without realising it, the Prester John episodes break down polarity into resemblance and nurture the hope that diversity might come full circle and lead to sameness and unity. Mandeville
and their duties, the reception of monks and the three principal monastic activities – divine service ( opus divina ), the study of scripture ( opus lectio ) and manual labour ( opus manum ). It was a detailed yet flexible guide that could be adapted to suit the needs of individual communities, which probably accounts for its widespread dissemination. Given a renewed lease of life with Benedict of Aniane’s imperially inspired reforms in 817, the Rule of St Benedict generally became the standard observance (with local variations) not just in the Carolingian empire
by plaintyng in uncerteyne stories, Legendes, Responds, Verses, vaine repetitions, Commemorations and Sinodalles’, and asserts that such additions ‘breake the continual course of the reading of the scripture’ (Aiir–iiir). The book of common prayer thus targets practices of textual organization that can be considered collative, relying on the collation of multiple external texts or excerpts drawn together into a single work.1 Perhaps the most commonplace example of such a work is one that dominated literary and devotional culture in the later Middle Ages, the book
the reign of Alfred. His personal interest in the biblical past is well documented, and the impact it had on his regal imagination was arguably his most profound inspiration. 101 Of course, earlier Anglo-Saxons had both a reverence for Scripture and an awareness of their connections to the continental Germans. 102 But this would not have been an awareness, particularly in the earlier period of
) as his prototype, though when it comes to compiling his own ‘examplayre’, he turns to ‘two preestes and two clerkes that I hadde’ and the male-dominated literary tradition of scripture, ‘gestes of the kynges’, and chronicles, as well as less easily categorised ‘straunge historyes’ (p. 13).19 The knight remembers another lady, beloved but long dead, as a profound inspiration to him. Indeed, poignant thoughts of love have returned to him in a garden in springtime to give the conduct book a fleeting courtly love opening. His remembrances soon turn, however, to the