European political and military culture.9 ForBede, Sigeberht was a sincere monk, but onewho failed in his attempt to be a new Moses tohis people. From a modern perspective we canperhaps catch a glimpse of a political andreligious innovator who anticipated the latermedieval attempt to synthesize religious andpolitical authority in a single figure.

THOMAS D. HILL

Cornell University

doi:10.1093/notesj/gjl131� The Author (2006). Published by Oxford University Press.

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OE M �AL AS A GLOSS FOR L CLASMA IN

ALDHELMIAN GLOSSARIES

THREE Old English glossaries with lemmataderived from Aldhelm’s Prosa de virginitaterender L clasma (<Gr k�0���> ‘lesion,rupture’) with OE <mal>: (1) the glossaryrecorded in the mid-tenth-century manuscriptfrom Canterbury London, British Library,MS Cotton Cleopatra A.iii, fos 92r–117r

(i.e. the so-called Third Cleopatra Glossary,hereafter Cleo III; ClGl 3 [Quinn] 1019);1

(2) the glossary recorded in the eleventh-century manuscript Brussels, Royal Library,MS 1650 (hereafter Brussels 1650; AldV 1[Goossens] 3701);2 and (3) the glossaryrecorded during the tenth and eleventhcenturies in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSDigby 146 (hereafter Digby 146; AldV 13.1

[Nap] 3815).3 While <mal> is the onlyinterpretamentum in Cleo III, the lemma isrendered in Brussels 1650 as <pace> (cp. Lpax ‘peace, a peace by mutual agreement’),4

which has been written by the hand whichGoossens identifies as Hand B, and OE<mal>, an addition by the hand whichGoossens identifies as Hand C. The latteralso wrote the lemma and the Old Englishinterpretamentum once more in the margin.5

The entry in Digby 146 has the same inter-pretamenta. Given the close connectionbetween the two glossaries, there is greatdifficulty in knowing which glossary actedas a source for the other. It may be thecase that Brussels 1650 Hand C took this glossfrom Digby 146 (or an apograph derivedfrom it), which s/he would have collatedwith the glosses provided by Brussels 1650Hands A and B.6 Alternatively, the OldEnglish gloss in Digby 146, like most ofthe others in the manuscript, might derivefrom Brussels 1650.7

The close relationship between Brussels1650 and Digby 146 has been acknowledgedsince 1900, when Napier published theDigby 146 glosses and tried to disentangle theconnections between the two glossaries.8 Yet,it is only recently that scholars have becomeaware of the fact that the Aldhelmian glossesin Cleo III are also closely associated

9 For one immediate example note the coronation rituals(which may have begun among the Anglo-Saxons) whichbecame such important and elaborate expressions of royalistideology and royal self-definition. The first anointed kingswere, after all, Saul and David (I Samuel 10:20–5; 16:12–13).For discussion of some of these issues see J. L. Nelson,Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London:Hambleton Press, 1986).

1 See Neil Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts ContainingAnglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957), rpt. with a Supplement fromAnglo-Saxon England, v (1977), 121–31 (Oxford, 1990), no.143; and David N. Dumvillle, ‘English Square MinusculeScript: The Mid-Century Phases’, Anglo-Saxon England,xxiii (1994), 137–9.

2 See Scott Gwara, Aldhelmi Malmesbiriensis Prosa devirginitate cum Glossa Latina atque Anglosaxonica, CorpusChristianorum Series Latina CXXIV and CXXIVa(Turnhout, 2001), CXXIV 124, 94–101, with references.

3 See ibid., 147–56, with references. Title abbreviationsof Old English texts follow those provided by the onlineversion of The Complete Corpus of Old English in MachineReadable Form (TEI Compatible Version), ed. Antonette diPaolo Healey, http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/o/oec/ [accessedfrom 10 January 2006 to 14 February 2006]. The editionsused in this article coincide with those quoted in the corpus;therefore, no bibliographical references are given for them.

4 Unless otherwise specified, the meanings of the Latinterms mentioned in the text rely on Charlton T. Lewis, andCharles Short (eds), A Latin Dictionary Founded on Andrew’sEdition of Freund’s Latin Dictionary (Oxford, 1879).

