Pre-Christian traces in the Laws of King Aethelberht?

177 Pre-Christian traces in the laws of King Æthelberht? dominic gibbs As is well known, the first few clauses of the law code of King Æthelberht of Kent, as it survives in the unique manuscript witness of the Textus Roffensis, contain a tariff of compensations payable in respect of thefts to various grades of clergy. This essay recalls evidence for the existence of pre- Christian priests in early England, restates a number of difficulties that have been identified by scholarship in respect of these clauses, and proposes that these difficulties can most economically and most satisfactorily be explained by supposing these clauses to have had their origins in a similar tariff referable to different grades of pagan priests. This proposition is not novel: it was aired by Michael Wallace-Hadrill in his 1970 Ford Lectures, and has recently been revived by the late Nicholas Brooks. The existing scholarship is however rather disjointed, such that there is some value even in a largely synthesising review such as this. First, it is useful briefly to recall the evidence for the existence of pre-Christian priests in early Anglo-Saxon England. It is not necessary for present purposes to consider the nature of pre-Christian belief, or to consider in detail the activities that its practitioners might have undertaken. The more modest objective of this paper is to recount a body of evidence speaking to the existence of pre-Christian priests active in early Anglo-Saxon society with a sufficient degree of organisation to suggest some degree of internal hierarchy. For this reason it is not proposed to consider in this paper evidence from elsewhere in Britain for the activities of a pagan priesthood. It is still more dangerous to draw indiscriminate parallels between Anglo-Saxon and Continental or Scandinavian religious beliefs and practices. Whilst no doubt comparative studies in the field of Germanic religion have the potential to be of very great value,1 the (for example) indiscriminate conflation of Woden/Odin by some scholars has tended somewhat to muddy the waters. The sober precepts articulated in this regard by A.L. Meaney2 have, regrettably, been followed more in the breach than in the observance. The direction of the majority of recent scholarship has tended to run contrary to the notion of an organised body of pre-Christian priests. The seminal scholarship of Carver, Samnark and Semple3 emphasises the importance of natural features of the landscape in pre-Christian belief, such as open-air spaces and the banks of rivers and lakes. Further, a body of archaeological evidence has emerged DOMINIC GIBBS 178 apparently suggestive of the existence of female, rather than male, spiritual or ritual specialists active in matters such as healing, midwifery, divination, or even, as contended for by Geake,4 the supervising of burials. Such competing views can, however, co-exist without contradiction. Evidence for female spiritual or ritual specialists operating at a local level in matters of healing, midwifery, divination and burial preparation by no means precludes, indeed perhaps complements, the possibility of male priests undertaking different activities such as sacrifices in different places, possibly at a supra-local level. Since the pre-Conversion Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were largely illiterate,5 it follows that there is no contemporary Old English textual evidence for pagan practices, such that one is dependent upon often incidental observations made by later Christian writers, inevitably clerics who would have found it extraordinarily difficult to approach the subject with anything approaching intellectual detachment even had they been disposed to do so, leavened with archaeologi cal evidence. Bede’s writings contain a variety of material that can, with care, be used to develop conjecture as to the practice of pagan Anglo-Saxon belief. Earlier scholarship has tended on the whole too readily to take Bede’s statements at face value, and an article of the late Raymond Page puts matters more cautiously.6 Nevertheless, Bede’s descriptions in the Historia Ecclesiastica of the conversions of Æthelberht and, particularly, Edwin of Northumbria, contain at three points considerable background colour concerning the locations at which pagan worship was carried out. The first instance is contained in Pope Gregory’s advice to Bishop Mellitus, given in a letter quoted by Bede: … namely that the idol temples of that race should by no means be destroyed, but only the idols in them. Take holy water and sprinkle it in these shrines, build altars and place relics in them. For if the shrines are well-built, it is essential that they should be changed from the worship of devils to the service of the true God.7 Pope Gregory continues: They are in the habit of slaughtering much cattle as sacrifices to devils …8 This is highly significant