2.1 Social networks and coalitions

The only attempt to apply social networks to OE data, so far as I am aware, is Ursula Lenker's article on the ‘Winchester School’ (Lenker Reference Lenker2000), although it should be acknowledged that smaller (intellectual) communities of Anglo-Saxon England and their linguistic practices are often singled out and referred to by the names of their key figures: the ‘School of Theodore and Hadrian’ (Lapidge Reference Lapidge1996), the ‘Alfredian Circle’ (Discenza & Szarmach Reference Discenza and Szarmach2014), the ‘School of Æthelwold’ (Lenker Reference Lenker2000: 225–6). Lenker, therefore, suggests that the concept as such is not exactly new to Anglo-Saxon studies, but its systematic application depends on the rigidity of definitions and analysis. If the term social network is defined broadly as ‘identifiable groups within a society’ (Preston Reference Preston, Ammon, Dittmar and Mattheier1987: 693) or as the aggregate of relationships contracted by an individual with others (Milroy & Llamas Reference Milroy, Llamas, Chambers and Schilling2013), its applicability to medieval data may look straightforward: as long as we can identify groups and individual actors within them, we can also use social networks as a concept. If, however, we introduce quantifiable parameters, such as frequency of interaction, degree of integration in a social network, network density, role-relations within a network, network clusters, etc. (Milroy Reference Milroy1987; Milroy & Milroy Reference Milroy, Milroy and Milroy1992; Milroy & Llamas Reference Milroy, Llamas, Chambers and Schilling2013), we find ourselves confined to historical reconstruction and guesswork. Lenker reconstructs the ‘Winchester School’ as a monastic community with high density and multiplicity of ties – the monks know each other by direct contact being territorially attached to the same house, they share most of their activities, many are also connected by class and family ties, and all of them are expected to take part in their common goal: to serve God and to adhere to the Benedictine Rule. She concludes that the ‘Winchester School’ is a cluster within a wider network of other reformed monasteries (Reference Lenker2000: 234).

The linguistic behaviour of this cluster is tested in a case study of ‘Winchester Vocabulary’ (2000: 231–3). It is shown that ‘Winchester usage’ is markedly selective: there are lexemes that display a strong correlation (up to 98 per cent) with the authors of the ‘Winchester School’ – Æthelwold and Ælfric – and there are lexemes that are avoided in Winchester texts. Contemporary texts from outside the cluster employ on average between 3 (Blickling and Vercelli Homilies, and the works of Wulfstan) and 18 per cent (two collections of glosses from Canterbury) of the ‘Winchester Vocabulary’, with the latter group testifying to a possible diffusion of Winchester features to a new locality. This spread can be accounted for by the relocation of monks to another monastery. Their role within the social-networks framework would be that of innovators with weak ties. Monks with central positions in the new scriptoria could qualify as early adopters; but, with both Canterbury texts being anonymous, it is impossible to say whether we are dealing with innovators’ or adopters’ features. Moreover, innovations could spread along with influential books, when these were borrowed, bought, donated or commissioned to be copied, in which case book migration created a special type of ties between human networks (Lenker Reference Lenker2000: 235). The concept of discourse communities, as argued below, may be relevant in this latter situation.

Summarising her analysis, Lenker defines the ‘Winchester School’ as a ‘closeknit, localised network cluster functioning as a mechanism of norm-enforcement’ (Reference Lenker2000: 236). She elaborates that, given the dominant position of bishop Æthelwold within this network and the institutional support of the reform movement by King Edgar, a better term to describe the Winchester network may be coalition, i.e. ‘identifiable, apparently strategic, alliances of people, . . . which are formed in order to achieve particular goals or to pursue a particular, common agenda’ (Fitzmaurice Reference Fitzmaurice2000: 266; Reference Fitzmaurice and Hickey2010). Through cultural focusing the Winchester network engages in the ‘formation of recognisable sets of norms . . . apparent in the standardisation of monastic life and the liturgy. . ., of manuscript art and, linguistically, of the “Winchester Vocabulary”’ (Lenker Reference Lenker2000: 237). These norms both emerge in and later on are maintained by the tight structures and links within the Winchester network, supported by its institutions and hierarchies. They would originate in daily interactions, such as collective studies of glosses and glossaries or of older translations, and gradually crystallise in joint translation exercises and in new translations.