5 Louis Goossens, The Old English Glosses of MS.Brussels, Royal Library, 1650 (Aldhelm’s De laudibusvirginitatis), Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Academievoor Wetenschappen, Letteren en schone Kunsten vanBelgie 74 (Brussels, 1974), 390.

6 On the relationship between Brussels 1650 Hand Cand Digby 146, as well as the so-called ‘Digby apograph’,see Gwara, Aldhelmi Malmesbiriensis Prosa de virginitate,CXXIV, 199–208.

7 See ibid., 197–9.8 Arthur S. Napier, Old English Glosses, Anecdota

Oxoniensia (Oxford, 1900), xxiii–xxvi.

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with those in the two aforementionedglossaries, although one cannot argue thatthey derive from Cleo III or its immediatesource.9 It seems, then, that the gloss underconsideration was part of a common bodyof Aldhelmian glosses which would haveexisted already by the mid-tenth century.10

This common body may originate fromCanterbury, where Gwara would also liketo locate the writing of Brussels 1650and Digby 146;11 or, as suggested by Gretsch,it may have developed in the houses underthe influence of Æthelwold, who spentsome time in Glastonbury before becomingabbot of Abingdon (c. 954–63) and bishopof Winchester (963–84).12

Once the use of OE <mal> to renderL clasma has been dated and, to a certainextent, localized, its etymology can beexplored. To do so one needs to look at thecontext of the lemma in Prosa de virginitate.The term appears in ch. XXXVIII: ‘Ceteris

enim uiolati foederis clasma concorditerreconciliantibus solus ultricem cruentaemortis uindictam exsolues’,13 which Lapidgeand Herren, simplifying Aldhelm’s syntax,translate as follows: ‘The others have harmo-niously repaired the lesion of the violatedalliance; you alone shall pay the vengefulpunishment of a bloody death’.14 The use of<mal> and L pax to render L clasma in thiscontext has caused much puzzlement amongstscholars. Goossens suggests that the terms mayinitially have been intended as interpretamentafor L foederis (cp. L foedus ‘agreement,alliance’) and Rusche points out thatL clasma may in fact be a form of L clama(cp. L clamium, -ia, -eum, -um ‘claim’).15 Thesesuggestions would lead one to associate theterm with OE m�al ‘suit, cause, case, action,agreement, covenant’, which is commonlybelieved to be Norse-derived (cp. OIc. mal‘speech, suit, action, cause, stipulation, agree-ment’; cf. WS m �æl and nWS mæðel ‘council,meeting, speech’ < PGmc *maþlan).16 Asfar as the dates of the Brussels and Digbymanuscripts are concerned, this suggestionwould fit particularly well the record ofthe term in the seemingly Norse-derivedconstruction beran �up m�al in ChronE (Irvine)

9 See Philip Guthrie Rusche, ‘The Cleopatra Glossaries:An Edition with Commentary on the Glosses and theirSources’ (PhD diss., Yale University, 1996), 96–9; andMechthild Gretsch, The Intellectual Foundations of theEnglish Benedictine Reform, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 25 (Cambridge, 1999), 149–54.

10 On the possibility that the glosses were already incirculation before the Cleopatra manuscript was written, seeGretsch, Intellectual Foundations of the English BenedictineReform, 139–41 and 368.

11 Scott Gwara, ‘Canterbury Affiliations of London,British Library MS Royal 7 D.xxiv and Brussels,Bibliotheque Royale MS 1650 (Aldhelm’s Prosa devirginitate)’, Romanobarbarica, xiv (1996–7), 359–74.On Canterbury as the origin of the common body of glosses,see also Gwara, Aldhelmi Malmesbiriensis Prosa devirginitate, CXXIV, chs. 3 and 4.