in the context of archaeological finds at Harrow Hill, near Angmering in Sussex. The place name itself is evocative, derived from OE hearg, used to translate fanum in the OE Bede and used up to the mid-tenth century as the regular term for a heathen temple, glossing a variety of Latin words for shrines.9 Meaney describes Harrow Hill as a partially isolated hill south of the escarpment of the Downs, crowned by a small, early Iron Age earthwork, within the curtilage of which a 1936 excavation10 deduced the presence of well over a thousand heads of an early breed of ox, apparently left at the surface of the mound before nature covered them up with mould and grass. As Meaney concedes, it is possible that this was a purely prehistoric sanctuary that the invading South Saxons recognised as such. For cogent reasons expressed by Meaney, however, it is more likely that this is a site of Saxon ritual of precisely the type observed by Augustine’s missionaries, reported to Gregory and described by Bede. If Meaney’s interpretation is correct, the evidence speaks to a level of supra-local organisation beyond that attributable to the local cunning woman. PRE-CHRISTIAN TRACES IN THE LAWS OF KING ÆTHELBERT? 179 The second is in the climax of the account of the conversion of King Edwin, when the high-priest Coifi himself offers to undertake the destruction of the templa et alteria that he has previously maintained. These are described as: ... the altars and shrines of their idols, together with their precincts.11 In an important article, John Blair clarifies septa as fenced or hedged enclosures, noting that if the locus illum quondam idolorum12 was still being pointed out in Bede’s own day, a century later, the structure must have been substantial enough for something to have survived in the ground.13 The substantial nature of some of the structures can also be implied from Bede’s third reference, where he describes in H.E. ii.15 how the syncretist King Rædwald maintained in the same fanum both an altare for the Christian mass and an arula ad uictimas daemoniorum, a small altar on which to offer victims to devils. Bede further records the East Saxon King Eadwulf (c.664-713) as asserting that he remembered seeing this altar in his boyhood, such that, as Blair observes, ‘it must have been solid enough to withstand twenty or thirty years of a bandonment’. Thus, evidence for Sussex, Northumbria and East Anglia speaks to a variety of locations sufficiently substantial in their construction and maintenance to have necessitated a significant drawing of resource from the community as a whole over a prolonged period of time. Such a drawing of resource can sensibly only have been effected by an organised body with the authority to do so. Further, in his De temporum ratione14 Bede provides a detailed exposition of the pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon calendar and a description of a number of festivals at various times of the year about which he had presumably heard through oral tradition. As explained more fully by Kenneth Harrison,15 the reconciliation of what has been identified with the benefit of modern astronomy as a solar year of 365.24 years with a lunar month of 29.53 days was, perforce, complex. Ordinarily the year consisted of twelve lunar months, yet in order to keep in line with the solar year, additional months were inserted in years three, five and eight of an eight year cycle. Doubtless the majority of the inhabitants of Æthelberht’s Kent had no particular requirement to know what particular day of what particular month they were living at any point during their lives. Their priorities would no doubt have been determined on a daily or weekly basis by the exigencies of the agricultural cycle, or by the whims of their masters. Yet for some, albeit a minority, a detailed, functioning, reliable calendar must have been an essential part of their lives. For example, we can deduce from Bede’s account of Æthelberht’s marriage to Bertha and the presence in her entourage of a Frankish bishop, Liudhard, and the fact that that Æthelberht’s Laws were promulgated cum consilio sapientium, that Æthelberht maintained at least an embryonic royal court of a size and prestige that can sensibly only have been sustained by a system of food renders, and by being at least in part itinerant.16 Plainly, both itineration and food renders require people and food to be at an appointed place on an appointed day: perforce, even at a modest level of social organisation, a standard calendar must have been in operation throughout the kingdom. Similarly, even in relatively early ‘supra-local’ community cemeteries17 we find a number of high status objects presumed to have been obtained as a result of DOMINIC GIBBS 180 trading with the Continent. It seems scarcely credible that such trade would have been carried out other than on a highly organised basis. Our postulated Continental merchant would hardly have