Collated Text

Apparatus 1: Correspondences in the Treatise Audiuimus multos (Vat. lat. 6018, fols. 51r–54r, ed. Munzi, Littera legitera, 63–69)

A.: … catholici[s] sapientes ea <n> dem A littera <m> … primam esse opinantur pro typo nominis primi hominis protoplausti, idest Adae.

B.: B, bonus filius, idest Habel iustus, qui pietate parentibus Deoque in offerendo munera obtima prestabat.

C.: C, caecus a muliere, idest Adam qui seductus est ab Eva.

D.: Damnandus est, idest diabolus in inferno.

E.: E: Eva, ipsa est mulier quae facta fuerat de corpus Adae, quia costa de latere eius dextro fuit, quam Dominus ipso soporato tollit et edificavit eam in mulierem, quae nuncupata est Eva.

F.: F: Fremuit populus Iudaicus quando Christus natus est.

G.: <G>, gemuit Satan ne raperet Christus homines ex eius potestate.

H.: H, hamum idest Christus qui tollit inimicum ex mundo: sicut enim hamum ae mari pisces auferit, ita salvator noster Iehsus Christus diabulo e mundo et ministros eius tollit.

I.: <I>, imber divinus, idest baptisma.

K.: K … calomnium, idest Iudaeorum calomniantium Christo …

L.: L … in sensu lumen, idest lex divina.

M.: M, magnus, idest Deus pater.

N.: … nomen <Christi>, idest filius Dei, quem nomen patris … (Munzi suspects a lacuna after patris)

O.: O, opifex, artifex idest Spiritus Sanctus.

P.: P, portavit Christus crucem pro sanctis et peccatoribus.

Q.: Q, Quassati sunt Iudei seducti ab heretici[ti]s.

R.: R, Raguhel fortis, idest rebellis Deo, hoc est Satanahel. (Munzi emends Satanahel to Nahalihel without comment.)

S.: S … Salvator Iehsus.

T.: T, tenuit fortitudinem, idest Christus, qui hominem ad caelum portavit.

V.: V, uncti sunt oleo sancto apostoli, spiritu sancto, misericordia divina.

X.: ecs: expulsi sunt gentes ab infidelitate reversi ad credulitatem.

Y.: Y fines saeculi, id⟨est⟩ dies iudicii.

Z.: Zizania inter triticum, id est peccatores in medio iustorum.

Translation and Commentary

In the commentary on each letter, the keyword or phrase assigned to each letter is referred to as the “lemma,” and its explanation as the “gloss.” We provide English translations of all three versions of AW (except where more than one version can be translated identically) as well as of the corresponding extracts from AM. In keeping with the alphabetical spirit of the genre, where the Latin keywords for each letter can be translated without undue liberty into modern English words beginning with the same letter we have done so; where even with due liberty no such equivalent is available we give the Latin keyword followed by the non-alphabetical English translation in parens.

A.

That the name of Adam, the first man (Gen. 1:26–27, 2:7; 1 Cor. 15:45; cf. 1 Tim. 2:13), should begin with the first letter in all of the “three sacred languages” is obviously appropriate. In Alcuin's Disputatio Pippini cum Albino, a riddle about Adam as the man who was never born but died once (indirectly answered as “earth”) is followed by a challenge to identify the first letter of his name, which is answered with “i.” (one, first): see Martha Bayless, “Alcuin's Disputatio Pippini and the Early Medieval Riddle Tradition,” in Humor, History and Politics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Guy Halsall (Cambridge, 2002), 157–78, at 175 (nos. 102–3) Surprisingly, AW does not invoke the all but inevitable figural connection to Christ as the “last Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45) and as the “alpha and omega” (Apoc. 1:8, 21:6, and 22:13). The reverse idea, that the letter “A” received its name from the word Adam (among other A-words) is concisely stated in the pseudo-Isidorian (probably Irish) Quaestiones de veteri et novo testamento: “Dic mihi. Prima littera A, pro quo accepit nomen A? De angelis, de ante secula, de Adam, de anima” (CCL 108B, 198), and the Hiberno-Latin Liber de numeris similarly explains the letter A's priority by means of sacred words and names (Adonai, Adam, and so on); see R. E. McNally, “Der irische Liber de numeris: Eine Quellenanalyse des pseudo-isidorischen Liber de numeris” (Ph.D. diss., University of Munich, 1957), 62–63, citing the Questiones as well as a tract Ysidorus De interpretatione litterarum alphabeti, ed. Hermann Hagen, Anecdota Helvetica quae ad grammaticam Latinam spectant (Leipzig, 1870), 302: “A vocalis est, tribus virgulis comparatur et tribus nominibus: aleph in ebraica, in greca alfa, in latina a: quia dicitur primus de nominibus hominum Adam, et in anima et in angelo” (see also Munzi, Littera legitera, 101). Compare a Hiberno-Latin poem on the letters of Hebrew and Greek alphabets: “Adam primus homo, doctrinam commonet aleph” (ed. Ludwig Traube, MGH, Poetae Latini Ævi Carolini 3 [Berlin, 1896], 698); and the Hiberno-Latin grammar Ars Sergilii: “Quare ex litteris prima (est) a? Quia primus de nominibus hominibus Adam, et anima quae dicta est ei et angelus qui portauit eam afuit ante secula dum animae sunt creatae a Deo uiuo” (ed. Richard M. A. Marshall, “Studies on the ‘Ars Grammatici Sergi{li}i’ with an Edition,” Journal of Medieval Latin 20 [2010]: 167–231, at 227). The first of two mnemonic alphabets in the Interrogationes in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 19410 quoted above (69) begins, “Quo ordine inventae sunt litterae et quomodo? a Adam, b benedictio, …” etc. (ed. Brunhölzl [n. 21 above], 23). On this dialogue see also Charles D. Wright, The Irish Tradition in Old English Literature, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 6 (Cambridge, 1993), 63–69.

In D the “first letter” is more clearly identified as referring not just to “A” as the first letter of the alphabet as in KKr but to the first of four letters in Adam's name as an acronym, though the constituent words are not identified. That the name Adam was an acronym of the Greek names for the four cardinal points (Anatole, Dysis, Arctus, Mesembria), sometimes understood as names of stars, was widespread, and there is an extensive scholarly literature on the origins and transmission of the motif. Most of the Latin testimonies are conveniently quoted by Christfried Böttrich, Adam als Mikrokosmos: Eine Untersuchung zum slavischen Henochbuch, Judentum und Umwelt 59 (Frankfurt am Main, 1995), 59–68. See also Émile Turdeanu, “Dieu créa l'homme de huit éléments et tira son nom des quatre coins du monde,” in Apocryphes slaves et roumains de l'Ancien Testament, Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha 5 (Leiden, 1981), 404–35; D. Cerbelaud, “Le nom d'Adam et les points cardinaux: Recherches sur un thème patristique,” Vigiliae Christianae 38 (1984): 285–301; Sever J. Voicu, “Adamo, acrostico del mondo,” Apocrypha 18 (2007): 205–30; Paolo Marone, “L'acrostico ADAM e la ghematria nella letteratura cristiana antica e medievale,” Rivista Biblica 61 (2013): 225–46; J.-P. Pettorelli, “La vie latine d'Adam et Eve: Analyse de la tradition manuscrite,” Apocrypha 10 (1999): 195–296, at 242–58; A. Scafi, “Le premier homme comme microcosme et préfiguration du Christ: La mappemonde d'Ebstorf et le nom d'Adam,” in Adam: Le premier homme, Micrologus Library 45 (Florence, 2012) 183–98; Sever J. Voicu, “Gematria e acrostico di Adamo: Nuovi testimoni,” Apocrypha 25 (2014): 181–93.

The earliest attestation of the motif is Sibylline Oracles III.24–26 (trans. in James H. Charlesworth, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols. [Garden City, NY, 1983–85], 1:362), and the tradition was alluded to by pseudo-Cyprian (third century), De duobus montibus Sina et Sion 4 (CSEL 3/3,108). Augustine assured its popularity in the early Middle Ages by discussing it in his In Iohannis euangelium tractatus 9.14; 10.12 (CCL 36: 98, 108), and it is found in many early-medieval biblical commentaries. However, a more likely source for AW is the text De plasmatione Adam, in which the naming of Adam is elaborated in narrative form in combination with other motifs regarding Adam's creation. Three recensions of this text have been edited with commentary by Wright, “De plasmatione Adam.”

B.