2.2 Discourse communities and communities of practice

Since genres are central for our understanding of language dynamics in the OE period (see Introduction; cf. Görlach Reference Görlach, Diller and Görlach2001), it seems necessary to consider sociolinguistic approaches that take them more into account. Among these the concept of discourse communities is particularly relevant (see Diller Reference Diller, Diller and Görlach2001: 19–24). A discourse community is defined by the following criteria: (i) a communality of interest, a public goal; (ii) participatory mechanisms, which, together with (iii) information exchange, provide both information and feedback through meetings, correspondence, or newsletters; (iv) genre-specific discoursal expectations (a discourse community which utilises and owns one or more genres); (v) a dynamic towards specialized language, controlled by the expert members; and (vi) a critical mass of expertise (Swales Reference Swales1987: 4–6; Fitzmaurice Reference Fitzmaurice and Hickey2010: 108–11). For example, a scholarly community like that of historical linguists is a discourse community. Its members own several academic and bureaucratic genres and have a very clear idea of what constitutes an article, presentation, grant application, lecture or project report. Importantly, discourse communities ‘are perceived as medium-neutral and unconstrained by place or time’ (Sairio Reference Sairio2009: 33). Indeed, historical linguists can work at different universities, live in different countries, be in the early stages of their doctoral research or act as professors or work in retirement, and still belong to the discourse community; even when they die their professional writings continue to be part of the discourse community. I think this later ‘distant’ aspect of discourse communities is quite relevant for the kind of incomplete data and poorly reconstructable social ties that we encounter in early medieval material. And yet we know that the surviving texts from, for example, the OE period were produced by a clearly delimited professional community. Reconstructing Anglo-Saxon clergy as a discourse community may look inevitable – after all, the whole OE and Anglo-Latin (AL) corpus was produced by them, they owned all the available written genres (including secular ones), and they controlled education and production of all written texts (Timofeeva Reference Timofeeva, Hall, Timofeeva, Kiricsi and Fox2010). And yet discourse practices were not the only practices that united them, just as historical linguists are united by a lot more than conference papers, referee statements and peer reviews. At our local levels we engage in the life of an office, department or faculty, we have joint meals, we celebrate communal feasts and public holidays; at an international level, too, we engage with colleagues in many different professional and social ways.

An approach that takes ‘a range of social practices’ into account is that of communities of practice (CoP) (Meyerhoff Reference Meyerhoff, Chambers, Trudgill and Schilling-Estes2002: 526). In a series of recent publications I have suggested that Anglo-Saxon monastic communities can be reconstructed as communities of practice (Timofeeva Reference Timofeeva, Kopaczyk and Jucker2013). This suggestion is based on three important premises adopted in the definition of a community of practice in cognitive anthropology: such communities are characterised by mutual engagement, joint enterprise and shared repertoire (Wenger Reference Wenger1998; Meyerhoff Reference Meyerhoff, Chambers, Trudgill and Schilling-Estes2002; Eckert Reference Eckert and Brown2006). One would imagine that monastic life, which consists of many communal activities (studying, working, taking part in religious observances), could easily foster a feeling of mutual engagement, establish collaborative relationships and local monastic norms. The monastery, its locality, its rule all create a shared understanding of the joint enterprise that binds the monks (or nuns) together. As they engage in joint activities, maintaining old and inventing new ones, members of monastic communities also produce a shared repertoire of practices (Timofeeva Reference Timofeeva, Kopaczyk and Jucker2013, Reference Timofeeva2016a, Reference Timofeeva2016b). These practices also include linguistic norms.

