Anglo-Saxons

Studies Presented to Cyril Roy Hart

Bibliographic Data

ID9801022
AuthorsDianne Kirby (corresponding author)
Year2006
Volume121
Issue493
Pages1161-1162
Publication date2006-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe English Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-8266 • E-ISSN: 1477-4534
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ehr/cel268
OpenAlexW2015503507
LanguageEN
Citations received7

Eighteen scholars have contributed to this volume in honour of the distinguished historian of Anglo-Saxon England, C.R. Hart, a list of whose publications not only on early English history but also on a range of medical matters and general practice work reveals the immense range of his interests and expertise. There is no student of Anglo-Saxon England today who will not have made use of Dr Hart's volumes and papers and found them indispensable. The editors describe his book on The Danelaw as ‘monumental’ and write of his ‘radical’ researches into the evolution of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. His work, they quite rightly say, has ‘revolutionised our understanding of Anglo-Saxon history’ (p. 12). The papers in this Festschrift certainly constitute a worthy tribute. Richard and Fiona Gameson trace the growth of the cult of Augustine down to Archbishop Parker's protestant redefinition of Augustine's significance, and Emma Mason reflects on how the patriarchal image of Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester, evolved during his lifetime and was enhanced after his death. Janet Bately reflects on the potential for misinterpretation in attempting to translate Ohthere's report to King Alfred and Paul E. Szarmach examines the ‘experimental’ approach of the translator of the OE Bede, specifically to the Latin poetry in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica. The history of Lyminge minster in Kent in the light of its early charters is examined by Susan Kelly, who demonstrates how a continuous history and an unchanging constitution for such a minster cannot be assumed. Janet L. Nelson looks again at the position of the queen in ninth-century Wessex, dependent on ‘deft interweavings of family influence and factional support’ (p. 72) and Pauline Stafford reads the Chronicle D entry for 1067 with the prominence it accords to women ‘symbolically, women “thought with” ’ (p. 213) to argue that the departure and arrival of women in this annal symbolises the passing of the old order and the coming of the new. Heathenism, understood to embrace also superstition, witchcraft, sorcery and the occult, is further explored by Audrey L. Meaney, who concludes that ‘the occult may have permeated Anglo-Saxon society even more than appears on the surface’ (p. 154). The ways in which Norwegian rulers of the tenth and eleventh centuries may have looked to English practices in shaping Norwegian kingship and government is considered by Peter Sawyer. D.M. Metcalfe seeks to clarify the monetary situation in the Danelaw between 973 and 1083, for which period the numismatic evidence is at its best, so that earlier patterns may be more securely interpreted, and identifies a rapidly-circulating currency both inside and outside the Danelaw as a consequence of inter-regional trade. Gail R. Owen-Crocker contemplates artistic borrowings and parallels in successive scenes depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry and the difficulty of determining what different agendas dictated the selection of models. That the ‘economic rationale’ for fragmented manors in late Anglo-Saxon England was transhumance is strongly argued by Harold Fox. Susan Oosthuizen finds social and tenurial conservatism in Cambridgeshire among the freemen or sokemen of the Bourn valley, who had full rights of soca and saca over their lands, mostly independent of any manorial control, and argues that these characteristics may have originated in the sixth and seventh centuries; and Ann Williams examines, with reference to Suffolk, the term antecessor in Domesday Book, which helped to define the rights of a post-Conquest successor and which, when applied to Anglo-Saxon survivors of 1066, may also have strengthened their position. Debby Banham provides a rare glimpse of new and inter-related medical texts, including several in Latin, with a new emphasis on causation and diagnosis, appearing in England in the eleventh century as closer contact was established with continental medicine, beginning in the reign of the Confessor but perhaps foreshadowed by Abbo of Fleury at Ramsey in the 980s. Dr Hart has devoted a great deal of attention in his published studies to the history of Ramsey abbey. Susan Edgington looks at how Herbert Losinga's business sense as abbot of Ramsey and bishop of Norwich led to the successful promotion of Ramsey's relics and the attempted up-staging of the shrine of St Edmund at Bury by one at Hoxne, and the volume closes with David Cozen's account of the dissolution of Ramsey abbey which led ‘to the demolition of virtually all of the monastic buildings’ there (p. 297), though thankfully not the loss of all its documents

Ancient history · Archaeology · Archbishop · Art history · Bishops · Cult · Honour · Protestantism · Theology · Tribute · Welsh · Classics · History · Law · Linguistics and language evolution · Philosophy

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