Introduction
The Old English Boethius is the name scholars now give to the free rendering of Boethius’ sixth-century De consolatione philosophiae, composed in the Early West Saxon dialect around the turn of the tenth century.Footnote 1 While the De consolatione itself is a prosimetrical text, with alternating prosa and metra, the Old English Boethius is really two distinct but closely related works, one of which transforms the Latin source entirely into vernacular prose (the B-text), while the other reintroduces sections corresponding to the Latin metra in vernacular alliterative verse (the C-text). The B-text survives in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 180 (2079), dating from the late eleventh or early twelfth century, while the C-text is extant in a mid-tenth-century manuscript, London, British Library, Cotton Otho A.vi.Footnote 2 A now-lost fragment of a single leaf dating from the late ninth or early tenth century was transcribed by Napier, providing the earliest witness of this ambitious translation project. The long-standing association of the Boethius with King Alfred rests largely on claims made in two accompanying prefaces, one done in prose, the other in verse. It is with the first of these two prefaces that this article is primarily concerned.
The Prose Preface to the Old English Boethius stands apart from the corpus of Alfredian prefaces by virtue of its unusual deployment of the speaking voice. Whereas the prose prefaces to the Old English Dialogues and the Domboc feature Alfred speaking in the first-person past simple,Footnote 3 and the well-known Prose Preface to the Pastoral Care opens with the king addressing his reader in third-person present tense (Ælfred kyning hateð gretan Wærfeð biscep his; ‘King Alfred orders his bishop Wærferth to be greeted’) before the voice shifts into the first-person present (ic wene ðætte noht monige begiondan Humbre næren; ‘I expect that there were not many [capable of reading Latin] beyond the Humber either’),Footnote 4 the Boethius preface is narrated by an anonymous speaker who refers to the king throughout in the third person, first in the past tense and then the present:Footnote 5
Ælfred kuning wæs wealhstod ðisse bec and hie of boclædene on Englisc wende swa hio nu is gedon. Hwilum he sette word be worde, hwilum andgit of andgite, swa swa he hit þa sweotolost and andgitfullicast gereccan mihte for þam mistlicum and manigfealdum [woruldbisgum] þe hine oft ægðer ge on mode ge on lichoman bisgodan. Ða bisgu us sint swiþe earfoþrime þe on his dagum on þa ricu becoman þe he underfangen hæfde, and þeah ða [he] þas boc hæfde geleornode and of Lædene to Engliscum spelle gewende, [þa geworhte he] hi eft to leoðe swa swa heo nu gedon is;
and nu bit and for Godes naman he halsað ælcne þara þe þas boc rædan lyste þæt he for hine gebidde, and him ne wite gif he hit rihtlicor ongite þonne he mihte, forþam þe ælc mon sceal be his andgites mæðe and be his æmettan sprecan þæt he sprecð and don þæt þæt he deþ.Footnote 6
‘King Alfred was the translator of this book, and turned it from Latin into English, just as it is now done. Sometimes he set it down word for word, sometimes sense for sense, just as he could most clearly and most meaningfully explain it on account of the various and multiple worldly concerns which often troubled him both in mind and body. It is difficult for us to count those troubles which befell the kingdoms which he had received in his days, and yet when he had learnt this book and turned it from Latin into English prose, he then turned it again into verse, just as it is now done.
And now he prays and beseeches everyone who takes pleasure in reading this book, in God’s name, to pray for him, and not to blame him if they should understand it more correctly than he was able to, for every person must speak what he speaks and do what he does according to the power of his understanding and his leisure.’
In addition to this Prose Preface, the Boethius – like the Old English Pastoral Care – was furnished with a second preface done in verse, in which a speaking voice again refers to Alfred in the third person as the author of the work. However, while both the prose and verse prefaces to the Pastoral Care appear to have been composed close in time to the translation which they accompany, there are indications that the Boethius prefaces were added as afterthoughts, perhaps shortly after the composition of the prosimetrical version.Footnote 7 Moreover, although both prefaces were included in the twelfth-century manuscript of the all-prose B-text, MS Bodley 180,Footnote 8 references to the Boethius itself as leoð (‘song/poetry’) in both the Prose and Verse Prefaces indicate that these paratexts were originally designed to precede only the prosimetrical C-text.
While the Verse Preface has received some attention from modern scholars, largely on account of its inventive use of the ‘talking book’ trope,Footnote 9 the Prose Preface has been dismissed as ‘flat-footed, a meagre tissue of clichés’,Footnote 10 and ‘a thoroughly undistinguished, boring piece of prose’,Footnote 11 while the most recent editors of the Boethius have described it as ‘curiously difficult’.Footnote 12 Much of this criticism stems from the preface’s confusing structure, in which the speaking voice moves from: (1) initial reflections on the relatively distant time when Alfred first translated the Consolatione from Latin into Old English prose (the B-text); to (2) Alfred’s subsequent production of a revised version in verse (the prosimetrical C-text); and (3) the present day of the text’s reception, when Alfred asks for the reader’s prayers and indulgence. The retrospective tone of section (1), with its references to Alfred’s past achievements, seems at odds with that of section (3) in which the king appears to speak to the readers of the Boethius, as it were, from beyond the grave.
Although the Prose Preface is not written in the king’s voice and largely comprises recycled passages from earlier Alfredian texts, scholars have nevertheless consistently attributed all or part of its composition to Alfred himself. For example, while Kenneth Sisam accepted that the reference to Alfred’s difficulties ‘reads like the comment of a later writer’, he nevertheless argued that the Prose Preface was ‘in the main’ the work of the king, while Eric Stanley maintained that the West Saxon king was the author of both the Prose and Verse Prefaces.Footnote 13 A notable exception is Nicole Guenther Discenza, whose 2008 article remains the most detailed study of this short text. Noting that the preface does not claim to be written by Alfred, Discenza suggested that it was the work of one of his contemporaries.Footnote 14 A year earlier, Malcolm Godden had brought the extent of Alfred’s involvement in the translation project into doubt, questioning the claims of royal authorship made in the various prefaces, epilogues and other paratexts.Footnote 15 The terminus ad quem for the composition of the Prose Preface to the Boethius is determined by its earliest manuscript witness, the now-badly damaged Cotton Otho A.vi, which as we have seen dates from the mid-tenth century. Building on Discenza’s study, this article reappraises the Prose Preface by situating its composition in the early years of the reign of Alfred’s son and heir, Edward the Elder (r. 899–924), a time of political turmoil and dynastic conflict in the kingdom of Wessex. Through comparison with contemporary vernacular and Latin sources, including other Alfredian works and the corpus of Old English dedicatory verse prefaces, I argue that the Prose Preface is a carefully constructed text which provides a window onto the earliest phase of the posthumous cult of Alfred. In the first part of the article, I demonstrate how the author of the Prose Preface purposefully constructed an image of Alfred as a suffering ruler dedicated to the pursuit of wisdom by borrowing imagery and phrasing from various other works associated with the king, as well as from the Boethius itself. I then examine evidence for the emerging cult of Alfred in the early years of Edward’s reign, situating the composition of the Prose Preface within this context.
The Old English Boethius and the Prose Preface
It was Kenneth Sisam who first noticed the connection between the Prose Preface’s concluding statement, forþam þe ælc mon sceal be his andgites mæðe and be his æmettan sprecan þæt he sprecð and don þæt þæt he deþ (‘for every person must speak what he speaks and do what he does according to the power of his understanding and his leisure’), and a passage near the opening of the final section of the Boethius itself (B-text Ch. 42; C- text Prose 33), in which Wisdom advises Mod to seek knowledge of God according to his ‘ability’ (mæð) and ‘understanding’ (andgit):Footnote 16
Forþy we sceoldon eallon mægne spirian æfter Gode þæt we wiston hwæt he wære. Þeah hit ure mæð ne sie þæt we witan [hwylc] he sie, we sculon þeah be þæs andgites mæþe þe he us gifð fundigan, swa swa we ær cwædon þæt mon sceolde ælc þing ongitan be his andgites mæþe, forþam we ne magon ælc þing ongitan swylc swilce hit bið.Footnote 17
‘Therefore we must enquire about God with all our might in order that we might know what he is. Although our ability may not be such that we may know what he is, yet we ought to seek according to the measure of understanding that he gives us, just as we said before that a person must perceive everything according to the measure of his understanding, since we cannot perceive everything such as it is.’ (Emphasis added.)
Further echoes of the main text of the Boethius are difficult to discern, although the preface’s sketch of Alfred’s troubled reign can be compared with brief accounts of the invasion of Rome in the early fifth century by the Gothic kings Rædgota, Alaric and Theoderic, with which the Old English text begins. In particular, the preface’s image of Alfred as both a warrior-king and wise scholar matches the opening portrait of Boethius himself, who is described both as a ‘battle-chief’ (heretoga) and ‘treasure-giver’ (sincgeofa) and as ‘a just man’ (rihtwis rinc) and ‘a wise scholar’ (beorn boca gleaw) (Metre 1, lines 46–53).Footnote 18 Moreover, just as the Prose Preface relates how Alfred endured ‘troubles’ (bisgu) before composing verses, so Metre 1’s portrait of Boethius concludes with reflections on the great misery that his imprisonment caused,Footnote 19 which in turn gave rise to the sorrowful verses that form the lament of his ‘mind’ (modsefa, Metre 1, line 74a). In a further verbal parallel to the Prose Preface, Wisdom describes Mod’s suffering as strongan stormas … weoruld-bisgunga (‘strong storms … of worldly troubles’, Metre 2, lines 3b–4a), before setting out a course of consolation.Footnote 20 The author of the Prose Preface thus seems to have used the opening and closing sections of the Boethius as models for their portrait of Alfred and the concluding request for the reader’s indulgence. Although there is no clear evidence of further engagement with the text of the Boethius, these echoes of the work’s beginning and ending in the Prose Preface serve to identify Alfred with Boethius by depicting him as a scholar-king who endured suffering in his time and composed consolatory verses.Footnote 21
The Prose Preface’s Connection to Other Alfredian Works
As Discenza and others have noted, the most striking feature of the Prose Preface to the Boethius is its extensive recycling of material contained in other Alfredian texts, in particular the Prose Preface to the Pastoral Care. Footnote 22 In this epistolary preface, preserved in a late-ninth-century copy of the Pastoral Care, the king famously calls on his bishops to assist him in restoring prosperity and wisdom to the Angelcynn by translating certain books, ða ðe niedbeðearfosta sien eallum monnum to wiotonne (‘those that are most necessary for all people to know’).Footnote 23 In support of this proposed educational project, Alfred explains to his bishops how the Church Fathers, ‘wise translators’ (wise wealhstodas), first ‘studied’ (geliornode) and then ‘translated’ (gewende) the Pentateuch (æ) from Hebrew into Greek into Latin. The wording of this passage is closely echoed in the Prose Preface to the Boethius, which relates how Alfred, himself now presented as a ‘translator’ (wealhstod), first ‘studied’ (geleornode) and then ‘translated’ (wende) Boethius’ book from Latin into English. Similarly, the Pastoral Care preface’s statement that Alfred began to translate Gregory’s work ‘sometimes word for word, sometimes sense for sense … in accordance with my understanding of it, and as intelligibly as I could render it’ (hwilum word be worde, hwilum andgit of andgiete … swæ swæ ic hie forstod, ond swæ ic hie andgitfullicost areccean meahte)Footnote 24 is repeated almost verbatim in the Boethius preface, which records how the king – who is now referred to in the third person – translated ‘sometimes word-for-word, sometimes sense-for-sense’ (Hwilum … word be worde, hwilum andgit of andgite), doing so ‘as clearly and intelligibly as he could’ (swa swa he hit þa sweotolost and andgitfullicast gereccan mihte). Finally, Alfred’s command in the Pastoral Care preface that his bishops should detach (geæmetige) themselves from worldly concerns as frequently as possible and engage themselves in the translation of books is echoed in the final sentence of the Boethius preface.Footnote 25 Through these extensive and purposeful revoicings of Alfred’s letter to his bishops, the Prose Preface to the Boethius fashions an image of the West Saxon king as a learned translator who endeavoured to make Christian teachings accessible to his own people in their own tongue.
The author of the Prose Preface to the Boethius also appears to have drawn on other Alfredian texts in describing the hardships which afflicted the king ægðer ge on mode ge on lichoman bisgodan (‘both in mind and in body’).Footnote 26 This same phrase appears, for example, in the body text of the Boethius in the description of the middlemost men on the wagon wheel of fate (B-text ch. 39); twice in Bk I of the Soliloquies;Footnote 27 and most frequently in the Prose Psalms. Footnote 28 For example, the introduction to Prose Psalm 15 first connects David’s difficulties with those of King Hezekiah, before linking it with the tribulations of all those who now sing the psalm and with the suffering of Christ:Footnote 29
Þone fifteðoan sealm Dauid sang be his earfoðum, ægðer ge modes ge lichaman; and eft swa ilce Ezechias hine sang be his mettrumnesse, wilnode him to Gode sumre frofre; and swa deð ælc rihtwis mann þe hine singð on his earfoðum; and swa dyde Crist þa he hine sang.Footnote 30
‘David sang this fifteenth psalm about his sufferings, both in mind and body; and afterward likewise Hezekiah sang it about his sickness, desiring some comfort from God for himself; and so does every righteous person who sings it in their sufferings; and so did Christ when he sang it.’ (Emphases added).
These close verbal connections encourage a reader of the Prose Preface who is familiar with the Prose Psalms to identify Alfred with the suffering biblical rulers David and Hezekiah.
While the author of the Prose Preface to the Boethius seems to have made free use of the Prose Preface to the Pastoral Care, as well perhaps as the Prose Psalms, the lack of direct verbal parallels with the Old English Soliloquies is surprising given its close relationship with the Old English Boethius. Footnote 31 There are, nonetheless, two significant points of contact between the Prose Preface to the Boethius and the extant text of the Soliloquies as it survives in the twelfth-century Southwick Codex. The Soliloquies begins with an elaborate passage in which a narrator describes how he gathered wood from the forest to build a home, which then moves into a meditation on the transitoriness of life on earth and preparation for the heavenly home.Footnote 32 This passage is commonly referred to as a preface or prologue, despite the fact that no author-figure or source is named.Footnote 33 However, Alfred is subsequently identified as the work’s compiler in an incomplete explicit on the final folio (59v), which refers to him in the third person: Hær endiað þa cwidas þe Ælfred kining alæs of þære bec þe we hatað on … (‘Here ends the sayings which King Alfred selected from the book which we call in ….’Footnote 34 This explicit may have been composed by the original author of the Soliloquies in the late ninth or early tenth century, or it may have been added by a later reader or copier who wished to identify the work with the famous West Saxon king.Footnote 35 Immediately following the famous wood-gathering passage, Bk I of the Soliloquies opens by introducing the author of the Latin source in in the manner of a preface:
Sanctus Agustinus Cartaina bisceop worhte twa bec be his agnum ingeþance. Þa bec sint gehatene Soliloquiorum, þat is, be hys modis smeaunge and tweounga, hu hys gesceadwisnes answarode hys mode þonne þæt mod ymbe hwæt tweonode, oðþe hit hwæs wilnode to witanne þæs þe hit ær forsweotole ongytan ne meahte.Footnote 36
‘Saint Augustine, bishop of Carthage, composed two books concerning his own inner thought. Those books are called Soliloquies, that is, concerning his mind’s contemplation and doubts, how his reason answered his mind when that mind entertained doubts about anything, or when it wished to know anything that it formerly could not understand very clearly.’
Leslie Lockett notes that the Old English translator expands here on Augustine’s own remarks on the Soliloquia in his Retractations, converting ‘the first-person speaker to a third-person narrator’.Footnote 37 As we have seen, the Prose Preface to the Boethius begins in a similar fashion by identifying the work’s translator (rather than author), in the third person: Ælfred kuning wæs wealhstod ðisse bec. Moreover, as noted above, the text of the Boethius itself opens with a comparable portrait of the Roman consul who composed the original work from which the Old English translation derives. The possibility emerges, then, that both the B-text of the Old English Boethius and the Soliloquies originally opened with these brief biographical sketches of the Latin authors of the source texts from which they are derived, and that both works were retrospectively attributed to Alfred via paratextual materials.
The Verse Preface to the Boethius
A small group of Old English dedicatory verse prefaces and colophons share certain features with the Prose Preface to the Boethius. The Verse Preface to the Old English Dialogues, the envoi to the Old English Bede, and the short poems Thureth and Aldhelm all feature shifts in tense and voice and requests for prayers for the author or patron and sometimes the scribe or poet.Footnote 38 For example, the Verse Preface to Wærferth’s translation of Gregory’s Dialogues, itself probably composed by Bishop Wulfsige, begins in the voice of the book itself, referring to the bishop in the third person and past tense (Me awritan het Wulfsige bisceop Footnote 39, ‘Bishop Wulfsige commanded me to be written’, line 1). As in the Prose Preface to the Boethius, there follows a shift into the present tense as a new third-person subject, ‘the bishop’ (se bisceop), now ‘requests’ (Bideþ, line 16) that readers of the book should pray for him and for his king, Alfred. Given the parallels in structure and content, we might tentatively add the Verse Preface to the Dialogues to the list of Alfredian sources drawn on by the author of the Prose Preface to the Boethius discussed above. Certainly, this short poem provides a precedent for the Prose Preface’s abrupt shift in voice and tense at the point where the request for prayers is introduced.
Unsurprisingly, however, the closest parallels to the Prose Preface to the Boethius are found in the short Verse Preface which was added to the same work. As noted above, this Verse Preface has garnered considerably more interest than its prose counterpart, chiefly on account of its playful deployment of the trope of the ‘speaking book’:Footnote 40
‘Thus Alfred told a story to us, the king of the West Saxons made known his skill, his ability as a poet. The desire was great for him that he proclaimed verse to these people, entertainment for men, various sayings, lest tedium should drive away the self-regarding man, when he little heeds such a matter on account of his pride. I must yet speak, engage in poetry, tell well-known counsel to warriors. Let him listen who will.’
In the opening half-line, the syntactical juxtaposition of subject and indirect object, underscored by double vocalic alliteration, establishes a clear distinction between the author of the Boethius (Ælfred) and the author of the preface, who identifies themselves as a member of the work’s intended audience (us) – as we have seen, the author of the Prose Preface takes similar care to distinguish between Alfred and us. The range of lexical terms used to describe Alfred’s skill as a poet (cræft; leoðwyrhta list), as well as his verses (ealdspell; leoð; fitte) and wise sayings (mislice cwidas; folccuðne ræd), complements the Davidic imagery employed in connection with the king in the Prose Preface noted above.Footnote 42 Moreover, the poem’s tripartite structure reflects three discrete stages in the work’s composition and reception. In lines 1–5 the subject is Alfred himself, who is referred to three times in the past tense and third person in verbs that all occur in final-position (reahte; meldode; spellode). In the middle section, lines 6–8a, the subject shifts to those inattentive audience-members whose self-regard and pride makes them unreceptive to the work they have before them.Footnote 43 In the final section, lines 8b–10, the speaking voice of the preface itself – the talking book – now emerges as the subject, with alliteration on the headstave giet (‘yet’) and a shift into the present tense signalling how it – the book – must continue to give voice to Alfred’s verses and wise sayings (Ic sceal giet sprecan, fon on fitte, … hæleðum secgean).Footnote 44 While the Prose Preface concludes with a request for prayers for Alfred, the Verse Preface ends with an appeal for the king’s words not to fall on deaf ears (Hliste se þe wille, line 10b). In both prose and verse prefaces, then, Alfred’s achievements as poet and author are set firmly in the past as examples to be admired by subsequent generations who continue to read his works.Footnote 45 In the next section, I propose that the early years of Edward the Elder’s reign present a plausible context for the conscious historicizing of Alfred in these prefaces.
In his days
The strongest indication that the author of the Prose Preface was neither Alfred himself or another individual writing during his reign is presented by the statement: Ða bisgu us sint swiþe earfoþrime þe on his dagum on þa ricu becoman þe he underfangen hæfde (‘It is difficult for us to count those troubles which befell the kingdoms which he had received in his days’). Several features of this sentence convey a sense of temporal distance between the author of the preface and the days of King Alfred. First, the use of the inexpressibility topos (us sint swiþe earfoþrime) suggests the eulogizing of a ruler whose reign is, by implication, firmly in the past.Footnote 46 Second, the use of personal pronouns to distinguish between the audience reading the Boethius (us) and Alfred (he/his) further emphasises the gap between the time of the main work’s original composition and that of the composition of the Prose Preface. Thirdly, the past tense verbs describing the time of Alfred’s accession (becoman; underfangen hæfde) further reinforce the sense that Alfred is no longer in possession of those same kingdoms. Finally, the prepositional phrase on his dagum underlines the fact that Alfred’s time as ruler has now passed.Footnote 47
Despite these strong indications that Alfred is not the speaking voice of the preface, scholars have nonetheless found reasons to attribute its composition to the West Saxon ruler. Sisam, for example, provides an elaborate account of how Alfred might have momentarily assumed the voice of his readers.Footnote 48 More recently, David Pratt has noted that the phrase on his dagum is used to denote ‘the historic representation of composition’ in the introductions to three of the Old English Prose Psalms (Ps. XI, XIII and XLVIII), suggesting that the use of the same wording in the Prose Preface to the Boethius ‘reads most naturally as artful self-reference on the part of the king, highlighting … the appropriate circumstances in which the act of translation had been undertaken’.Footnote 49 However, closer examination of the psalm introductions suggests rather that the author of the Boethius preface used this phrase to historicize the figure of Alfred and to consolidate links with the Old Testament rulers David and Hezekiah noted above.
The introduction to Prose Psalm 11, for instance, expands the statement of its Latin source, the Pseudo-Bede Argumentum, ‘Ex persona David canitur, quod in tempore eius omnis defecerit sanctus et deminutae sint ueritates a filiis hominum’ (emphasis added),Footnote 50 as follows:
Þa Dafid þisne endleftan sealm sang, þa seofode he on þam sealme þæt on his dagum sceolde rihtwisnes and wisdom beon swa swiðe alegen; and swa deð ælc rihtwis mann: þonne he þysne sealm singð, þonne mænð he to Drihtne þæt unriht þæt on his dagum bið; and swa dyde Crist: þa he hine sang, þa mænde he to Drihtne Iudea ungeleaffulnesse.Footnote 51
‘When David sang this eleventh psalm, then he lamented in that psalm that in his days justice and wisdom should be brought so very low; and so does every just man: when he sings this psalm, then he laments to the Lord about the injustice that is in his days; and so did Christ: when he sang it, then he complained to the Lord about the unbelief of the Jews.’ (Emphases added).
In this passage, the phrase on his dagum connects the historical period of injustice when David first sang (and by implication, composed) the psalm with the Christian present (and future) when every just man sings it, as well as the intervening time of Christ.Footnote 52 In the Prose Psalms, on his dagum thus situates the psalm’s original composition in the distant biblical past of the Old Testament, far removed in time from the Christian present in which it was translated into English.Footnote 53
Variants on the phrase on his dagum are used in this same historicizing sense to describe three momentous historical events in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS A (the Parker or Winchester Chronicle), a work which, like the Boethius, appears to have been commissioned in either the late ninth or the early tenth century:Footnote 54
449: Her Mauricius & Ualentines onfengon rice & ricsodon VII winter. & on hiera dagum Hengest & Horsa from Wyrtgeorne geleaþade Bretta kyninge gesohton Bretene on þam staþe þe is genemned Ypwines fleot, ærest Brettum to fultume, ac hie eft on hie fuhton.Footnote 55
‘In this year, Marcian and Valentinian succeeded to the kingdom and they ruled for seven years, and in their days Hengest and Horsa, at the invitation of Vortigern the king of the Britons, sought out Britain in that landing-place that is called Ebba’s Creek, first to assist the Britons, but afterwards they fought against them.’
565: Her feng Æðelbriht to Cantwara rice & heold LIII wintra. On his dagum sende Gregorius us fulluht, & Columba mæssepreost com to Pihtum & hi gecyrde to Cristes geleauan.
‘In this year, Æthelberht succeeded to the kingdom of Kent, and he ruled for fifty-three years. In his days Gregory sent baptism to us, and Columba the chaplain came to the Picts and converted them to the faith of Christ.’
787: Her nom Beorhtric cyning Offan dohtor Eadburge. & on his dagum cuomon ærest III scipu, & þa se gerefa þærto rad & hie wolde drifan to þæs cyninges tune þy he nyste hwæt hie wæron, & hiene mon ofslog. Þæt wæron þa ærestan scipu deniscra monna þe Angelcynnes lond gesohton.
‘In this year King Beohrtric took Offa’s daughter Eadburh [as a wife], and in his days first came three ships, and then the reeve rode down there and he wished to drive them to the king’s town because he knew not what they were; and those men killed him. Those were the first ships of Danish men than sought out the land of the English.’ (Emphases added).
The author of the Prose Preface appears to be using the phrase on his dagum in a similar way, to mythologise Alfred’s achievements for a new generation. Such retrospective glorification of Alfred complements the chronicle annals celebrating his military achievements during the 870s and 880s, which were themselves copied (and perhaps composed) a decade or so either side of the year 900.Footnote 56
The equivalent Latin construction, (in) diebus/tempore suis/ipsius/eius, is relatively rare in Anglo-Latin but appears frequently in the Vulgate Bible, sometimes as a means of anchoring salvation events in historical time.Footnote 57 In some charters of the mid- to late-tenth century, similar wording is occasionally used to refer to recipients of grants of land.Footnote 58 Most significant to this discussion is a small group of early Edwardian charters (S 358, 359 and 384) in which variations on this phrase are used in reference to the reigns of Alfred, his father, Æthelwulf, and grandfather, Ecgbert. The dating and authenticity of these charters is complex, with S 359 having the strongest claim to authenticity.Footnote 59 Both S 358 and 359 purport to have been issued in 900 by Edward to the familia of Winchester Cathedral:Footnote 60
S 358: Quapropter Ego Ea[d]ward, diuina indulgente clementia Angul-Saxonum Rex, litterarum memoriæ commendare procuraui aliquam causidicæ rei explanationem quæ in diebus proaui mei Ecgberhti regis et etiam aui mei Aðelwlfi regis, necnon et in diebus patris mei Ælfredi regis uentilata est.
‘Therefore, I, Edward, King of the Anglo-Saxons by divine mercy, have seen fit to have a certain clarification of a legal matter that, in the days of my great-grandfather, Ecgbert, and also my grandfather, King Æthelwulf, and also in the days of my father, King Alfred, was publicly declared, committed to writing.’
S 359: Qua propter ego Eadward gratia Dei Angul Saxonum rex, litterarum memorie commendare procurauerim, quod in diebus aui mei, Aðelwulfi regis, æt Ælfredi regis patris mei factum fuerat.
‘Therefore, I, Edward, King of the Anglo Saxons by the grace of God, have committed to writing a thing that had been done in the days of my grandfather, King Æthelwulf, and also my father, King Alfred.’ (Emphases added).
S 384 is extant only in a sixteenth-century manuscript and is regarded as a spurious conflation of S 358 and 359:Footnote 61
S 384: Cumque proavus meus, moriens, commendavit eandem terram filio suo, Adulpho regi, avo meo, at ille, viam universitatis ingrediens, reliquit eandem terram filio suo, Alfredo regi, patri meo, in diebus suis, ea condicione, ut ipse, moriens, demitteret eandem terram venerabili familiæ beatorum apostolorum Petri et Pauli in Wentana civitate in perpetuam hereditatem habendam et possidendam
‘Since my great-grandfather, upon his death, bequeathed that same land to his son, King Æthelwulf, my grandfather and he, in turn, as he embarked on the journey towards death, left the aforementioned land to his son, King Alfred, my father, in his days with the condition that upon his own death, he would bequeath the said land to the venerable family of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul in the city of Winchester, so that they might hold and possess it as a perpetual inheritance.’ (Emphases added).
In each of these (purportedly) early Edwardian charters, forms of the phrase in diebus suis are used to refer to grants of land that had originally taken place during Alfred’s reign and that of his father Æthelwulf. In the next section, I will suggest that Edward’s vigorous promotion of Alfred’s cult during the first years of his reign further strengthens the case for placing the composition of the Prose Preface to the Boethius in this period.
A Voice from Beyond the Grave
As noted above, in the second part of the Prose Preface the speaking voice shifts from the past to the present tense in describing Alfred’s request for prayers from his readers:
and nu bit and for Godes naman he halsað ælcne þara þe þas boc rædan lyste þæt he for hine gebidde, and him ne wite gif he hit rihtlicor ongite þonne he mihte, forþam þe ælc mon sceal be his andgites mæðe and be his æmettan sprecan þæt he sprecð and don þæt þæt he deþ.
‘And now he (i.e. Alfred) prays and beseeches everyone who takes pleasure in reading this book, in God’s name, to pray for him, and not to blame him if they should understand it more correctly than he was able to, for every person must speak what he speaks and do what he does according to the power of his understanding and his leisure.’
In presenting Alfred as if he were still alive, this conclusion section appears to contradict the opening section which referred to the king in the past tense as if he were dead at the time of writing.Footnote 62 Although Godden argues against identifying the author of the Prose Preface with Alfred, he concedes that these concluding lines ‘do seem to be approximating his [i.e. Alfred’s] voice’, while Pratt argues that this passage ‘implies the circumstances of a living king addressing future readers’.Footnote 63 However, in keeping with the opening section of the Prose Preface, the speaking voice continues to refer to Alfred in the third person in this passage, asking us – the readers of the Boethius – to pray for him – the putative author of the Boethius.
The vigorous promotion of Alfred’s cult in the early years of Edward’s reign provides a plausible context for this seemingly posthumous request for prayers on the king’s behalf. Following his death in 899, Alfred was initially buried in the Old Minster, Winchester, together with his father, Æthelwulf, though Edward soon moved his body the short distance to the newly built New Minster. As Nicole Marafioti has recently demonstrated, the mausoleum which Edward had built for his father served as a potent reminder of Alfred’s enduring physical and spiritual presence.Footnote 64 Moreover, charters from the early 900s attest to Edward’s desire to promote the memory of his father through prayer: S 1443 records that Edward acquired land from Bishop Denewulf and the community at Winchester in 900 in order that he might found a monastery there for mine saule hælo ond mines ðæs arwyrðan fader Ælfredes cyninges (‘for the salvation of my soul and for the soul of my honourable father, King Alfred’), while the Latin charters S 365 and 366, issued in 901, request daily prayers and intercessions for Edward, his uenerabili patre (‘venerable father’) and his children.Footnote 65
The motivation behind Edward’s intense devotion to his late father in the early years of his reign was, at least in part, political. Alfred had succeeded to the throne in 871 following the death of his older brother, King Æthelred I (r. 866–71), an event which, as we have seen, the Prose Preface places in the distant past: on his dagum on þa ricu becoman þe he underfangen hæfde (‘the kingdoms which he had received in his time’). Following Alfred’s death in 899, Æthelred’s son, Æthelwold, rebelled against his cousin Edward, who had been consecrated king by 900.Footnote 66 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS A 901 (= 899) records that Æthelwold took the West Saxon royal estates at Wimborne (where his father was buried), and Twynham butan ðæs cyninges leafe ⁊ his witena (‘without the permission of the king and his witan’), and then sought out the viking army in Northumbria.Footnote 67 Æthelwold then sailed with a fleet to Essex, where he ‘enticed’ (aspon) the viking army settled in East Anglia to join him in raiding across Mercia and into Wessex, before he was finally defeated and killed by Edward’s forces at the Battle of the Holme (ASC MS A 904 [= 902]). Æthelwold’s three-year revolt thereby constituted a major challenge to Edward’s authority. As the sons of former kings, Æthelwold and Edward were rival æthelings, each possessing a strong claim to the throne.Footnote 68 Even after Æthelwold’s death, the threat of futher rebellion must have been a constant concern for Edward. As Marafioti notes, by relocating Alfred’s body to the New Minster, Edward effectively instigated a new, Alfredian dynasty to which he was the legitimate heir.Footnote 69
This charged political context helps to account for the early-tenth-century practice of inserting references to Alfred in copies of earlier vernacular texts. Emily Kesling has recently argued that the Old English Bede, Orosius, Bald’s Leechbook and the Parker Chronicle were all produced by a group of scribes – possibly nuns – at Nunnaminster, an abbey thought to have been founded by Alfred’s wife and Edward’s mother, Ealhswith.Footnote 70 Although these texts do not feature prefaces attributing their composition to Alfred, they have all been retrospectively associated with the king in various ways. Hence, for example, a copy of Alfred’s lawcode (domboc), including the long Mosaic Prologue attributing the compilation of the laws to the king, was added to the manuscript of the Parker Chronicle, Cambridge Corpus Christi College MS 173, perhaps during Æthelstan’s reign.Footnote 71 Similarly, the reports of the northern travellers Ohthere and Wulfstan to Alfred – perhaps based on court records – appear to have been incorporated into the geographical preface to the Orosius sometime in the late-ninth or early-tenth century, possibly by the second scribe of the Parker Chronicle.Footnote 72 Moreover, the third Parker Chronicle scribe seems to have added a reference to Alfred’s request for medical remedies from the Patriarch Elias in the copy of Bald’s Leechbook in London, British Library, MS Royal 12 D XVII. The same scribe may also have been responsible for adding the West Saxon Genealogical Preface to a copy of the Old English Bede. Footnote 73 By recasting the translation of Boethius as a gift from Alfred to future generations of readers, the Prose Preface might have served a similar purpose to these opportunistic references to the king, preserving his memory among English readers after his death while simultaneously bolstering the dynastic claim of his son, Edward.
Conclusion
The search for the authentic voice of an early medieval king in written sources continues to engage scholars.Footnote 74 In particular, the Alfredian prefaces and epilogues, along with the translations they accompany, have long been taken as products of the king’s own pen. This article has challenged the traditional attribution of the Prose Preface to the Old English Boethius to Alfred, arguing that it was composed after his death by an author who drew on a range of texts connected with his reign in order to present him as both a wise scholar and the new paterfamilias of the West Saxon dynasty. The preface’s use of the phrase on his dagum was found to have a close match in early Edwardian charters, where similar wording is used to refer to the reigns of Alfred and Æthelwulf. Comparable phrasing also occurs in the annals of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, where it is applied to rulers whose reigns were pivotal in the history of the English people. The preface’s seemingly confusing shift from the past to the present tense at the midway point, together with the speaker’s request for prayers for Alfred, can best be understood in the light of Edward’s sustained efforts to keep his father’s image alive in the early years of his reign.
Given their shared themes and structure, it is possible that both the Prose and Verse Prefaces to the Boethius were the work of the same individual, perhaps a member of Alfred’s former circle who remained active in Edward’s court,Footnote 75 or a scribe or compiler involved in the copying of the prosimetrical C-text in the early tenth century. Rather than reading the twin prefaces attached to the Old English Boethius as the king’s own composition, or as reliable indications that he was responsible for one or both vernacular versions of the De consolatione, we should view these paratexts as among the earliest written witnesses to Alfred’s posthumous cult.Footnote 76
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Rachel A. Burns, Amy Faulkner, Niamh Kehoe, Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, Michael Treschow and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council grant number AH/Y003276/1.
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