Even though monasteries seem to be clearly defined and localisable units, one could also see them and their members as taking part in a wider community of practice, one that involves larger administrative units (sees or kingdoms) or larger ideological units (monasteries that adhere to the Rule of St Benedict), with church synods and councils, and the mobility of clergy promoting the exchange of ideas and practices between monasteries, between provinces, and ultimately even between countries. To an extent one could argue that the church of Anglo-Saxon England as a whole is a community of practice with mutual engagement, joint enterprise and a shared repertoire of practices. Taking this approach, Timofeeva (Reference Timofeeva, Kopaczyk and Jucker2013 and in press) shows how Anglo-Saxon lexical and syntactic practices of constructing the notions of ‘Latinity’ and ‘Romanity’, and ‘Greek’ and ‘the Greek language’ are shaped by the common Christian ideas about the role of Romans and Greeks in history and the role of the Latin and Greek languages in Christian schooling and written culture more generally. These common ideas are first adopted by the Anglo-Latin writers of the late seventh century and, as the vernacular tradition develops in the late ninth century, they are re-coded in OE creating almost identical meanings and connotations. I claim that several cultural movements – the school of Theodore and Hadrian, the Alfredian revival, and the Benedictine movement – can also be reconstructed as communities of practice (2013). The advantage of the CoP approach in the description of these communities is that it allows us to take their agenda into account. Indeed an educational programme or a religious reform movement can be envisaged as a joint enterprise that recruits the best among the literati, brings them together and encourages them to collaborate with each other for the shared goal. The practices that they adopt and cherish both confirm their membership and distinguish the CoP as a social unit (Eckert Reference Eckert and Brown2006: 683–5).

As Lenker (Reference Lenker2000) has observed, it is impossible to separate diffusion of features due to weak ties through the relocation of actors from diffusion of features due to the circulation of manuscripts. Similarly, in his study of communities involved in grammar writing in eighteenth-century Britain, Richard Watts remarks that on the one hand they develop ‘astounding structural and conceptual similarities across time, space and between authors’ (Reference Watts and van Ostade2008: 44), yet on the other hand they demonstrate no mutual engagement with fellow grammar writers (2008: 51). Whatever similarities of practices they have are conditioned by the circulation of grammar books, by publishers’ practices of copyright and book marketing, by classroom reproduction of grammar rules, but not by face-to-face discussion and collaboration. Quite the contrary, grammar writers competed against each other for a share of the market. Thus ‘the grammarians had a common, but not a shared enterprise, . . . they developed a common but not a shared repertoire of discursive moves, and . . . they were commonly engaged rather than mutually engaged in grammar writing’ (Watts Reference Watts and van Ostade2008: 54) – in other words, they constituted a discourse community.

These characteristics can to an extent be applied to Anglo-Saxon religious communities. Although market competition is not a concern here, reproduction of common language practices over time can be explained both by mutual engagement by fellow scribes working within the same scriptorium and by common engagement in similar or adjacent practices by scribes working in different scriptoria in terms of both geographical location and time. Below I will argue that a few practices of professional communities can remain quite stable over a period of about 200 years (see section 4). However, it would be wrong to assume that they are necessarily preserved by several generations of professionals working within the same scribal office. Rather these norms can be picked up from monastic and royal archives by potentially any scribe who has access to relevant documents regardless of his provenance, affiliation and degree of bureaucratic training. Thus perhaps what has to be distinguished is synchronic communities of practice that have all the ‘mutual’ characteristics plus the face-to-face interaction factor and conscious involvement in the joint enterprise, and diachronic discourse communities that can maintain ‘common’ characteristics and norms without the requirement of physical and social proximity to their colleagues and sometimes with the impossibility thereof. Both approaches differ from social networks in that discourse communities and CoPs bring people together (literally or metaphorically) for a purpose, a common/shared goal that is known to their members, while social networks exist without them. ‘[M]embership in a social network may be involuntary, characterised by chance or circumstance’ (Sairio Reference Sairio2009: 33; cf. Meyerhoff Reference Meyerhoff, Chambers, Trudgill and Schilling-Estes2002: 531). To an extent social networks may just happen to their actors, when they are born into a certain family or brought up in a certain neighbourhood; access to the other two types of communities is more restricted and regulated. In the following section I show how social network, discourse community and CoP approaches can be harmonised to achieve a better understanding of the influence of the Alfredian circle and its successors in the history of OE.

