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Cnut, also known as Cnut the Great and Canute, was King of England from 1016, King of Denmark from 1018, and King of Norway from 1028 until his death in 1035. The three kingdoms united under Cnut's rule are referred to together as the North Sea Empire.
Lyfing was an Anglo-Saxon Bishop of Wells and Archbishop of Canterbury. He was abbot of Chertsey Abbey before becoming bishop at Wells. His appointment to Canterbury came at a time of Danish invasions of England, and he was unable to act as archbishop for a time due to Danish activity. When Cnut, the Danish king, became king of England, Lyfing likely consecrated the new king. Lyfing was known as a wise man and gave gifts to his church and oversaw repairs to his cathedral before his death in 1020.
Ancrene Wisse is an anonymous monastic rule for female anchoresses written in the early 13th century.
Wulfstan was an English Bishop of London, Bishop of Worcester, and Archbishop of York. He is thought to have begun his ecclesiastical career as a Benedictine monk. He became the Bishop of London in 996. In 1002 he was elected simultaneously to the diocese of Worcester and the archdiocese of York, holding both in plurality until 1016, when he relinquished Worcester; he remained archbishop of York until his death. It was perhaps while he was at London that he first became well known as a writer of sermons, or homilies, on the topic of Antichrist. In 1014, as archbishop, he wrote his most famous work, a homily which he titled the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, or the Sermon of the Wolf to the English.
The Sermo Lupi ad Anglos is the title given to a homily composed in England between 1010-1016 by Wulfstan II, Archbishop of York, who commonly styled himself Lupus, or 'wolf' after the first element in his name [wulf-stan = 'wolf-stone']. Though the title is Latin, the work itself is written in Old English. The Sermo Lupi is Wulfstan's most well-known work. In it, he blames a lack of moral discipline amongst his fellow English as the source of God's anger against the English, which has taken the shape of thirty years of Viking raids against England. Wulfstan exhorts the English to behave in a manner more pleasing to God, and specifically to live according to the laws of the Church and of the king. The Sermo Lupi is noted for its rhetorical achievements, and is considered to represent the height of Wulfstan's skill as a homilist and rhetor. The text of the Sermo Lupi has been critically edited many times, most recently by Dorothy Bethurum. The work contains one of several mentions of Old English wælcyrian, a term cognate to the Old Norse valkyrjur—valkyries.
The Doom Book, Dōmbōc, Code of Alfred or Legal Code of Ælfred the Great was the code of laws compiled by Alfred the Great. Alfred codified three prior Saxon codes – those of Æthelberht of Kent, Ine of Wessex and Offa of Mercia – to which he prefixed the Ten Commandments of Moses and incorporated rules of life from the Mosaic Code and the Christian code of ethics.
The Winchester Troper refers to two eleventh-century manuscripts of liturgical plainchant and two-voice polyphony copied and used in the Old Minster at Winchester Cathedral in Hampshire, England. The manuscripts are now held at Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 473 and Oxford, Bodleian Library Bodley 775 . The term "Winchester Troper" is best understood as the repertory of music contained in the two manuscripts. Both manuscripts contain a variety of liturgical genres, including Proper and Ordinary chants for both the Mass and the Divine Office. Many of the chants can also be found in other English and Northern French tropers, graduals, and antiphoners. However, some chants are unique to Winchester, including those for local saints such as St. Æthelwold and St. Swithun, who were influential Bishops of Winchester in the previous centuries. Corpus 473 contains the most significant and largest surviving collection of eleventh-century organum. This polyphonic repertoire is unique to that manuscript.
Wulfhelm was Bishop of Wells before being promoted to the Archbishopric of Canterbury about 926. Nothing is known about his time at Wells, but as archbishop he helped codify royal law codes and gave lands to monasteries. He went to Rome soon after his selection as archbishop. Two religious books that he gave to his cathedral are still extant.
The Anglian collection is a collection of Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies and regnal lists. These survive in four manuscripts; two of which now reside in the British Library. The remaining two belong to the libraries of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and Rochester Cathedral, the latter now deposited with the Medway Archives.
The Leges Henrici Primi or Laws of Henry I is a legal treatise, written in about 1115, that records the legal customs of medieval England in the reign of King Henry I of England. Although it is not an official document, it was written by someone apparently associated with the royal administration. It lists and explains the laws, and includes explanations of how to conduct legal proceedings. Although its title implies that these laws were issued by King Henry, it lists laws issued by earlier monarchs that were still in force in Henry's reign; the only law of Henry that is included is the coronation charter he issued at the start of his reign. It covers a diverse range of subjects, including ecclesiastical cases, treason, murder, theft, feuds, assessment of danegeld, and the amounts of judicial fines.
