An Edition of the Old English Translation of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica

FAIN: RQ-50718-13

Christopher Newport University (Newport News, VA 23606-2949)
Sharon Melissa Rowley (Project Director: December 2012 to April 2017)

Preparation for publication of a critical edition of the Old English translation of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum.

The Old English version of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica (OEB) translates and revises Bede’s Latin masterwork (731) for 10th-century vernacular audiences. The substantial differences between the OEB and its source reveal crucial information about life, language and literary culture of later Anglo-Saxon England. The OEB's continuous use through the 14th century demonstrates its independent significance over time. The OEB has not, however, been edited in over 100 years. This proposal is to support a new critical edition that will combine the most important developments in editorial theory since the last edition. The new edition also draws on key philological, sociolinguistic and paleographic advances, which reveal information about the language of the translation and transmission of the text to which no previous editor has had access. Our Modern English translation will make this work available to historians and scholars who do not read Old English.

Associated Products

‘Translation Style, Lexical Systems, Dialect Vocabulary, and the Manuscript Transmission of the Old English Bede.’ (Article)
Title: ‘Translation Style, Lexical Systems, Dialect Vocabulary, and the Manuscript Transmission of the Old English Bede.’
Author: Greg Waite
Abstract: This article explores the co-existence of Angliand dialect words with common Old English synonyms within particular semantic fields in the Old English translation of Bede's Ecclesiastical History. This phenomenon arises out of the writer’s distinctive method of close translation, and the deliberate strategies of lexical and stylistic control that he exercised. In this article I focus upon selected examples, including the vocabulary of death and dying, as a case study of how understanding of the dialect vocabulary of the OEB and its putative Mercian archetype can be extended. By comparing sets of synonyms – including dialect words like leoran ‘to go, depart, die’ – with the Latin terms that they translate, I seek to demonstrate that the lexical systems identifiable within the text have important implications for reconstructing the hypothetical archetype, and also for understanding the varied ways in which West Saxon scribes undertook modifications of the text.
Year: 2014
Access Model: subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Medium Ævum 83.1
Publisher: Medium Ævum 83.1

‘The Preface to the Old English Bede: Authorship, Transmission, and Connection with the West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List’ (Article)
Title: ‘The Preface to the Old English Bede: Authorship, Transmission, and Connection with the West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List’
Author: Greg Waite
Abstract: Lexical and stylistic features indicate that the Preface to the Old English Bede was composed by a writer different from the anonymous Mercian who translated the body of the text. The Preface, therefore, cannot be taken to reveal aspects of the original translator’s aims or attitude to the text. Recently discovered collations of the burnt manuscript London, British Library, Cotton Otho B. xi, made by John Smith prior to the 1731 fire, provide further insight, indicating that a copy of the West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List was attached to the Preface by the mid tenth century. Thus the origins of the Preface may lie in an Alfredian or post-Alfredian initiative to disseminate the translation at some time later than its actual creation.
Year: 2015
Access Model: subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Anglo-Saxon England 44
Publisher: Cambridge Journals

‘A New Discovery: John Smith’s Collations for his Edition of the OE Bede (1722)’ (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: ‘A New Discovery: John Smith’s Collations for his Edition of the OE Bede (1722)’
Author: Greg Waite
Abstract: This paper describes the discovery of hand-written collations in a British Library copy of Abraham Wheloc’s 1643/44 edition of Bede, and discusses the significance of this material. Although this copy of Wheloc has resided in the British Library collection since 1837, its important annotations have remained unnoticed, until observed in December 2013.
Date: 8/6/2015
Primary URL: http://www.isas2015.com/
Conference Name: International Society of Anglo-Saxonists

‘A Tale of Two Texts’ (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: ‘A Tale of Two Texts’
Author: Greg Waite
Abstract: This paper presents an overview of the history and challenges of editing the Old English version of Bede's Ecclesiastical History.
Date: 6/9/2015
Primary URL: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/ims/imc/IMC2015/imc2015.html
Conference Name: Leeds International Medieval Congress