3.1 Individual actors

Alfred, famously, names four of his teachers-advisers in the preface to the Pastoral Care (CPLetWærf 58), stating that he has learned (the interpretation of) the text (Gregory the Great's Regula pastoralis) from

1. 1. Archbishop Plegmund (d. 914), of Canterbury;

2. 2. Bishop Asser (d. 909), of St David's, Wales;

3. 3. Mass-priest Grimbald (d. 901), of St Bertin, Flanders;

4. 4. Mass-priest John (fl. c. 885–904), the Old Saxon.

As is suggested by the opening lines of the surviving manuscripts with the preface, mentioning the name of the recipient of an individual copy, and a note to the same effect formerly to be found in one of the manuscripts of the Pastoral Care, the translation was circulated to at least five people (Keynes & Lapidge Reference Keynes and Lapidge1983: 293–4; Lapidge Reference Lapidge2004; Schreiber Reference Schreiber, Discenza and Szarmach2014: 175–8):

1. 5. Werferth (d. 907x915), bishop of Worcester;

2. 6. Heahstan, bishop of London (867x896–7);

3. 7. Wulfsige, bishop of Sherborne (879x889–890x900);

4. 8. Swithulf, bishop of Rochester (868x880–894x897);

5. 1. Plegmund, archbishop of Canterbury (already mentioned in the preface).

It is conceivable that five or more manuscripts were prepared and distributed to the remaining bishops and other important monastic centres (Keynes & Lapidge Reference Keynes and Lapidge1983: 294). Further, Asser's account of the educational project in the Life of King Alfred (ch. 77–8) gives the list of advisers as largely overlapping with that in the Pastoral Care (indicated by numbers 1, 3, 4, and 5) and also adding two more names (9 and 10):

1. 1. Plegmund;

2. 3. Grimbald;

3. 4. John;

4. 5. Werferth, identifying him as the translator of Gregory the Great's Dialogues;

5. 9. Æthelstan, priest and chaplain, probably bishop of Ramsbury from c. 909;

6. 10. Werwulf, priest and chaplain, a friend and associate of Werferth (according to charter S 1279; Keynes & Lapidge Reference Keynes and Lapidge1983: 259, fn. 166).

Asser claims that all of them had a reputation as scholars and intellectuals, describing Plegmund, Werferth, Æthelstan and Werwulf as luminaria ‘luminaries’ (ch. 77) and Grimbald and John as magistros ‘instructors’ (ch. 78). Since Wulfsige, Heahstan and Swithulf (and possibly other bishops) are mentioned only as recipients of the Pastoral Care, they are probably only marginally relevant to the immediate Alfredian network, attesting however to the intention to circulate the core texts of the educational reform widely (Keynes & Lapidge Reference Keynes and Lapidge1983; Schreiber Reference Schreiber, Discenza and Szarmach2014; Irvine Reference Irvine, Discenza and Szarmach2014a). The remaining seven names – Plegmund, Asser, Grimbald, John, Werferth, Æthelstan, and Werwulf – pointed out in the preface to the Pastoral Care and by Asser explicitly as advisers and associates emerge as more relevant. They come from a variety of places, where education and scholarship were in a better state than in Wessex. As Asser testifies, Werferth, Plegmund, Æthelstan and Werwulf are from Mercia, Asser himself is from Wales, Grimbald and John come from Gaul (Galliam), although their home places are identified as Flanders and Saxony, respectively. What is conspicuous is that not one of the actors, except Alfred himself, is a West Saxon (I return to this point below). Moreover whether Grimbald's vernacular was Germanic or Romance is not exactly certain (Pfaff Reference Pfaff2004). Thus in the centre of this community we have King Alfred connected in multiple ways to seven scholars, three of them being foreigners and four Mercians. Within the Mercian group friendship and monastic-community ties have been suggested (Keynes Reference Keynes, Blackburn and Dumville1998: 28–9), so we might be dealing with a cluster of closer ties within a bigger network of the Alfredian court. Socially all the advisers bear asymmetrical ties (in terms of social rank and economic resources) to King Alfred, who can summon them from other places, pay compensation for their services and promote them to key positions (e.g. the appointment of Plegmund as Archbishop of Canterbury in 890). He is probably also older than his associates as most of them survive him by 5–15 years. Given the various ecclesiastical obligations the actors of the Alfredian network had to perform both in Winchester and in their respective sees and monasteries, with frequent and prolonged absences (e.g. Asser was expected to be in Winchester only six months of the year (Life of Alfred, ch. 79)), it seems difficult to imagine that the frequency of interaction within the network was stable. Even though its members continued to stay in touch through correspondence and messengers, periods of intensive interaction at the court (when the translations were selected, discussed or even produced?) probably alternated with periods of reduced interaction. Before any further conclusions are drawn, it is necessary to consider one more important actor, the proto-chancery.

