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Dramatic Justice at Penenden Heath

28/2/2015

The Trial of Penenden Heath: It conjures up images of King William honouring the native laws of his newly conquered land, wheeling out (quite literally) the frail Bishop Æthelric, learned in the laws and customs of the English, to espouse the old ways. The Anglo-Saxon Monk asks if we should go along with this drama ...

Grande Chronique de Normandie, British Library (Brussels, c. 1460-1468). Left, William the Conqueror's funeral; right, Archbishop Lanfranc crowning William Rufus. The Rochester version of the Trial of Penenden Heath, between Lanfranc and Bishop Odo of Bayeux, was recorded some time after William the Conqueror's death in 1089. This image is PUBLIC DOMAIN. Please click on it to go to the source.

Penenden Heath is now parkland in a suburb of the town of Maidstone, Kent. Image copyright: Penny Mayes, 2005. This image may be distributed under a Creative Commons licence: please click on the image for details.

Like me, I’m sure you like a bit of drama to liven things up. Anyone who saw me performing as Guy of Ponthieu last week at Gale Owen-Crocker’s retirement party knows I even stretch to a spot of high camp now and again. (No pics of this, I'm afraid.)

Well, there’s a nod towards the melodramatic in one of the recorded versions of the 1072 trial at Penenden Heath, a royal enquiry over disputed land, involving Lanfranc, the archbishop of Canterbury, and William the Conqueror’s half-brother, Odo, the bishop of Bayeux. Well that sounds juicy, doesn't it!

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Celebrating Professor Gale Owen-Crocker

21/2/2015

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Cutting the cake at Kalamazoo: Gale Owen-Crocker celebrates the tenth anniversary of her journal, Medieval Clothing and Textiles, co-edited with Robin Netherton. Please click on the image to take you to Boydell's page for the journal. Image by Christopher Monk © 2014.

In the world of Anglo-Saxon scholarship, there are not many who can match Gale Owen-Crocker's achievements. Here, though, the Anglo-Saxon Monk pays tribute to the kindness and support this extraordinary professor gave to her PhD student who wanted to study Anglo-Saxon sex.

I had the pleasure, this past Thursday evening, of attending Professor Gale Owen-Crocker’s retirement celebration. What a wonderful scholar! In the field of Anglo-Saxon studies she stands as one of the greats. She has pioneered the study of Anglo-Saxon dress, has used her weighty interdisciplinary skills to open up new ways of reading our most famous poem Beowulf, and has compelled us to look ever closer at the Bayeux Tapestry.

It’s certainly not difficult to enumerate her academic achievements, though you would need to utilise a medieval monk’s mnemonic techniques in order to recall her huge list of publications! What we don’t always get to hear, though, about someone who has been as successful as Gale, are the personal accounts of kindness, humility and sense of fun.

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The Nine Commandments

14/2/2015

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The DVD cover for Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 The Ten Commandments has a beefed-up representation of Charlton Heston as Moses, about to smash the two tablets of stone, illuminated by fire from Heaven, and with the swirling waters of the Red Sea as the backdrop. Moses was angry and so was God. What would they have thought of King Alfred? This Image has limitations on its reproduction. Please click the image to find out more.

Whatever happened to 'Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven image'? Alfred deleted it, that's what! The Anglo-Saxon Monk investigates Alfred the Great's judicious editing of the most famous set of laws: The Ten Commandments.

Gospel book, British Library, Royal 1 B. vii (Northumbria, 8th century), folio 15v: detail of zoomorphic 'Chi-Rho' (an abbreviation for Christ), showing biting birds. Public Domain image (please click image for source).

King Alfred. We all know he was Great. Resilient, doughty warrior and subduer of Vikings. Champion of education, lawmaker and military reformer. Not so good at baking, mind you. Let’s just say that he wouldn’t have got his cakes past that devil in disguise Mary Berry and her blue-eyed tormentor Paul Hollywood.*

*Non-UK readers: Mary and Paul are the feared judges on one of the UK’s most popular TV shows, The Great British Bake-Off.

Now I mentioned just now that Alfred was a lawmaker. Yes, indeed. He wrote the largest piece of early medieval legislation in Old English. Well, he probably got some lowly scribe to work the quill. Someone like me.

Part of the reason that his law-code was rather long was because he wrote a preface to it, in which he actually translated several chapters from Exodus, the second book of the Bible.

Now, all you blessed theologians out there will know that Exodus incorporates the law attributed to Moses (big white beard and ten plagues of Egypt fame), which includes, at its heart, the Ten Commandments, written initially by the finger of God on a couple of stone tablets (handily knocked up by God, too, I imagine), and subsequently transcribed by more human means onto a human-prepared medium, this following Moses’ smashing of the tablets in a moment of righteous indignation (see DVD image above).

By now I’m sure you’ve anticipated me and you realise that King Alfred actually translated The Ten Commandments in his lawcode. Well, actually, he didn’t. Alfred produced The Nine Commandments. Moreover, not content to omit one of God's own big laws, he also took his legislative pruning shears to a couple of the others. Kingly privilege, my blessed readers, kingly privilege.

Now as you read his version through, below, and compare it to the version that appears in the Bible, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind thinking about possible reasons Alfred may have had for engaging in – what shall I call it? – a moment of shrewd editing.

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Dramatic Justice at Penenden Heath

Celebrating Professor Gale Owen-Crocker

In the world of Anglo-Saxon scholarship, there are not many who can match Gale Owen-Crocker's achievements. Here, though, the Anglo-Saxon Monk pays tribute to the kindness and support this extraordinary professor gave to her PhD student who wanted to study Anglo-Saxon sex.

The Nine Commandments

Whatever happened to 'Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven image'? Alfred deleted it, that's what! The Anglo-Saxon Monk investigates Alfred the Great's judicious editing of the most famous set of laws: The Ten Commandments.

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