"The Long Ninth Century and the Prose of King Alfred's Reign" (Article)
Title: "The Long Ninth Century and the Prose of King Alfred's Reign"
Author: Sharon M. Rowley
Abstract: This article examines the history of the scholarship of the Old English prose of the ninth century and the reign of King Alfred the Great. Looking at the manuscripts, language, Latin sources, and the transmission of the texts, it argues that Old English prose existed before Alfred, then changed and developed during Alfred’s reign. Analyzing passages from key Old English prose texts, including the Old English version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, Wærferth’s translation of Gregory the Great’s Dialogues, and Alfred’s translations of Gregory’s Pastoral Care and the first fifty Psalms, this essay argues that early Old English prose was highly learned and in dialogue with many of the primary texts of the medieval Western world.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/
Access Model: subscription only
Format: Other
Periodical Title: Oxford Handbooks Online
Publisher: Oxford University Press

"Phantoms of Bede" (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: "Phantoms of Bede"
Author: Sharon M Rowley
Abstract: This paper re-examines at the editorial dilemma presented by the divergent translation of Book III, Chapters 14-18 in one branch of the OEHE manuscripts as a question of source. This dilemma is compounded by other readings shared across branches, and complicated by the survival of chapter headings written to fit one branch in a manuscript of the other branch. None of these problems are new, but they are problems that seem to arise from the fact that the HE and its vernacular counterpart circulated together in Anglo-Saxon England. If it is too circular to say that a palimpsest in Bodleian Library, MS Tanner 10 used the OEHE as a source for itself, it may be safe to say that the OEHE provides one of the clearest surviving examples of a text that was revised and restored (variably) by reference to both itself and its Latin source. I am in the process of editing the OEHE Book III.14-18, and hope to shed new light on the question of the divergence because I have access to materials unknown to Thomas Miller, the last editor of the OEHE. These are: Lawrence Nowell’s transcription of the burned Cotton MS and John Smith’s collation of that MS in a copy of Wheloc’s 1644 edition.
Date: 5/14/2016
Conference Name: International Medieval Congress, Western Michigan University

"Introduction" to A Commentary on the Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, by Frederick Klaeber. (Book Section)
Title: "Introduction" to A Commentary on the Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, by Frederick Klaeber.
Author: Rowley, Sharon
Editor: Valentine A Pakis, editor and translator
Abstract: First serialized in the journal Anglia in 1902 and 1904, this commentary is here translated into English for the first time. It is to date the only full-length commentary on the Old English version of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastic gentis Anglorum. With an introduction on the history of the scholarship by Sharon M. Rowley.
Year: 2015
Access Model: Book
Publisher: ACMRS
Book Title: A Commentary on the Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, by Frederick Klaeber
ISBN: 978-0-86698-53

“Sources, Controversies and Silences: Bede, Muirchú, Patrick and Acgilbert” (Article)
Title: “Sources, Controversies and Silences: Bede, Muirchú, Patrick and Acgilbert”
Author: Sharon M. Rowley
Abstract: This essay explores the role of intertextuality in the commemoration of Patrick, Cuthbert and Acgilbert in three texts that share an identical phrase. These texts are: Muirchú’s Vita sancti Patricii, and Bede’s Vita sancti Cuthberti and Historia ecclesiastica. The rhythmic phrase relates to themes of mission, grace, and conversion across the three texts.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://www.brepols.net/products/IS-9782503592343-1
Primary URL Description: Brepols' website for Peritia.
Access Model: subscription only
Format: Journal
Publisher: Peritia: The Journal of the Medieval Academy of Ireland

"Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 41 and 286: Digitization as translation," in Manuscripts in the Digital Age (Book Section)
Title: "Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 41 and 286: Digitization as translation," in Manuscripts in the Digital Age
Author: Sharon M. Rowley
Editor: Benjamin Albritton, Georgia Henley, and Elaine Treharne
Abstract: This chapter reads digitization as a form of translation that can also be read as activating the resources, not just of language, but of vision, screenic sensoria, and knowledge. Using these tropes to deepen our understanding of MSS 41 and 286 as powerfully transformative and performative texts, we can see how digitization activates new forms of presence, visibility and meaning that echo and extend the ways in which these books were received, transmitted and appropriated as manuscripts in medieval Britain.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://www.routledge.com/Medieval-Manuscripts-in-the-Digital-Age/Albritton-Henley-Treharne/p/book/9780367426613
Primary URL Description: Routledge's website for the book.
Access Model: e-book and hardcover
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 978-0-367-4266

“Constructing Early Medieval Winchester: Historical Narratives and the Compilation of British Library Cotton Otho B.xi," in Early Medieval Winchester: Communities, Authority and Power in an Urban Space, c.800-c.1200 (Book Section)
Title: “Constructing Early Medieval Winchester: Historical Narratives and the Compilation of British Library Cotton Otho B.xi," in Early Medieval Winchester: Communities, Authority and Power in an Urban Space, c.800-c.1200
Author: Sharon M. Rowley
Editor: Ryan Lavelle
Abstract: This chapter reconsiders the compilation of British Library MS Cotton Otho B.XI in light of recent developments in codicological theory and from the perspective of Winchester as a place where the manuscript was being copied, added to or otherwise altered. The first phase of copying took place in the middle of the tenth century, when the Otho copy of the Old English version of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica was made; the second phase took place at the beginning of the eleventh century, between 1001–12, when additional materials were added to Otho from Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 173. These stages correspond to the reigns of Edmund I (939–46), Eadred (946–55), Eadwig (955–9) and Æthelred (978–1016). By looking closely at the contents and differences between the two manuscripts as they changed over time, it is argued that the scribes who expanded Otho did not, as Patrick Wormald suggested, ‘wide[n] the scope of the Corpus 173 argument’; rather, the scribes of Otho created an entirely new composite book that provides both a record of and a resource for Christian kingship. In it, the compilers brought together a range of texts that explore the relationship between the king, his bishops and his people; the nation and its boroughs; the part and the whole.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://www.oxbowbooks.com/oxbow/early-medieval-winchester.html
Primary URL Description: Oxbow's website for the book.
Access Model: book
Publisher: Oxbow
ISBN: 9781789256239

“Bishop Lyfing, Crediton and the Cultural Orbit of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 41,” forthcoming in Yearbook of English Studies 2022: Literature to 1200, ed. Joshua Davies and Clare Lees, (Article)
Title: “Bishop Lyfing, Crediton and the Cultural Orbit of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 41,” forthcoming in Yearbook of English Studies 2022: Literature to 1200, ed. Joshua Davies and Clare Lees,
Author: Sharon M. Rowley
Abstract: This essay explores the likely possibility that the OE Bede in CCCC 41 was copied in Crediton under the direction of Bishop Lyfing, in the 1030s-1040s and that it can be read as part of an initiative begun by Wulfstan of York to provide the English with ideological continuity and, as Patrick Wormald put it “a new beginning,” after the turmoil of the early eleventh century, including the displacement and changes that followed the accession of King Cnut, in 1016, along with the possibility that Cnut faced a coup d’état in the Southwest in 1020. Looking at MS 41 as a whole book in relation to Cnut’s (eventual) performance of Christian kingship (which was authored in part by Wulfstan and in part by Lyfing), the connections Cnut asserted with the house of Wessex (through his veneration of his “brother” Edmund Ironside and his promise to uphold the laws of Edgar), and, finally, in relation to increasing interest in Saints Cuthbert and Æthelthryth — who feature prominently in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History and the OE version of it. While some of these ideas and connections are speculative, I hope to elucidate the continuing and changing significance of the OE Bede in the first quarter of the eleventh century, where it comes into dialogue with the writings of Wulfstan and Ælfric, and to demonstrate the value of integrating paleography and codicology into literary and historical analysis.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://academic.oup.com/ywes?login=false#
Primary URL Description: This is the main website for YES, the site for this volume is not yet up.
Format: Journal
Publisher: Modern Humanities Research Association

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