Introduction
Britain was a problem in pre-conquest England. While the island remained a multilingual and multicultural zone, including speakers of Brittonic and Goidelic languages and Norse, as well as Old English, late pre-conquest English kings were frequently presented as rex Britanniae (‘king of Britain’). For much of the tenth and early eleventh centuries, the king of the English could be regarded as the most powerful person on the island of Britain. Yet texts adopted a variety of strategies for presenting this domination and the peoples under the king’s nominal control. In naming a king as rex Britanniae, texts such as charters often leave open the question of the ethnic groups present on the island. Some go further and explicitly present the English king as ruler of a multi-ethnic realm. Thus, in a charter of 955, Eadred is styled ‘rex Angulsæxna et Norþhimbra imperator, paganorum gubernator Brettonumque propugnator’ (‘King of the Anglo-Saxons, and emperor of the Northumbrians, governor of the pagans and champion of the Britons’).Footnote 1 The Welsh monk Asser, in a divergent but still imperial vein, presents Alfred the Great as protector of all the Christians of the island of Britain, allowing the Britons as well as the English to fall under his protection.Footnote 2 Old English poetry produced in the tenth and eleventh centuries followed a different path, and this article aims to examine this in detail, discussing each reference to Britain in its immediate context, before interpreting their significance within broader frameworks. These texts present Britain as being fundamentally English, rather than simply subject to the overlordship of the king of the English, with implications for our understanding of audience and shared models for remembering the past.
Many of the terms used here are both varied and contested in meaning, not least Britain and English. I use Britain in this article, unless otherwise qualified, in its now standard meaning as referring to the island of Britain. This is also a meaning of Britannia in early medieval Latin, but there are other meanings too. Britannia could refer to a particular Brittonic area, within Britain (as in Asser’s use of Britannia for Wales) or without, such as Brittany.Footnote 3 Britannia could also be used to refer to the area of the former Roman provinces of Britannia, thus excluding northern Scotland.Footnote 4 This range of meanings is a lens through which to analyse how Old English Bryten is used in the poems below.
In the tenth and eleventh centuries, before the Norman Conquest of England, English-speakers controlled much of the island of Britain.Footnote 5 Already in the eighth century, they had been presented by Bede as the divinely-ordained possessors of the island, with ecclesiastical supremacy over it.Footnote 6 Yet they were not Britons. We find such a distinction in Bede, who famously highlights the different languages spoken in Britain by different peoples, and sources agree in distinguishing between Brittonic-speakers and English-speakers as one of a number of potential ethnic demarcations in early medieval Britain. Early medieval Britons were Brittonic-speakers, who continued to refer to themselves as such throughout this period, and commonly viewed themselves as the rightful inhabitants of all Britain.Footnote 7 I do not seek to create here a distinction between English and Anglophone (or Brittonic and Brittonic-speaking) when referring to group identity, as this is not found in the texts. Indeed, both internal and external sources present strong links between language and identity. English illegitimacy is inscribed in language in Historia Brittonum (Gwynedd, 829/30) and the tenth-century Welsh poem Armes Prydein Vawr (‘The Great Prophecy of Britain’), where the English language itself is deployed to describe English treachery and their flight after their prophesied defeat, respectively.Footnote 8 In the Life of St Beuno, composed at Clynnog Fawr in North Wales, hearing an Englishman’s language is enough to urge the saint and his disciples to move from one area to another.Footnote 9 Similarly, scholars have highlighted the importance of language to identity from an English perspective, both in early and later sources.Footnote 10 English-speakers on the island of Britain appear to have had, from at least the eighth century, some sense of collective identity. This was not, of course, to the exclusion of other identities, but is nevertheless plentifully evidenced.Footnote 11 A common vernacular endonym for expressing this identity was englisc. Footnote 12 I describe here how in these poems such an English identity presented itself as being dominant throughout Britain, without the English appropriating the name of Britons for themselves. This article is not in itself a comprehensive reassessment of early English identities, but rather an attempt to bring poetic evidence to the table in a debate often dominated by less literary sources.
To turn to the texts in question, the Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus shows that Bryten ‘Britain’ occurs around twelve times in Old English poetry, namely The Battle of Brunanburh (71b), The Death of Edgar (14a), Guthlac A (175a), Guthlac B (883b), The Seasons for Fasting (56b (ambiguous)), Aldhelm (5a), The Metres of Boethius: Metre 20 (99a (ambiguous)), as well as five times in the Old English poetic Menologium (14b, 40a, 98b, 104b, 155b).Footnote 13 With the exceptions of Guthlac A and Guthlac B, these instances are all found in what has been termed late southern verse, indicating a particular interest in the topic of Britain in tenth- and early eleventh-century English poetry.Footnote 14 The Menologium stands out and merits particular attention for its emphatic use of the term Bryten. Of all Old English poems, The Menologium is the only one which deploys this term more than once, and indeed provides almost half of its instances in the entire verse corpus. We will thus turn our attention to this poem first.
Bryten and The Menologium
Also known as the Old English Metrical Calendar, The Menologium moves through the entire year from Christmas to Christmas, describing important liturgical events and mixing these with the changing of the seasons.Footnote 15 It is a poem which shows how the specific can be natural and universal.Footnote 16 As such, it bring together events from Christian history (like the death of Gregory the Great, lines 37b–40a) and the perennial changing of the seasons (including the coming of ice-covered March, lines 29b–37a), with the language it uses highlighting an essential equation between these types of events.Footnote 17 This is one of the many artful ways in which medieval Christian writers highlighted how events of Christian history were close and relevant to their audiences, and made new each year in the liturgy.
