One of the most provocative legends from early medieval England tells of a meeting between Gregory the Great, before his papal election in 590, and a group of pagan “Angles” (English) who had come to Rome from the Northumbrian subkingdom of Deira. During the encounter, Gregory alludes prophetically to the Angles’ future conversion to Christianity; this incident is presented as the catalyst for his decision to send a mission to England after he became pope. The famous early medieval English scholar, the Venerable Bede (d. 735), narrates the event in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed ca. 731 (Historia ecclesiastica gens Anglorum; henceforth History or Ecclesiastical History).Footnote 1 Echoes of his version of the legend occur in insular and continental Latin and vernacular chronicles, liturgical texts, poems, and other writing genres from every medieval century and in many post-medieval works, including nineteenth- and twentieth-century artistic representations.Footnote 2
Bede's account of the meeting between Gregory and the Deiran Angles was not the first to be written, however. An earlier version appears in the Book of the Blessed and Praiseworthy Man Gregory (Liber beati et laudabilis viri Gregorii; henceforth Liber) composed at the “double monastery” of Strænæshalch that the Northumbrian king Oswiu established in 657.Footnote 3 I use the conventional name of Whitby for this religious center, though it may have occupied sites at both Strensall, near York, and Whitby to the northeast. Oswiu's foundation housed female as well as male religious and clergy. The gender ratio is uncertain, yet the first three rulers were abbesses, as was apparently the norm in double monasteries of the seventh and eighth centuries.Footnote 4
All three women were of Northumbrian royal background. Hild, the first abbess, was a great-niece of King Edwin (Eadwine, d. 633), the first Northumbrian ruler to convert to Christianity; she was raised at his court. Eanflæd, Edwin's daughter and wife of Oswiu, entered Whitby after Oswiu died in 670 and remained there until her death by ca. 704.Footnote 5 Ælfflæd, a daughter of Oswiu and Eanflæd, was placed in Hild's care ca. 655, at about the age of one, and moved with Hild to Whitby in 657. Ælfflæd served as abbess with her mother after Hild died in 680 and, following Eanflæd's death, on her own until she died in 714. Whitby's abbesses or abbots between Ælfflæd's death and the monastery's destruction by Vikings ca. 867 are unknown.Footnote 6
Bede recalls that Trumwine, a former bishop of the Picts, retired to Whitby “with a few of his people” (cum paucis suorum) after Northumbria lost control of its Pictish territories in 685, and that the bishop assisted Ælfflæd to govern the monastery until he died, probably before 705.Footnote 7 Despite his sojourn and the presence of an unknown number of other male religious and clergy, Whitby is appropriately described as female-led throughout this period. Bede's History and other near-contemporary texts, including the Liber, invariably assign preeminence to the monastery's abbesses.Footnote 8 The Ecclesiastical History and the life of Bishop Wilfrid of York and Hexham (d. 710) written by Stephen of Ripon ca. 713 also draw attention to the wider regional influence of Hild and Ælfflæd. High-level secular and religious authorities from outside Whitby are said to have received counsel and assistance from the two women.Footnote 9
The Liber has been dated to the last decade of Ælfflæd's governance of Whitby (ca. 704–14), which makes it the oldest extant narrative of Pope Gregory's life.Footnote 10 The author (henceforth “author,” “Whitby author,” or “Liber author”) was an unidentified member of the community, possibly female though this, too, remains uncertain. It is unlikely that Ælfflæd composed the text, since its only mention of her is in the third person.Footnote 11 Yet as discussed later in this essay, there is thematic resonance between the Liber, a surviving letter written in Ælfflæd's name, and other evidence regarding her activities.Footnote 12 For these reasons and because she was the sole Whitby abbess at the time, it seems likely that she exercised influence over and approved the Liber contents. Whether its author was male or female, then, it may offer insight into Ælfflæd's concerns and beliefs as well as into attitudes more generally found at her monastery.
Through the 1990s, studies of the Liber often compared it unfavorably with Bede's writings. In 1963, Bertram Colgrave described the Whitby text as “crude”; its Latin, he asserted, was “crabbed, awkward, ungrammatical . . .” and made “a very bad showing” alongside that of Bede.Footnote 13 Subsequent scholarship has also characterized the text's Latin as of poor quality and narrated episodes as naive, simplistic, or haphazardly arranged.Footnote 14 Other publications of the last quarter century, though, have challenged such assessments. David Howlett, for example, contended in 1998 that the organization of the entire Liber and of discrete passages emulated biblical compositional patterns. An essay of 2001, by Kate Rambridge, demonstrated that portions of the Liber expounding on theoretical issues presented complex arguments that skillfully interwove quoted and paraphrased excerpts from Gregory's writings with allusions to biblical and other authoritative texts.Footnote 15
Another essay published in 2001 that has particularly informed my discussion here is a transcribed conversation between Uppinder Mehan and David Townsend analyzing, in part, ways in which twentieth-century African writers negotiated positions for their native languages alongside or in opposition to English. Similarly, recalling Kathleen Biddick's description of Bede's History as an example of “border writing,” Townsend proposed that the different prose styles of that work and the Liber could represent “different strategies of cultural contact” relative to the colonizing power of the Roman church. The Whitby author may have “experimented” to craft a Latin expressive of cultural distance from Rome, partly by fusing that language with vernacular grammatical and syntactical norms. Townsend's main example of such fusion came from the Liber account of Gregory meeting the Deirans.Footnote 16
Over several decades now, a related concern in scholarly discussions of the Liber has been its sources, especially the extent to which these could have been oral rather than written. Prior to and again following his report of the encounter between Gregory and the Deirans, Bede refers to the story as an “opinion” (opinio) handed down from previous generations, comments that may indicate his familiarity with its oral transmission.Footnote 17 The Whitby author's own frequent mention of things said, heard, and taught aloud led Colgrave to think that much of the material in the Liber, including its version of the same story, had roots in oral communication.Footnote 18 Yet Colgrave's 1968 edition of the Liber showed that in other parts of its narrative, the author drew on diverse written works — scripture, writings by Gregory, and other Christian literature. More recently, Michael Richter and Alan Thacker have argued that Bede may have had access to the Liber (a possibility Colgrave rejected) or to a different written version of the story about Gregory with the Deirans and reworked that text for the Ecclesiastical History. Thacker provided evidence that this and other anecdotes about the pope could have reached England through written collections brought from Rome.Footnote 19
Precisely because the Whitby author was probably indebted to textual sources beyond those that Colgrave identified, however, the many allusions in the Liber to orally transmitted information warrant renewed attention. While a written record of the legend about Gregory and the Deirans was possibly available at Whitby, the Liber — more clearly than Bede's History — refers to the tale's oral circulation. Such sharing of the story makes sense given that it is short and simple, with playful puns that would have aided recollection. The retelling in Ælfric of Eynsham's vernacular homily on Gregory, written in the tenth century primarily for a non-Latinate secular audience, shows that even in such circumstances, the basic elements of the legend might be clearly conveyed.Footnote 20 It is thus possible to envisage both Latinate and other listeners hearing the story and relating it in turn to friends, relatives, or fellow religious. In the process, as oral versions circulated alongside written, variants undoubtedly crept into both, while some elements remained more or less the same.Footnote 21
More broadly, too, as remarked above, a feature observed throughout the Liber is a concern with oral communication. The Whitby author places the encounter between Gregory and the Angles from Deira at the start of a continuous spiritual and didactic involvement of the pope with England that is grounded in orality. As in the story of the meeting, passages are often presented in the form of direct speech or dialogue.Footnote 22 Before as well as after that story, references occur to Gregory and other holy figures teaching spiritual wisdom orally or hearing it spoken from heaven. The dangers of faithless, malicious, or deceptive speech and other sounds are also noted. At the same time, the allusions to oral sources for information presented in the Liber reinforce the impression that its author wanted much of the text to be understood as a record of knowledge passed along in this manner. Anxiety is intimated about this situation; there are hints that oral reports (unless heaven-sent) are unreliable or easily forgotten. Gregory's observation, “What we speak is transitory, what we write endures,” in his Moralia in Iob, one of his works on which the Whitby author drew, may have strengthened that worry.Footnote 23 Truths articulated orally need to be written down to assure survival. This is one of the author's responsibilities in the Liber.
Before investigating these and related refrains more closely, Section 1 below briefly discusses some issues arising from Colgrave's edition and translation of the only surviving manuscript copy of the complete text of the Liber: St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 567, pp. 75–110, now online in a digitized facsimile.Footnote 24 The article's second section opens with fresh translations of the accounts of Gregory with the Deirans in the Liber and Bede's History as the basis for comparison of the two versions, with a focus on their differences. In the third section, I present a detailed survey of the structure and major themes of the larger narrative framing that episode in the Liber, with occasional reference again to Bede's History. The difference in textual genres between the Liber and the History limits the scope for comparisons. Although, as Colgrave observed, some features of the Liber distinguish it from other early saints’ lives, the Whitby author clearly sought to follow hagiographical conventions.Footnote 25 The Ecclesiastical History also contains hagiographical elements, including in its biography of Gregory, but Bede's massive five-book work is not only much longer than the Liber; it is primarily a historical narrative with complex, multilayered goals informed by his knowledge of older writing in that genre.Footnote 26 Nonetheless, setting a few passages from the Liber and the History side by side that concern related events may help illumine the Whitby author's distinctive aims.
A particular objective in Section 3 of this article is to highlight the references in the Liber, specifically, to pedagogical and other forms of oral expression, and the organization — possibly grounded in sensitivity to oral communication — of numerous passages “associatively.” While parts of the text have a chronological order, often the decision as to how to arrange material appears to have been based instead on phonetic/linguistic or thematic relationships, such that one idea or topic leads to the next because of resemblances or analogies between words, their sounds, or their meanings. In portions of the narrative, the author develops associative sequences by repeating a concept in different forms or using the same or similar words in different contexts.Footnote 27 The Liber is artfully composed. Even when the author is not quoting from known written sources, the style reveals extensive study of scripture and other literature.Footnote 28 Yet in some respects, the text's structure and elements of its language are reminiscent of strategies that a gifted teacher or preacher might utilize to engage the listening audience of a lecture or homily.Footnote 29
Section 4 situates the legend of Gregory's encounter with the Deirans and other aspects of the Liber against the backdrop of the following circumstances: regional political and religious developments in the later seventh and early eighth centuries that affected Whitby; conditions of teaching at this monastery, an important English educational center at the time; the apparent interest at Whitby under Hild and Ælfflæd (judging from sources besides the Liber) in heaven-inspired oratory; and liturgy and commemoration of the dead. Of concern for analyzing all these topics, though especially the last two mentioned, is Whitby's status as a female-led institution — whatever the gender of the Liber author.