12 Gretsch, Intellectual Foundations of the EnglishBenedictine Reform, ch. 9; and eadem, ‘WinchesterVocabulary and Standard Old English: The Vernacular inLate Anglo-Saxon England’, Bulletin of the John RylandsUniversity Library of Manchester, lxxxiii (2001), 67 and 73.For an argument in favour of Abingdon as the place oforigin of the Brussels and Digby manuscripts, see LouisGoossens, ‘Latin and Old English Aldhelm Glosses: ADirect Link in the ‘‘Abingdon Group’’’, in Anglo-SaxonGlossography: Papers Read at the International ConferenceHeld in the Koninklijka Academie voor WetenschappenLetteren en Schone Kunsten van Belgie, Brussels, 8 and 9September 1986, ed. R. Derolez (Brussels, 1992), 139–49;and David W. Porter, ‘Æthelwold’s Bowl and ‘‘TheChronicle of Abingdon’’’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen,xcvii (1996), 163–7. For a summary of Æthelwold’s career,see Michael Lapidge, ‘Æthelwold’, in The BlackwellEncyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. MichaelLapidge et al. (Oxford, 1999), 19.

13 Gwara, Aldhelmi Malmesbiriensis Prosa de virginitate,CXXIVa, 565.

14 Michael Lapidge and Michael Herren (trans.),Aldhelm: The Prose Works (Cambridge, 1979), 105.

15 Goossens, Old English Glosses, 390 n. to 3701; Rusche‘Cleopatra Glossaries’, 712 n. to Cleo III 683 (according tohis counting system). On L clamium, see the Dictionary ofMedieval Latin from British Sources, ed. R. E. Latham et al.(London: 1975–), s.v. clamium.

16 Cp. Mary S. Serjeantson, A History of Foreign Wordsin English (London, 1935), 73. See Richard Cleasby, andGudbrand Vigfusson (eds), An Icelandic-English Dictionary,2nd edn with a Supplement by William A. Craigie (Oxford,1957), s.v. mal. The meanings of the Old English termsmentioned in the text are drawn from J. R. Clark Hall (ed.),A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 4th edn with aSupplement by Herbert D. Meritt (Cambridge, 1960). Thereconstructions of the Proto-Germanic terms rely onVladimir Orel, A Handbook of Germanic Etymology(Leiden, 2003). On WS m �æl vs nWS mæðel, see RichardM. Hogg, A Grammar of Old English, vol. 1, Phonology(Oxford, 1992), §7.10. On the reasons for considering OEm�al as Norse-derived, see Erik Bjorkman, ScandinavianLoanwords in Middle English, Studien zur englischenPhilologie 7 and 11 (Halle, 1900–2), 103–4.

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1052.59 (¼ ChronF [Baker] 1051.22–3),17 anentry which belongs to a group of annals withlikely Kentish or, at least, south-east origin.18

However, when the suggestion is brought inline with the Cleo III entry, it becomes moreproblematic because one may not expect thepresence of a Norse-derived term at such anearly date in a non-Scandinavianized area.19

Admittedly, OE m�al is a technical term andits character would not be at odds with theearliest Norse-derived terms recorded in OldEnglish texts.20 Moreover, as pointed out byDance, one has to be careful not to put toomuch emphasis on the dialectal distributionof a term when attempting to establish itsetymology because there are many reasonswhy a scribe could have used a Norse-derivedterm; this selection does not necessarily implythat the term in question was common inthe dialectal area where s/he was working.21

Despite these caveats, the date and likelyorigin of the gloss would rather lead one tothink of a native origin for the term.

OE m�al ‘spot, mark, blemish’ (<PGmc*mailan) presents itself as a good alternativeto the Norse-derived m�al. The meaning ofL clasma in the Aldhelmian text is not farfrom that of L macula, which could refer toa stain, fault or blemish in appearance orin character.22 Interestingly, L maculare isused in various Aldhelmian glossaries torender L violati (cp. L violare ‘to treat withviolence, dishonour, violate, break’) in thecontext from Prosa de virginitate quotedabove (e.g. AldV 1 [Goossens] 3700) andboth the noun and the past participle seemto refer to the same concept: the breach orviolation of the pact.23 The use of OE m�al,which renders L macula in the Cleopatraglossaries (ClGl 1 [Stryker] 4050¼ClGl 3[Quinn] 1692), would therefore not be outof place.Thus, Goossens’s suggestion regarding