Hemming's Cartulary is a manuscript cartulary, or collection of charters and other land records, collected by a monk named Hemming around the time of the Norman Conquest of England. The manuscript comprises two separate cartularies that were made at different times and later bound together; it is in the British Library as MS Cotton Tiberius A xiii. The first was composed at the end of the 10th or beginning of the 11th century. The second section was compiled by Hemming and was written around the end of the 11th or the beginning of the 12th century. The first section, traditionally titled the Liber Wigorniensis, is a collection of Anglo-Saxon charters and other land records, most of which are organized geographically. The second section, Hemming's Cartulary proper, combines charters and other land records with a narrative of deprivation of property owned by the church of Worcester.
Handbook for a Confessor is a compilation of Old English and Latin penitential texts associated with – and possibly authored or adapted by – Wulfstan (II), Archbishop of York. The handbook was intended for the use of parish priests in hearing confession and determining penances. Its transmission in the manuscripts seems to bear witness to Wulfstan's profound concern with these sacraments and their regulation, an impression which is similarly borne out by his Canons of Edgar, a guide of ecclesiastical law also targeted at priests. The handbook is a derivative work, based largely on earlier vernacular representatives of the penitential genre such as the Scrifboc and the Old English Penitential. Nevertheless, a unique quality seems to lie in the more or less systematic way it seeks to integrate various points of concern, including the proper formulae for confession and instructions on the administration of confession, the prescription of penances and their commutation.
The title Quadripartitus refers to an extensive legal collection compiled during the reign of Henry I, king of England (1100–1135). The work consists of Anglo-Saxon legal materials in Latin translation as well as a number of Latin texts of legal interest that were produced after the Conquest. It ranks as the largest surviving medieval collection of pre-Conquest law and is the second to have been produced during Henry I's reign, after that contained in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 383. First compiled for the use of Henry I's jurists and administrators, the Quadripartitus enjoyed immense interest for a considerable time afterwards and was consulted by legal scholars, including Henry de Bracton in the thirteenth century and John Fortescue in the fifteenth.
The Instituta Cnuti, in full Instituta Cnuti aliorumque regum Anglorum, is a legal compilation that cites, in Latin translation, selected material of Old English law. It was put together by an Anglo-Norman cleric, possibly at Worcester, sometime after the Conquest, between 1066 and 1124.
Geþyncðo, meaning “Dignities”, is the title given to an Old English legal tract on status and social mobility, probably written by Wulfstan (II), Archbishop of York between 1002 and 1023. It is sometimes known as one of the so-called 'promotion laws', along with Norðlleoda laga, and both these texts belong to a legal compilation on status, dubbed ‘the Geþyncðu group’ by the historian Patrick Wormald. Though the extent to which these reflect reality is a topic of some debate, they constitute one of the most valuable primary documents for an understanding of social status in late Anglo-Saxon England.
Robert of Cricklade was a medieval English writer and prior of St Frideswide's Priory in Oxford. He was a native of Cricklade and taught before becoming a cleric. He wrote several theological works as well as a lost biography of Thomas Becket, the murdered Archbishop of Canterbury.
The Collectio canonum Wigorniensis is a medieval canon law collection originating in southern England around the year 1005. It exists in multiple recensions, the earliest of which — "Recension A" — consists of just over 100 canons drawn from a variety of sources, most predominantly the ninth-century Frankish collection of penitential and canon law known as the Collectio canonum quadripartita. The author of Recension A is currently unknown. Other recensions also exist, slightly later in date than the first. These later recensions are extensions and augmentations of Recension A, and are known collectively as "Recension B". These later recensions all bear the unmistakable mark of having been created by Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester and archbishop of York, possibly sometime around the year 1008, though some of them may have been compiled as late as 1023, the year of Wulfstan's death. The collection treats a range of ecclesiastical and lay subjects, such as clerical discipline, church administration, lay and clerical penance, public and private penance, as well as a variety of spiritual, doctrinal and catechistic matters. Several "canons" in the collection verge on the character of sermons or expository texts rather than church canons in the traditional sense; but nearly every element in the collection is prescriptive in nature, and concerns the proper ordering of society in a Christian polity.
The Canons of Edgar are a set of early eleventh-century ecclesiastical regulations produced in Anglo-Saxon England by Wulfstan, Archbishop of York.
Norðhymbra preosta lagu is an Old English legal text found in the manuscript Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 201, pp. 43–46. In the summary of the Early English Laws project, "the law deals with offences committed against priests or churches, punishments for heathen practices, non-observance of Sundays, festivals and fasts, or for withholding church dues. The text post-dates 1023 and draws on legislation from the reigns" of Æthelred the Unready and Cnut the Great.
References
- ↑ Mary P. Richards, 'I-II Cnut: Wulfstan's Summa?', in English Law Before Magna Carta: Felix Liebermann and 'Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen’, ed. by Stefan Jurasinski, Lisi Oliver and Andrew Rabin, Medieval Law and Its Practice, 8 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 137-56. doi : 10.1163/ej.9789004187566.i-330.31.
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