The Liber beati et laudabilis viri Gregorii and its Modern Edition
Containing the sole extant medieval witness to the full Liber, St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 567 is a compilation of seven textual units, primarily hagiographical, written in long lines of Caroline minuscule on 200 pages that measure 25 x 16/17 cm.Footnote 30 The texts were products of separate scribal campaigns undertaken between the later eighth and later ninth centuries, the majority — like the Liber — probably at the Abbey of St. Gall. A ninth-century St. Gallen catalog entry that seems to describe Cod. 567 lists the following contents: Vita s[an]c[t]i silvestri et s[an]c[t]i gregorii, hilarii ep[iscop]i et eiusde[m] / ep[istol]a ad filia[m] sua[m] abram et lucii confessoris / atq[ue] lonochilidis ep[iscop]i et goaris in vol[umine] I. Sometime after this entry was written, it appears, the Life of Goar (Vita . . . goaris) was removed from Cod. 567 and other texts written in ninth-century hands were added to the end of the collection: an Acts of St. Martin (Acta S. Martini), two letters, and a brief description of the basilica of St. Martin.Footnote 31
The Liber, the second unit in St. Gallen 567, covers sixteen folios bound in two quires, with two additional folios attached to the end of the second quire. One early ninth-century scribe, identified by Colgrave as “M1,” wrote pages 75 through 106 on twenty-five lines per page. A second, roughly contemporary scribe (Colgrave's “M3”) wrote the last two leaves (pp. 107–10) with twenty-six text lines per page. Each scribe proofread his work against the exemplar and made emendations. Later in the ninth century, a third scribe (Colgrave's “M2”) inserted more changes above lines and in margins.
In Colgrave's view, oddities in the spelling of English names implied that the scribes worked from an exemplar at least one remove from a Whitby version.Footnote 32 In spite of the evidence that they reviewed their writing with a certain degree of care, some unusual prose in the St. Gallen Liber — beyond the orthography of English names — possibly resulted from mistakes in transcribing the exemplar or from transcription of corrupted passages in that copy. Conversely, as the Liber was recopied over time, certain scribes perhaps emended unfamiliar constructions derived from the original to bring the Latin closer to classical or contemporary standards, while overlooking other such passages.Footnote 33
Colgrave's edition improved significantly on the 1904 printing of the Liber by Cardinal F. A. Gasquet, which had multiple errors of transcription that Colgrave corrected.Footnote 34 Most of his further editorial changes relative to the manuscript also seem valid, especially where his alterations of only a few letters provide a clearly more logical word form or phrase. Occasionally, though, the greater fidelity of his edition to standard Latin grammar and spelling may elide idiosyncrasies of the original Whitby version. It is important to bear in mind that the precise nature of the original text therefore remains uncertain. None of the differences between Colgrave's edition and the St. Gallen text significantly affects my analysis here, but the list given in the Appendix to the present article, primarily intended for readers who do not have his edition to hand, may allow a sense of their number and character.
A more important deviation from the St. Gallen manuscript in Colgrave's edition, for my purposes, concerns his chapter breaks. These divisions correspond to ones proposed in 1886 by Paul Ewald, the first modern scholar to study the manuscript closely.Footnote 35 The divisions help modern readers locate passages in the narrative, yet it needs to be realized that the only two well-marked text breaks in the St. Gallen Liber occur between its preface and modern Chapter 1 and between modern Chapters 4 and 5 (St. Gallen 567, pp. 75 and 79).Footnote 36 Otherwise, unlike the Ecclesiastical History, which Bede personally divided into books and chapters, the St. Gallen Liber is written as continuous text with no skipped lines or numeration to differentiate sections.Footnote 37 Its scribes did, however, make substantial use of various types of punctuation corresponding with widespread early medieval practices: notably, a punctus (dot), a uirgula suspensiua (forward slash), a positura (dot with comma), and a simplex ductus (resembling a 7).Footnote 38 Such marks usually occur at intervals of two or three lines, sometimes more often. Occasionally, punctuation precedes an enlarged initial, a few decorated with interlace; most of the initials do not correspond to the modern chapter divisions. If the St. Gallen manuscript offers a window on the formatting of this text as it was composed, it suggests that the Whitby author divided the Liber not into chapters, but into short sentences and slightly longer sense units.
As for Colgrave's translation, it is fluid and easy to read, and has been indispensable in making the Whitby author's unusual Latin accessible to scholars together with wider audiences. Frequently, though, Colgrave paraphrased in order to assure the clarity of his English. Parts of the Whitby text as transmitted in St. Gallen 567 are difficult to translate literally, but his rendering tends to be more faithful to modern English grammar and syntax than the St. Gallen copy is to standard Latin norms. Often, too, his translation substitutes proper names for Latin pronouns, especially after the chapter breaks he inserted, at times with the result that the narrative flow across the breaks and the associative structure of parts of the text are obscured.Footnote 39 It is important to stress that Colgrave's edition and translation remain invaluable aids to interpretation of the Liber, for which they have served here as a guide. Yet because of the issues just outlined, I have translated afresh passages quoted in the following pages, trying to remain close to the Latin in spite of some awkward results. While the quotations generally come from parts of the Liber for which I agree with Colgrave's edition aside from the chapter divisions, I have paid attention to the St. Gallen manuscript in developing my larger analysis. Colgrave was editor and translator of additional works to which I refer in this essay, and co-editor and translator of the 1969 edition of Bede's Ecclesiastical History.Footnote 40 For the sake of consistency, I have retranslated text from those writings as well.
Gregory's Encounter with the Deirans
The Whitby author's report of the meeting between Gregory and the Deiran Angles, Chapter 9 in Colgrave's edition of the Liber, may be translated as follows:
That thing must altogether not be cloaked in silence, how he [Gregory], spiritually near God and foreseeing with an incomparable mirror of the eyes of the heart, generated our conversion to God. There is, therefore, a narrative of the faithful that before his above-mentioned pontificate, some individuals from our nation, shining white in form and with white hair (forma et crinibus candidati albis), came to Rome. When he heard that they had come, already he desired to see them. And, by an intuition of [his] kindly mind, having received them to himself, uncertain at [their] new [and] unfamiliar appearance and, what was most important, with God inwardly suggesting, he asked of which people (cuius gentis) they were. Some say that they were beautiful boys, but some [say] in truth curly haired and decorous young men. And when they answered, ‘They are called Angles (Anguli) from whom we are,’ he said, ‘Angels of God.’ Then he said, ‘The king of that people (gentis illius), how is he named?’ And they said, ‘Aelli’ (Ælle). And he said, ‘Alleluia, for it is fitting that the praise of God be there.’ The tribe (tribus) from which they properly were, he also asked its name; and they said, ‘Of Deira (Deir[a]e).’ And he said, ‘Fleeing from the wrath of God to faith (De ira Dei confugientes ad fidem).’Footnote 41
Bede relates this story toward the close of the biography of Gregory forming Book 2, Chapter 1 of his Ecclesiastical History:
Nor must the opinion about the blessed Gregory be passed over in silence that has endured from a tradition of [our] forefathers until us today: namely, the reason why he bore such zealous care for the salvation of our people (nostrae gentis). They say that on a certain day, when merchants had recently arrived, many things had been brought into the forum for sale. Many people gathered to buy, and among others Gregory himself came and saw, among other things, boys put up for sale [who were] of shining white body (candidi corporis) and lovely face and also hair with outstanding form (capillorum quoque forma egregia). When he saw them, he asked, as they say, from what region or land they were brought. And it was said that [they were] from the island of Britain, inhabitants of which were of such aspect. Again, he asked whether likewise the islanders were Christian or still entangled in pagan errors. It was said that they were pagan. But drawing long sighs from the depth of his heart, he said, ‘Alas, how sad that the author of darkness possesses men (or human beings: homines) of such bright face, and that such grace of outer appearance carries a mind empty of internal grace.’ Again, therefore, he asked what the name was of that people (gentis illius). It was answered that they were called Angles (Angli). But he said, ‘Good, for they have an angelic face, and it is fitting that such [people] be coheirs of the angels in heaven. What name does that province (ipsa prouincia) have from which they were brought?’ It was answered that the people of the province were called Deirans (Deiri). But he said, ‘Good, Deiri, snatched from wrath (de ira eruti) and called (uocati) to the mercy of Christ. How is the king of that province named?’ It was answered that he was called Aelli (Ælle). But he [Gregory], jesting at the name, said, ‘It is appropriate that Alleluia, praise of God the Creator, be sung in those parts.’Footnote 42
There are obvious similarities between these narratives. Both authors describe the Deirans in Rome as male, and both emphasize their “white” skin by using a variant of the Latin candidus, a term implying white that shines or dazzles with brightness.Footnote 43 Both versions of the story comment on the Deirans’ hair; both interpret their physical appearance as beautiful. Both Bede and the Whitby author also attribute similar questions to Gregory, the answers to which prompt him to utter three similar puns on the names “Angles” (Anguli/Angli), “Aelli,” and “Deira/Deirans” (Deira/Deiri). A first pun links Angles to angels; the other two puns allude prophetically to the Angles’ or Deirans’ future conversion. Bede's version of the first pun likens the Angles to angels not only because of the words’ similarity but also because of the boys’ physical aspect. The Liber version only alludes to the words’ phonetic resemblance (their similar sounds); but it is implied that the Deirans’ whiteness encouraged Gregory's interest in the group, while later passages in the Liber evoke the notion of whiteness as symbolic of spiritual purity: the verb used for the baptism of King Æthelbert of Kent (d. 616) refers to his “whitening” (dealbatus); the soul ascending to heaven of Paulinus (d. 644), the Roman missionary-bishop who converted King Edwin, is compared to a “beautiful white swan” (cignus, alba specie avis, satisque pulchra); and a story is told of heavenly inspiration sent to Gregory in the form of a “white dove” (albam . . . columbam).Footnote 44
Whether this story originated in Rome or an English center with strong ties to the city, such as Canterbury, and whatever the degree to which the story was reshaped by the Whitby author or Bede, their representations of Gregory's reaction to the Deirans likely had some correspondence with contemporary Roman attitudes. In general, the early medieval Germanic populations of northern Europe almost certainly had lighter toned skin than was common in Mediterranean regions, where, as Geraldine Heng has remarked, “races, peoples, and dermal pigments intermixed for millennia.”Footnote 45 The identification of northern light-colored skin as white and the belief that somatic attributes correlated to psychological or spiritual characteristics had deep roots in antiquity. Developing on this paradigm, ancient and medieval Christian writers linked dark complexions with evil and the devil, fair complexions with faith, chastity, purity, and other virtues.Footnote 46 Moreover, some late antique and early medieval art from Italy,Footnote 47 as well as art from the early medieval British Isles,Footnote 48 depicts angels and other heavenly figures with light-toned skin and yellow or golden hair. Italian Christians of Gregory's day or later might indeed, therefore, have viewed similar features among northern visitors to Rome as akin to the look of angels in human form.