the association with L foederis of the twoterms which are seemingly presented as inter-pretamenta for L clasma in Brussels 1650and Digby 146 could be slightly revised.Brussels 1650 Hand C would have encounteredthe gloss by Hand B when working throughthe text; s/he would have added the correctinterpretamentum for the Latin term and,when extracting the lemma from the textand glossing it (possibly in preparationfor a compilation of glossae collectae),24

s/he would have chosen (knowingly orunknowingly) the correct interpretamentum,not the interpretamentum intended forL foederis. The presence of the parenthesisin the previous sentence responds to the factthat accuracy may not have been the toppriority in Hand C’s agenda; rather, thelanguage of the interpretamentum may have

17 See Dietrich Hofmann, Nordisch-englischeLehnbeziehungen der Wikingerzeit, BibliothecaArnamagnæana 14 (Copenhagen, 1955), §368.

18 See Susan Irvine (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: ACollaborative Edition, vol. 7,MS E (Cambridge, 2004), lxxvi,with references.

19 The treaty between Alfred and Guthrum (LawAGu 1)establishes the border of the territories under the control ofthe Scandinavian newcomers as running ‘up the Thames,and then up the Lea, and along the Lea to its source, then ina straight line to Bedford, and then up the Ouse to WatlingStreet’, as translated by Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge(trans.), Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred andOther Contemporary Sources (Harmondsworth, 1993), 171.On this border, see further R. H. C. Davis, ‘Alfred andGuthrum’s Frontier’, English Historical Review, xcvii (1982),803–10, rpt. in From Alfred the Great to Stephen (London,1991), 47–54; David N. Dumville, ‘The Treaty of Alfred andGuthrum’, in his Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar:Six Essays on Political, Cultural and Ecclesiastical Revival(Woodbridge, 1992), 1–14; and Paul Kershaw, ‘The Alfred-Guthrum Treaty: Scripting Accommodation and Interactionin Viking Age England’, in Cultures in Contact: ScandinavianSettlement in England in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries, ed.Dawn M. Hadley and Julian D. Richards, Studies in theEarly Middle Ages 2 (Turnhout, 2000), 43–64.

20 For a chronological presentation of the Norse-derivedterms recorded in Old English, see Serjeantson, A History ofForeign Words in English, 61–74; her survey is, however,neither complete nor fully reliable.

21 Richard Dance, ‘The Battle of Maldon Line 91 andthe Origins of Call: A Reconsideration’, NeuphilologischeMitteilungen, c (1999), 148.

22 See Evald Liden, ‘Etymologien’, Beitrage zurGeschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, xv (1891),513–4, for an argument in favour of the direct etymologicaland semantic relationship between the terms associated withOE mæðel /OIc. mal / OHG mahal, m�al and OE m�al / OHGmeil. He argues that the initial meaning of the former wouldhave been the same as that of L macula (cp. OE spotmeaning both ‘mark, stain’ and ‘place’). The association ofthese terms is, however, problematic and it seems better tointerpret OE m�al meaning ‘claim’ or ‘agreement’ as a Norse-derived loanword (see above, n. 16).

23 See Gwara, Aldhelmi Malmesbiriensis Prosa devirginitate, CXXIVa, 564.

24 See ibid., CXXIV, 99–100, with references.

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been a more important factor. Indeed, Brussels1650 offers cases when Hand C chose for themarginal gloss the same interpretamentum ass/he had added to the main body of the text,25

and cases when s/he chose for the marginalgloss the interpretamentum which was alreadypresent in the manuscript.26 The main reasonbehind his/her choice in most cases seems tohave been the fact that the interpretamentumwas an Old English term.27 Even thoughthere are also some cases when Hand Cchose Latin interpretamenta, their accuracy asglosses for the lemmata they are associatedwith cannot be fully accepted.28 Thus, thefact that m�al was an Old English term islikely to have played a very important role inits selection for the marginal gloss in AldV 1(Goossens) 3701; this may not have beenthe only factor at work but one cannotknow what exactly went through the mindof Hand C as s/he was doing his/her work.29

SARA M. PONS-SANZ

The University of Nottingham

doi:10.1093/notesj/gjl132� The Author (2006). Published by Oxford University Press.