The Menologium survives in one manuscript, London, British Library MS Cotton Tiberius B. i, produced in Abingdon in the mid-eleventh century.Footnote 18 Copied on folios 112r–114v, The Menologium is placed between a copy of the Old English Orosius and, with the short poem Maxims II intervening, the C-text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Karasawa argues that in this manuscript The Menologium marks a movement from the older, largely pre-Christian history of Orosius to the more recent (and more domestic) events of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.Footnote 19 A related prose text, known as the prose Menologium, is extant in two eleventh-century manuscripts.Footnote 20 Neither the prose nor the verse appears to derive from the other, but Karasawa convincingly shows that both belong to a closely related tradition, and are far closer to each other than they are to the various early medieval Latin and Irish analogues with which The Menologium has traditionally been compared.Footnote 21 The prose is a much sparer text, containing similar festivals to the poetic Menologium but presenting them in a pared-down list without the combination of natural imagery or the concern with Bryten found in the verse. As such, the focus here will be entirely on the metrical Menologium. Like the prose, the poetic Menologium is a late southern text, composed after the Metrical Psalms (likely dating from the mid-to-late tenth century) on which it draws, but before Cnut’s invasion of 1016.Footnote 22
The poem’s first instance of Bryten occurs in line 14b. After opening with a mention of Christ’s birth in mid-winter, the text moves to state that he was called Hælend on the eighth day (3b–4a), and notes that side herigeas, folc unmæte ‘hosts far and wide, innumerable people’ (5b–6a) hold that to be the start of the year, because this is when the calend of the first month comes to us. A great people (folc mycel) called this month January long ago (gerum).Footnote 23 The focus here is thoroughly international, with lines 9b–10a harking back to the Roman past, and associating the Latin name Ianuarius (10a) with this in particular. Us (8b) is as yet unnarrowed and could easily be equated with the side herigeas ‘hosts far and wide’ and folc unmæte ‘innumerable people’ of lines 5 and 6.
All this changes in the subsequent passage:
Lines 11–14a remain ostensibly broad, commemorating Christ’s baptism on the feast of Epiphany, and to us could refer to all Christendom or all humanity.Footnote 25 Yet lines 14b–15a transform this and bring a far narrower us into view, one which remains the concern throughout. The focus is now on us in Britain, equated with in foldan her ‘in the land here’, but by no means does this extend to all inhabitants of the island of Britain. Importantly, the blessed ones in Britain, these warriors brave in battle, speak English. These people call this festival by the English term twelfta dæg ‘twelfth day’, and hatað is used to convey this action, the very same verb found in line 10b when referring to the Romans naming the first month of the year Ianuarius. Yet, significantly, line 10b uses the past-tense heton, as opposed to the present indicative hatað here. This is perhaps so simple as an association of English with the present and Latin with the past, but it does emphasize the vitality of the English term. Twelfta dæg is still being named as such, whereas the Latin term is fixed by ancient tradition.
The next instance of Bryten occurs shortly after the coming of March:
As a church father, Gregory the Great’s death was widely celebrated and this exemplifies the poem’s concern with universal saints, rather than those culted only in England or regionally. Yet it is interesting that Gregory is described specifically as breme in Brytene ‘famous in Britain’ (40a). Gregory’s most famous actions relating to Britain were to establish the Augustinian mission of 597, perceived as the major event in the conversion of the English, and highlighted in this poem (again in a Bryten context) at line 98b. This is a specifically English event, being of less importance for the already Christian Britons, but here it is associated with the island of Britain, rather than England alone, which is never mentioned. English history is thus subtly mapped on to all of Britain.
The poem progresses through April, Easter and May, with an explicitly universal focus on Christendom and people far and wide (79b, 92a–3a), although we and us continue to be used (60b, 63a, 68b, 72b)Footnote 26 and the climate described is domestic. It is only at line 98b that we find the next reference to Britain, although it is quickly followed by another (104b):
Again, these two examples associate Britain (once more presented as being here) with specifically English ecclesiastical history. Augustine found obedient noblemen in Britain. The details of these noblemen, that they were English specifically rather than any of the other, already Christian, peoples of Britain, are omitted. Although the gospel had already been brought to Britain, it is emphasized here that the teaching brought by Augustine is better than that ever brought before, suggesting the superiority of the Christianity he brought to that already existing.Footnote 27 There is also no more famous bishop than Augustine, first archbishop of Canterbury, who came to Britain, emphasizing the greater claim to authority of this bishop (and implicitly his successors) over any other on the island. It is important in this regard that both instances of Bryten are connected with Canterbury, this being especially clear in 104b, where Augustine’s body is said to rest nu ‘now’, in Britain. Canterbury’s authority is thus associated with the entirety of Britain.
Lines 106b–153a repeat the mixture of universal liturgical festivals and a Christianity-wide focus with regional weather descriptions, before the text provides its final example of Bryten on its own:
This instance is less clearly loaded than the previous four. Britain is emphasized again as being here, but beyond this little is done to link to the English or English dominion in particular, and an apparently broad Christian focus is subsequently maintained.
Yet this changes with the arrival of October:
The vitality and importance of the English term for the month is again emphasized. The present indicative cigð ‘calls’ highlights how Winterfylleð is a continually used term, and the breadth of its usage is highlighted by the adverb wide ‘widely’ and by the apposition of Engle and Seaxe ‘Angles and Saxons’ with weras mid wifum ‘men along with women’, indicating that this term is used throughout English society. Here the name Bryten is not deployed, but the island nevertheless remains present in the compound igbuende. This is a present participle meaning ‘island-dwelling’ which can also be taken substantively as ‘island-dwellers’. Karasawa interprets this adjectivally and translates ‘the island-dwelling Angles and Saxons’.Footnote 29 Jones translates as ‘dwellers on this island, Angles and Saxons’.Footnote 30 If igbuende is taken adjectivally, it links the Angles and Saxons strongly to the entire island. If taken substantively, as its use in the a-line with Engle and Seaxe in the b-line might suggest, the effect is even more powerful. The artful slippage of apposition allows for the equation of quite distinct items: those dwelling on the island, and the Angles and Saxons. Again, a claim is made on the island of Britain on the part of Angles and Saxons who speak English. Angles and Saxons in this context would appear to refer to the linguistic group of all the English in Britain, rather than the Mercians and West-Saxons only. An island-focused identity was of fundamental importance to the Britons and, in claiming this, the poem highlights the transfer of dominion over the island from the Britons to the English.Footnote 31
The final reference to Bryten, in the ambiguous compound Brytenricu, does not occur until the very end of the poem, after the entire year has been covered and Christmas again mentioned:
The term Brytenricu is grammatically accusative plural.Footnote 32 The Dictionary of Old English notes it as occurring only here and in Azarias (107b), where brytenrices weard ‘the guardian of brytenrice’ refers to God. It provides the following cautious definition:
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1. spacious kingdom; ‘destructive power’ has also been proposed, if bryten is related to brȳtan ‘to destroy’
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2. ? spacious kingdom ? kingdom of Britain
The first definition applies to its use in Azarias, the second to its use in The Menologium. Footnote 33 Karasawa highlights the variant Breotenrice which occurs in Durham 1b and the Old English Bede (ch. 5), not included in the DOE entry. This is perhaps because it was viewed as a proper noun, and Karasawa indeed argues that it means ‘the kingdom of Britain’ in both instances.Footnote 34 Yet the usage of the term in Azarias suggests that it can be detached from Britain specifically, and most probably means ‘spacious kingdom’ there.Footnote 35 Such a meaning is possible for the usage in Durham 1b (Is ðis burch breome geond Breotenrice ‘This town is famous throughout a spacious kingdom’) and indeed for The Menologium. Thomas O’Donnell translates ‘Breotenrice’ as ‘kingdom of Britain’ in his discussion of Durham, a poem which he argues dates to between 1050 and 1083.Footnote 36 He compares the Historia de sancto Cuthberto, a worked produced at Durham in the tenth or eleventh century, with the relevant section deriving from the eleventh century.Footnote 37 In this text, Cuthbert appears to Alfred in a vision, stating ‘tibi et filiis tuis data est tota Albion’ (‘all Britain has been given to you and your sons’), and describing him as ‘rex totius Brittanniae’.Footnote 38 That a text produced in a similar milieu to Durham has such a focus strengthens the conclusion that Breotenrice does indeed mean ‘kingdom of Britain’ in that poem. O’Donnell cites an extraordinary use of ‘Breotanrices’ in a varied eleventh-century document from Bury St Edmunds:
Ures drihtnes hælendes Cristes freo náma á on ecnyssa sy gewurþod þe ængla wuldorheap him sylfum to wyrðscipe gegearawode . ⁊ eac manna wynsumlic wlita . æfter his agenan anlicnessan gehywlæhte . syllende heom genihtsumlice geofa heofonas ⁊ eorþan . swa he nu dagum Breotanrices fægran islandes . Eadwearde cyncge sealde ⁊ geuþe . ealswa he æror geara his magum dyde . ðæra wæs sum æþel ⁊ wurðful Sc̄te Eadmund gehaten . ⁊ se mid Criste sylfum nu eardað on heofonum.
May the noble name of our Lord the Saviour Christ be honoured for ever to all eternity. He formed the glorious company of angels for his own honour, and likewise fashioned the winsome countenance of men after his own image, bestowing abundantly upon them the gifts of heaven and earth. In these days he has given and granted to King Edward the fair island of Britain, as he did of yore to his kinsmen, one of whom was by name the noble and honourable St Edmund, who now dwells in heaven with Christ himself.Footnote 39
Here, the island of Britain does appear to be presented as one kingdom, under the control of King Edward and previously that of his kin. Kathryn Lowe suggests that this text is a translation of a Latin original and it is possible that Breotanrices here translates regni Britannie. Footnote 40 While Brytenrice is rare in Old English, references to pre-conquest English kings being rulers of regnum Britannie are found in a number of Latin charters associated with the tenth century (S434 (Æthelstan), S435 (Æthelstan), S436 (Æthelstan), S777 (Edgar), S1795 (Edgar)).
O’Donnell proceeds to argue that ‘[w]hatever the history of the term in eighth- and ninth-century contexts, by the eleventh century, Breotenric [sic] had come to be associated with the multiethnic realm governed by Alfred’s descendants.’Footnote 41 This is possible, although the term’s currency in Old English is uncertain and its only unambiguous use in this sense is in the Bury St Edmunds document, where the kingdom is associated with a particular kin-group. O’Donnell translates Brytenricu in The Menologium as singular, but the plurality of its form is significant and different, and is discussed further below. An earlier instance of Breotenrice is found in the Old English Bede, translated in the late ninth or early tenth century.Footnote 42 It occurs in Book 1, Chapter 5: Basianus his sunu feng to Breotenrice ‘His son Basianus succeeded to Breotenrice’.Footnote 43 This translates Bede’s Bassanius Antonini cognomine adsumto regno potitus est ‘Bassanius, having acquired the additional name Antoninus, gained the kingdom’.Footnote 44 In its context of Bede’s description of early British history, it seems most likely that Breotenrice does refer to the kingdom or realm of Britain here, although it is noteworthy that this refers to the Roman past rather than the English present.
It appears, primarily through the parallel with Latin charters, that Brytenrice could be used in the tenth century to refer to a ‘kingdom of Britain’ under the control of an English king. What, then, is to be made of the plural Brytenricu in The Menologium? Karasawa translates it as ‘the spacious kingdoms of Britain’, drawing on both potential meanings of bryten here. However, Karasawa then moves from Britain to England in discussing the term: ‘It is used in the plural, perhaps because of the awareness that kingdoms once existed in England, which later came to be ruled by a single (West Saxon) king’.Footnote 45 I agree with Karasawa that the phrase evokes Britain in its context, but would take issue with the slippage from Britain to England. The poem never mentions England and the very compound used here is a claim to Britain, not England.Footnote 46 The island of Britain of course still contained multiple kingdoms. Yet the poem’s subtle equation of Britain with the English encourages such conflation of England and Britain. Karasawa’s second suggestion that the plural form could simply be formulaic appears unlikely as Brytenrice only occurs in the singular elsewhere in the corpus.Footnote 47 Brytenricu should be taken as plural, referring either to ‘spacious kingdoms’ or, more probably, ‘kingdoms of Britain’. There is an intriguing parallel to this in S629, a charter of Eadwig. Here Eadwig, in addition to being styled rex totius Britannie (‘king of all Britain’) is described as ‘rex Anglorum et totius Britannie prouinciarum’ (‘king of the English and of the provinces of all Britain’). The exact referent of prouinciae is ambiguous: the term could refer to a kingdom or an administrative division within a kingdom, and could also recall the Roman provinces of Britain.Footnote 48 Nevertheless, this presentation of Eadwig as ruling over a plurality of units parallels The Menologium’s plural use of ‘the kingdoms of Britain’. Thus the plural –ricu, rather than being problematic, might in fact be easier to justify than the singular. English kings from Alfred onwards claimed overlordship over kings in Wales and other parts of Britain, and this appears to be the context here: there are multiple kingdoms of Britain, but the Saxon king holds sway over them, or at least some of them.Footnote 49 Yet this stands in an intriguing contrast with the rest of the poem, which readily elides all other kingdoms and peoples in Britain. The poem states that now one knows which festivals should be held as far as the command of the king of the Saxons extends at this very time around Britain.
The poem’s use of Sexna ‘of the Saxons’ is unusual. Nowhere else in Old English is it deployed on its own to refer to the English in general in late pre-conquest England. The standard Latin use was rex Anglorum (et Saxonum) or rex Angul/Angol/Anglo Saxonum for tenth-century English kings. If Saxonum was used in other contexts it would be accompanied by a specifying adjective like occidentalium. However, a charter of Eadwig (S654) describes him as rex Saxonum, providing a parallel to the usage in The Menologium. This less usual way of referring to the English may also have been encouraged in its context in the poem by the alliteration in /s/. Also difficult is the use of swa, translated by Karasawa as ‘as far as’.Footnote 50 In his discussion of swa (swa) in clauses of place, Bruce Mitchell offers a number of examples similar to that in The Menologium, suggesting meanings of ‘wherever’, ‘as far as’, or ‘as widely as’ for swa. Footnote 51 This is seen clearly in the following instances:
This phrase swa wæter bebugeð also occurs in Andreas 333, with the same meaning, and it is noteworthy that the very same verb bebugeð is used in this context in The Menologium. Footnote 52 The evidence for swa as a causal conjunction is less clear, and does not provide such obvious parallels as those above.Footnote 53 As such, it is much more likely that the phrase in The Menologium is a clause of place. Karasawa’s translation of ‘as far as’ is effective in highlighting how this phrase emphasizes the breadth of the area under control of the Saxon king, but that this area is not unlimited. The text is more ambitious and less declaratory here than elsewhere. There is a suggestion that the authority of the Saxon king extends widely around the kingdoms of Britain and that this is a beneficial authority, under which one celebrates festivals at their proper dates, in accordance with the reckoning of wise ancient scholars. Yet the use of swa indicates that this authority has limits and is not absolute. In its ambition and pride in the Saxon king, the text also subtly admits the boundaries of his power.
The Menologium repeatedly emphasizes the English domination of Britain. This emphasis is achieved in a number of ways. Those dwelling on the island of Britain are presented as English-speaking Angles and Saxons (11–15a, 181–6a), and English ecclesiastical history is foregrounded and presented as being of primary importance throughout Britain (95b–106a, 228b–31). This allows for the elision of non-English peoples in Britain, and any idea of a smaller territorial England itself, which is never mentioned. Bryten appears to refer to the island of Britain here, as the use of igbuende suggests. It certainly does not refer to a specific Brittonic area, as Latin Britannia could. The poem’s geography does not allow us to conclude whether its conception of the island of Britain included northern Scotland or not, but it is in any case a claim to a significantly larger unit than that settled by the English. The Menologium is highly successful in presenting such English domination of Britain as normal, natural, and unmarked. It is a thoroughly believable rhetoric, and one in which other late Old English poems partook, as I discuss below.
British Ambiguities: Guthlac, The Metres of Boethius, The Seasons for Fasting
As noted, the seven instances of Bryten in Old English poetry outside The Menologium are as follows: Aldhelm (5a), The Battle of Brunanburh (71b), The Death of Edgar (14a), Guthlac A (175a), Guthlac B (883b), The Metres of Boethius: Metre 20 (99a), The Seasons for Fasting (56b). With the exception of the Guthlac poems, these can all be characterized as products of southern England from the tenth or eleventh centuries.
The contexts of the composition of Guthlac A and Guthlac B appear rather different from that of The Menologium, and so is their use of the term Bryten, although they have interesting parallels with one another.Footnote 54
Both poems highlight Guthlac’s fame throughout Britain, rather than a particular region thereof, although Guthlac B does also highlight his blessedness among the English, forming an implicit connection between on Engle ‘among the English’ (880a) and geond Bryten innan ‘throughout Britain’ (883b). The poems emphasize the breadth and importance of Guthlac’s renown, but the references to Britain could also be linked to Guthlac’s engagement with the Britons. As Lindy Brady has discussed, Felix’s Life of Guthlac, the major source for Guthlac B and a potential, but uncertain, source for Guthlac A, mentions Guthlac’s interactions with the Britons on multiple occasions.Footnote 55 While the poems do not explicitly name the Britons as the prose does, Guthlac’s known connections with the Britons, as well as the English, may well be a motivating factor for emphasizing the importance of his cult throughout Britain. Felix’s Life also refers to a fen in meditullaneis Brittanniae (‘in the midland district of Britain’), translated in the Old English prose Life of Guthlac as on Bretonelande, highlighting how the Latin text could also have had an influence here.Footnote 56
One of the most ambiguous instances of Bryten in Old English poetry occurs in the Metres of Boethius (Metre 20), where it may well not refer to Britain at all. The Old English Boethius was produced at some point between 890 and 950, and its prose translations of the Latin metres were later turned into Old English poetry.Footnote 57 Metre 20 describes God’s creation in great detail and variety, focusing on the earth before moving to describe humanity. The term Bretene occurs in line 99a, amid a discussion of the four elements:
In the ASPR text given here, Bretene is capitalized and taken as the proper noun. In Godden and Irvine’s edition there is no such capitalization, and they translate bretene as ‘spacious regions’, the same interpretation as suggested in the DOE. Footnote 58 This latter interpretation certainly seems possible, as indicated by examples like brytenrices weard in Azarias (107b) and brytengrundas and brytenwongas in Christ A (357a, 380b).Footnote 59 The context here is very general, referring to the whole earth and its elements, and thus ‘spacious regions’ appears to fit better than the specificity of ‘Britain’. It is also closer in sense to the equivalent section in the Old English prose translation which the poet versified.Footnote 60 If we were nevertheless to follow the less likely interpretation, and suppose that bretene does indeed mean ‘Britain’ here, then it lacks the obvious political charge of The Menologium, simply describing the greenery growing in Britain.
The Seasons for Fasting is a poem in some ways more similar to The Menologium, with which it is often brought into comparison, and, like The Menologium, Seasons has a powerful political focus. Now surviving only in Laurence Nowell’s transcript of 1562, and missing its ending, Seasons was once found in the damaged manuscript British Library, Cotton Otho B. xi, with the relevant section of this codex having been produced at Winchester in the first half of the eleventh century.Footnote 61 It is similar in date to The Menologium (c. early eleventh century), being another example of late southern verse, and the similarities do not end there.Footnote 62 Mary Richards states that Seasons for Fasting and The Menologium ‘share a focus on certain holy days of the liturgical calendar and a nationalistic emphasis on the observances and figures, especially Gregory the Great, important to England.’Footnote 63 Seasons also contains references to Britain or Brittonic peoples, but the way in which these are deployed suggests a rather different political focus to that found in The Menologium. Both references occur in the section of the poem concerning the Ember Dates controversy (lines 1–102). In England, the Ember Fasts, as Richards notes, ‘were celebrated on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday of designated weeks in late February or March, June, September, and December’.Footnote 64 The Ember Fasts were scheduled somewhat differently on the continent, and this became a significant issue following the Benedictine Revival, when continental usage appears to have started impacting on English usage.Footnote 65 In response, a number of documents were drawn up to prescribe the English dates, ‘swa swa Sanctus Gregorius Angelcynne sylf hit gedihte’.Footnote 66
The dates of the Ember Fasts were thus a source of considerable controversy in late pre-conquest England and are key to the British references in the poem.The first is as follows:Footnote 67
Line 56b has traditionally been interpreted as meaning ‘people(s) of Britain’, but requires further attention. Bryten appears to refer to locations only, rather than Britons (‘Wealas’ or ‘Bryttas’), as there are no clear examples of it referring to a people rather than a place.Footnote 69 The form ending in -a is found only here and in a manuscript of the Old English translation of Gregory’s Dialogues, where it is an error for beterena. Footnote 70 Bryten is a strong feminine ō-stem noun, and otherwise appears to occur in nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative singular forms, the last three all being Brytene. Footnote 71 There are three obvious possibilities to explain the form Brytena in Seasons for Fasting: it could be an error for Brytene, probably introduced by Nowell; it could be an otherwise unattested form of the genitive singular; it could be genitive plural. The first option is highly possible, given the large number of errors Nowell made elsewhere in his copy, particularly in inflexional endings, but cannot be proven.Footnote 72 The second is favoured by most scholars, without discussion.Footnote 73 Philologists have noted that while -a would be predicted in the genitive singular of ō-stem nouns, -e is the regular form (except for nouns with the suffix -ung/-ing).Footnote 74 Ō-stem nouns not ending in -ung/-ing with -a in the genitive singular are exceptionally rare.Footnote 75 Thus the use of a genuine genitive singular form Brytena here seems unlikely.
The final option ‘of the Britains’ may appear the oddest, but can be justified formally. This is the regular ending for the genitive plural in feminine ō-nouns. As noted above, early medieval writers knew of many Britains: Britannia could refer to Britain (including or excluding northern Scotland), to Brittany, or to other Brittonic regions.Footnote 76 The Old English Martyrology, possibly produced in Mercia in the ninth century, repeatedly refers to Britain as ðas Brytene/ðisse Brytene (‘this Britain’), perhaps indicating an awareness of others.Footnote 77 As regards the phrase Brytena leodum here, it is easier and more common to take the dative plural leodum as ‘to the people(s)’, rather than ‘by the people(s)’. Indeed, in context it appears that the former interpretation is encouraged. As noted, this text is concerned that continental influence on the Ember Dates be resisted, and that the correct English system be upheld. As such, it is particularly effective here to state that this date should be proclaimed to the Britons (especially the continential Bretons): perhaps these are the people of the Britains. This coheres with the arguments the poet makes thirty lines later that the instructions of the Bretons or the Franks should be ignored. Also noteworthy here is the focus on English (in the term Pentecostenes dæg) being widely spoken by priests, although this is not explicitly equated with a particular territory. Due to the inaccuracy of Nowell’s transcription, it is difficult to be certain about the interpretation of Brytena. If Brytena is retained, there could be a particular focus on correcting the insular and continental Britons here. If it is an error for Brytene, the term could refer to various peoples living on the island of Britain. If *Brytene leodum were translated as ‘by the people of Britain’ and taken to refer to the English specifically, paralleling the reference to English-speaking priests in lines 59b–60, then we could see an equivalence of those living in Britain with the English, as in The Menologium.
The second possible reference to Brittonic peoples also occurs in the section of the text concerned with the Ember Dates Controversy (1–102) at 88a:
Here, then, we have a focus on upholding the English dates against contemporary continental influence. As part of this, the poem emphasizes the validity and authority of English Christianity. Unlike The Menologium, we do not have a geographic expansion of English Christianity and cultural normalcy here. Indeed, in Seasons, England exists and is referred to (98a; cf. 44b), without any clear reference to Britain. Both poems focus on us, here in this wide land, but the imagined land is not necessarily identical between them. The apparent focus on Bretons in Seasons is different from The Menologium, where continental peoples do not feature. Also unlike The Menologium, although English-speaking priests are presented as covering a wide area, there is no specific mapping of English Christianity and cultural normlacy onto Britain. Nevertheless, the validity and importance of these are emphasized. Seasons shares with The Menologium a focus on legitimising English ecclesiastical history and practice, and in both cases (but more explicitly in Seasons) emphasizes the superiority of this to the religious traditions of Brittonic peoples, and in Seasons continental peoples more widely. Due to the unreliability of the transcription, the presentation of the English in Britain in The Seasons for Fasting is ultimately too ambiguous to decide whether it equates the English with the people in Britain or refers specifically to the Brittonic peoples, in Britain as well as the continent.
Bishops in Britain: Aldhelm and The Death of Edgar
Three of the five instances of Bryten in The Menologium have episcopal associations with Gregory, Augustine, and Canterbury, and it is revealing that such a connection between bishops and Britain is also found in Aldhelm and The Death of Edgar. Biscop and Bryten of course alliterate, but the connection between them appears to go further than this. Let us first take The Death of Edgar, a text surviving in manuscripts A, B and C of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the last of which also contains the only copy of The Menologium. This poem was most likely composed shortly after the death of the king in 975.Footnote 79 The section which mentions Britain describes the death of Cyneweard, bishop of Wells:
This linking of bishops and Britain in an English context is found from Bede onwards, and we have already seen it in The Menologium. Footnote 80 George Molyneaux notes further the claims of the Archbishop of Canterbury to authority over all Britain in a range of seventh and eighth-century sources.Footnote 81 Although it became less prominent in the texts, this remained a concern in later periods, as indicated by S546, a grant by King Eadred to Canterbury Cathedral. This is of doubtful authenticity, but survives in a mid-tenth-century copy among other witnesses, and thus can in any case be examined with a mid-tenth-century context in mind.Footnote 82 Here, Odo, archbishop of Canterbury, is described as ‘regni celestis super arua Brittannica claues preportans’ (‘carrying the keys of the heavenly kingdom above the British earth’) and as pater tocius Britannie (‘father of all Britain’). Thus the connection between bishops and Britain here, in Aldhelm, and most prominently in The Menologium, is part of this wider pattern of emphasizing Canterbury’s claim to all Britain. Edgar is explicitly described as Engla cyning (‘king of the English’ 2a), with the poet playfully describing God as Brego Engla (‘lord of angels’ 36a).Footnote 83 Notably, this reference to Brego Engla is quickly followed by ‘geaf eft blisse gehwæm / egbuendra’ (‘he [God] gave bliss to each of the island-dwellers’). As in The Menologium, but less obviously here, there is an equation of the English and the island-dwellers, as well as a connection between Britain and an English bishop.Footnote 84
Such an equation is more prominent in Aldhelm, a short bilingual poem in English and Latin (with some Greek vocabulary), surviving uniquely in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 326. This manuscript was produced at Canterbury in the late tenth or early eleventh century.Footnote 85 The circumstances of this poem’s preservation as an insert between the contents list and beginning of Aldhelm’s Prosa de uirginitate suggest it may have been composed by its scribe.Footnote 86 Bretene occurs in line 5a:
Here the word Britain is associated with Aldhelm’s episcopal status as bishop of Sherborne. As noted above, the association between Britain and bishops may be due to Canterbury’s claim to primacy over Britain. Yet even more striking than this here is the use of apposition in lines 4–5. The slip of variation allows Britain to be subtly equated with the homeland of the Anglo-Saxons, in a manner reminiscent of The Menologium equating the Angles and Saxons with those dwelling on the island (185). The poet emphasizes the idea that Britain is the homeland of the Anglo-Saxons, and again there is no mention of other peoples.Footnote 87 As with The Menologium, Breten in Aldhelm and The Death of Edgar appears to map on to the sense of Britannia as the island of Britain, including or excluding northern Scotland.
Britain and The Battle of Brunanburh
The remaining example of Bryten in the poetry, and that which perhaps resonates most strongly with The Menologium, is in The Battle of Brunanburh. Brunanburh occurs in manuscripts A, B, C (also containing The Menologium) and D of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This poem celebrates the battle of 937 where Æthelstan and Edmund of Wessex overcame a combined force of multiple peoples. On the text’s dating, there are two main schools of scholarship: it can be seen as a praise-poem composed shortly after the battle, or a somewhat later poem composed with its Chronicle context in mind.Footnote 88 Sarah Foot, whose scholarship is fundamental to understanding this work, revises an earlier position in noting that ‘this is a poem not only about the English people but about the realm of Britain.’Footnote 89 I certainly agree that Brunanburh concerns Britain, but my reading of the text here, and of its engagement with Britain, follows a somewhat different path.
Here Britain occurs at the very end of the text:
Britain occurs thrice here, in on þis eiglande, explicitly as Brytene, and finally implicitly as eard. No idea of England is mentioned in the poem, but there is a clear connection between Engle and Seaxe Footnote 90 (‘Angles and Saxons’), who are praised as wlance wigsmiþas (‘proud war-smiths’) and Britain. Britain here cannot be separated from the English defeat of the Britons. In the first instance, it is linked to the slaughter at Brunanburh, presented as an heroic deed unparalleled in the history of the island since the principal act of obtaining dominion (also by the Angles and Saxons) centuries before.Footnote 91 Britain features only in the English claiming of it: the preterite phrases Brytene sohtan,Footnote 92 Wealas ofercoman, and eard begeatan are all in apposition with one another, this highlighting in particular that the eard (‘land’) the English acquired was Britain.Footnote 93 This celebrates the confirmation of English dominance at Brunanburh, but also back-dates it, suggesting that English possession of Britain goes all the way back to their first victories over the Britons.
With this reading of Bryten in mind, let us turn our attention to the rest of the poem. Æthelstan and Edmund do not fight Britons in this text, despite the likely presence of Britons at the historical battle.Footnote 94 The poem presents Æthelstan and Edmund as fighting against Scots, that is, Gaelic-speakers under Constantine of Alba (11a, 19b, 32a) and Norsemen from Dublin under Olaf Guthrithson (18b, 33b, 53a). These other peoples are presented as invading Britain and fleeing from it. The text is not tied to our understanding of the historical reality and there is no reference here to these other peoples submitting to Æthelstan and becoming part of his empire: rather they flee from his nation. This is obvious in the case of the Norsemen who explicitly flee back to Dublin over the sea, leaving the island (53–6). The case of Constantine of Alba is a little more complex: he flees on his cyþþe norð (38). Although this may seem like an example of another king in Britain remaining in Britain, as noted above, a number of texts from early medieval Britain (including some composed in the context of Brunanburh) view Scotland north of the Firth of Forth as separate from Britain.Footnote 95 This may well ultimately connect with Roman conceptions of Britain, with the Antonine Wall marking the northernmost frontier.Footnote 96 Utilizing this concept of Britain allows the imagined history of The Battle of Brunanburh to fall into place. The English have held Britain from an early stage, when dominion was transferred to them from the Britons through military conquest. Invaders arrive from outside Britain (over sea or from the north). The English defeat these invaders at Brunanburh and they flee away from Britain, with no transfer of dominion at this stage. This is why Æthelstan and Edmund are explicitly presented as defending their land: land ealgodon. The contemporary Britons naturally do not occur in this text as, in the poem’s view, they already lost Britain centuries before.Footnote 97
The Battle of Brunanburh notably differs from the more imperial focus of the Latin Carta dirige gressus and Æthelweard’s late tenth-century Latin Chronicle, which present Constantine as paying homage to Æthelstan.Footnote 98 Whereas certain scholars have emphasized imperium in Brunanburh, this appears rather more relevant to these Latin texts than to the vernacular.Footnote 99 Nobody pays homage to Æthelstan in Brunanburh. The Scottish and Norse attackers cease to exist in Britain by the end of the poem, and the Britons have long since ceased to exist. There is no place for other peoples in Brunanburh’s conception of Britain. The differences between Brunanburh and The Menologium and their spare prose equivalents also speak to expectations of what late Old English poets did when treating the issue of Britain in their verse.Footnote 100 There appears to be a common idea of history presented here, of longstanding and hegemonic English domination of Britain, with the elision of other ethnic groups having already taken place. This is a literary construct, and need not equate whatsoever with what we believe to be historical truth or the evidence of other types of texts, such as charters. In the case of Brunanburh, the modern historical discourse surrounding the battle is so strong that it has been difficult to read the poem on its own terms in the context of other late southern poems, which can help us understand the imagined history and community it presents.
Whereas the earlier use of Bryten in Guthlac A and Guthlac B may be linked to that saint’s specific connection with the Britons, some clear patterns emerge from the tenth- and eleventh-century poems. The Menologium, Aldhelm and The Death of Edgar all connect Britain with bishops. Such a British focus in episcopal contexts appears to be connected (especially in the case of The Menologium) with Canterbury’s claim to Britain as its archiepiscopal province, which, as scholars such as Molyneaux have highlighted, was not always clearly separate from the imperial ambitions of English kings.Footnote 101 Britain is used in conjunction with bishops as that island, the poets indicate, is the territory of the most important English bishop. The Seasons for Fasting alone does not appear to use the term Bryten to refer to the island (with or without northern Scotland), and appears focused at least as much on England as on any larger territory. Seasons is also the only Old English poem which may use Bryten to refer to specifically Brittonic areas, if plural Brytena is a genuine form. If this interpretation is correct, Seasons refers to plural Britains in order to emphasize the need for the Britons in particular to change their ways. Such use of Bryten to refer to Brittonic territories is avoided in the other poems, perhaps because it would highlight the special nominal connection between the Britons and the island. Yet Seasons does powerfully parallel The Menologium in its emphasis on the validity and rectitude of the traditions of English Christianity as opposed to those of other peoples. Like The Menologium, Aldhelm and Brunanburh do not simply indicate episcopal supremacy but rather English domination and normalcy throughout Britain. Britain is the homeland of the English (Aldhelm 4–5a), who are the island-dwellers (Menologium 185), and they have been dominant, the Brunanburh poet affirms, since they first made for Britain and overcame the Britons, with the victory at Brunanburh providing spectacular confirmation of this. Late Old English poetry thus articulated a confidence in the validity and supremacy of the English presence in Britain. The Menologium is unusual in its five-times repeated reference to Britain, and perhaps locating its composition at Canterbury, a place which the poet is keen to emphasize and which had a particular episcopal concern with Britain, might explain this. Yet The Menologium also stands out in the element of doubt and plurality introduced in the final lines of the text. Although the ways of the English are valid and widespread, the poem, unlike any other here discussed, appears to admit of multiple kingdoms in Britain and that the rule of the king of the Saxons, though vast, does not necessarily cover all of them.
Conclusion: on English Britain
In a rightly celebrated article, George Molyneaux discusses an array of sources, showing how certain tenth-century English kings are presented as kings of Britain and explaining possible reasons for this.Footnote 102 As indicated above, a number of documents notably highlight the English king’s overlordship of a multi-ethnic island. This is even true of the poetic Death of Edward (1065), which, while it does not mention Britain explicitly, does present Edward as having ruled over multiple peoples, these being invoked to celebrate the breadth of his power.Footnote 103 The Old English poems discussed here, other than those of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, have received little attention from historians of early medieval England, and are not mentioned in Molyneaux’s article, nor in Rees Davies’ highly influential First English Empire. Yet it is worth considering how they contribute to and complicate presentations of Britain in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The poems stand out in presenting Britain as English, rather than simply subject to the overlordship of the king of the English. Why is this the case? The audience for these poems is unlikely to be identical with that of Asser’s Life of King Alfred, who may well have had one eye on a Welsh readership and who, as mentioned above, presents the king as protector of all Christians in Britain, including the Britons. Unlike with charters, nothing needs to be agreed in these poems and they do not have explicit parties and witnesses. They have the freedom to include and exclude whatever best suits their purpose.
But can we trace a pre-existing tradition upon which these poets may have been building? As discussed above, the framework of an English-dominated Britain is already provided by Bede, with the English as God’s chosen people in Britain. As well as providing a list of kings who ruled all or almost all of the peoples of Britain (called Bretwaldas in later vernacular texts), Bede and others also advocate English ecclesiastical supremacy, presenting the Archbishop of Canterbury as Archbishop of Britain.Footnote 104 Bede’s history remained one of the most well-known works in pre-conquest England and was translated into Old English in the late ninth or early tenth century.Footnote 105 Bede was also not alone in highlighting the overwhelming importance of a gens Anglorum in Britain: Alcuin’s letters emphasize further still the connection of the English with Britain in its entirety.Footnote 106 These sources generally do not go as far as some of the poems discussed here in presenting an English Britain occupied by the English alone, but might be seen as planting the seeds for such a model.
Outside poetry, we also find stronger evidence for this model from the late ninth-century onwards, when English hegemony over the island was often substantial.Footnote 107 Thus a will from the reign of Alfred the Great states ‘Ond sio ðis lond gewriten 7 unbefliten efter Eadredes dege in Aelfredes rehtmeodrencynn ða hwile þe fulwihte sio on Angelcynnes ealonde’ (‘And let this estate be ascribed and without dispute after Eadred’s day to Ælfred’s direct maternal kin, as long as there be baptism on the English people’s island.’).Footnote 108 Æthelweard’s late tenth-century adaptation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle claims that Britain is now called Anglia, following the name of the victors.Footnote 109 Ælfric is even more striking in depicting Diocletian’s persecution as coming to engla lande in his life of St Alban, before the adventus Saxonum. Footnote 110 These texts, which appear to equate Britain with the land of the English, are by no means representative of all pre-conquest English representations of Britain in Old English prose and Latin. As Molyneaux has shown, there are many references to a multi-ethnic realm under the overlordship of the English king, and the model presented in this article was one of a number of perhaps competing ways in which the English envisaged their relationship with Britain, which of course varies over time. Nevertheless, the references here highlight that the representation of Britain in Old English poetic tradition was not wholly isolated, and also formed a vein in late pre-conquest vernacular prose and Latin works. It is beyond the scope of this article to ascertain how prominent such an ideology was. Text-type appears to be significant and vernacular poetry was perhaps particularly well-placed to enable this model, more so than legal texts. However, the fact that this tradition of an English Britain appears in a variety of texts, in different contexts from at least the ninth century onwards, suggests it was a worldview more widespread than that of a few closely networked authors. An English king terming himself Rex Britanniae could therefore be presenting himself as overlord of a multi-ethnic dominion but might equally be projecting himself as an English king over an English land called Britain: the other terms associated with the king in a given text need to be closely examined to determine which is more likely.
A final comparison may further highlight the achievement of late Old English poetry in its construction of an unmarked English Britain. Perhaps the most bloodthirsty text surviving from tenth-century Britain is the Welsh Armes Prydein Vawr (‘Great Prophecy of Britain’).Footnote 111 This poem shocks modern readers with its brutal presentation of the Welsh and their allies massacring the English and exiling them from the island of Britain. Yet Armes Prydein never pretends that the Britons actually control all Britain or are the only people currently dwelling there. As such, the claims of a poem like The Menologium are in fact bolder, and more provocative. It takes a huge rhetorical effort to conceal this. Perhaps the emphatically multi-ethnic Armes Prydein was reacting against just such rhetoric.Footnote 112 If so, texts assuming (and creating) a monocultural English us as an audience, like some of these poems, may nevertheless have reached unanticipated readers.
The late Old English poetic presentation of Britain’s history can, in part, be summarized thus: Britain is English, being occupied entirely by the English, and has been so since the English first arrived and overcame the Britons. English too, indeed especially so, is the Church in Britain, ever since the arrival of the Augustinian mission to establish the head of Christianity in Britain at Canterbury. English settlement of the island was much less complete than such a framework allowed. This can create tension in the texts, as we see in the final Brytenricu of The Menologium. Nevertheless, the framework would have helped enable audiences to feel comfortable and legitimate where they lived. As such, this model can be productively compared with other examples of migrations with transfer of dominion, where literature has acted to legitimise.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to many scholars for their support with this article over the long period of its composition, including Rebecca Thomas, Richard Dance, Harriet Soper and the editors and peer-reviewers of EMEN, as well as the audience of the 21st Biennial Conference of the International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England, where I presented an earlier version of this work. None of these other scholars necessarily shares the views set out here and all errors remain my own.
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