shipped his cargo of luxury goods to Britain on the off chance that his intended counterpart might be on hand with his own wares to trade. On the contrary: we might rather suppose the occasions of such trade to have been prearranged, possibly through agents. Just as with Æthelberht’s steward receiving food renders, both parties would have needed a reliable calendar. In the absence of any evidence that the maintenance of a calendar was one of the functions of kingship, one sees some logic in the conclusion contended for by James Campbell, that so complex a calendar could sensibly have been maintained and operated only by an organised and recognised priesthood, very possibly based in sanctuaries of the type referred to by Gregory in his letter to Mellitus considered above. Indeed, Campbell was minded to speculate18 that ‘… Bede may have known so much about the intricacies of the pagan calendar because he could have come from a priestly family’ whose allegiance was subsequently transferred to the Christian faith. One need not, of course, press the point nearly so firmly. Though we have no evidence for it, the possibility that the maintenance of a calendar was one of the functions of the royal household should not perhaps be so lightly dismissed. Yet, acknowledging that someone must have been keeping a calendar, it would seem logical to deduce that a priesthood – moreover, one attested by other evidence to have played a substantial and well-established role in the community – would have been likely to have played at least a substantial, albeit not necessarily an exclusive, role in its maintenance. The readiest example of a member of this postulated priesthood is of course Coifi, from Bede’s account of the conversion of King Edwin considered above. Another pagan priest appears in the Vita Sancti Wilfridi, chapter 13, again in a position of authority: While they were crossing the British sea on their return from Gaul with Bishop Wilfrid of blessed memory … the wind blew hard from the south-east and the foam-crested waves hurled them on to the land of the South Saxo ns which they did not know … Forthwith a huge army of pagans arrived intending to seize the ship, to divide the money as booty for themselves, carry off the captives whom they vanquished and incontinently put to the sword all who resisted them …The chief priest of their idolatrous worship also took up his stand in front of the pagans, on a high mound, and like Balaam, attempted to curse the people of God, and to bind their hands by means of his magical arts.19 Fittingly, the chief priest meets his end in the manner of Goliath, felled by a slingshot to the forehead. These passages need, of course, to be treated with caution and by no means taken at face value. The days are long gone when even so skilled a textual critic as Bertram Colgrave could write: … perhaps it is the natural reaction of the twentieth century to ask whether after all it may not be possible that there is something more in these strange stories than the earlier editors of Bede believed, and that these holy men, living lives of incredible hardships and asceticism, actually reached a state of being in which they possessed PRE-CHRISTIAN TRACES IN THE LAWS OF KING ÆTHELBERT? 181 powers – hypnotism, clairvoyance, telepathy – call them what you choose – which are not perhaps miraculous in the strict sense of the term but would certainly be considered so in the early middle ages.20 It is now better understood that Bede and the Vita Sancti Wilfridi need to be used with circumspection, being second- or third-hand accounts of some of the events that they describe, and moreover written in literary styles heavily influenced by classical and Biblical texts and also, to some extent, by the political and doctrinal expectations of their respective audiences. Even the intrinsic evidence of the passage from the Vita Sancti Wilfridi puts the reader on inquiry. A few lines further on, drawing a comparison between the paucity in number of Wilfrid’s followers and the massed ranks of the pagan South Saxons, the author advises us of the bishop’s companions: There were 120 of them, equal in number to the age of Moses ... 21 As James Campbell, who as we have seen has emerged in some of his other writings as sympathetically disposed towards arguments for the existence of pre-Christian priests, has pithily observed,22 ... if the ship in which Wilfrid was wrecked on the coast of Sussex really did, as his biographer says, have 120 men in it, then it was of at least twice the capacity of the Sutton Hoo ship, which is, at over ninety feet long, the largest of the period known. Nevertheless, one should for a number of reasons be disinclined too readily to dismiss as fantastic this account of a pagan priest accompanying a war-band, and attempting to influence the outcome of a battle through his magic arts. Firstly, from Bede’s account of Æthelfrith’s reaction to the news of the presence of