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WHO DOES LAÞUM REFER TO AT

BEOWULF, LINE 1257A?

AFTER Beowulf’s fight against Grendel,the monster just barely manages to escape.Grendel dies in the cave he inhabits togetherwith his mother. The Danes celebrateBeowulf’s heroic achievement, and after thefestivity they retire to sleep: little do theyanticipate that Grendel’s mother wouldavenge her son’s death. Æschere, a trustedcounsellor at Hrothgar’s court, has to paydearly with his life:

Þæt gesyne wearþwidcuþ werum þætte wrecend þa gytlifde æfter laþum lange þrageæfter guðceare; Grendles modorides aglæcwif yrmþe gemundese þe wæteregesan wunian scoldecealde streamas siþðan Cain wearðto ecgbanan angan breþerfæderenmæge;

(Beowulf, lines 1255b–63a)1

The vocabulary of the quoted passagedoes not present particular difficulties, andthe syntactic constructions also seem clear. Thetext was translated by Kemble in 1837 asfollows: ‘that was seen, notorious to men, thata revenger yet lived after the loathed one, fora long time, after the warlike care: Grendel’smother, a woman, a wretched woman, remem-bered her sorrow, she namely, who wasdoomed to inhabit the terror of waters, thecold streams, after Cain became the murdererof his only brother’.2 Subsequent translationsdo not differ in any significant way.3

25 E.g. in fo 36r, s/he would have seen that L simultatem(cp. L simultas ‘hostile encounter’) had been rendered byHand B as L <discordiam>; s/he added the Old Englishgloss <ungehærnesse> and that is the term which s/he chosefor the marginal gloss (AldV 1 [Goossens] 3690).

26 E.g. in fo 23v, s/he rendered L fortunatum (cp. Lfortunatus ‘fortunate, blessed’) as <dictatum>, but in themarginal gloss the lemma is rendered by <gegodedne>,which is the interpretamentum entered by Hand A (AldV 1[Goossens] 2489).

27 E.g. see above, nn. 25 and 26.28 E.g. Hand C added the marginal gloss <Naptar: genus

frumenti> in fo 15r, even though Hand A had rendered thelemma naptarum (cp. L naphtha ‘naphtha, coal oil’) as<tyrwena> and <heorþana> (Hand CD used <teorwena>;AldV 1 [Goossens] 1648). The interpretamentum chosen byHand C, though, seems to render Hand A’s <heorþana>(cp. OE heorde ‘hards’) rather than the Latin lemma. Yet,Brussels 1650 Hand C was not the only one to make suchmistake when rendering the Latin term; see Dictionary ofOld English, ed. Ashley Crabdell Amos et al. (Toronto,1986–), s.v. �a-cumba.

29 I would like to thank the British Academy for itsfinancial support (through the Postdoctoral FellowshipScheme) during the writing process of this article.

1 Quoted from Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson(eds), Beowulf. An Edition (Oxford, 1998), 90 (diacritics havebeen omitted). The manuscript reading <camp> at line1261b is generally emended to Cain.

2 J. M. Kemble, A Translation of the Anglo-Saxon Poemof Beowulf with a Copious Glossary, Preface and PhilologicalNotes (London, 1837), 52.

3 In his translation Orchard also considers Grendlesmodor (line 1258b) as beginning a fresh clause andfunctioning as the antecedent of the relative clause: ‘Thatbecame clear, widely-known to men, that an avenger stilllived after the hateful one, a long time after the war-strife.Grendel’s mother, an awesome assailant in woman’s form,called to mind her misery, she who had to inhabit the dreadwaters, the cold streams, since Cain became the sword-slayerto his only brother, his paternal kinsman’; see AndyOrchard, A Critical Companion to Beowulf (Woodbridge,2003), 188.

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