THE CAMBRIDGE ANTHOLOGY OF BRITISH MEDIEVAL LATIN: Volume 1, 450-1066
CUP (2024) h/b 482pp £75 (ISBN 9781107186514)
THE CAMBRIDGE ANTHOLOGY OF BRITISH MEDIEVAL LATIN: Volume 2, 1066–1500
(CUP 2024) h/b 522pp £75 (ISBN 9781107186576)
[£150 the set: ISBN 9781316637296]
This anthology, containing some 170 passages of mediaeval Latin (male and female authors, all translated), covers the first 1000 years of British history. Its primary purpose is to use the selected passages in association with the Dictionary of Mediaeval Latin from British Sources and medieval Latin dictionaries from other countries to examine developments that took place over that period, both in the changing use of Latin and in the effect of its interaction with European languages, especially Anglo-Saxon. W. also discusses the historical, social and cultural influences (especially of Christianity) that lie behind her chosen texts. She sees the increase in the teaching of Latin in our schools (she mentions Classics for All) as especially timely for this sort of project.
These two volumes will be of great importance to scholars interested in this subject. But they serve another purpose: to introduce classicists and others with a general interest in Latin to the enormous range of documents from a period that is crucial for understanding both the development of modern English and other European languages and the creation of what we know as England. From Anglo-Saxo charters, educational works, history, biography, letters and poetry, displaying a ‘high degree of linguistic and stylistic coherence’ to the post-Norman world of royal administration and monasteries, military history, medical practice (how to remove a cataract), town life, the legal system and the shift to Latin of a more classical kind (raising questions about the relationship between education in Latin and one’s social standing), loanwords taken into Latin from the vernaculars (e.g. wikettum from Anglo-Norman wiket, ‘gate’, cf. French guichet) and much else—with what a cornucopia W. has presented us!
Both books are organised on the same principles. They are chronological by century, and under each century there is a selection of topics illustrated by one or more passages from different authors. Thus, under the 7th century, four topics are listed: the earliest charters (2 passages), Theodore of Canterbury (2 passages), Descriptions of the Holy Land (2 passages) and Adhelm (2 passages). The number of authors and topics increases considerably as the centuries pass. Each of the topics is given a general historical introduction, with further reading; and each of the passages is given an individual historical and linguistic introduction. The mediaeval Latin of each passage is followed by its translation into English, each followed by a note of the primary sources and brief further reading.
The two volumes could easily be twice the length, of course, such are the social, cultural and intellectual questions that the passages themselves raise, but that would make the whole project quite unfeasible. For those who want to follow up matters more closely, the reading lists are there to help them. In sum, the organisation of the contents of the two volumes, given the limitations of length, has been very skilfully handled.
As for the content, many of the old favourites are here—Gildas’ destruction of Britain, Bede’s history of Britain, Cuthbert’s letter on the death of Bede, the battle of Brunabuhr that made Aethelstan our first king, the coming of the Vikings, the destruction of Lindisfarne, the battle of Maldon (991) and the Danegeld, three accounts of king Alfred and the cakes (with Alfred giving the [Juvenalian] middle finger to fortune for all his bad luck), the battle of Hastings, the death of Becket, Magna Carta, a description of London, the battles of Bannockburn, Agincourt and Bosworth, the Black Death, and so on, all translated with admirable care and clarity into English.
Among much other fascinating material, your reviewer especially enjoyed Adomnán’s explanation why Jerusalem was built on a hill, because after the major annual trade fair the town was covered in dung, and once it ended, God ensured a gigantic storm immediately cleansed the streets, sweeping the dung away down the hill; Bede on orthography; Aelfric’s colloquy (‘Do you want to be beaten while learning?’ ‘We prefer to be beaten in order to gain knowledge than to be ignorant’); Richard FitzNigel’s account of King William’s Domesdei book (‘the day of judgement’); the details of Glanvill’s laws and customs of England (1188); the comment of the author of the chronicle of Meaux Abbey in Yorkshire that ‘after the naval battle of Sluys in 1340, the fish had eaten so many dead Frenchmen that, if God had given fish the ability to talk, they would have spoken French’; errors in the Latin of churchmen (e.g. equum for aequum, repente translated as ‘repented’); John of Garland’s learning Latin by grouping words according to different subjects (‘pie makers make a huge profit by selling to clerks pork pies, chicken pies and eel pies seasoned with pepper, and displaying for sale tarts and flans stuffed with soft cheese and eggs, healthy but often dirty’); Roger Bacon on the importance of grammar (‘no Latin speaker will be able to understand as he ought the wisdom of the sacred scripture and of philosophy unless he understands the languages from which they were translated’); Henry Knighton on women who dressed up as men and looked as if they were going to take part in a tournament, until God sent a thunderstorm to end it all; Walsingham on the Peasant’s Revolt; Henry Knighton on the Black Death; the Ordinance of Labourers (1349) to try (vainly) to control price inflation; the fire and rebuilding of Canterbury Cathedral (1174); (1338-9) the accounts of everyday expenditure at Durham Cathedral (‘for someone to kill the rats in the exchequer and the bursar’s stable, 12d.’).
One striking passage (author unknown) describes in detail a football match (pedipiludium, c. 1500). est enim quo solent adolescentes rustici et lascivi ingentem pilam non iactando in aera, sed solotenus volutando, nec manibus quidem sed pedibus pulsitando et versando, propellere; ludus, inquam, execrabilis satis et, meo sane iudicio, omni genere ludorum rusticior, inhonestior quoque et vilior ‘it is a game in which rowdy young men in the countryside who propel a large ball, not by throwing it in the air, but rolling it along the ground, striking and turning it not with their hands but their feet. It is a dreadful game, in my opinion, rougher, rowdier and more uncivilised than any other game’. It goes on to describe one of the players, Willelmus Bartram, whose tackle (verenda) was so severely mutilated that it took a miracle assigned to King Henry VI to restore him almost completely to health. W. notes the high- flown Latin, befitting ‘the account of a healing miracle attributed to a holy king to which this incident leads’.
This is a serious work of superb scholarship, primarily dedicated to those interested in language development. But without doubt it will also give much enjoyment to all Latinists, while providing fascinating insights into the Anglo-Saxon and post-Norman worlds. A careful selection of passages (text plus translation) with appropriate historical comment could surely form the basis of a most attractive general introduction to the world of mediaeval Latin.
Peter Jones