For the association of B with bonus cf. the Ars Sergilii (ed. Marshall, 227): “B fuit ante secula ex nomine et opere, quia Deus bonus et opus eius bonum.” Abel the good and the pious son of Adam and Eve was regularly contrasted with the evil son Cain, who slew his brother (Gen. 4:6; cf. Jude 11), for example, in the Regula S. Columbani 8: “Abel pius bona elegit, Cain vero mala incoepit” (Sancti Columbani opera, ed. G. S. M. Walker, Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 2 [Dublin, 1957], 134). As John Hennig notes, the word pius “implies here the idea of obedience to the father and love for the brother” (“Abel's Place in the Liturgy,” Theological Studies 7 [1946]: 126–41, at 132). See generally Hans Martin von Erffa, Ikonologie der Genesis: Die christlichen Bildthemen aus dem Alten Testament und ihre Quellen, vol. 1 (Munich, 1989), 346–51, with extensive bibliography. James L. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible as It Was at the Start of the Common Era (Cambridge, MA, 1998), 151–52, cites a variety of passages (such as 1 Jn. 3:12) showing that “Abel … came to be thought of as fundamentally good, righteous, Cain's diametrical opposite.”

The epithet iustus (only in AM) applied to Abel is biblical (Matt. 23:25); in the writings of Cyprian, for example, he is regularly called “Abel iustus” (Michael Andrew Fahey, Cyprian and the Bible: A Study in Third-Century Exegesis [Tübingen, 1971], 559), and the epithet found its way into the canon of the mass: “munera pueri tui iusti Abel” (Anton Hänggi and Irmgard Pahl, eds., Prex Eucharistica: Textus e Variis Liturgiis Antiquioribus Selecti, 3rd ed., Spicilegium Friburgense 12 [Fribourg, 1998], 435).

The further extension in AM specifying that Abel offered the “best” gifts to God reflects a standard qualitative understanding of his selection from the “firstlings” (“de primogenitis”) of his flock (Gen. 6:4). According to Heb. 11:4, by faith Abel offered a more valuable sacrifice (“plurimam hostiam”) than did Cain. On the quality of Abel's selection in contradistinction to Cain's as a traditional explanation for God's acceptance only of Abel's, see Johannes Bartholdy Glenthøj, Cain and Abel in Syriac and Jewish Writers (4th–6th Centuries), CSCO, Subsidia 95 (Leuven, 1997), 91–92; Oliver F. Emerson, “Legends of Cain, Especially in Old and Middle English,” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 21 (1906): 831–929, citing Alcuin, “Abel Deo optima et naturalia offerebat, Cain vero viliora et humana inventione excogitata, ut putatur” (Interrogationes in Genesim 15, PL 100, 518). The alternative explanations were that Abel offered animals, Cain only plants, or (as also in Alcuin) that Abel offered gifts of nature, Cain gifts of human invention.

The extension “who showed piety towards his parents” is unique in AW in deriving (ultimately if not directly) from a pagan source, the De moribus of pseudo-Seneca: “Praestabis parentibus pietatem, cognatis dilectionem” (Publilii Syri Sententiae, ed. Eduard von Wölfflin [Leipzig, 1869], 96). First cited in the sixth century and widely disseminated in the Carolingian period, the De moribus in turn draws on a popular proverb cited by Quintillian, Institutio oratoria: “pro certis autem habemus primum quae sensibus percipiuntur, ut quae videmus, audimus, qualia sunt signa, deinde ea, <ad> quae communi opinione consensum est ‘deos esse, praestandam pietatem parentibus’” (emphasis ours in both cases; ed. Ludwig Radermacher and Vinzenz Buchheit [Leipzig, 1965], 252). This particular sententia from pseudo-Seneca also occurs among extracts in Munich, BSB, Clm 19413, fol. 118v (Birger Munk Olsen, La réception de la littérature classique au moyen âge (ixe–xiie siècle) [Copenhagen, 1995], 242). On the transmission of the De moribus, see Veronika von Büren, “La transmission du De Moribus du ps. Sénèque, de Winithar de S. Gall à Sedulius Scottus,” in Ways of Approaching Knowledge in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Schools and Scholarship, ed. Paulo Farmhouse Alberto and David Paniagua, Studia classica et mediaevalia 8 (Nordhausen, 2012), 206–44. von Büren (244) suggests that Sedulius Scottus and his milieu at Rheims played a central role in the dissemination of these sententiae, many of which (though not this one) Sedulius incorporated into his own Collectaneum Miscellaneum.

C.

The adjective caecus and the verb caeco have both literal and metaphorical senses (as does Old English ablendan, which Aldred uses to translate caecatum in D). The image of Adam's “blindness” as a result of Eve's “seduction” is an ironic spiritualization of the biblical sequence Gen. 3:6–7, in which Eve gives the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge to Adam and immediately “the eyes of both of them were opened” (“et aperti sunt oculi amborum”). See Christiana Reemts, Biblische Gestalten bei den Kirchenvätern: Adam (Münster, 2007), 160–61, 174–75. Exegetes were mainly concerned to clarify that this verse does not imply that Adam and Eve were born blind, but sometimes they assert the spiritual “blindness” of Adam (and of his progeny) after the Fall. Origen does both at once:

In pseudo-Chrysostom's In Genesim sermo III, Adam blames Eve for his fall, asking “Why have you blinded my eyes?” (PG 56, 534; Clavis Patrum Graecorum, ed. M. Geerard [Turnhout, 1983–98], no. 4562: cited by Glenthøj, Cain and Abel in Syriac and Jewish Writers, 149 n. 262). In Avitus's biblical poem De spiritalis historiae gestis 2.267 one result of eating the fruit is that Adam becomes “completely blind” (mage caecus; MGH Auct. ant. 6/2, ed. R. Peiper [Berlin, 1883], 219). Augustine associated the man born blind in Jn. 9:1 with humanity, born “blind” from Adam (In Iohannis euangelium tractatus 34.9; CCL 36, 315). For similar comments in early-medieval Latin exegesis, see Heiric of Auxerre, Homiliae 1, 27: “Caecus ergo iste a domino illuminatus, allegorice genus humanum designat quod modo ignorantiae caecitatem et tenebras patitur postquam in Adam supernae claritatis scientiam amisit” (CCM 116, 224); and two probably Hiberno-Latin commentaries, the Commentarius in Iohannem (CCL 108C, 119): “Caecus: Id, humanum genus. A natiuitate. Id, ab Adam quando dixit: Aperientur oculi uestri”; and pseudo-Jerome, Expositio quattuor euangeliorum (PL 30, 582A): “Vidit hominem caecum a nativitate, caecus humanum genus significat. Neque hic peccavit neque parentes ejus, ut intelligas hoc quod dixit neque peccavit: Adam primus creatus, ad videndum malum, clausos habuit oculos, cum transgressus fuit mandatum Dei: apertos oculos tenuit ad malum, et clausit ad bonum.”

1 Tim. 2:14 says that Adam was not “seduced,” meaning of course by the serpent, but that Eve was. Exegetes extrapolated from Gen. 3:6, which states simply that Eve gave the fruit to Adam, that she in turn “seduced” him, for example, pseudo-Bede, De sex dierum creatione liber: “Adam non fuit per serpentem seductus, sed per mulierem” (PL 93, 231B); on this commentary (properly titled Explanatio sex dierum), see Michael Gorman, “The Canon of Bede's Works and the World of Ps. Bede,” Revue bénédictine 111 (2001): 399–445.

D.

As unremarkable as this lemma and gloss may seem, the gloss does implicitly decide between hell and the air as the abode to which the devil was condemned between his expulsion from heaven and the Last Judgment. Both alternatives had scriptural and patristic authority, as summarized by Peter Dendle, Satan Unbound: The Devil in Old English Narrative Literature (Toronto, 2001), 66–73, 148–50 nn. 29–41, citing Jean Daniélou, Théologie du Judéo-Christianisme, Histoire des doctrines Chrétiennes avant Nicée 1 (Tournai, 1958), 132–34, 149–59, 258–59. According to the Apocalypse, Satan was thrown down to the earth (12:9) or into the abyss (20:3), while 2 Pt. 2:4 says that the rebel angels were cast down “in tartarum.” Yet Eph. 2:1–2 speaks of the “ruler of the power of the air” (“principem potestatis aeris”) and Jude 6 of the rebels angels being condemned “under darkness” (“sub caligine”), which was often understood to be the lower atmosphere. Augustine set out the alternatives very clearly:

Aldred's translation of damnatus by gehæftad alludes to the biblical “binding” of Satan (Apoc. 20:1–3); in the Old English Beowulf Grendel is termed hellehæfta, “captive of hell” (line 788a); cf. also hellehæftling in Juliana (line 246a) and Andreas (line 1342a; ed. G. P. Krapp and E. v. K. Dobbie, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, 6 vols. [New York, 1936–42]).

E.