The analogies between the story of Gregory meeting the Deirans in the Liber and Bede's History are sufficiently great to suggest that the Whitby text could have been one of Bede's sources, though like the Liber author, Bede may have also known orally circulated accounts. Yet certain differences merit scrutiny here. A minor one to point out, first, is that in the Liber, the name “Angles” is rendered as Anguli, the spelling in the Liber pontificalis biography of Gregory from which the Whitby author borrows elsewhere in this text. Throughout his History as in other writings, Bede's preferred form of the name is Angli.Footnote 49 The same form appears in Gregory's letters and epitaph, the latter quoted in the Ecclesiastical History directly before the story of the meeting with the Deirans. Most likely, the Whitby author was unfamiliar with most of the papal correspondence, as Colgrave surmised, and the epitaph.Footnote 50
Second and more significant, while the reference to people “saying” different things about the Deirans’ age and appearance hints that the Liber author knew more than one orally transmitted version of the legend, there is no suggestion here that the story is untrustworthy. As for Bede, he had enough respect for the tale to include it without censure. The episode “must not be passed over in silence,” he states, words that echo the Whitby author's comment that it “must . . . not be cloaked in silence.” Yet Bede's two references to the story as opinio may reflect not, or not only, oral communication, but uncertainty about its truth.Footnote 51 His presentation of the unidentified interlocutor's replies to Gregory's questions about the child-slaves as indirect speech may convey a similar hesitancy, though another possible reason for this choice will be discussed shortly.
Third, notice should be taken of the different arrangements of Gregory's questions and consequently of his puns. The Whitby narrative places the question regarding the visitors’ king and the response naming Ælle directly after the question about their gens and the wordplay on Anguli. A reader lacking knowledge of English dynasties might have interpreted this to mean that Ælle was the king of all Angles, not simply Deirans, and drawn the inference that Angle conversion primarily concerned this ruler. By setting the question that leads to the pun on Deiri directly after the pun on Angli, and the reference to Ælle at the end, Bede makes clear that Ælle only ruled Deira.
The implications of a fourth group of differences are clearest if we consider Bede's version first. His account contains details implying significant distance, social and spiritual, between Gregory and the Deiran Angles. Only in Bede's narrative are they definitely boys rather than young men, and he alone presents them as having been forcibly brought to Rome for sale as slaves. His reference to their hair's “outstanding form” (forma egregia), possibly designating its style, could mean that he thought of them as nobility.Footnote 52 If so, this social rank heightens the contrast to their enslavement. Bede does not indicate the kind of labor for which the boys might be purchased, but Allen Frantzen followed John Boswell in thinking that for some medieval readers, if not Bede personally, the boys’ young age and the beauty attributed to them would have implied sexual exploitation.Footnote 53
Regardless of their social status or the purpose of their servitude, of greater concern to Bede was their spiritual condition. The Angles in Rome were prisoners not only of merchants, but also of the “author of darkness.” For Bede much as for the Whitby author, it is evident, the somatic whiteness and beauty of the Deirans were consonant with the Angles’ future salvation. But in Bede's account, these physical qualities are set in stark opposition to the boys’ current spiritual slavery as captives of Satan. In keeping with this situation, Bede points to the absence of divine grace.Footnote 54
Here it is important to note Bede's empathy for Augustinian and Gregorian teachings on grace. In this as in other respects, he may have been exceptional among early insular scholars. Although, deviating from Augustine's later doctrine, Bede sometimes indicates a belief that the soul can freely turn or return to God before receiving grace, he seems to agree with Augustine and Gregory that the divine gift is necessary in order for a person to strive consistently for redemption.Footnote 55 The reference to the boys’ lack of inner grace in Bede's version of the story thus accentuates their spiritual impotence. His pun on “Deirans” conveys an analogous message. The Angles need to be “snatched” (eruti) from wrath and “called” (uocati) to mercy; they cannot turn from wrath (whether of God or the devil) on their own. Later when he was pope, Gregory's mission to England liberated the Angles from slavery to the devil, but the boys in the Roman market remain powerless on both social and spiritual levels. This circumstance fits with the passivity and silence Bede ascribes to them: they do not speak, presumably in part because of the language barrier, but also because of internal as well as physical captivity. That Bede portrays Gregory directing his questions to an interlocutor, possibly the slave merchant, whose responses are cast as indirect speech, emphasizes the hierarchical separation between the Christian, Roman, Latin-speaking saint, a future pope, and the pagan, Deiran, mute child-slaves, prisoners of the devil.
Although the Liber account of the meeting does not identify the Angles as pagan, the author later reports Gregory's request to Pope Benedict I (d. 579) for permission to lead a mission himself to England so that — as Gregory tells Benedict — such “beautiful vessels” do not end up in hell.Footnote 56 The pun on Deira also suggests paganism — in the Liber version, “Fleeing from the wrath of God to faith.” Yet unlike Bede, the Whitby author implies that the Deirans came to Rome of their own volition. Similarly, where Bede's Gregory refers to the need for the Angles to be “snatched” from wrath and “called” to mercy, the Liber has Gregory prophesize the future “fleeing” (confugientes) of Angles (through religious conversion) from divine anger and toward faith. Such wording is reminiscent of the seemingly voluntary aspect, according to this account, of the journey that put the Deirans in contact with the church. There is no allusion in this episode to grace or its absence or to slavery, spiritual or physical, refrains of Bede's text that underscore the group's powerlessness.Footnote 57 Also unlike Bede, the Whitby author allows for the possibility that the Deirans were young men rather than boys, hence old enough to travel so far alone, and they are represented as bilingual. They interact directly with Gregory, answering his questions without an intermediary in Latin that incorporates references to the English names of their “people,” king, and “tribe.”Footnote 58 These dialogic elements enhance the episode's drama and may have invited English readers and listeners to imagine themselves in the place of the Deiran visitors to Rome.Footnote 59
A fifth set of features of the story in the Liber to consider, which resonates with those just noted and with the hagiographical character of its framing narrative, concerns the tale's “out of the ordinary” quality. Again, comparison with Bede's version helps illuminate these aspects. While Ecclesiastical History 1.23 refers to Pope Gregory's decision to send a mission to England as divinely inspired, in Book 2, Chapter 1, Bede depicts the meeting with the Deirans prior to Gregory's pontificate as essentially happenstance.Footnote 60 Gregory chanced to see the boys when walking in the market, where they were logically present as slaves for sale. A mediator happened to be available who spoke Latin. In contrast, the Liber version explicitly links the encounter, both in terms of Gregory's foresight of English conversion and his questioning of the Deirans, with his spiritual closeness to God. For the Whitby author and contemporary audiences, the apparently willing journey of the Deirans to Rome, prefiguring the Angles’ flight “from God's wrath and toward faith,” and their ability despite paganism to converse with Gregory in the language of the church, may have also implied heavenly influence. That their hair was as white as their skin perhaps seemed to increase the story's strangeness and underline the extraordinary nature of the visit to the holy city that opened the way to English salvation.
The Setting in the Liber
In line with conventions of early medieval Latin hagiography, the Liber sets the story about Gregory and the Deirans within a chronological frame extending from his childhood to his death. Immediately after the preface is a report of his family background, and the text concludes with information concerning his burial, followed by a brief encomium. In between, varied miracles and other virtuous actions are attributed to Gregory (most of them unmentioned in the Ecclesiastical History), and his spiritual wisdom is further shown through discourses on teachings and written works by him known to the Whitby author.Footnote 61
David Howlett argued that if the modern chapter divisions are ignored, it becomes apparent that these contents of the Liber are organized in a chiastic structure comparable to biblical compositional patterns. The second half of the text consists of a series of episodes that thematically echo, in reverse order, the same number of episodes in the first half. Additionally, some individual sections appear to have an internal chiastic organization. While Howlett does not refer to the text layout in St. Gallen 567, his division of the Liber into thematic units usually corresponds to breaks marked by punctuation in the manuscript.Footnote 62
Another notable feature of the Liber when read without the chapter breaks, possibly also indicative of a deliberate compositional strategy, is the author's linking of passages “associatively” in narrative chains.Footnote 63 The following overview highlights instances of these configurations along with a selection of the many references to didactic utterances, other speech acts and sounds, and the oral transmission or aural reception of stories and other information recorded in the Liber. While I note some of the text's written sources, a greater concern is to draw attention to its diverse allusions to orality, including numerous passages identifying Gregory as “our” teacher who has spoken, speaks to, or otherwise instructs “us.” The Whitby author does not directly define “us,” “our,” and the like, but the context usually implies that such terms designate all Angles or Northumbrians as a subset of that population.Footnote 64 Further themes and episodes are indicated below as necessary to clarify the narrative flow and provide a stage for examining, in Section 4, the circumstances in which the Liber was composed. Corresponding passages in Bede's History are noted for comparison where the differences may elucidate features of the Whitby text consonant with its hagiographical aims.
The Liber preface extols the church's commemoration of its teachers (doctores) in writings meant for posterity. In the light of this tradition, the author offers this work about “our teacher . . . Saint Gregory . . . with the Lord helping.”Footnote 65 Following the preface, the brief account of Gregory's family is given, then a summary of early-career events that the author claims were compiled from his “speech and sense.”Footnote 66 Much of this material consists of autobiographical comments quoted or paraphrased from works by Gregory.Footnote 67
After having “said enough concerning these things,” the author announces an intention to write about Gregory's sanctity, though “we have heard little about the deeds of his signs.”Footnote 68 An exposition on the nature of sanctity follows, with echoes of passages in Gregory's Dialogues, his homilies, and the New Testament. Miracles are not essential to holiness, the Whitby author maintains with the aid of such sources, and indeed pose a risk if teachers of pagans boast about them. 1 Corinthians 14:22 is quoted to differentiate speaking in tongues as a sign that benefits unbelievers from speaking prophetically, which benefits believers. The latter group is identified with faithful who celebrate saints’ festivals.Footnote 69
Following the break in the St. Gallen manuscript that corresponds to the start of modern Chapter 5, a review begins of “things” remembered since ancient times that concern the holiness of “our teacher,” the “apostolic man Saint Gregory.” From here until the report of his meeting with the Deirans, the Whitby author's sources include Gregory's Dialogues, two of his Gospel homilies, scripture, a text attributed to Jerome, and possibly other writings.Footnote 70 The “things” of interest in this section center on Gregory's pedagogical skill with words, written and spoken. Teaching, it is made clear, can seem miraculous. Teachers who “shone with such doctrine through the Holy Spirit” have “watered” people all over the world “with the showers of their words.”Footnote 71 Just as other apostles and teachers will lead the people entrusted to them before God at the Judgment, Gregory will do the same for the Angles, whom he “taught by God's grace.”Footnote 72 When done in a holy manner, instruction heals not bodies (as do some miracles), but souls. Gregory offers outstanding examples of such pedagogy. God grants diverse gifts to the faithful according to measure, yet “reveals greater [gifts] in blessed Gregory through speech (sermo) of wisdom and knowledge of Jesus Christ.” Christ does more for us “by speaking through Saint Gregory” than when he made Peter walk on water or Paul blind the evil magician.Footnote 73
Gregory's emulation of Christ's humility and patience in trying to avoid papal office was his first “sign of sanctity” (signum sanctitatis), according to the Liber. After a light emanating from Gregory — compared in this passage to his subsequent illumination of the church — revealed his hiding place, his example of humble self-sacrifice in accepting the papacy and his teaching of love and prayer for one's enemy instructed “us” in love of Christ. The prophecy, “the law of truth was in his mouth and iniquity was not found on his lips” (Mal. 2:6), was spoken by Christ regarding Gregory. Elaborating on the theme of miraculous light, the Whitby author declares that the Lord's “shining precept, illuminating the eyes,” enlightened Gregory to such a degree that he attained, “by singular gift, the grace of prophetic understanding about us.”Footnote 74 This mention of prophecy introduces, by associative logic though out of chronological order, the meeting with and prophecy to the Deirans that occurred before his pontificate.
After that encounter, the author goes on to report, Gregory was “inflamed by the spiritual opportunity given [to him]” and sought Pope Benedict's permission to travel to England, but a crowd protested Gregory's departure and Benedict sent legates to retrieve the travelers. Another miracle is recalled: before the legates arrived, Gregory learned “from the Lord speaking in him” that he should not continue. The message came through a locust (locusta) at a rest stop. “As if it spoke to him,” the insect's name revealed the command, “Stay in place” (Sta in loco).Footnote 75
Once Gregory became pope, the Liber then relates, he sent Augustine, Mellitus, and Laurence to England “with other men” (cum ceteris).Footnote 76 Mention is made of the episcopal consecration of the three named missionaries and their conversion of Æthelbert of Kent, the first “of all kings of the Angles” to accept Christianity. He “gleamed, whitened in his baptism, with his nation.”Footnote 77 But the focus shifts directly thereafter to the Northumbrian Edwin, also described as an Angle ruler; no further reference occurs in the Liber to Æthelbert or the Roman mission in southern England. While some thirty years separated the Romans’ journey to Kent from Edwin's baptism in 627 (as Bede's History indicates), the Liber represents the evangelization of the two realms as quickly accomplished, proximate phases of the mission to the Angles.Footnote 78 The fulfillment of Gregory's prophetic utterances to the Deirans in Rome is implicitly identified with Edwin's conversion — the king of “our people of the Humbrians” and “son of the aforesaid Aelli, whom we not undeservedly remembered in the alleluiatic prophecy of divine praise.” Edwin's wisdom and authority are described as unmatched since the “people of the Angles arrived on this island.”Footnote 79
Following that announcement, the Liber author sets out an exposition of the orthography, sound, and meaning of “Angles,” “Aelli,” and “Edwin.” This passage reinforces one implication of the prophetic puns assigned to Gregory: even before the Angles became Christian, words in their own language, especially ones related to Ælle and his kingdom, foreshadowed English redemption.Footnote 80 The discussion links the noted words to one another and to Christian precepts through phonetic associations (that is, analogies in how they sound). If “e” is added to Anguli, we are told, the name “sounds of angels” who “forever praise almighty God.” Just as “praise of God” (laus Dei) consists of two words, “Aelli” has two syllables. When the “e” is removed and another replaces the “i,” that name becomes alle, meaning omnes in “our tongue” (English), a word recalling — the Whitby author asserts — Christ's offer of heavenly rest to “all” (Matt. 11:28). “Aelli” is next linked to Alleluia and the Trinity: “If alle signifies the king, it also [signifies] the Father, lu the Son, ia the Holy Spirit.”Footnote 81
Turning to the name “Edwin,” the Liber author again connects him with Gregory's prophecy; it is announced that he was the “predestined vessel of mercy for God” since he was “perhaps in the loins of his father” when Gregory spoke to the Deirans. The relation to the prophecy is strengthened by interpretation of the three syllables of Edwin (Ed/ui/nus) as a further sign of the Trinity, now described as the mystery that Christ taught, “who invites all people to himself [who are] baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” This progression from Gregory's prophetic speech in Rome, to Ælle, Edwin, and finally baptism leads — again associatively — to the first reference to Paulinus by name. He is identified as “one of those” whom Gregory “directed into our midst” and Edwin's “father in baptism.”Footnote 82
Edwin's reception of the sacrament is never explicitly narrated. Instead, two stories are next recounted pertaining to catechetical instruction. In the first, Edwin and his followers hear a crow's caw as they proceed to the church. Since the “royal multitude” risked mistaking the bird's “false and useless” noise as the “new song to our God,” Paulinus ordered that the crow be shot down and the arrow later brought to the palace. There he instructed the assembly that the crow's death proved its sound had no spiritual significance.Footnote 83 The account of this event is ambiguous, perhaps deliberately, as to whether Edwin was catechized with his retinue or only accompanied it to and from the church.
The explanation for that vagueness may lie in the next-related episode, a vision granted earlier to the king during his exile (ca. 616) at the court of the East Anglian monarch, Rædwald.Footnote 84 This miracle is presented in the Liber as a prior occasion on which Edwin received Christian instruction foreshadowing his conversion; unlike his retinue, the king had been partly catechized before he met Paulinus. The Whitby author describes the vision as an “ancient” episode that “we have not at all heard reported by those who knew more of his [Edwin's] things than did others,” things indeed that happened before anyone presently alive was born. These comments likely indicate that the author had in mind deceased members of the Whitby community such as Hild and Eanflæd who had personally known the king. Possibly, there is a hint here of suspicion about the vision because it was not among the tales about Edwin they had passed down. The story was one “we have heard in condensed form,” the Liber author also notes. Despite these issues, it deserved inclusion since “it has been so spiritually transmitted by faithful people,” yet the author implies that the Liber account is amplified to strengthen its “truth.” Perhaps to further justify the modifications, the author observes that reports from distant times and places can reach the “ears of different people in different ways” — another allusion to oral communication as well as to the instability of information shared in this manner.Footnote 85
Most miracles and other stories narrated in the Liber have no counterpart in Bede's History, but Gregory's meeting with the Deirans and Edwin's vision are exceptions. It is worthwhile, therefore, to compare briefly the two versions of the latter episode. According to Bede, the apparition and its speech to Edwin were meant to help him believe Paulinus's Christian teaching when they met years later (ca. 624), but Edwin remained ignorant of this purpose at the time. After Paulinus came to know Edwin and “learned [about the vision], probably in spirit,” Bede states, the bishop made a gesture toward the king that the apparition had warned Edwin to expect. Despite this miracle too, he still hesitated to accept Christianity.Footnote 86 The Liber asserts that the apparition itself “revealed [Edwin's conversion] to him beforehand.” Approaching him “crowned with Christ's cross,” the Whitby author then relates, the figure informed the king that someone with its “likeness” would later “teach you to obey the one living and true God who created all things, and God, who will give to you those things I promise, will also reveal through him everything you must do.” Those who tell this anecdote, the author notes, say the apparition was Paulinus.Footnote 87
The episodes that focus on Paulinus conclude with a prayer of gratitude for Gregory's sending of the bishop, “our teacher” (doctoris nostri), and the report of his soul rising to heaven in the form of a white swan.Footnote 88 That miracle thematically balances the story of the crow: Paulinus's soaring, white bird-like soul contrasts with the black bird falling dead to the ground. This entire quartet of events — the shooting of the crow, Paulinus's catechetical teaching about the significance of the bird's death, the foretaste of Christian instruction granted Edwin through the vision, and the vision of the bishop's swan-soul — has a chiastic structure, even as thematic resonances link episodes associatively.
A series of events narrated next augments the evidence of the divine benediction of Ælle's royal line. The primary concern here is the discovery of Edwin's bones and their translation to Whitby. The Liber emphasizes the relics’ importance by giving detailed information on when and where they were found, where they were reburied, and the information's source. We learn that a monk of Whitby who was related to Trimma, the story's main protagonist, described the events to the Liber author. Trimma was a monk and priest “of our people” living in a Mercian monastery during the reign of Æthelred (675– after 704), while Eanflæd was still “in monastic life.” An apparition appeared to Trimma three times enjoining him to look for Edwin's remains at Hatfield Chase (in Mercia) and to take them to the “most famous monastery of Ælfflæd”; Eanflæd is then identified as Ælfflæd's mother and Edwin's daughter.Footnote 89 The genealogical succession of Edwin — Eanflæd — Ælfflæd is thus clear. Following the apparition's third visit, Trimma did as commanded, and Edwin's bones were re-interred in Whitby's church of St. Peter “with other of our kings, to the south of the altar which is sanctified in the name of the most blessed Apostle Peter and east of that [altar of] . . . Saint Gregory.”Footnote 90
While the Ecclesiastical History notes that Edwin was buried in the Whitby church, it also refers to the king's skull kept at York, information omitted from the Liber though it was probably known.Footnote 91 The narrative of Trimma's actions closes with a notice that he later stayed for a time near Edwin's original grave, where the monk-priest claimed to have seen spirits of four other slain warriors, and that he would have built a monastery on the site if he had been able to do so.Footnote 92 The implication is that he could not fulfill this wish; Whitby is therefore the only religious center linked with Edwin's relics in the Liber. The references to Eanflæd as a nun still living at the time and to Whitby as Ælfflæd's monastery reveal that the translation occurred between 680, when Eanflæd and Ælfflæd became co-abbesses, and ca. 704, by which time Eanflæd was dead.Footnote 93
After recalling Trimma's decision to stay at Hatfield Chase, the Whitby author distinguishes between the “completed reports” that were “proper to us,” apparently meaning the foregoing narrative from Gregory's encounter with the Deirans through the episodes relating to Edwin, and the stories to follow: “things in which, with Christ also speaking in him, the most blessed man Gregory is famed [or reputed] among us (famatus nobiscum) in sanctity of signs.”Footnote 94 At this point, about midway through the Liber, we turn away from Ælfflæd's Whitby and back to Rome during Gregory's pontificate.
A “narrative of the ancients” and an “old report” are mentioned as sources for the next two stories.Footnote 95 A letter by Gregory attributes to Pope Leo I a miracle similar to the one ascribed to Gregory in the second episode. A tale about a monk-physician subsequently recounted in the Liber was taken from the Dialogues, and further analogues of events narrated in the second half have been located in other late Roman and early medieval texts. Consequently, it is plausible to think, as Alan Thacker argued, that textual sources informed all the anecdotes presented in this section of the Liber.Footnote 96 Yet famatus nobiscum may again imply stories that were also shared orally in the Whitby author's milieu. After setting out four of them, the author notes, echoing a comment in the Dialogues, that only the “sense” has been given of some lest, in “speaking rustically, we say nothing spiritual.” In the context of the Liber, “rustically” could be an allusion to the vernacular, though it perhaps instead hints at concerns about the quality of a Latin source or its information. In either case, the inference is that the author once more made adjustments in order to bring the narrated episodes into conformity with “spiritual” truth.Footnote 97
The first four tales in this section juxtapose prayer, teaching, and other spiritually meaningful speech acts by Gregory with the faithlessness or ignorance of interlocutors. Logically — since the stories follow the account of the reburial of Edwin's remains near Whitby altars — the first two stories concern masses. The opening tale is of a Roman matron who smiled at Gregory's communion prayer identifying the bread as Christ's body. Gregory denied her the eucharist and, after the mass ended, asked her the reason for the smile. The woman indicated her disbelief that the bread could be body, since she had baked it herself. When the congregation, at Gregory's request, prayed that Christ would reveal the sacramental reality, the woman's portion changed into a bloody piece of finger. The pope explained the miracle to the woman and urged the congregants to pray for the bread's restoration to its usual form. They did “as he taught.”Footnote 98
The second story concerns men who came to Rome to obtain relics for their lord. Gregory gave them cloths that he had transformed into martyrs’ relics through masses. When the men opened the box on their return journey, they did not believe the cloths were holy and went back to Rome to protest. Gregory asked them to attend a mass and, in their presence, requested that the congregation again pray for a sign. After this collective prayer, blood flowed from the cloths when he cut them with a knife, and he explained the miracle's significance to the men and gathered faithful.Footnote 99
According to the third story, Gregory, not wishing “to teach gently” (edocere leniter noluit), excommunicated a man who had divorced his wife. The man hired magicians to harm the pope, but the Holy Spirit blinded them after they tried to injure Gregory. Their blinding is juxtaposed with the keen eyesight that enabled him to spot them in the crowd. Once Gregory told the magicians why their blindness would be permanent, they converted.Footnote 100 The fourth story concerns a king who, the Whitby author “thinks,” was Lombardic. The ruler intended to invade Rome, but Gregory's “singular flow of divine doctrine” softened the king's “fiery breast,” and he promised never to attack so long as Gregory was pope. The author paraphrases Psalm 45:6–7 to clarify the source of Gregory's oratorical power: “through him the highest one [God] gave his own voice and the earth was moved.” When the king later fell ill, he sent word to the pope, choosing him “as his teacher because of [Gregory's] aforesaid doctrine.” Gregory advised the ruler to eat milky foods; he obeyed this “doctrine” and his health improved.Footnote 101
As yet another “sign of [Gregory's] sanctity,” the Liber author next offers an exposition on the “outstanding heavenly skill that shone forth” in his writings, “with Christ speaking in him.” The initial focus is the pope's Gospel homilies, works in which he answered Christ's injunction to “preach the Gospel to every creature.”Footnote 102 This mention of preaching and Christ-mediated heavenly skill introduces a lengthy series of interwoven references to Gregory's rhetorical prowess and closeness to Christ, heaven, and angels. We learn, for instance, that Gregory “so fully and wisely receives this [sign, skill, or Gospel] from [Christ], who is God's wisdom hidden in mystery,” and “thunders [so] sublimely” that the Roman people call him “golden mouth.” Through Gregory, spiritual wisdom “still resounds for us today with honeyed sweetness, as if with living voice.”Footnote 103 The divine light shone in him before angels as well as men; for unlike even Augustine of Hippo, Gregory could distinguish the angelic orders.Footnote 104 Christ was referring to Gregory when he said that “every scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven is similar to the head of the household, who brings forth from his treasure new things and old” (Matt. 13:52). The new things, the Whitby author implies, were Gregory's Gospel homilies, the old his homilies on Ezekiel, a prophet for whom the “heavens were similarly opened.”Footnote 105
Paraphrased exegesis of the firmament taken from one of Gregory's Ezekiel homilies provides added testimony of his knowledge of heaven. Next comes the report of the white dove, which rested on him as he wrote his Ezekiel homilies. The miracle is compared to the opening of heaven and the dove's descent at Jesus's baptism. Here too the heavens opened “for this our pope,” though Gregory warned the servant who witnessed the event not to tell others about this “sign of heavenly fame.”Footnote 106 The Whitby author then compares Gregory again to Ezekiel, to Peter since they both held the power of the heavenly keys, and to Job, who suffered from illness like the pope and heard the Lord speak from heaven.Footnote 107
The bond thereby established between Gregory, heaven, and its keys sets the stage for a further group of four interconnected stories demonstrating his power of the keys — that is, his power to bind and loose sins (Matt. 16:19). The first episode in this series is the tale of the monk-physician, who died having hidden three coins in contravention of his monastery's rule. Gregory consigned the monk's soul to hell but later celebrated a mass that allowed him to enter heaven.Footnote 108 The next tale offers a particularly good illustration of the pleasure that the Whitby author apparently took in interweaving evocations of a single theme. “Brightly illumined” by the “lamp of divine reading,” Gregory ordered the lamp beside the tomb of an unnamed pope (Siricius, d. 399) to be extinguished because he had banished Jerome, a “lamp . . . of the entire world,” from Rome.Footnote 109 In the third story, the deceased Gregory appears three times in a vision to his unnamed papal successor (Sabinian, d. 606), because the latter neglected to care for the city's poor. When Sabinian fails to acquiesce to Gregory's “speeches” (sermonibus) and amend his behavior, Gregory kicks him in the head. Sabinian dies a few days later.Footnote 110
The Whitby author describes the final (fourth) story in this group as a “narrative from the Romans,” again implying a textual source; but the story is also one that “some among us tell” and that “is wonderful to tell and hear.”Footnote 111 One day when passing through Trajan's Forum, a site which, “they say, [was] constructed by him [Trajan] with marvelous work,” Gregory learned that the pagan emperor had once ordered the murderers of a widow's son to pay her compensation. Recognizing this “work of mercy” as worthy of a Christian, and with “Christ speaking in him,” Gregory entered St. Peter's to weep in prayer for the relief of Trajan's soul. While he wept, it was divinely revealed that he “had been heard.” The celestial response, the author indicates, was to accept the pope's tears as baptism of the late emperor.Footnote 112
A penultimate section of the Liber offers a long defense against potential detractors; the disparate lines of thought are joined together through recurring references to love. Because only limited information has been available (a common topos of hagiographical writing), the Whitby author declares that a love of Gregory “strong as death” (Cant. 8:6) has “twisted” the Liber “more than knowledge.” As the author goes on to state, “Love, according to this small measure of our competence, spurs us to recall signs about this our teacher, with God giving to us.” Some deeds ascribed to Gregory may have been performed by other saints, yet that should not provoke concern, since the saints share everything through love of Christ's body, of which they are all members.Footnote 113
While, as the Liber author then admits, certain stories about Gregory were learned from “common report” rather than “orally from those who saw or heard [the events],” anything mistakenly attributed to the pope still pertains to him; for Gregory himself teaches that a person can render his own “what is seen and loved in others.” The source to which the author alludes is Gregory's Pastoral Rule.Footnote 114 Christ showed his love of the apostles when he enabled them to perform greater miracles than his own. One such miracle, performed by other teachers as well, was to increase the number of faithful. Christ will exhibit his love again at the Judgment. “How great and wonderful is the love of our Savior” that God shows in us (see Rom. 5:8) and in “our blessed apostolic Gregory.” Because he emulated Christ's humility, divine wisdom illumined Gregory, and “. . . through the indwelling Spirit by which God's love was diffused in his heart, he completed the marvelous work of his own humility on which the [work] of love properly rests.”Footnote 115
A subsequent short discourse based on the Pastoral Rule picks up on the theme of humility and alludes to the virtue's importance in all pastors. The Whitby author then quotes from the Pastoral Rule on the need for teachers to adjust their “speech” (sermo) to reach varied audiences.Footnote 116 The rest of the Liber concerns Gregory's death, though “we have heard very little about the end of life of this man.” His naming in Whitby litanies is mentioned along with the date of his death (12 March), his burial in St. Peter's Rome, and the length of his pontificate, information drawn from his biography in the Liber pontificalis. The author ends by expressing confidence that Gregory will rise to glory on the Last Day and enjoy eternal life with Christ.Footnote 117
The Liber and the Monastery of Whitby
Summary
Before proceeding further, it seems best to review briefly the key structural and thematic elements just surveyed. The “frame” of the Liber — the opening report of Gregory's family background, the closing report of his death — is chronological, and certain sections within these bookends are chronologically organized. Yet much of the narrative proceeds associatively from one topic or theme to the next. After discussing the nature of sanctity, the author praises virtuous teaching and describes Gregory's saintly attributes as the Angles’ apostolic teacher: among them, the humility he demonstrated, hence taught, when he rose to papal office; his ability to receive heavenly illumination and to hear Christ or God speaking in him; his mediation of divine speech and wisdom to others in Rome and England; and his foreknowledge of English conversion, as revealed through his prophetic words to the Deirans in Rome.
The story of this encounter underlines both Gregory's spiritual inspiration and God's blessing of the Angles. Above all, the Liber author makes clear, that blessing is directed to the Deirans, their ruler Ælle, and his blood line. Unlike Bede, the Whitby author depicts the Angles from Deira whom Gregory met as willing travelers, not transported slaves. In a parallel manner, through the pun on “Deira,” he prophesizes that the Angles will flee from “God's wrath” and toward Christianity. The Deirans’ seemingly voluntary journey; Gregory's foresight that the Angles would willingly convert; the divine guidance that led him to question the Deirans; the whiteness of their hair as well as skin; their ability to converse with him in Latin — all these features of the episode as narrated in the Liber may have appeared potentially miraculous to the Whitby author and the text's contemporary audiences.
The Liber next recalls Gregory's failed effort to lead a mission to England, the miracle of the locust, the journey of Augustine with his party, and Æthelbert's conversion, before directing attention to Edwin. The following exposition on the names “Angles,” “Aelli,” and “Edwin” along with the stories of Paulinus's catechetical teaching, Edwin's vision at Rædwald's court, and the translation of Edwin's relics leave no doubt that his conversion should be viewed as the climactic outcome of Gregory's prophetic utterances to the Deirans. The account, about midway through the Liber, of the reburial of Edwin's remains is the last link in this spiritual chain extending from Rome to Whitby. The path of faith opened through the Deirans’ journey and Gregory's puns culminated at Ælfflæd's monastery.
The second half of the Liber, which shifts the focus back to Gregory, recalls additional “signs” of his sanctity. Thematic and topical associations seem to have determined the arrangement of most of this material; some passages are interconnected through the use of the same or similar words. Teaching and speech continue to be significant refrains. Gregory, the author recalls, instructed witnesses orally about the meaning of his miracles. His eloquence mediating the voice of God persuaded a hostile ruler not to invade Rome, and the king chose the pope as his teacher. Gregory's writings demonstrated that he merited the byname, “golden mouth.” His homilies manifested his knowledge of heaven, and the prayers in which he guided faithful were heard in heaven. Other holy sounds are also mentioned; church song and Paulinus's instruction are juxtaposed with the “false and useless” cawing of a crow. Gregory's teaching and command of prayer overcome disbelief voiced by interlocutors. He urges a divorced husband and Sabinian to change their behavior and punishes them when they fail to heed his admonitions.
Furthermore, allusions regularly appear in the Liber to information circulated orally in the Whitby milieu, including a possible hint at vernacular exchanges. The author implies familiarity with more than one oral version of the legend of Gregory meeting the Deirans. Near the end of the Liber, the author defends recourse to “common report” as consonant with love for Gregory, a love mirroring that of Christ.
Regional Concerns
If we now consider how the characteristics of this text outlined above may have responded to circumstances at Whitby, we should first note the monastery's importance among seventh- and eighth-century English religious centers. This was a major Northumbrian house throughout the tenures of its three known abbesses. Within the decade after its foundation by Oswiu, in 664, Whitby was selected as the location of the synod convened under that king to debate methods for dating Easter. Hild “with her companions” (cum suis) participated in the synod, Bede reports. They sided with the party supporting the practice of the monastery of Iona (in present-day Scotland), whereas Oswiu opted for the Roman Dionysian system promoted by Wilfrid, subsequently bishop of York (669–78). Yet after Oswiu died in 670, he was buried at Whitby, and his widow Eanflæd joined its community.Footnote 118
The monastery was also a prominent center of education. Evidence concerning its pedagogy will be discussed below, but to note here is that, according to Bede, many men who studied under Hild at Whitby were qualified to become priests, and five became bishops: Bosa, John, and Wilfrid II, who held consecutively the see of York (678–706, 706–14, and 714–32); Ætla, a bishop of Dorchester; and Otfor, who became a bishop in the realm of the Hwicce, a Mercian subkingdom. Before the election of Otfor's predecessor Bosel, that bishopric had gone to Tatfrith, a “most learned man” (uir . . . doctissimus) from Whitby who died before his consecration. The consecutive appointment of three clergy of Hild's monastery to York demonstrates Whitby's influence, well into the eighth century, over the most powerful Northumbrian episcopal see.Footnote 119
Hild, Eanflæd, and Ælfflæd interacted with secular notables besides Oswiu and Edwin, and with high-level ecclesiastics from outside their community. Bede asserts that “kings and princes” along with ordinary people sought Hild's counsel.Footnote 120 Stephen's Life of Wilfrid quotes a letter from Pope John VI recalling her collaboration with Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury (d. 690) to remove Wilfrid from York in 678. Wilfrid's replacement was Whitby's Bosa. The letter implies that Hild and Theodore jointly sent representatives to Rome to oppose Wilfrid's appeal to Pope Agatho. Some of these delegates may have been Whitby clergy who acquired books for their monastery, among them perhaps sources used in composing the Liber.Footnote 121
Stephen indicates that unlike Hild, Eanflæd was on good terms with Wilfrid, and the same seems to have eventually been true of Ælfflæd. In 687, she may have encouraged Theodore's appointment of Whitby's John to the bishopric at Wilfrid's foundation of Hexham. Yet Stephen reports that Theodore urged Ælfflæd to make peace with Wilfrid, and after the death of the Northumbrian king Aldfrith (d. 704/5), her half-brother, and a struggle over the royal succession, she as well as Wilfrid were allies of Aldfrith's young son Osred. In 706, the Life of Wilfrid further relates, Ælfflæd collaborated with Archbishop Berhtwald of Canterbury to reconcile Wilfrid with fellow Northumbrian bishops at the Synod of Nidd.Footnote 122 In reporting on this assembly, Stephen praises her as the “blessed abbess Ælfflæd, always comforter and best counsellor of the entire province,” the “most blessed abbess” who speaks “with blessed speech,” and “wisest virgin.” The Life of Wilfrid attributes to her a speech before the synod in which she stated that the dying Aldfrith affirmed, in her presence, a desire for reconciliation between Wilfrid and the Northumbrian throne. Her oration is described as a major factor leading to the synod's decision in Wilfrid's favor.Footnote 123 Not long afterwards, he was made bishop of Hexham and John moved to the see of York, an appointment in which Ælfflæd likely had a hand. As Alan Thacker has observed, “Ælfflæd, it seems, could make and unmake bishops.”Footnote 124
There was surely awareness at Whitby during these years, however, as Walter Goffart argued, of growing competition for influence from other English religious establishments. At Lindisfarne, north of Whitby, the translation in 698 of the body of the ascetic monk-bishop Cuthbert to an above-ground coffin within the church and the writing of a life by an anonymous Lindisfarne monk between 699 and 705 enhanced Cuthbert's cult.Footnote 125 Ælfflæd apparently also fostered his veneration. According to Bede's prose Life of Cuthbert, written ca. 721, she claimed that a girdle she received from the saint worked miraculous cures, and both Bede's Life and the Lindisfarne Life recall Ælfflæd's witness of prophecies by Cuthbert and of a vision granted to him.Footnote 126 At Bardney in Mercia, Ælfflæd's sister Queen Osthryth enshrined the relics of their relative, King Oswald, in the monastery church ca. 679. Osthryth was murdered in 697; she and her husband Æthelred, who gave up the Mercian throne and became abbot of Bardney in 704, were also buried and venerated there.Footnote 127 At Ripon, Wilfrid was buried in the monastic church when he died in 710. Stephen wrote the Life of Wilfrid to encourage his cult.Footnote 128
Although the complete text of the Liber only survives in St. Gallen 567, it may have had some circulation in the British Isles. As noted earlier, it is plausible to suspect that Bede had access to a copy at Wearmouth–Jarrow.Footnote 129 In view of Ælfflæd's relationship with Berhtwald, a copy was possibly sent to Canterbury, another center that worked to foster veneration of Gregory; and manuscripts of the Liber perhaps reached other insular monasteries. Diffusion of the Liber would have helped increase the renown of Ælfflæd's house relative to centers like Lindisfarne, Ripon, and Bardney, by drawing attention to its Latin learning and ties to Gregory and papal Rome. Additionally, it seems likely that the Liber author, other Whitby religious and clergy, and their abbess Ælfflæd hoped the text would increase veneration of Edwin in the Whitby church alongside the honors paid to Peter and Gregory at their altars.
It is important in this context to note the synchrony between the prophetic puns ascribed to Gregory in the Liber and its references to Whitby in the account of the translation of Edwin's relics. The synchrony strengthens the connection that the author so carefully traces, in this portion of the text, between Gregory in Rome and Ælfflæd's monastery. While there may have been other reasons for the author's total silence regarding Hild, Whitby's first abbess, and Oswiu, its royal benefactor, one probable factor was to avoid reminders of Ionan Christianity and Bernicia, the subkingdom north of Deira. Hild's monastic training was under Bishop Aidan, who had come to Northumbria from Iona; this circumstance informed her support for the Ionan party in 664 and her difficult relationship with Wilfrid.Footnote 130 Oswiu, a son of the Bernician king, Æthelfrith, received Christian instruction at Iona or Ireland and ruled Bernicia for some thirteen years before gaining full control of Deira.Footnote 131 The only Angle dynasty explicitly linked with Whitby in the Liber is that of the Deiran Ælle through descendants — Edwin, Eanflæd, and Ælfflæd — who seem to have been consistently loyal to Rome, St. Peter, and the papacy. Elements of Whitby's history that would have distracted from the bond proclaimed through Gregory's puns between Rome, Deira, Ælle, and accordingly his son Edwin do not figure in this narrative.Footnote 132
Teaching at Whitby
Second, it is helpful to piece together the scattered insights provided by both written sources and artifacts concerning educational activities at Whitby. Bede expresses his admiration for Hild's teaching at some length. The History describes her as renowned for “innate wisdom” and states that she “taught the preservation of justice, piety, and chastity, and of other virtues, but especially peace and love.” During her final six years of illness, she continued “to teach her flock both publicly and privately.” While Bede refers to virtue as a focus of her pedagogy, the foundation must have been scripture.Footnote 133 The same chapter also observes that Hild enjoined fellow religious to read biblical texts as well as perform good works. It was because of these activities, Bede indicates, that numerous male residents of Whitby could become priests and bishops.Footnote 134
Members of the community besides Hild taught as well. Ælfflæd was evidently an instructor; Bede calls her magistra and doctrix.Footnote 135 The chapter that directly follows his biography of Hild in the Ecclesiastical History tells the story of the Whitby cowherd, Cædmon, who was granted a vision one night through which he gained the ability to compose and sing vernacular Christian songs. Cædmon revealed his new talent to “many, more learned men” of the monastery in Hild's presence. At her command, he took religious vows and was handed over to “teachers” for instruction in sacred history.Footnote 136
The Whitby students seem to have ranged in age. Since Ælfflæd was placed in Hild's care when about a year old, she probably started her education while young, and this may have been true of other residents; but some took vows only after childhood. Hild herself was thirty-three; Cædmon was “of advanced age” (ad tempora prouectioris aetatis) before she arranged his education.Footnote 137 The surviving letter by Ælfflæd, sent ca. 700 to Abbess Adolana of Pfalzel in what is now Germany, introduces an English abbess traveling to Rome as Ælfflæd's “daughter since adolescence”; possibly, she was a student.Footnote 138 Eanflæd was about forty-four when she joined Whitby.Footnote 139
As for the monastery's library, this may have been fairly small, yet the Liber reveals that it comprised diverse works: some Old Testament scripture and probably all of the New Testament; varied writings by Gregory and some by Jerome and Augustine; a copy of the Liber pontificalis or at least its biography of Gregory; possibly Sulpicius Severus's Life of St. Martin; and probably a collection of anecdotes about Gregory. Liturgical books must have also been available and probably other works.Footnote 140 The Liber, Ælfflæd's letter, and possibly one of Cædmon's hymns are the only writings composed at Whitby to survive more or less intact, but seventh- to ninth-century artifacts excavated at the site offer added evidence of literacy.Footnote 141 The finds include stone fragments with carved inscriptions, book clasps, pins, some of which were apparently writing styli, and part of a seventh-century bone comb inscribed in runes with a prayer mixing Latin with mainly vernacular vocabulary.Footnote 142
The attention given to pedagogy in the Liber underlines the importance of education within the Whitby community as a whole. The Liber was surely intended in part for meditative reading by any of the monastery's literate residents, but the emphasis on teaching is a possible clue that the author envisaged Whitby instructors — to whose number the author may have belonged — as a core audience. Reading the Liber alone or in small groups might have inspired them to believe or hope that, however imperfectly, with God's help, they could emulate Gregory and Paulinus by strengthening faith and knowledge of orthodoxy among their own students, some of whom would have been preparing for clerical offices. While I am unaware of evidence for the use of hagiography in monastic education during this period, it is also possible that Whitby teachers introduced the Liber to their pupils, whether by reading from and commenting on passages in the text before the students or assisting them to read, perhaps in conjunction with perusal of works by Gregory.
The significance of teaching at this monastery and as a theme of the Liber has a bearing on how we assess the text's compositional style. Whitby instructors and other learned residents were doubtless sensitive to the need to find ways to convey knowledge in an effective manner to audiences of disparate educational levels. The passage in the Liber quoted from Gregory's Pastoral Rule that advises adjusting pedagogical strategies for different audiences, and the Whitby author's elaboration on the pope's comments, deserve consideration in this context. The passage is indicative of the author's personal awareness of the value of modifying language style as well as content when addressing diverse groups:
‘One and the same exhortation is not suitable for all. Therefore, the speech of teachers should be shaped according to the quality of listeners. For often things that benefit some offend others.’ Hence by publicizing the diverse vices and virtues of the human race, by enumerating the classes of almost all men, [Gregory] advised in a marvelous exhortation what should be said, to whom, when, at what length, and in what manner.Footnote 143
Such awareness, along with the concern for orality generally attested in the Liber, raises the issue of the languages employed among Whitby religious and clergy outside the liturgy.Footnote 144 Most or all of them likely received their main Latin instruction after entering the community. Ælfflæd seems to have mastered the writing of Latin well, to judge from the surviving version of her letter; this is composed in a flowery, competent style.Footnote 145 Since she was placed with Hild at infancy, it is possible that she was taught the language from very early childhood.
Many residents who joined the monastery at older ages, however (and perhaps Ælfflæd), surely remained more comfortable speaking their native language. In this respect, Whitby was almost certainly not exceptional among early English monasteries. Alaric Hall has pointed to evidence of the use of vernaculars for English monastic and clerical education in the seventh century. As he also discusses, even the high-ranking ecclesiastics at the Synod of 664 conferred in English and Irish probably in part because they understood spoken Latin less well.Footnote 146 A corollary is that relatively educated English religious and clergy, including Bede, at times employed written as well as oral linguistic forms suggestive of their cultural distance from Rome — vernacular alone, combinations of Latin and vernacular, adaptations of Latin coinciding with vernacular grammar or syntax, or others.Footnote 147
A monastery like Ælfflæd's Whitby might well therefore have been a “contact zone” in the sense described by Jonathan Hsy: a space marked by negotiations between Latin and the first language/s of residents.Footnote 148 The runic inscription mixing Latin with mostly vernacular text on the seventh-century Whitby comb (like runic inscriptions on multiple other early English artifacts), and the efforts made under Hild — according to Bede — to facilitate Cædmon's composition of vernacular Christian songs, singing that apparently enjoyed considerable popularity at Whitby, are suggestive of such circumstances.Footnote 149 The Liber author's comment on speaking “rustically,” whether an allusion to vernacular communication or to less than grammatical Latin speech, is also usefully set against this backdrop. So, too, is the report of Gregory's prophetic wordplay on the names “Angles,” “Aelli,” and “Deira” and the following exegesis in the Liber of the first two terms and “Edwin,” passages that testify to the Whitby author's interest in the relationship between English and Latin as well as in the Hebrew Alleluia.Footnote 150
Overall, then, it seems reasonable to suspect that the ability of Whitby religious under Hild and still in Ælfflæd's day to read, write, or speak Latin varied, as did interpretations of what represented correct Latin. Although the original Liber text cannot be fully reconstructed with confidence, it likely presented a good number of deviations from classical Latin standards.Footnote 151 It is certainly conceivable that its author had insufficient command of such Latin to write consistently adhering to its rules. Yet another possibility, as Townsend argued, is that idiosyncrasies of grammar and syntax for which the author was responsible were not always inadvertent errors. Some of these variants may have resulted from a conscious strategy to approximate characteristics of usage within the community.
One aim may have been to demonstrate cultural autonomy, as Townsend proposed, while perhaps another was more pedagogical: to find some middle ground between normative written Latin and the divergent locutions that some (or many) Whitby readers and listeners of readings from this text would have been habituated to, understood better, or preferred. Townsend's main example — based on Colgrave's edition — of a possibly deliberate deviation from standard Latin is an indirect statement with a nominative subject and an infinitive verb in the story of Gregory meeting the Deirans.Footnote 152 The statement seems a hybrid, grammatically, of the classical Latin structure of indirect speech that places the subject in the accusative and the verb in the infinitive, and a form possible in early medieval Latin and Old English, as in modern English, in which the subordinate clause is typically introduced by “that” (Latin quod), the subject is nominative, and the verb is finite. The Whitby author may have used the classical form shortly after the hybrid just noted, and it is found elsewhere in the Liber. But the hybrid form also recurs in the St. Gallen text (and Colgrave's edition), and it is possible that the author utilized this form more frequently than is visible in the manuscript. Some passages with the classical mode of indirect speech may represent places where, in the course of textual transmission, scribal emendations distanced the prose from the original Whitby version.Footnote 153
The associative organization of sections of the Liber may reflect similar concerns to make the text accessible to diverse listeners and readers, in this case by evoking features of oral delivery familiar from teaching and preaching. In short, the importance of Whitby as an educational center, and a sensitivity among its teachers and other educated residents to the need to adjust language for groups with different levels of learning and different approaches to Latin, possibly led to the development of distinctive forms of written Latin shaped by vernacular as well as Latin, oral as well as textual, norms of grammar, syntax, and structure for conveying Christian truth.
Women, Clergy, and the Power of Words
Also warranting investigation for present purposes, third, is the evidence beyond that found in the Liber of a particular interest at Whitby under Hild and Ælfflæd in the potential for speech to be spiritually transmitted, guided, or inspired. According to Bede, once Hild identified Cædmon's new talent as a miraculous gift, she assured that he had the resources to develop it for the rest of his life. Bede links the songs that Cædmon composed after becoming a monk to the instruction received from teachers, yet Bede implies that the singing remained miraculous, and Cædmon's Whitby audiences probably interpreted it in this manner.Footnote 154 One possible indication of Ælfflæd's own affinity for heaven-inspired utterances — perhaps nurtured by hearing Cædmon's songs — is her request to Adolana, the recipient of the letter, for “sacred and flaming oracles.” The term oraculum is a metaphor for prayer, but the adjectives “sacred and flaming” recall the word's primary meanings of oracle, prophecy, and utterance of divine origin.Footnote 155
A stronger hint of this outlook lies in the twin reports in the anonymous Lindisfarne Life and Bede's prose Life of Cuthbert of the saint's prophecies in Ælfflæd's presence. On the first occasion, both texts relate, the abbess deliberately sought out Cuthbert for prophetic purpose: Ælfflæd asked the saint to tell her how much longer her brother King Ecgfrith would live, the identity of his royal successor, Cuthbert's future response to Ecgfrith's offer of a bishopric, and the length of time that Cuthbert would hold this office. The saint spoke “prophetic words” in reply to her questions.Footnote 156 The Lindisfarne author states that he learned about the second meeting directly from Ælfflæd.Footnote 157 At that time, in her presence, Cuthbert had a vision of angels carrying the soul of a Whitby monk-shepherd to heaven. The saint told Ælfflæd that she would give him the name of the deceased the next day. When she did so, she (and other witnesses, in Bede's version) recognized Cuthbert's “spirit of prophecy.”Footnote 158
Since Ælfflæd almost certainly approved the Liber, its numerous references to spiritually empowered and miraculous speech events likely constitute further evidence of her personal interest in such phenomena: the story of Gregory's prophetic speech to the Deirans; the many references to Christ or God speaking to, in, or through Gregory; his powerful prayers; the tales of the locust, the dove, the apparitions that spoke to Edwin and Trimma, Gregory's spirit warning Sabinian, and more. It may be useful to juxtapose these episodes with the limited attention that the narrative gives to the sacerdotal hierarchy of the English church or its sacraments. Most of the miracles attributed to Gregory in Rome center on his papal office and sacraments — masses, baptism, and binding and loosing sins. Regarding England, though, while the author identifies Augustine, Mellitus, Laurence, and Paulinus as bishops and Trimma as a priest, the archiepiscopal status of the see of Canterbury (as possibly of Paulinus at York) is ignored, and there is no reference to Whitby clergy.Footnote 159 Æthelbert's baptism is reported, but not Edwin's. Paulinus is identified not as the Northumbrian king's baptizer, but as catechizer and Edwin's “father in baptism” (pater in baptismo) — a term that evokes godparentage, another teaching role.Footnote 160
A critical factor underlying such features of the Liber is undoubtedly the author's hagiographical focus on Rome, Gregory, and his saintly activities rather than the institutions of the English church. Two additional issues worth considering, however, are the apparent high repute of Hild and Ælfflæd for skilled oral communication and, again, their monastery's importance as a center of education. While neither abbess nor their fellow female religious could engage in sacerdotal ministry, both Hild and Ælfflæd taught; nobles and rulers as well as ordinary folk supposedly came to Whitby to seek Hild's counsel; and the speech of Ælfflæd, the “best counsellor of the entire province,” was seemingly critical in determining Wilfrid's fate at the Synod of Nidd.Footnote 161 Both women, it would therefore appear, commanded respect and influence through the spoken word. This circumstance alongside the concern for education at Whitby may have led the Liber author to pay less attention to the differences among English clerical offices or to their sacramental agency than to episodes of teaching, catechizing, prayer — oratorical acts within the reach of female as much as male religious — and utterances inspired by or sent from heaven.Footnote 162
The stories of Cædmon and of Ælfflæd's visits with Cuthbert suggest that both she and Hild actively encouraged certain men to open themselves as channels of heavenly communication. Ælfflæd possibly played some part in Trimma's search for Edwin's remains; if so, she may have urged him to seek the spiritual direction that he received from the apparition.Footnote 163 Aside perhaps from her letter, the textual sources related to Whitby do not indicate that either abbess incited women to analogous acts; yet it can be wondered whether the author of the Liber, whatever that person's gender, was perceived at Whitby as especially receptive to heavenly mediation. The author was clearly learned, and possibly one recognized talent was an ability to write a Latin accessible to religious of disparate educational levels. But in addition, scattered passages may imply that the writing was understood as divinely guided. The Liber was composed “with the Lord helping,” “God aiding,” and “God giving,” we are told.Footnote 164 Such comments hint less at a hope for spiritual help than a conviction it was received. The same perception could underlie the author's apparent confidence that his or her departures from some sources allowed their stories’ spiritual “truth” or “sense” to be more fully revealed.Footnote 165
Liturgy, Communal Reading, and Memory at Whitby
Fourth and finally, we should give thought to the possible role of the Liber in corporate ritual at Whitby. While literate members of the community likely read and meditated on this text on their own, its reference to saints’ festivals conceivably implies an expectation that the Liber would be used liturgically. Just as the legend of Gregory meeting the Deirans and other hagiographical material about him were relayed through homilies and lections on his feast day (12 March) in later centuries, sections of the Liber may have been read during his festival mass at Whitby.Footnote 166 If Paulinus was also venerated at the monastery, as seems likely, passages from the Liber were perhaps read in a mass on his feast as well.Footnote 167
Further communal reading from the Liber could have taken place in the Night Offices (Matins) of the same festivals, times when those services seem to have been prolonged and more scripture was read. Where appropriate, hagiography was perhaps included among the lections.Footnote 168 One of Bede's homilies reminds his Wearmouth–Jarrow brethren that they customarily pass the night of a festival “. . . in joyful vigils, singing additional psalms and [hearing] a larger number of lections, in a church where more lights are burning and the walls are adorned more lavishly than usual . . .”Footnote 169 Since the Divine Office was non-sacramental, female and male religious were able to play comparable roles. Although Whitby had clergy, the abbess may have led offices, and women religious likely acted at times as readers.Footnote 170
Besides on saints’ feast days, Whitby religious possibly read from the Liber in offices and masses for the descendants of Ælle buried at the monastery who are named in the narrative: Edwin, Eanflæd, and Ælfflæd after her death in 714. As Catherine Karkov has observed, the remains of memorial sculpture excavated at Whitby suggest that commemorating the dead was a significant concern, though the remains are too fragmentary to identify firmly the deceased who were honored.Footnote 171 Remembrance of the dead, especially kin, was viewed as a preeminently female duty in early medieval Europe.Footnote 172 The commemorative prayers of nuns and masses that clergy performed with their participation were believed to protect and strengthen the bonds between the dead and their living relatives, the monasteries of which they were patrons, and heaven. Through such activities, female religious could provide spiritual aid to lay benefactors who endowed their communities in the hope of improving chances of salvation for their ancestors and themselves. That Whitby was led by abbesses, with other women among its residents, probably instilled a strong sense of responsibility for these tasks.
Some Conclusions
The Liber portrays the Deirans as willing travelers to Rome, where they amazed Gregory the Great by their “whiteness” and conversed with him in Latin. Their apparently voluntary journey from Northumbria, according to this narrative, prepared the way for Rome's evangelization of all the Angles. Gregory, guided by God, responded to the English names that the Deirans pronounced in their Latin answers to his questions by linking “Angles” with angels, “Aelli” with Alleluia, and “Deira” with an impetus to “flee God's wrath” and receive the faith. The mission that Gregory then organized, once he became pope, carried the mystical force of his prophetic words northward. While the first royal convert in England was Æthelbert of Kent, the climactic resting place of the miracle inherent in Gregory's speech was Northumbria and the person of its ruler when the Roman mission arrived — Ælle's son, Edwin. The discovery of Edwin's remains and their reburial at Ælfflæd's Whitby, near its church altars dedicated to Peter and Gregory, marked this monastery as the principal site of the spiritual connection that the words Gregory spoke to the Deirans had established between the papal city and Northumbria. By omitting any mention of Oswiu or Hild and thus eliding Whitby's relationship with Bernicia and Iona, the Liber author centered attention on the community's ties, through Edwin, to Gregory, the papacy, and Rome.
These and other aspects of the Liber were almost certainly meant to augment Whitby's prestige relative to other powerful English monasteries such as Lindisfarne, Bardney, and Ripon. Besides celebrating the connection with Gregory and Rome, the Liber emphasizes teaching, a theme that coincides with Whitby's prominence as an educational center. That the Liber was probably written during the last decade of Ælfflæd's tenure as abbess demonstrates the persistent significance of pedagogy in the culture of her monastery still in the early eighth century. The Liber occasionally reveals worry about the ease with which speech can be forgotten and memory of it distorted. Writing is necessary to preserve spoken truths, didactic or other. Yet the many idiosyncrasies of the text's prose — as far as can be judged from Colgrave's edition and St. Gallen 567 — may illumine characteristics of Latin usage, outside the liturgy, among residents of Whitby during this period. Perhaps because the author was one of the monastery instructors, his or her interest in the interface between Latin and vernacular, awareness of the need to adjust language in order to communicate with diverse audiences, and sensitivity to oral communication possibly encouraged crafting of the Liber in a style that deliberately deviated in various ways from standard written Latin norms.
A related concern of this article has been the evidence of interest at Whitby in the power of speech not only to teach or persuade, but also to take miraculous form. In drawing attention to the holiness of teaching, especially Gregory's, his ability to speak prophetically and hear God, Christ, and heavenly messengers, and heaven's openness to his prayers, the Liber joins the reports of Cædmon's singing, Hild's counsel and teaching, Cuthbert's prophecies to Ælfflæd, and her mediation at Nidd in foregrounding oral acts potentially within the reach of women as well as men. The Whitby author seems to have believed that writing the Liber itself responded in some measure to heavenly guidance. He or she likely hoped that reading it or hearing it read would inspire audiences, in turn, to seek out heaven in their thoughts and prayers. Passages may have been read communally during Gregory's festival mass and Night Office, the latter a service in which abbesses could have taken the lead. In view of women's special responsibility for remembering the deceased, especially kin, parts of the Liber were perhaps read in liturgies to commemorate the Deiran royalty buried in the Whitby church.
The present analysis of the Liber beati et laudabilis viri Gregorii has by no means been intended as exhaustive, but rather to indicate reasons why its language, structure, and certain themes of this remarkable text deserve renewed scholarly consideration. Future studies will, I hope, reveal further ways in which the Liber can not only shed light on the cultural environment of eighth-century Whitby, but also serve as an important case study for elucidating the strategies by which female-led religious communities more broadly in early medieval Europe supported and enriched the intellectual and spiritual life of their members, within the male clerical framework of the church of Rome.
APPENDIX
For many years, the only form in which the Liber beati et laudabilis viri Gregorii was available to researchers and students was the authoritative printed edition that Bertram Colgrave prepared from St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 567, pp. 75–110, the complete text's sole extant manuscript witness. The production of digital scans of this as of many other medieval codices, and their availability on the internet, has changed that picture. Now, anyone may examine the original, albeit at a distance. I present here differences between St. Gallen 567 and Colgrave's edition in the hope that this information may spur further interest in study of the Liber and its transmission, in medieval manuscripts and beyond. Page numbers on the left correspond to the pagination in St. Gallen 567. Colgrave's text with the pagination of his edition is in square brackets [ ] to the right. I have omitted places where Colgrave's notes show that he emended what he thought was the manuscript version of the text but the latter agrees with his edition. Abbreviated words are written in full for the sake of legibility.
p. 76: “. . . celeriter sollicite humilitatis . . .” [ed. sollicite om., p. 74]
p. 76: “. . . pelagus raperet . . .” [ed. pelago reperi, p. 74]
p. 77: “. . . placitum litus . . .” [ed. placidum litus, p. 76]
p. 77: “. . . inpulsa fluctuum . . .” [ed. inpulsu fluctuarem, p. 76]
p. 77: “. . . ad tutisimi portus . . .” [ed. ad tutissimi portus, p. 76]
p. 77: “. . . per studiose letionis . . .” [ed. per studiose lectionis, p. 76]
p. 77: “. . . que secuntur festinemus . . .” [ed. que sequuntur festinemus, p. 76]
p. 78: “. . . qui et signa . . .” [ed. qui, etsi signa, p. 78]
p. 78: “. . . sepius mirabili usque . . .” [ed. sepius mirabiliusque, p. 78]
p. 78: “. . . uiri maximi latentes nullis declarare miraculis . . .” [ed. viri maxime latentes, nullis declarantur miraculis, p. 78]
p. 79: “. . . morientes nascuntur . . .” [ed. morientes nascunter, p. 80]
p. 80: “. . . gentem angulorum . . .” [ed. gentem Anglorum, p. 82]
p. 80: “. . . dict apostolus . . .” [ed. dicit apostolus, p. 82]
p. 80: “. . . per sermonem sapientientiae . . .” [ed. per sermonem sapientiae, pp. 82, 84]
p. 81: “. . . qui hic gloriantur . . .” [ed. hic om., p. 84]
p. 82: “. . . custodibus cingebatur . . .” [ed. custodibus cingebantur, p. 86]
p. 82: “. . . se fromdissimis . . .” [ed. se frondissimis, p. 86]
p. 83: “. . . omni studia concitant . . .” [ed. omni studio concitant, p. 86]
p. 84: “. . . totius plebem regnum . . .” [ed. totius plebis regnum, p. 88]
p. 84: “. . . pontificatum romam uenisse . . .” [ed. pontificatum, Roman venisse, p. 90]
p. 84: “. . . albe mentis intuitu . . .” [ed. alme mentis intuitu, p. 90]
p. 85: “. . . dicunt quidam uero . . .” [ed. dicunt et quidam vero, p. 90]
p. 85: “. . . ut preces sue . . .” [ed. ut precis sue, p. 92]
p. 87: “. . . e alle uocatur . . .” [ed. e, all vocatur, p. 94]
p. 88: “. . . fuit praedistinatum uas . . .” [ed. fuit predestinatum vas, p. 96]
p. 90: “. . . omnes fuise scimus . . .” [ed. omnes fuisse scimus, p. 98]
p. 91: “. . . coenobium famasisimum aelflede filiae supradicte regina . . .” [ed. coenobium famosissimum Aelflede, filiae supradicte regine, p. 102]
p. 91: “. . . in Lindis sicuius . . .” [ed. in Lindissi (cuius . . .), p. 102]
p. 92: “. . . quide esse dimittere . . .” [ed. quid esset dimittere, p. 102]
p. 92: “. . . secum asportabit coenobium . . .” [ed. secum asportavit coenobium, p. 104]
p. 93: “. . . per nimirum baptizatatorum . . .” [ed. per nimirum baptizatorum, p. 104]
p. 93: “. . . ubi uoluisse facere . . .” [ed. ibi voluisse facere, p. 104]
p. 93: “. . . faciens ea adtulisset . . .” [ed. faciens, eas adtulisset, p. 106]
p. 96: “. . . ut tales esset . . .” [ed. ut fides esset, p. 110]
p. 99: “. . . cogitando cui sanctus . . .” [ed. cogitando, duxit. Cui sanctus, p. 114]
p. 99: “. . . in presentiarum adlocutus . . .” [ed. in praesentia eorum adlocutus, p. 114]
p. 99: “. . . sic male fecit . . .” [ed. sic molle fecit, p. 114]
p. 99: “. . . in eo letificauit deus . . .” [ed. in eo sanctificavit Deus, p. 116]
p. 100: “. . . predistinauit deus . . .” [ed. predestinavit Deus, p. 116]
p. 101: “. . . augustinus cuius . . .” [ed. Augustinus, e cuius, p. 118]
p. 102: “. . . multitudo de filio . . .” [ed. plenitudo de filio, p. 122]
p. 102: “. . . celos papa nostro . . .” [ed. celos pape nostro, p. 122]
p. 103: “. . . cum illa xxxv . . .” [ed. cum illa xxxii, p. 122]
p. 103: “. . . diuinae prouidentiae consilium . . .” [ed. consilium om., p. 122]
p. 103: “. . . die trigisimo . . .” [ed. die trigesimo, p. 124]
p. 107: “. . . angelorum esse nihil hominus . . .” [ed. angelorum esse nihilominus, p. 132]
p. 107: “. . . ræstaurauit perditum ostendit suum . . .” [ed. restauravit perditum. Ostendit suam, p. 132]
p. 109: “. . . iohanni episcopi . . .” [ed. Iohanni episcopo, p. 134]
p. 109: “. . . sequendum et quid . . .” [ed. sequendum est quid, p. 136]
p. 110: “. . . domini sui beatissima . . .” [ed. Domini sua beatissimi, p. 138]
p. 110: “. . . semper regnaturus . . .” [ed. semper est regnaturus, p. 138]
