“Jesus wept.” Famously the shortest verse in the Authorised English version of the Bible (John 11:35), when Jesus weeps at the death of his friend Lazarus, this is actually slightly longer in Latin, usually a more succinct language than English: Et lacrimatus est Iesus. A major focus of my work is on the circumstances surrounding…
Category: Confession
Have mercy, guide me, guard me: an eighth- (and eleventh-) century prayer
It’s Lent, and time for something a bit more penitential than some of the glorious manuscripts and linguistic fun that I have been writing about in recent posts. It happens that a lot of my current work (adapting my doctoral thesis for publication) has been on confessional prayers of various kinds, which is pretty convenient. …
Have mercy on me, O God: Psalm 50 in the Anglo-Saxon church
I have a new article out! ‘Which Psalms Were Important to the Anglo-Saxons? The Psalms in Tenth- and Eleventh-Century Prayer and Medical Remedies’ is part of a special edition of English Studies on the psalms in Anglo-Saxon and Anglo -Norman England, edited by Helen Appleton and Francis Leneghan, and I am grateful to both of…
Gentle deaths and softening hearts: an Old English confession
The main focus of my academic work is on private prayer in eleventh-century English religious institutions, and at least three-quarters of the prayers that I look at are in Latin. However, people did pray in their native language, and a number of prayers in Old English survive: some of these are known to be translations…
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…
Prayer – from God’s point of view
So far, in this blog, I have written a lot about Anglo-Saxon prayer, which is the main focus of my research; and, in particular, how monks and nuns thought about their prayers. But one issue that I have never yet addressed is: what is God supposed to be thinking, all this time? What is prayer…
Like, pray, share: Anglo-Saxon prayer memes
So you’re scrolling through your Facebook feed, and one of those memes pops up. You know what I mean. Either it’s a sick child who needs your prayers (‘1 like = 100 prayers!’), or a cursed photo of a hellwraith (‘like and share or you’ll die tonight!!’), or simply an inspirational image which will give…
Betony, the miracle herb (or: all about Anglo-Saxon vomit)
So far, in this blog, I have mostly written about subjects of deep spiritual significance to the lives of pious Anglo-Saxons: solitary prayer, confession, the healing of the sick, and praying in the words of the great Fathers of the church. Today, I am going to write about vomit. Not, you might think, a related…
How to confess like an Anglo-Saxon
When I’m looking through late Anglo-Saxon prayer collections, one of the prayer genres that I encounter most frequently is that of confession. In my work, I have discovered that there were a number of different ways of confessing one’s sins, such as: directly to God in private; with the aid of a skilled confessor; and…
For the Wynn 