“Eve” is the solution to an implied riddle of which the manuscripts preserve two different versions. In KD, she is the woman who was “clothed” (induta) for thirty years before (ante, K) she was born; in Kr, she is the woman “brought in” (inducta) upon the earth and born without father and mother. The latter version is a riddle whose answer is regularly “Adam,” the man born without father or mother; see Archer Taylor, English Riddles from Oral Tradition (Berkeley, 1951), 236 (no. 667); cf. Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, 6 vols. (Bloomington, IN, 1955–58), motif H813: “Riddle: who, having neither father nor mother, are dead? (Adam and Eve.)” Eve, however, is normally said to have been born without a mother (her “father” being Adam). Thus the pseudo-Augustinian Sermo ad fratres in eremo 28 (CPPM 1A, no. 1155) distinguishes between Adam, who was born without a father and a mother, and Eve, who was born without a mother: “Novus enim erat homo quia quatuor modis generantur homines: aut sine matre, ut Eva; aut sine patre et matre, ut Adam; aut ex patre et matre, ut homines; aut sine patre ex matre tantum, ut Christus” (PL 40, 1285).

Kr, however, probably represents a secondary substitution for the first and more difficult version of the riddle in KD. We are aware of no analogue for this riddle, but (assuming induta is not a scribal error for or variant spelling of inducta) the logic seems to be as follows. Adam was created at the age of thirty, according to (for example) the Laterculus Malalianus 17, ed. Jane Stevenson, The ‘Laterculus Malalianus’ and the School of Archbishop Theodore, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 14 (Cambridge, 1995), 143 and 208; for other attestations see the commentary in J. E. Cross and Thomas D. Hill, The Prose Solomon and Saturn and Adrian and Ritheus (Toronto, 1982), 70–72. Adam's flesh therefore already “clothed” the rib from which Eve was subsequently created (Gen. 2:22). Based on Gen. 5:2 (“masculum et feminam creauit eos”), Eve was often said to have been created (as the rib) at the same time as Adam, as in Jubilees 3:8 and frequently in Ephraem the Syrian, with reference to Gen. 1:27; see James L. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible, 85–86. Thus, while Eve's creation was usually said to have been only a matter of hours or days after Adam's, she had been “clothed” in flesh that was already thirty years old. KD do not explain the riddle this way, but AM, which omits the enigmatic comparisons that make it a riddle, does refer to her creation from a rib from Adam's right side, as if preserving only that part of the explanation.

Alternatively, “clothed” might be a metaphor alluding to the tradition of the “garments of glory” in which Adam and Eve were clad before the Fall (see Kugel, Traditions of the Bible, 114–19; Brian Murdoch, The Fall of Man in the Early Middle High German Biblical Epic, Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 58 [Göppingen, 1972], 106–18; Alexander Toepel, “When Did Adam Wear Garments of Light?” Journal of Jewish Studies 61 [2010]: 62–71). The motif was commonplace and appears prominently, for example, in the Middle-Irish Saltair na Rann: “After Eve had eaten secretly half of the apple of offence, her body changed — a wide penalty — her fair covering fell from her”: trans. David Greene and Fergus Kelly, with commentary by Brian Murdoch, The Irish Adam and Eve Story from Saltair na Rann, 2 vols. (Dublin, 1976), 1:43 (lines 1293–96). On the sources and transmission of the motif, see Brian Murdoch's commentary (2:88–89).

F.

The impetus for the characterization of the Jews’ response to the birth of Christ by the lemma fremuit is probably commentary on Ps. 2:1, “Quare fremuerunt gentes et populi meditati sunt inania?” Although the gentes are of course by biblical definition not the Jews, the populi of the psalm verse were identified with the “people of Israel” already in Acts 4:25–28 (D’s diabulus, which results in a curious allusion to a “Jewish devil,” probably results from contamination from the following lemma and gloss: “Gemuit, id est diabulus …”). The identifications are made explicitly by Isidore of Seville, though with reference to the Crucifixion rather than the Incarnation: “Sed quia eum Judaei non agnoscentes, congregati sunt ad interficiendum eum, et universalem assensum in passione ejus praebuerunt, ita legitur: Quare fremuerunt gentes, id est, Romani, et populi meditati sunt inania, hoc est, Judaei” (De fide catholica contra Iudaeos 1.19.1, PL 83, 477B–C), and by Bede, Retractatio in Actus apostolorum 4.25: “Gentes autem propter milites Romanorum, populos propter Iudaeos posuit, unde apte gentes fremuisse, populi autem inania aduersus dominum meditati esse dicuntur” (CCL 121, 124). Compare Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 40.12 (CCL 38, 457), where we find the singular fremuit with the subject populus identified as the Jews: “Ciuitas enim illa in qua fremuit populus, tamquam leo rapiens et rugiens, exclamans: Crucifige, crucifige, eradicatis inde Iudaeis, christianos habet, a Iudaeo nullo inhabitatur.” In the Utrecht Psalter illustration of Psalm 2, the two groups of soldiers at the Crucifixion are labelled “Gentes” and “Populi,” while buildings behind them are labelled “sancta ecclesia” (since the gentes were eventually converted) and “sinagoga,” which identifies the populi as the Jews, as Susan Gillingham has noted (A Journey of Two Psalms: The Reception of Psalms 1 and 2 in Jewish and Christian Tradition [Oxford, 2013], 168). The parallelism of the two halves of the psalm verse apparently facilitated a transfer of the agents and the actions, so that in AW it is the Jewish populus that is said to have “raged.” Psalm 2, moreover, was also associated with the Incarnation (since in verse 7 God says, “Filius meus es tu ego hodie genui te”) and Acts 4:27, which quotes Ps. 2:1, refers to Jesus as the “sanctum puerum” against whom the Gentiles and Jews assembled (see Michael Marissen, Tainted Glory in Handel's Messiah: The Unsettling History of the World's Most Beloved Choral Work [New Haven, 2014], 186, n. 15).

G.

Christ's rescue of men from the “throat” of the devil is an allusion either specifically to the Harrowing of Hell, in which case the homines are the Old Testament patriarchs whom Christ rescued, or more generally to the Atonement, in which case the homines are Christians destined to be saved from damnation (Kr’s reading hominem, added in the margin, implies a more general allusion to humanity, whereas the plural homines in KD is open to either interpretation). Taking this item in isolation, the image of the devil's guttur (KKr) or os (D) suggests the iconography of the hell-mouth, on which see Gary D. Schmidt, The Iconography of the Mouth of Hell: Eighth-Century Britain to the Fifteenth Century (Selinsgrove and London, 1995). According to Schmidt, that iconography did not develop until the ninth century in Anglo-Saxon period, but as Schmidt notes there were various literary analogues in the Bible that were developed by patristic writers. In the Old Testament hell (Sheol) is anthropomorphized as having a voracious mouth (os, Isa. 5:14). Patristic writers speak of hell or the devil as having a mouth or jaws (fauces) to swallow humanity (for example, Jerome, Comm. in Osee 3.13, PL 25, 937B, cit. Schmidt). Even prior to the emergence of hell-mouth iconography, there was an iconographic tradition in which Christ stabs the personified Hades either in the stomach or in the throat: Margaret English Frazer, “Hades Stabbed by the Cross of Christ,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 9 (1974): 153–61. Caesarius of Arles refers to the Harrowing using similar imagery, stating that Christ had regained prey from the devil's jaws (fauces): “in inferna descendit, ut praedam, quam diabolus rapuerat, disruptis eius faucibus et exulceratis inferni visceribus ad superna revocaret” (Sermo 26.3, CCL 103, 116). However, the lemma for the next letter H introduces the metaphor of Christ as a “hook,” which suggests that the devil here may be the sea-beast Leviathan or Behemoth (see Commentary below). The image of Christ as hamus alludes not to the Harrowing but to the Atonement.

That Satan “groaned” at the Harrowing of Hell is stated in a poem by John Scottus Eriugena: “Captiuam reuocans praedam raptoris ab ore/Abstulit: ille gemit confossus membra superbus/Vulneribus duris” (ed. Michael W. Herren, Iohannis Scotti Eriugenae Carmina, Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 12 [Dublin, 1993], 90–93). Cf. Peter the Venerable: “Inde Satan victus gemit/Unde victor nos redemit” (Carm. 7.1.13; PL 189, 1017D). Further examples of the motif of the devil's groaning are cited by Udo Wawrzyniak, Philologische Untersuchungen zum “Rithmus in laude saluatoris” des Petrus Venerabilis: Edition und Kommentar, Lateinische Sprache und Literatur des Mittelalters 22 (Frankfurt am Main, 1985), 85.

H.

The metaphor of Christ as a “hook” that catches the devil is a classic image of the Atonement: Christ deceived the devil using the “bait” of his flesh or human body, concealing the “hook” of his divinity. By bringing about the death of Christ, a sinless man, the devil swallowed the bait and was caught and taken captive (in AW, reeled in from the world). This image assumes that the devil had no legitimate legal “rights” to fallen humanity and therefore that God had no need to conduct a transaction by paying a “ransom” with Christ's death, an alternative image of the Atonement. See generally Gustav Aulén, Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement, trans. A. G. Herbert (London, 1950), esp. 63–71. On the transmission of the image in the Middle Ages, see Johannes Zellinger, “Der geköderte Leviathan im Hortus Deliciarum der Herrad von Landsberg,” Historisches Jahrbuch 45 (1925): 161–77; James W. Marchand, “Leviathan and the Mousetrap in the Niðrstigningarsaga,” Scandinavian Studies 47 (1975): 328–38, esp. 333.

The most influential formulation for the Latin Middle Ages was that of Gregory the Great:

A concise summary is provided by Isidore of Seville, complementing the image of the “hook” (hamus) and “bait” (esca) by equating the “line” (linea) with Christ's human genealogy:

I.

The image of baptism as a rainstorm (imber) evokes Christian typological interpretation of two Old Testament episodes: the deluge of rain (pluvia, diluvium) that caused Noah's Flood in Genesis 7, and the great rain (pluvia grandis) obtained by the prayer of Elijah in 1 Kgs. 18:42–45. Already in 1 Pt. 3:20–21 the waters (aquae) through which the eight souls on the ark were saved are explicitly interpreted as a figure of baptism, and this became a standard typology, as concisely summarized by Jean Daniélou: “As sinful humanity in the time of Noe was destroyed by a judgment of God in the midst of the water, and one man was saved to be the first-born of a new human race, so in Baptism the old man is annihilated by means of the sacrament of water, and the man who comes out of the baptismal pool belongs to the new creation.” See The Bible and the Liturgy (Notre Dame, 1956), 70–85 (quotation at 77); and idem, From Shadows to Reality: Studies in the Biblical Typology of the Fathers, trans. W. Hibberd (Westminster, MD, 1960), 69–102. Though it does not occur in either biblical passage, the word imber denotes a downpour and is therefore appropriate to describe these heavy rains, and in commentary on the Noah's flood or Elijah's rain imber sometimes supplements pluvia or diluvium, for example in Maximus of Turin: “Quod quidem in figuram nostri factum esse cognoscimus, ut nos quoque horum quadraginta curriculo dierum ieiunantes spiritalem baptismatis pluuiam mereamur, ut et totius mundi in fratribus nostris iam diu aridam terram caelestis desuper imber infundat, et longam gentilium siccitatem lauacri inundatio salutaris inroret” (Collectio sermonum antiqua, sermo 35.4, CCL 23, 138); “Etenim coelestis imber vitia peccatorum diluit. … Sicut enim superveniente Eliae pluvia, omne pabulum terra produxit. … Et sicut illic pluviarum fontes irrigaverunt orbem, ut vivificarentur herbarum mortificata jam semina: ita et fons baptismatis irrigat genus hominum, ut animarum mortificata corda vivificet” (Sermo 33, PL 17, 670B–C); also Peter Chrysologus: “quadraginta diebus et noctibus expiaturus terram caelestis imber effunditur, ut quia perire sibi mundus, quod factus fuerat, iam deflebat, gauderet tali baptismate se renatum” (Sermo 166.3, CCL 24B, 1020).

With D’s alternative gloss “scriptura” cf. Rupert of Deutz, Commentaria in duodecim prophetas minores 2.2 (PL 168, 92D): “Prophetica namque scriptura ipsa est imber temporaneus; quia sicut serotino imbre infusa coalescunt semina, ita haec promissionem Christi uenturi quae ad Abraham facta est, frequenti declamatione exspectabilem faciebat. Porro euangelica uel apostolica scriptura imber serotinus est; quia, sicut serotino imbre fructus ad maturitatem perducuntur, ita scriptura haec iam aduenisse Christum confirmat, de quo prophetae uaticinabantur. Igitur et uenient, inquiunt, nobis quasi imber temporaneus et serotinus, id est talis et taliter ueniet nobis, uel taliter nobis cum faciet, sicut utriusque scilicet Noui ac Veteris testamenti scripturae testificantur.”

K.

Dag Norberg (An Introduction to the Study of Medieval Latin Versification [Washington, DC, 2004], 51) notes that K-strophes in abecedarian poems regularly begin with words in ka-, following grammatical teaching. Munzi (Litera legitera, 73) cites the Roman grammarian Diomedes who lists Kalendae, kaput, and kalumniae as words in which the consonant k is written before the vowel “a.” In Roman law, calumny was punishable by having the letter K for kalumniator branded on the forehead (see Julio García Camiñas, La lex remmia de calumniatoribus [Santiago de Compostela, 1984], 91–112). The locus classicus is Cicero, Pro Sexto Roscio 57, ed. Andrew R. Dyck (Cambridge, 2010), 35: “that letter to which you (accusers) are so hostile that you hate the Kalends of every month” (see Dyck's commentary and references at 123). That the Jews falsely accused or “calumniated” Christ is based on the Passion narratives in the gospels, in which the Jewish high priests Annas and Caiaphas bring charges of sedition against Jesus to Pilate, the Roman governor. At Jesus's trial, a crowd of Jews, urged on by the chief priests and elders, chooses to have the murderer Barabbas pardoned rather than Jesus, demanding that Jesus be crucified (Matt. 27:15–23; Mk. 15:6–15; Lk. 23:17–23; Jn. 18:39–19:1–7, 15). On the history of extrapolation from these scenes to the blanket condemnation of the Jews as “Christ killers,” see Jeremy Cohen, Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen (Oxford, 2007). Augustine, notably, insisted that the Jews through their forebears were responsible for Christ's death: “Occidistis Christum in parentibus vestris” (Adversus Judaeos 8.11; PL 42, 60).

In addition to the Passion narratives, the gospels also include a number of scenes in which the Pharisees pose hostile questions to Jesus or make accusatorial comments about his actions or statements. An extension of the gloss in AM (see Munzi, Litera legitera, 65) refers specifically to the “false testimony” (the legal definition of calumny was false accusation motivated by malice) of the Jews responding to Jesus's prophecy that he would destroy the temple and build another in three days in Mk. 14:57–59: “et quidam surgentes falsum testimonium ferebant adversus eum dicentes quoniam nos audivimus eum dicentem ego dissolvam templum hoc manufactum et per triduum aliud non manufactum aedificabo” (cf. Matt. 27:40, Jn. 2:19). The frequency with which the Jews were accused of “calumny” by Christian-Latin writers can be appreciated by searching “calumn* + Iud*e* #iudex, #iudi*” in the Library of Latin Texts database (http://apps.brepolis.net/BrepolisPortal/default.aspx). A perhaps fortuitously close verbal parallel for the phrasing in AW occurs in Augustine, Sermo 293.4 (PL 38, 1329–30), “calumniantes Iudaei Domino.”

L.

The image of the Law as a light or lamp is biblical: see Richard Bauckham, “Qumran and the Fourth Gospel,” in The Scrolls and the Scriptures: Qumran Fifty Years After, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Craig E. Evans (Sheffield, 1997), 267–80, at 276–78. The words lex and lux are equated in Prov. 6:23 (“quia mandatum lucerna est et lex lux”), and Wisd. 18:4 speaks of the “incorruptum legis lumen.” Cf. also Isa. 51:4 (“quia lex a me exiet et iudicium meum in lucem populorum requiescet”); Ps. 36:6 (“et educet sicut lumen iustitiam tuam et iudicium tuum sicut meridiem”). A patristic example is Caesarius of Arles, Sermo 76.3, “Et quia lex Dei non solum pluvia, sed et lumen est, secundum illud quod scriptum est, Lucerna pedibus meis verbum tuum Domine (Ps. 118:105)” (CCL 103, 318). But lex and lumen are just as often opposed, with lex standing for the Old Law and lumen for the gospel or revealed truth: “lex ergo quasi figura sit nobis, euangelium quasi lumen et signaculum ueritatis” (Ambrose, Explanatio super psalmos xii, CSEL 64², 303); “Lex enim justitiam praedicat, ut fugiatur iniquitas: lumen ostendit, quod est veritas” (Ambrosiaster, Comm. in Epistolam ad Corinthios secundam, PL 17, 319A). The formulation in AW, however, is too compressed to identify a precise source or tradition underlying its equation of lex and lumen. D’s change to uerum lumen presumably alludes to 1 Jn. 2:8, where the phrase refers to the mandatum nouum of loving one's brother.

M.

The formulation of this Letter is probably corrupt due to entanglement with the wording of the Letter N. Taking the formulation of KKr as it stands, the equation of deus pater and magnus is too banal to document meaningfully. Kr’s faulty neuter magnum, however, may be a vestige of an original lemma magnum nomen, with nomen subsequently being wrongly displaced, on the assumption that it should be the lemma for N. The conjecture is supported by Kr’s conflation in the Letter N of the lemma nomen with the gloss deus pater omnipotens that properly belongs to the Letter M. The original reading, therefore, was probably “M. Magnum nomen, id est deus pater (omnipotens).” If so, the biblical sources are Ps. 75:2, “notus in Iudaea deus, in Israhel magnum nomen eius,” and Jer. 10:6, “Non est similis tui Domine magnus tu et magnum nomen tuum in fortitudine.” The pseudo-Hieronymian, probably Hiberno-Latin Breuiarium in psalmos (PL 26, 1009B) understands Deus in the psalm verse as the Father: “Notus enim in Iudaea Deus: in Israhel magnum nomen eius. Notus erat Deus, sed Dei via non erat nota in Iudaea. Quoniam ergo via Dei Patris non erat nota in Iudaeis” (on this commentary see Martin McNamara, The Psalms in the Early Irish Church, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series 165 [Sheffield, 2000], 49).

D’s epithet puer excelsus is obviously more suitable to Christ than to God the Father, but puer obviously cannot have been the original lemma for N, which may have been replaced by Nomen; or perhaps originally Nomen was glossed by puer excelsus, in which case the repetition of the word nomen in the gloss of M and the lemma of N was the source of the scribal confusion. For Boyd's suggestion that the original lemma for N may have been D’s Nemar (the obscurity of which resulted in the scribal substitution of Nomen), see the Commentary on N below.

Christ as puer is of course biblical, designating not only Christ as a “child” but also his divine Sonship (see the Theological Dictionary of the New Testatment [Grand Rapids, 1964–76], s.v. παῖς). In Old Testament passages interpreted as prophecies of Christ, the word puer is sometimes an epithet, for example, Isa. 49:6, “Magnum tibi est vocari te puerum meum” (Vetus Latina reading). The Breviarium Gothicum includes an antiphon for matins on the feast of St. Clement, “Ecce intelliget puer meus, excelsus erit et sublimis” (PL 86, 997D), a variant of Isa. 52:13 also found in the Mozarabic Antiphonary (Esaias, ed. R. Gryson, Vetus Latina 12/2, fasc. 6 [1996], 1266). At a later date, Peter Lombard, commenting on Isa. 9:6, “Puer natus est nobis” (Vulgate parvulus; puer is the reading of the Christmas vigil introit), adds “Magnus est et excelsus puer iste” (PL 171, 383D).

The collocation of Jesus as puer with the adjective excelsus in AW may be due to Jerome's explication of two Hebrew words meaning excelsus, both of which were associated with biblical verses naming or prefiguring Christ as “puer.” The first of these is the name “Aram” in the genealogy of Christ, which Jerome in his treatise on Hebrew names glossed “excelsus” (CCL 72, 61). Hrabanus Maurus in his commentary on Matthew associated this etymology with Matt. 12:18 (cf. Isa. 42:1):

The second is the word bama, meaning “excelsus” or better “excelsum” in Isa. 2:22 (“quiescite ergo ab homine cuius spiritus in naribus eius quia excelsus reputatus est ipse”). According to Jerome, the Jews tendentiously read bamma, meaning “in quo,” to obscure the prophecy of Christ:

N.

W. J. P. Boyd, “Aldrediana XXV: Ritual Hebraica,” English Philological Studies 14 (1975): 1–58, at 51–55, following a suggestion by O. Ritter, understands D’s lemma nemar as “a rough translation of the Hebrew word … namer, leopard or panther” (51). The interpretation of namer as Christ Boyd traces to the Physiologus tradition: “Sic et dominus noster Iesus Christus, uerus panther … descendens de caelis eripuit nos de potestate diaboli et sociauit nos bonitati suae” (ed. F. J. Carmody, Physiologus Latinus, versio B [Paris, 1939], 40; cited by Boyd, “Aldrediana,” 55, with references to other bestiary texts). If so, then KKr AM nomen would be an understandable scribal effort to correct what must have appeared to be nonsense. Boyd, however, must assume that in glossing nemar with onlesend (“Redeemer”) instead of with panðer, Aldred was silently skipping over the literal meaning of the lemma in favor of its allegorical meaning, even though that meaning is supplied in the gloss, its proper place. Moreover, the spelling nemar is apparently not attested elsewhere as a Latin transliteration of this Hebrew word (Boyd cites several other variant spellings at 51 n. 17). Two versions of AW interpret the lemma as the name Christ (D) or Christ Jesus (Kr), which suggests that nomen is in fact the original lemma (see commentary on M), as does the second alphabet text in Clm 19410, which has “n pro nomine, quod est super omne nomen” (above, 69). So does the sequence of letters M, N, O, whose lemmata all involve epithets for the three persons of the Trinity.

Either name, Christ or Jesus, or both, can suitably gloss the lemma nomen, though according to the biblical verse quoted partially in Clm 19410, Phil. 2:9–10, the name Jesus is the “name above every name” (“nomen super omne nomen ut in nomine Iesu omne genu flectat caelestium et terrestrium et infernorum”). The word nomen in reference to the deity can by itself denote divinity, as in the Irish Southampton Psalter, in which the word nomen is repeatedly glossed with forms of diuinitas (see, for example, glosses to Pss. 17:50, 19:2, 53:3; CCM 240, 42, 46, 138). Jesus was understood to mean Saluator, based on Matt. 1:21, “salvum faciet”; and in Old English the name Jesus was almost always rendered Hælend (“Savior”), as in Aldred's translation here (see also the commentary below on the letter S lemma Saluator). See Damian Fleming, “Jesus, that is hælend: Hebrew Names and the Vernacular Savior in Anglo-Saxon England,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 112 (2013): 26–47. Forms of onlysend/alysend regularly translated redemptor or liberator. A hymnal from Durham does gloss salvator with both Old English words (Inge Milfull, The Hymns of the Anglo-Saxon Church: A Study and Edition of the Durham Hymnal, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 17 [Cambridge, 1997], 98.3), though alysend may have been prompted by the closely following participle redemptis. Since Aldred gives hælend as the direct equivalent for the personal name Iesus in the gloss, he may have chosen to use the near-synonym onlesend to render the inexplicable lemma nemar with another divine epithet. This seems more likely than accepting nemar as equivalent to Hebrew namer, which we should expect Aldred to have glossed literally as “panther.”

Instead of the personal name Iesus, the gloss in K extends the epithet Christus with the epithet “filius dei uiui altissimi.” In John 10:36 Christ calls himself “filius Dei,” and in Matt. 16:16 Peter confesses Christ as “tu es Christus Filius Dei vivi.” On the epithet “Son of God,” see Martin Hengel, The Son of God: The Origin of Christology and the History of Jewish-Hellenistic Religion, trans. John Bowden (Eugene, OR, 2007); Klaus Berger, “Zum traditionsgeschichtlichen Hintergrund christologischer Hoheitstitel,” New Testament Studies 17 (1971): 391–425. The expression “per nomen dei uiui omnipotentis” occurs already in a second- or third-century defixio from Carthage (see Jean-Marie Lassère, Manuel d’épigraphie romaine, vol. 1 [Paris, 2005], 298), and in the oldest text of the apocryphal Apocalypse of Thomas, Christ identifies himself to Thomas by saying, “Ego sum filius Dei uiui omnipotentis” (E. Hauler, “Zu den neuen lateinischen Bruchstücken der Thomasapokalypse und eines apostolischen Sendschreibens im Codex Vind. Nr. 16,” Wiener Studien 30 [1908]: 308–40, at 312). The formula “In nomine sanctae trinitatis atque verae unitatis Dei vivi omnipotentis” occurs in an Anglo-Saxon charter of Berhtwulf, king of Mercia (840 × 848: S205 in The Electronic Sawyer, http://www.esawyer.org.uk/charter/205.html), and a similar invocation occurs in a Carolingian exorcism: “Adiuro te etiam per invisibile et ineffabile nomen Christi Jesu, Filii Dei vivi omnipotentis” (ed. Karl Zeumer, Formulae Merowingici et Karolini aevi, MGH Leges 5 [Hanover, 1886], 621).

O.

A likely ultimate source is 1 Cor. 12:11, haec autem omnia operatur unus atque idem Spiritus. Pseudo-Ambrose, De trinitate, characterized the Holy Spirit as opifex in the conception of Christ: “Ad viscera igitur sacrae Virginis, et suscipiendi inde carnem, et formandi illic hominem Spiritus sanctus opifex et sanctificator accessit” (PL 17, 524B). Augustine terms the Holy Spirit opifex in a different context, the action of the Spirit of God hovering over the waters in Gen. 1:2: “Ecce In principio fecit Deus caelum et terram … Spiritus Dei superferebatur super aquas, et ipse opifex, nec a Patre et unigenito Verbo seiunctus” (Sermo 223A, ed. G. Morin, Sancti Augustini Sermones post Maurinos reperti, Miscellanea Agostiniana 1 [Rome, 1930], 13). While not very common, the epithet is also found, for example, in Beatus of Liébana, Aduersus Elipandum 1.40 (“ita Pater et Filius et Spiritus sanctus, opifex unius totius conditae creaturae, unius glomeratio caritatis, unius ambitus dilectionis coaeterna substantia” [CCM 59, 27]); and in Paschasius, Sententiae catholicorum patrum (PL 120, 1361B): “Quia in his omnibus unus est opifex Spiritus sanctus, unus et Christus, qui conceptus de Spiritu sancto ex Maria Virgine, unus et creator atque sanctificator corporis et sanguinis ipse Spiritus.” Like AW, both Beatus and Paschasius emphasize the unity of the Holy Spirit as opifex with the Father and the Son, and the epithet was also applied both to the Father and the Son.

P.

That Christ carried his own cross is asserted uniquely in John's Passion narrative (19:17); the synoptics agree that the Roman soldiers made Simon of Cyrene carry the cross behind Jesus (Matt. 27:32; Mk. 15:21; Lk. 23:26 post Iesum). The discrepancy was usually resolved on the literal level by assuming that Jesus carried the cross first, and then was relieved by Simon, or that Simon carried the cross as far as Golgotha, where Jesus took it up himself. See Jerome, Commentariorum in Matheum libri iv 4 (CCL 77, 269–70), and Augustine, De consensu euangelistarum 3.10.37 (CSEL 43, 321–22), both cited by Mark DelCogliano, “Gregory the Great on Simon of Cyrene: A Critique of Tradition,” Annali di storia dell'esegesi 28/1 (2011): 315–24, at 316 n. 14.

In the Vulgate Jn. 19:17 reads “baiulans sibi crucem,” but Vetus Latina variants include both gestans and (more frequently) portans, as in quotations by Augustine, whose paraphrases of the verse are sometimes formulated very similarly to AW (Jo. 9, 12, 5, “Portauit enim Dominus crucem suam”; s. 218, 2 “crucem suam ipse portavit”; see Evangelium secundum Iohannem, ed. P. H. Burton et al., Vetus Latina: Die Reste der altlateinischen Bibel 19 [Freiburg, 2013], ad loc.). Verbal parallels for the phrasing in AW can also be found elsewhere, but it is not distinctive enough to trace to a particular source.

Q.

That the Jews were “shaken” or “bruised” (quassati) echoes interpretation of two gospel verses, each of which involves a quotation by Jesus of an Old Testament verse. The first, Lk. 20:18, follows Jesus's quotation of Ps. 117:22 about the stone rejected by the builders that has become the cornerstone: “omnis qui ceciderit supra illum lapidem conquassabitur supra quem autem ceciderit comminuet illum” (the parallel verse Matt. 21:44 reads confringitur, though conquassabitur occurs as a variant). Augustine consistently identified those who were “shaken” by falling on this stone as the Jews: “iam ergo Judaei illa offensione quassati sunt” (Sermo 91, PL 38, 567); “lapis erat jacens, offenderunt in eum Judaei, et quassati sunt” (Sermo 92, PL 38, 573); Enarrationes in Psalmos 73.11, CCL 39, 1012 (“O Israel! quassatus es”) and 109.18, CCL 40, 1618. Munzi's edition of AM gives the reading “quas satigunt” (Littera legitera, 66, 69), but the letter Munzi read as a g is clearly a majuscule s. See the facsimile of the manuscript at http://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.lat.6018 (fol. 53r).

The second gospel verse is Matt. 12:20, a quotation of Isa. 42:2: “harundinem quassatam non confringet et linum fumigans non extinguet donec eiciat ad victoriam iudicium.” Jesus has just withdrawn from the Pharisees after healing the man with the withered hand on the sabbath, charging others whom he heals not to tell anyone, in fulfillment of Isa. 42:1–3. The “bruised” reed was interpreted as the Jews by, for example, pseudo-Cyprian: “alii uero Iudaei inridentes de harundine caput ei quassabant, blasphemantes et dicentes: aue rex Iudaeorum, ubi est pater tuus?” (De montibus Sina et Sion 8, CSEL 3/3, 112); Epiphanius Latinus: “Ergo reliquit incredulos Iudaeos, ut veniret ad gentes peccatores, sicut ait sequenti evangelii: Harundinem quassatam non confringet et linum fumigantem non extinguet, quoadusque erigat victoriam ad iudicium” (Sancti Epiphanii episcopi Interpretatio Evangeliorum, ed. Alvar Erickson, Acta Regiae Societatis Humaniorum Litterarum Lundensis 27 [Lund, 1939], 36); Gregory the Great: “Vnde et Iudaeorum regnum calamo comparatur, cum per prophetam apparente in ueritate carnis Domino dicitur: Calamum quassatum non conteret et linum fumigans non exstinguet. Quid enim calami nomine, nisi Iudaici populi temporale regnum denuntiat, nitens quidem exterius, sed interius uacuum? … Incarnatus autem Dominus calamum quassatum non confregit … non potestate iudicii perculit, sed cum patientiae longanimitate tolerauit” (Moralia in Iob 33.3.7, CCL 143B, 1675–76).

R.

The name Raguel occurs in lists of the names of archangels such as 1 Enoch 20:1–7 (trans. in J. H. Charlesworth, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols. [Garden City, NY, 1983–85], 1:23–24) and in various early-medieval litanies: see Karen Louise Jolly, “Prayers from the Field: Practical Protection and Demonic Defense in Anglo-Saxon England,” Traditio 61 (2006): 95–147, nn. 64, 92, 93, 106, 197; p. 142. Boyd (“Aldrediana,” 55) explains the meaning of the Hebrew name r^e’u'el: “The first element … is re‘eh, ‘fellow,’ ‘friend.’ The second element, ’el, ‘god’ is frequently compounded in personal names.” According to Boyd, the gloss fortis is mistakenly based on the idiomatic use of the word ’el in Gen. 31:29 and elsewhere in a Hebrew phrase that means “in the power of one's hand.”

A better explanation, however, lies closer to hand. R. E. Kaske (without reference to AW) has noted “the frequent association of EL with strength,” citing Jerome, Ep. 25, “Primum dei nomen est el, quod Septuaginta ‘deum,’ Aquila ἐτυμολογίαν eius exprimens ἰσχυρόν, id est ‘fortem’ interpretatur” (CSEL 54, 218–19 = PL 22, 429; repeated by pseudo-Jerome, De deo et nominibus eius, PL 23, 1306–7); see Kaske, “Beowulf and the Book of Enoch,” Speculum 46 (1971): 421–31, at 426 n. 26. See also Isidore, Etymologiae 7.1.3 (ed. W. M. Lindsay, Isidori Hispalensis Etymologiarum Libri XX, 2 vols. [Oxford, 1911]): “Primum apud Hebraeos Dei nomen El dicitur; quod alii Deum, alii etymologiam eius exprimentes ἰσχυρὸς, id est fortem interpretati sunt, ideo quod nulla infirmitate opprimitur, sed fortis est et sufficiens ad omnia perpetranda.” As Lukas Dorfbauer points out to us, the “strong man” (fortis) of Matt. 12:29 and Mk. 3:27 was usually identified as the devil.

Boyd, moreover, seems to understand both Raguel and Satahel as angel names, whereas Satahel is almost certainly a variant of Satanahel (the form given by R, which explains fortis as a reference to being a “rebel against God”), a name for the devil. Satanahel/Satanael is named in 3 Enoch, 3 Baruch, and the Questions of Bartholomew. See Marcel Dando, “Satanaël,” Cahiers d’Études Cathares 30 (1979): 16–21; Charles D. Wright, “Apocryphal Lore and Insular Tradition in St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek MS 908,” in Irland und die Christenheit: Bibelstudien und Mission, ed. Próinséas Ní Chatháin and Michael Richter (Stuttgart, 1987), 124–45, at 138. An example in an early-medieval Latin source is the dialogue in St. Gall, Stiftsbibliothek 908: “Quis de thronum discendit? – Satanaël et Iudas infelex”; ed. François Ploton-Nicollet, “Ioca monachorum et pseudo Interpretatio sancti Augustini,” Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 74 (2007): 105–59, at 126. The draco of Ps. 73:14 is identified in the Irish Southampton Psalter as Sathel (CCM 240, 190), and Sathiel is given as another name for Satan in the Old English Prose Solomon and Saturn Pater Noster Dialogue, ed. Daniel Anlezark, The Old English Dialogues of Solomon and Saturn, Anglo-Saxon Texts 7 (Cambridge, 2009), 74. See Wright, The Irish Tradition, 255 and n. 147. In explicating the name Grendel in Beowulf, Kaske (“Beowulf and the Book of Enoch,” 426) has noted that a catalogue of fallen angels in 1 Enoch 6:7 includes sixteen whose names end in -el, and Thomas D. Hill has argued that Raguel in AW is more likely the name of a devil. See idem, “Raguel and Ragnel: Notes on the Literary Genealogy of a Devil,” Names 22 (1974): 145–49, at 148, citing Boniface's condemnation of the heretic Adalbert, claiming that Adalbert had wrongly invoked the names of devils (including Raguel) as archangels: Die Briefe des heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus, ed. M. Tangl, MGH, Epistolae selectae 1 (Berlin, 1916), 117. Compare the shorter recension of the Hiberno-Latin Reference Bible: “Interrogatio: Dic: de quantos angelos scimus nomina? R.: Trium angelorum nomina scimus et legimus. Id est Gabriel, … Michahel … Raphahel. … Amplius quicumque legerit, aposit[i]a esse non dubitatur. Solent aliqui[t] dicere Heuel, Salathiel, Raguel, sed haec <non> nomina angelorum sed demoniorum sunt” (ed. G. MacGinty, Pauca problesmata de enigmatibus ex tomis canonicis: Praefatio et libri de Pentateucho Moysi, CCM 173, 219).

S.

Saluator was the standard Latin translation of the name Jesus, based on Matt. 1:21, as Jerome explained: “Aethimologiam ergo nominis eius euangelista signauit dicens: Vocabis nomen eius: Saluator, quia ipse saluum faciet populum suum” (Commentariorum in Matheum libri iv, CCL 77, 11). See commentary on N above.

The statement that Christ “saved the world through his cross” is less commonplace than one might expect, and it is striking that the close verbal parallels are all poetic (for salvavit mundum, see Otto Schumann, Lateinisches Hexameter-Lexikon: Dichterisches Formelgut von Ennius bis zum Archipoeta, Teil 5: S. –Z., MGH, Hilfsmittel 4–5 [Munich, 1982], 22). The closest parallels are in Hiberno-Latin hymns. Compare the hymn Sancte uenite: “Mundum salvavit / Per crucem et sanguinem” (The Bangor Antiphonary, ed. F. E. Warren, 2 vols., HBS 9–10 [London, 1895], 2:10) and In te Christe credentium: “Christus crucem ascenderat / Christus mundum saluauerat” (The Irish Liber Hymnorum, ed. J. H. Bernard and R. Atkinson, 2 vols., HBS 13–14 [London, 1898], 1:85; in this hymn the pluperfect is used for the perfect). Compare also verses of uncertain authorship quoted by both Aldhelm and Cruindmel in their treatises on metrics:

Compare also Hrabanus Maurus, “Qui cruce saluauit mundum, dans regna beatis.” (In honorem sanctae crucis I.B3, l. 35; CCM 100, 44)

T.

The phrase fortitudinem magnam may echo Ex. 33:11, in which Moses refers to God as the one who led his people out of Egypt with great power (in fortitudine magna = 2 Kgs. 17:36). The gloss explicates the lemma in relation to the Ascension, when Christ carried humanity into heaven in his own human body (singular hominem refers to Christ's own human body as well as to human nature collectively). For convenient surveys of Ascension theology with special reference to Anglo-Saxon texts, see Brian Ó Broin, “Rex Christus Ascendens: The Christological Cult of the Ascension in Anglo-Saxon England” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, 2002); Johanna Kramer, Between Heaven and Earth: Liminality and the Ascension of Christ in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Manchester, 2014). Thus Leo the Great characterized the feast of the Ascension as “that day on which our poor human nature was carried up in Christ above all the hosts of heaven, above all the ranks of angels, beyond the highest heavenly powers to the very throne of God the Father” (Tractatus 74.1, CCL 138A, 455–56; trans. Thomas C. Oden and Christopher A. Hall, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Mark [Downers Grove, IL, 1995], 254). As Ambrose stated, “non unus homo, sed totus in omnium redemptore mundus intrabat” (De fide 4.1.7, CSEL 78, 160; cit. Kramer, Between Heaven and Earth, 43). The doctrine totus Christus asserted that human believers as “members” of Christ could not be separated from him, as Augustine assured his congregation (“sic et nos cum illo ibi iam sumus, quamvis nondum in corpore nostro sit quod promittur nobis”; Sermo 263 [ = Sermo Mai 98], PLS 2, 494; cit. Kramer, Between Heaven and Earth, 51). D’s reference to the Cross (which may reflect conflation with a gloss to the letter X like that preserved in P, where the wording is very similar) shifts the soteriological significance of the lemma from the Ascension to the Crucifixion.

V.

The gloss is based on a wordplay on Greek ἔλεος, “mercy,” and ἐλαίον, “olive tree.” The patristic background and diffusion in early-medieval Gaul has been traced very thoroughly by Philippe Bernard in his edition of the Epistolae de ordine sacrae oblationis et de diversis charismatibus ecclesiae wrongly attributed to Germanus of Paris (CCM 187, 135–46). In this text oleum is identified with Greek eleo, glossed as misericordia in Latin: “Specialiter autem oleum <eleo> grece, latine autem misericordia dicitur; et per oleum sancti Spiritus gratia designatur” (2.2a, CCM 187, 356). According to Bernard, the earliest attestation of this etymology is in Clement of Alexandria. In Christian-Latin it is found in Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Euangelia 1.20.13 (CCL 141, 165) and three early-medieval sources cited by Bernard, to which we can add Albericus of Monte Cassino, Sermo in S. Scholasticam (PL 66, 945C [CPPM IB, no. 4207]). The term oleum misericordiae occurs more frequently in patristic writers, though not explicitly as an etymology (for example, Ambrose, In Ps. 118 14.7, CSEL 62², 301–2; Caesarius of Arles, Sermo 128, CCL 103, 527). The “oil of mercy” also features prominently in two widely disseminated apocryphal texts that relate how Seth went to Paradise to find it: the Vita Latina Adae et Evae 36:2, 40:1, ed. Jean-Pierre Pettorelli and Jean-Daniel Kaestli, Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum 18 (Turnhout, 2012), 368–69, 376–77, and the Euangelium Nicodemi 19.1, ed. H. C. Kim, The Gospel of Nicodemus (Toronto, 1973), 38. On the motif in these apocryphal narratives, see Esther Casier Quinn, The Quest of Seth for the Oil of Life (Chicago, 1962), esp. 24–27. Later examples of the etymology are noted by Paul Tombeur, “La symbolique de l'huile et du vin dans la tradition occidentale,” in Olio e vino nell'alto Medioevo, Settimane di Studio della Fondazione Centro Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo 54 (Spoleto, 2007), 711–52, at 738–41.

KD do not specify who was anointed with holy oil, but AM identifes the apostles. In the Bible, the apostles anoint the sick with oil (Mark 6:13, Jas. 5:14) but are not themselves anointed. Since the word “Christ” means “anointed,” all Christians are spiritually anointed, as Jerome explained: “iuxta litteram, omni generi electo, regali et sacerdotali — quod proprie ad christianos refertur, qui uncti sunt oleo spiritali de quo scriptum est: Vnxit te deus, deus tuus, oleo laetitiae prae participibus tuis [Ps. 44:8]” (Commentarii in Hiezechielem 13.44, CCL 75, 669). By the same token, as the Hiberno-Latin Liber questionum in euangeliis explains, “Apostoli susceperunt Christum et ideo oleo Spiritus Sancti uncti sunt” (25.8, CCL 108 F, 390–91).

X.

The manuscripts present two very different alternatives for both lemma and gloss. In D AM the lemma expulsi sunt is based not on the letter x as a grapheme but on its pronunciation, which AM specifies as “ecs” (in Roman grammarians it is usually ex or eex or ix; see Arthur Ernes Gordon, The Letter Names of the Latin Alphabet [Berkeley, 1973], 2, 20, 30, 43 and passim). As Norberg notes (An Introduction to the Study of Medieval Latin Versification, 51), X-strophes in abecedarian poems “sometimes begin with words eXultantes, eXul, eXcelsa, eXtolle.” K’s Lex cannot be the lemma for X and is presumably a scribal error for the letter name ex, unless it is influenced by the association of the Roman numeral X with the letter x and the Decalogue, as in the seventh-century Versus cuiusdam Scotti de alphabeto: “per me [scil. X] saepe patet numerus de lege sacratus” (CCL 133A, 739). In addition, K is lacking the “id est” separating lemma and gloss, and the first part of the gloss repeats part of the gloss from the letter S. The gloss in KD AM refers to the conversion of the Gentiles, which was understood both historically and eschatologically. As commonplace as this theme was, the wording here, that the gentes were “expelled” or driven from their lack of faith, is idiosyncratic.