Christian monks attached to the opposing forces at the Battle of Chester,23 we should be in no doubt that pagan war-leaders believed that such things were possible. Further, in a laconic reference to the pagan Mercian King Penda in describing the battle of Maserfelth in 642 apparently derived from traditions independent of Bede, it is said of Penda: He was victorious through the arts of the Devil.24 What these diabolicam artem may have been the author does not say. No more may of course be implied than ruthlessness and lack of compassion or scruple. One is, however, put in mind of the chief priest in the Wilfrid episode, and also of a reference in Tacitus to the custom of the German tribes to bring with them into battle images and symbols taken from the sacred groves.25 Ample supporting evidence for the practice of pagan worship is afforded by placename studies. In the context of Æthelberht’s Kent, the starting point is the wellknown address delivered by F.M. Stenton to the Royal Historical Society in 1940,26 in which he identified ‘…five undoubted places of heathen worship… within a radius of twelve miles from Augustine’s church of Canterbury’. Two of Stenton’s five locations contain the Old English alh or ealh, meaning ‘temple’, or ‘sacred enclosure’, cognate with the Old Saxon and Old High German DOMINIC GIBBS 182 alah, and the Gothic alhs. One of these occurs in the name Ealhfleot, which has no surviving present-day equivalent, but which appears in a ninth-century source27 seemingly describing either part, or possibly the whole, of a channel linking Faversham to the north Kent coast. The other is contained in Ealhham, which appears28 as the earliest form of present-day Alkham, four miles north-east of Dover. The cult of Woden is attested by Woodnesborough, near Sandwich, four miles from the sea and astride the strategically important Roman road linking Dover to the Wantsum Channel, where a mound covered a possibly cremated burial of a high status male,30 whilst a mound sacred to Thunor once stood near Manston in Thanet and gave rise to the name Thunores hlaew.31 Finally of Stenton’s quintet of names, the Old English weoh or wih, meaning ‘idol’, cognate with Old Saxon wih, ‘temple’, Icelandic ve, Gothic weihs, Old High German wih, ‘holy’, provides the name of Wye, three miles north-east of Ashford, on the opposite side of the Great Stour valley to the old Roman road, and suggests the presence of a pagan shrine in pre-Christian times. The importance of Wye in Anglo-Saxon England is indicated by the fact that it was the administrative centre of one of the four east Kentish lathes. John Blair32 subsequently drew attention to Bladbean, situated on a high point of Downland some two miles due east of Stelling Minnis. Blair derives the Bladelement from ‘blood’, whilst beam, with its primary meaning of ‘tree’, could have a subsidiary meaning of ‘post’, ‘pillar’, or ‘cross’. He considers that the name could well, therefore, refer to human sacrifice around a sacred tree. Summarising, therefore: albeit that this is view somewhat neglected by the thrust of recent scholarship, colourable evidence nevertheless exists for the presence in Æthelberht’s Kent of pagan priests who, as elsewhere in early Anglo-Saxon England, would have operated a complex calendar of the type described by Bede and maintained shrines whose existence is attested through place-name evidence. If, as seems consistent with evidence advanced elsewhere in this paper, Æthelberht’s Laws are broadly contemporary with the conversion to Christianity, it would follow readily enough that these pagan priests would at least until only very recently prior to the Laws have occupied a position of considerable standing in society, a theme that will emerge with more force in the following detailed examination of specific provisions of the Laws. Offences against churchmen in Æthelberht’s Laws In setting out the extracts below, what is now deservedly accepted as, and is likely to remain, the critical edition of the Laws, set out by Lisi Oliver in her excellent The Beginnings of English Law32 has been adopted throughout, together with her translation from which Nicholas Brooks has differed only on relatively minor points of interpretation in his own more recent paper.33 Oliver improves in a number of specific areas on the edition contained in Liebermann’s monumental Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen,34 most notably in her refinement of Liebermann’s original editorial clause-numbering, which proved something of a false trail to subsequent scholarship. PRE-CHRISTIAN TRACES IN THE LAWS OF KING ÆTHELBERT? 