Cyninges fedesl
The king's feeding in Æthelberht, ch. 12
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11451980 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lisi Oliver (Louisiana State University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1998 |
| Volume | 27 |
| Pages | 31-40 |
| Publication date | 1998-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Anglo-Saxon England (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0263-6751 • E-ISSN: 1474-0532 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0263675100004786 |
| OpenAlex | W2084053172 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 5 |
The twelfth-century Textus Roffensis contains a collection of early English laws, of which the first is attributed to Æthelberht of Kent, who reigned c . 580–616. Although these laws remain to us only in a copy made some six centuries later, there are strong linguistic grounds, first proposed by Sievers and Liebermann, and recently elaborated on and expanded by myself, to assume that the text as we have it genuinely reflects a copy of an early original, albeit much changed by generations of scribal modernization. Yet problems of interpretation often arise, among them the difficulty in the definition of hapax legomena: words which occur in the corpus of Old English only in this text. One such term is contained in Æthelberht, ch. 12, which states: ‘Cyninges fedesl XX scillinga forgelde.’ This is presumably formulated along the lines of Æthelberht, ch. 8, which reads: ‘Cyninges mundbyrd L scillinga.’ There is basic agreement among scholars as to the meaning, if not the precise interpretation, of mundbyrd: most would agree with Bosworth's definition of ‘protection, patronage’. Along these lines, the clause can be interpreted as: ‘[For violating] the king's protection: 50 (of) shillings.’ Using this as a template, one might translate iEthelberht, ch. 12, as: ‘[For violating] the king's fedesl: let [the perpetrator pay] 20 (of) shillings.’
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| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.11 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2017 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |