Today is Good Friday, the day which commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. For today’s blogpost, I’ve decided simply to post and translate some Anglo-Saxon texts dedicated to the Holy Cross: a hymn, a poem, and two prayers. As my research is all about how texts were adapted and reused in different contexts, in each…
Category: Liturgy
Beati illuminatores: meeting a manuscript
Recently, I have been doing research on the prayers added to late Anglo-Saxon psalters, for which I paid a short visit to the Bodleian Library in Oxford a couple of months ago. While I was there, I thought I might as well take the chance to look at a manuscript which I have mentioned in…
Solidify us unto Thy charity: the medicinal and liturgical uses of cheese
On this blog, I write about some of the most important aspects of Christian spirituality in early medieval England. The feast of Easter. The healing of the sick. Confession. Expressing one’s deepest yearnings to God in prayer. And now: cheese. I’ve written before about Ælfric of Eynsham, abbot and homilist, and also the author of…
The Feast of St Michael (and his cute little dragons)
Today is the Feast of St Michael. While other saints might be a martyr, a confessor or a virgin, Michael is the chief of the angels. He appears four times in the Bible, but is best remembered for his part in a brief but exciting twist in the Book of Revelation (or Apocalypse): Et factum…
Galba A. xiv: the Cinderella of medieval prayerbooks
I research medieval prayerbooks. When I say that, it conjures up an image of a gorgeous, multicoloured, exquisitely-decorated Book of Hours. Like this one: Unfortunately, they’re not all like that. Some of them look more like this: That is London, British Library Cotton Galba A. xiv, an eleventh-century English manuscript which, for convenience’s sake, I…
Who are you seeking? Easter in the Anglo-Saxon church
With the season of Easter upon us, I have been thinking about how the resurrection of Christ might have been celebrated in the Anglo-Saxon church. How did people relate to the story of Mary Magdalene and her companion arriving at the tomb to find not a body, but an angel – essentially the moment at…
For the Wynn 