183 On Oliver’s editorial clause-numbering,35 the first five clauses of Æthelberht’s Laws provide a sliding scale of compensations for theft from churchmen, as follows: Clause 1: Godes feoh 7 ciricean XII gylde. God’s property and the church’s [is to be compensated] with 12 [-fold] compensation. Clause 2: Biscopes feoh XI gylde. A bishop’s property [is to be compensated] with 11 [-fold] compensation. Clause 3: Preostes feoh IX gylde. A priest’s property [is to be compensated] with 9 [-fold] compensation. Clause 4: Diacones feoh VI gylde. A deacon’s property [is to be compensated] with 6 [-fold] compensation. Clause 5: Cleroces feoh III gylde. A cleric’s property [is to be compensated with] 3 [-fold] compensation. These clauses dealing with theft from the Church and churchmen give rise to some of the most problematic issues in the Laws. Four distinct areas of difficulty have been identified, which have led some scholars36 to consider these clauses to be a later interpolation: i) the straightforward syntax of the clauses, which in comparison to the rest of the Laws gives an impression of extreme terseness of language; ii) the absence of a prologue to the Laws, in apparent contrast to the account given by Bede; iii) various internal inconsistencies between these clauses, and other provisions appearing elsewhere in the Laws; and iv) the inconsistency of these clauses with the Responsiones of Pope Gregory quoted by Bede in his Ecclesiastical History. The points are cumulative, and will be considered in turn. Terseness of language As described by Oliver,37 each of clauses 1-5 follows a very simple template: [Property/ peace] [number] gylde. Since this usage does not appear elsewhere in the Laws, these clauses can accordingly be differentiated on linguistic grounds from the rest of the text. This plainly raises the issue of whether these clauses were interpolated at the time of the original recording of the Laws, or in a later revision, perhaps at a time when the original version of the Laws was being recopied. Although the possibility of an interpolation does need formally to be put, these arguments do, however, sit somewhat oddly with the observation that the grammar of these clauses is considerably more straightforward than the rest of the Laws. The usual observation is that the language of legal drafting becomes more sophisticated over time, not less, such that the terseness of language of these clauses should ordinarily be an argument for their antiquity.38 Further, Nicholas Brooks has DOMINIC GIBBS 184 suggested that the terseness of language may be consistent with the relevant clauses having originally been recorded in runes.39 This intriguing and attractive suggestion, also pointing to an antique origin, deserves close consideration. The absence of a prologue The Laws of Hloþhere and Eadric begin with the following prologue: Hlothhere and Eadric, kings of the people of Kent, added to the laws that their ancestors made before with these decrees, which are stated hereafter ...40 More elaborately, the Laws of Wihtred: To the most gracious king of the Kentish people, Wihtred, ruling in the fifth winter of his reign, in the ninth indiction, sixth day of Rugern, in that place which is called Berghamstead, there was gathered a consiliary assembly of great men. [...] There the great men devised, with the consent of all, these decrees, and added to the just customs of the Kentish people, as it hereafter says and decrees ...41 Yet in Æthelberht’s Laws, at least as they have survived in the Textus Roffensis, the text begins abruptly with clauses 1-5, drafted moreover in a terseness of language that can, as previously noted, be distinguished from the rest of the Laws. The position is not enlightened by a passage from Bede, summarising the achievements of Æthelberht: Among other benefits which he conferred upon the race under his care, he established with the advice of his councillors a code of laws after the Roman manner. These are written in English and are still kept and observed by the peopl e.42 The difficulty is thus readily apparent. In the absence of a prologue that is found in the laws both of Hloþhere and Eadric and those of Wihtred, what authority did Bede have for the assertion that the Laws were established cum consilio sapientium? It seems doubtful whether too firm a conclusion can be drawn as to whether Bede’s Kentish informant, Abbot Albinus, provided Bede with a whole text of Æthelberht’s Laws, or alternatively with merely the opening clauses together with a hint of its overall content and an explanation of its background. If, however, either Bede, or his Kentish informant Albinus, did have before them a text of the Laws that did contain a prologue to this effect, this would indicate a stage in the transmission of the manuscript of which we are unaware. Internal consistency with other provisions of the Laws A subsequent provision in clause 10 of the Laws provides that theft from the king by a freeman shall be compensated for with nine-fold compensation. If this is taken at face value, and compared with clauses 2 and 3, the king is afforded a lower level of restitution than a bishop, equivalent to that afforded to a mere priest. This seems an inherently unlikely arrangement at any time in Anglo-Saxon history, whether in an excess of religious fervour in the immediate aftermath of conversion, or subsequently, and this was, indeed, one of the considerations that prompted Richardson and Sayles to consider the earlier clauses to be a l ater interpolation. PRE-CHRISTIAN TRACES IN THE LAWS OF KING ÆTHELBERT? 185 The inconsistency of the clauses with Pope Gregory’s Responsiones Bede makes very clear that by his time, c.731, clauses 1-5 formed an integral part of the Laws. The passage of the Ecclesiastical History cited above continues as follows: Among these [laws] he set down first of all what restitution must be made by anyone who steals anything belonging to the church or the bishop or any other clergy; these laws were designed to give protection to those whose coming and whose teaching he had welcomed.43 Yet elsewhere Bede makes clear that the scales of compensation provided for by clauses 1-5, ‘startlingly heavy’, according to Michael Wallace-Hadrill,44 did not sit at all comfortably with Christian teaching. Bede describes how, at a relatively early stage in his mission, Augustine sought guidance from Pope Gregory by letter on a number of matters of Christian doctrine. Gregory’s replies, the Responsiones, are quoted by Bede at length. One such concerned the matter of thef t from a church: Augustine’s third question: I beg you to tell me how one who robs a church should be punished. Gregory answered: My brother, you must judge from the thief’s circumstances what punishment he ought to have. For there are some who commit theft though they have resources, whilst others transgress in this matter through poverty. So some must be punished by fines, some by a flogging, some severely and others more leniently ... You should also add that they ought to restore whatever they have stolen from a church. But God forbid that the Church should make a profit out of the earthly things it seems to lose and so seek to gain from such vanities.45 Analysis Various scholars have sought to explain these contradictions in different ways, yet none satisfactorily. As previously noted, Richardson and Sayles followed Liebermann too closely in treating these clauses as a single article, in defiance of the clear manuscript evidence of the Textus Roffensis. They also expressed scepticism that literacy could have developed even at a court so relatively sophisticated as that of Æthelberht within a timetable as short as that of the first few years of the Augustinian mission. Richardson and Sayles, writing for publication in 1966, were also greatly influenced by the then still relatively recent study by Humphrey Sutherland46 on the circulation of gold coins in early Anglo-Saxon England, which concluded that Kent and the Frankish kingdoms had an interchangeable gold currency as early as the late sixth century and that at the very close of the sixth century coins, or at least coins with loops for wearing as jewellery, may have been produced in England. Since these coins carried recognisable inscriptions, Richardson and Sayles contended for an emergence of literacy in Kent at an earlier stage than the Augustinian mission. Developing this line of reasoning, they argued that the bulk of the Laws ‘… may well belong to the last quarter of the sixth century or even to some earlier year…’,47 and to this pre-existing vernacular text at some unspecified later date at ‘… a later generation when the English Church had come to terms with the world…’,48 these clauses were added as an interpolation. This analysis has not stood up well to subsequent scholarship, and in particular the notion that the Laws existed as a text prior to the Augustinian mission has DOMINIC GIBBS 186 been treated with ‘contempt’.49 Certainly it seems doubtful to attach quite so much emphasis to the importance of literate recipients of a written law-code: the act of committing the law code to writing may have served a symbolic function that was no less valuable. It could also be doubted whether the Laws could have been promulgated at all if they did not date to the mature years of Æthelberht’s reign, by which time his right to rule had been reinforced by success in the military campaigns that caused Bede to name Æthelberht as one of the bretwaldas. Finally, the weight of modern scholarship is inclined to be more cautious about the existence of a circulating currency at quite such an early date,50 thus weakening the arguments for an earlier spread of literacy. In her thought-provoking paper originally delivered in 1997,51 Patrizia Lendinara suggested instead that the Laws were derived from, and possibly even a direct translation of, a Latin original. If this were the case, Oliver reasoned that one would probably expect to see frequent borrowings of Latin terms in the text, or at least some highly convoluted language as the translator wrestled with the difficulty of rendering Latin legal terminology into Old English. As such borrowings are infrequent, and