The alternative lemma xps for Christus in P (paralleled in D’s lemma for the letter T) is the only one that relies on an abbreviation, for which see Ludwig Traube, Nomina Sacra: Versuch einer Geschichte der christlichen Kürzung, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur lateinischen Philologie des Mittelalters 2 (Munich, 1903), 156–60; W. M. Lindsay, Notae Latinae: An Account of Abbreviation in Latin Mss. of the Early Minuscule Period (c. 700–850) (Cambridge, 1915), 402–6.

As Ambrose stated, “non unus homo, sed totus in omnium redemptore mundus intrabat [scil. into heaven]” (cited above, commentary on T). Although there is sporadic evidence for a conception of universal salvation in the early-medieval West (see Thomas D. Hill, “Universal Salvation and Its Literary Context in Piers Plowman B.18,” The Yearbook of Langland Studies 5 [1991]: 65–76; Derek Pearsall, “The Idea of Universal Salvation in Piers Plowman B and C,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 39 [2009]: 257–81), in the P gloss that Christ “saved the world through the cross [and] took it up with him to heaven” the word mundus should be taken as synecdoche (that is, that part of humanity that Christ's Crucifixion and Ascension ultimately does save). Indeed the glosses to the following two letters imply an eschatological separation of the saved and the damned.

Y.

This is the only letter in AW with a lemma that begins with a different letter (finis, in KD AM). In early-medieval abecedarian poems, however, a Y-strophe may begin with a word in f-, a phenomenon that Norberg (An Introduction to the Study of Medieval Latin Versification, 51) suggests may derive from the spelling fydes. However, the name of the letter Y actually started with F in certain medieval literary traditions. A twelfth-century English alphabet in London, British Library, Stowe 57, for example, gives the name of the letter Y as “fix,” a name also found in a thirteenth-century Old French alphabet poem (see Fred C. Robinson, “Syntactical Glosses in Latin Manuscripts of Anglo-Saxon Provenance,” Speculum 48 [1973]: 443–75, at 450 and 451 n. 32; E. S. Sheldon, “The Origin of the English Names of the Letters of the Alphabet,” Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature 1 [1892]: 66–87, at 78–82). The name of the letter in the English alphabet in Stowe 57 is likely a borrowing from Anglo-Norman, and the text is much too late to have had any direct relationship to AW, but it is possible that the name “fix” reflects an older tradition by which F was connected to Y by the two letters’ positions at the beginning of the Latin and Greek words for “son,” filius and υἱός (that is, ΥIOΣ) respectively. The fact that “fix” is a common spelling variant of Old French filz, “son,” has been cited in support of this hypothesis, and corroborating evidence may be found in names for the letter Y in several Romance dialects (see Sheldon, “The Origin,” 79–81, where a possible [if distant] connection to the word finis is also discussed).

The other alphabet of words in P, which overlaps with AW only in the last three letters, does preserve a Y-lemma for Y: ymen. It is therefore possible that ymen, which is untranslated, represents the original reading of AW, and was preserved in the lost manuscript of AW used by the compiler of P for the letters X Y Z. In that case finis in the surviving manuscripts of AW would be a substitute by a reviser who was baffled by ymen but familiar with the convention of using words in f- for Y-strophes in abecedarian poems. Alternatively, ymen might be an ingenious substitute for an original finis by a reviser who was not familiar with these abecedarian or letter-naming conventions for the letter Y.

At first blush the Greek word ymen, meaning “membrane, hymen,” hardly seems relevant to the gloss. There was, however, an alternative meaning (or homonym) attested in glosses on Jerome's prologue to the book of Genesis. Explicating the word prologus, Haymo of Auxerre's commentary on Genesis gives the following sequence of equivalences: “Praefatio Latine, prologus vel prooemium Graece dicitur, id est breviatio. Ymen Graece, Latine dicitur via” (PL 131, 51C). The sequence is closely paralleled in a set of glosses on the biblical prologues of Jerome that seems to depend on Haymo: “Prologus, id est pręlocutio sive pręfatio. … Idem et proemium sive proimium. Imen siquidem dicunt Greci viam. Pro, ponitur ante, vel pro, pre … Unde dicitur proemium sive proimium, previatio” (John J. Contreni, “The Biblical Glosses of Haimo of Auxerre and John Scottus Eriugena,” Speculum 51 [1976]: 411–34, at 417). According to Contreni, Haymo's biblical glosses derive largely from the “Leiden Family” of glosses, which ultimately reflect the exegesis of the School of Canterbury under Theodore (see Michael Lapidge, “The School of Theodore and Hadrian,” Anglo-Saxon England 15 [1986]: 45–72; repr. with additional notes in Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature 600–899 [London and Rio Grande, 1996], 141–69 and 502–3; and J. D. Pheifer, “Early Anglo-Saxon Glossaries and the School of Canterbury,” Anglo-Saxon England 16 [1987]: 17–44). However, while Haymo's commentary preserves the word ymen, the gloss attributed to Haymo which Contreni cites as a parallel for the gloss on the prologues of Jerome does not. There seems to be no such Greek word (the Greek word for “way” being ὁδός).

The combination of the letter Y with a lemma meaning “way” implicitly alludes to the tradition of the symbolic “Pythagorean Y,” representing the two ways of virtue and vice open to each human being. Ausonius's alphabet poem “De litteris monosyllabis Graecis et Latinis” states for the letter Y, “Pythagorae bivium ramis pateo ambiguis” (ed. R. Peiper, Decimi Magni Ausonii Burdigalensis opuscula [Leipzig, 1886], 166). The homo in bivio tradition, which goes back as far as Hesiod, was readily assimilated by Christian writers to the spiritual tradition of the “two ways” and to the opposition between the broad and narrow gates and ways of Matt. 7:13–14. While Lactantius (Divinae Institutiones 6.3.1–6, CSEL 19, 485–87) contrasted the Pythagorean and Christian formulations of the two ways precisely in terms of the eschatological focus of the latter, most Christian writers simply conflated them. See Carlo Pascal, “Il bivio della vita e la «Littera Pythagoræ»,” in Miscellanea Ceriani: Raccolta di Scritti originali per onorare la memoria di Mr. Antonio Maria Ceriani (Milan, 1910), 57–67; Wolfgang Harms, Homo Viator in Bivio: Studien zur Bildlichkeit des Weges (Munich, 1970), 158–86; Margherita Guarducci, “Dal gioco letterale alla crittografia mistica,” in eadem, Scritti scelti sulla religione Greca e Romana e sul Cristianesimo (Leiden, 1983), 407–44. According to Isidore of Seville, “Y litteram Pythagoras Samius ad exemplum vitae humanae primus formavit; virgula subterior primam aetatem significat, incertam quippe et quae adhuc se nec vitiis nec virtutibus dedit. Bivium autem, quod superest, ab adolescentia incipit: cuius dextra pars ardua est sed ad beatam vitam tendens: sinistra facilior sed ad labem interitumque deducens” (Etymologiae 1.3.7, ed. Lindsay). P stresses the Christian eschatological dimension of the Pythagorean Y by equating it with the end of the world and Judgment Day, when the eternal consequences of the temporal choice of “ways” are realized.

Z.

The lemma derives from the Parable of the Wheat and Tares in Matt. 13:24–30 and 36–43. An enemy oversows tares in the middle of a man's wheat (“superseminavit zizania in medio tritici”). The man tells his servants to wait until the harvest and then tells the reapers, “colligite primum zizania et alligate ea fasciculos ad conburendum triticum autem congregate in horreum meum.” The gloss in AW reflects Jesus's own explanation in verses 37–43: the good seed (and implicitly the wheat that grows from it) are the filii regni sown by the filius hominis; the tares are the filii nequam sown by the devil. The harvest is the consummatio saeculi, the reapers the angeli who separate eos qui faciunt iniquitatem and cast them into the fiery furnace. (Aldred elsewhere shows his understanding of the traditional exegesis by glossing Matt. 13:39 messem as “hrípe .i. to domes dæg”; see W. J. P. Boyd, Aldred's Marginalia: Explanatory Comments on the Lindisfarne Gospels [Exeter, 1975], 34 with Boyd's commentary). In the gloss to AW the phrase in medio echoes the phrasing of the lemma but may also be influenced by Jesus's explanation of the Parable of the Fishing Net in the same chapter of Matthew (13:49): “et separabunt malos de medio iustorum.” The phrase de medio iustorum is used with reference to the tares and wheat by, for example, Augustine: “messores autem angeli sunt: separant malos de medio iustorum, sicut zizania a tritico; frumentum recondent in horreo, paleam autem comburent igni inexstinguibili” (Enarrationes in Psalmos 128.7, CCL 40, 1885). Patristic and medieval commentary often merely paraphrases Jesus's own explanation of the parable, though alternatives are sometimes offered (notably the equation of the tares with heresy rather than or in addition to Jesus's equation with “wicked sons”). See Stephen J. Wailes, Medieval Allegories of Jesus’ Parables (Berkeley, 1987), 103–8.