3.2 Proto-chancery as actor

Although traditional school education, and hence literacy, in Anglo-Saxon England was only available in monastic schools, Anglo-Saxon written documents were not necessarily produced by monastic scribes alone; at least not all the genres were produced by them. Those whose circulation could have emanated from the royal quarters are chartersFootnote ¹ (Snook Reference Snook2015) and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC; Brooks Reference Brooks2010), with the same hands sometimes being responsible for both (Ker Reference Ker1957: lix). The origins of the royal chancery are traced to Winchester and the court of King Alfred, with its Carolingian precursor and likely model being based on similar institutions employed by the Merovingian kings and Roman emperors (Keynes Reference Keynes1980: 30–1). Charter material shows that the issue of these documents becomes increasingly centralised, especially in the first half of the tenth century. In the Alfredian period Winchester charters display strong influence of the Mercian diplomatic tradition, but towards the 930s new norms develop that reflect both their Mercian origins and West Saxon adaptation. During the reigns of Edward the Elder (899–924) and Æthelstan (924–39) stylistically flamboyant charters become potent symbolic manifestations of the effectiveness of the West Saxon political and administrative machine that controls both landed property and the legal means of its regulation (Snook Reference Snook2015: 5–7, 30–3, 41–6). Although it is impossible to say where royal scribes came from, with the Mercian connection being obvious only for the first generations, where they were trained, whether or not they were obliged to stay at the chancery for their entire career, etc., the existence of a professional bureaucratic community employed more or less permanently by the West Saxon kings is very important for our understanding of the production and circulation of not only functional but also of literary texts (see Dumville Reference Dumville and Richards1994: 186–7). In particular, common royal-chancery provenance has been suggested for the ASC (Brooks Reference Brooks2010). This central office was responsible both for the annals of the Common Stock, i.e. material in all the surviving manuscripts of the ASC as far as c. 892, and, significantly, for the subsequent continuations. Nicholas Brooks argues that the ASC was written centrally in Winchester and disseminated in instalments to other important localities, in an attempt to control public opinion of prominent social leaders across the West Saxon dependencies (Brooks Reference Brooks2010: 49–62; Timofeeva Reference Timofeeva2016a, Reference Timofeeva2016b).

The proto-chancery offers itself most readily for the CoP analysis, with mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and shared norms being easily envisaged and reconstructed for a small localisable professional community employed to carry out a definitive scope of tasks. Founded under the auspices of Alfredian reforms to provide copies of charters and the ASC for circulation, it may well also have been responsible for copying other Alfredian texts. With the Mercian influence being strong in Latin charter material, it seems reasonable to assume that the four Mercian advisers of King Alfred (Plegmund, Werferth, Æthelstan and Werwulf) were also somehow involved in the organisation and work of the proto-chancery. Further, if the royal office was capable of producing eloquent and sophisticated Latin documents (Snook Reference Snook2015), its scribes may also have been employed to perform other literary tasks such as OE translations. To what extent their influence can be felt in surviving texts is demonstrated in the case studies in section 4.