indeed confined to clauses 1-5 dealing with the various grades of clergy, Lendinara’s original hypothesis has failed to gain any real currency. However, David Dumville, a member of the symposium panel receiving the paper, developed in discussion the possibility that the Laws existed in oral form in Æthelberht’s time, but only came into writing significantly later. Taking up the linguistic evidence for Anglian influence52 upon the language of the Laws, Dumville tentatively suggested that the Laws may have come into written form at the behest of Anglian conquerors of Kent wishing to inform themselves more closely concerning Kentish law. Such an interesting suggestion provides an excellent working hypothesis as to the eighthcentury transmission of the archetype of the Laws from which the Textus Roffensis version is ultimately derived. It does not, however, wholly explain how Bede came to write as he did. For Bede to have written as he did, the Laws must have appeared in written form, even if after Æthelberht’s time, at least sufficiently early for the precise details of their origin not to have been known to Bede or Abbot Albinus. Since the extension of significant Anglian political influence into Kent, i.e. via Mercia, is generally supposed to date only from the last years of the reign of King Wihtred (d.721), this hypothesis presents some difficulties of internal chronology. Oliver too thought deeply about these issues, and concluded on linguistic grounds that these clauses had a separate origin to the rest of the Laws. Since she regarded it as unlikely that the Laws would have ignored the direct exposition of Pope Gregory, she concluded that these clauses were added by a later redact or.53 It falls to be considered, however, whether scholarship might have been heading in the wrong direction in treating these clauses as a later interpolation, or indeed as an interpolation at all. The attendant difficulties can much more readily be resolved if it is instead supposed that these clauses date contemporaneously with the rest of the Laws from the period of the conversion, but are derived from a pre-existing set of tariffs providing levels of restitution for thefts from a pagan priesthood. This suggestion was originally made by Michael Wallace-Hadrill,54 who supposed that the origin of the eleven-fold restitution payable to a bishop was a similar tariff payable to a pagan high-priest, and has recently been revived by Nicholas Brooks.55 PRE-CHRISTIAN TRACES IN THE LAWS OF KING ÆTHELBERT? 187 On this hypothesis, the terseness of the syntax can be seen to be entirely consistent with an early origin prior – perhaps well prior – to the conversion period. A lower level of restitution to a king than to a bishop would be much more plausible in the context of a pagan high-priest with responsibility for the maintenance of a complex calendar on which the agricultural cycle depended, to say nothing of the supposed ability to influence the outcome of a battle through hi s magic arts. More sense too can now be made of the internal chronology of Augustine’s request for guidance from Pope Gregory. Augustine can be supposed to have been already more than familiar with Church thinking on the subject, and thus to have viewed with disquiet the output of Æthelberht’s drafting committee (cum consilio sapientium). Nevertheless, had these clauses indeed been derived from existing pre-Conversion custom, one can readily apprehend the very real difficulties that Augustine would have anticipated in seeking to resist these clauses on the grounds of Christian doctrine. In such a potentially highly problematic situation, it would have been prudent as well as plausible for Augustine to seek papal authority to buttress his own reservations. Such an analysis might well be thought more plausible than alternative explanations which seek to invert the two stages and to place decades between them. Neither the pre-existing vernacular text postulated by Richardson and Sayles, nor the pre-existing Latin text postulated by Lendinara, would be required if it is accepted that these clauses reflect existing custom transmitted orally down to the time of Æthelberht and reinforced by practical usage. The fact that the version of the Laws supplied to Bede by Abbot Albinus contained a prologue absent from the Textus Roffensis would now becomes a detail of manuscript transmission history, and it is not so hard to imagine how a copy of the Laws without the prologue might have been made. One could return, for example, in this context to the Anglian conquerors of Kent postulated by David Dumville, who could plausibly be presumed to be more concerned with a memorandum stating what the laws of Kent were, rather than a prologue detailing the process whereby they were compiled, and who would certainly have had no reason to encourage any embellishment of the reputation of Æthelberht. Finally, the explanation would also deal with a difficulty put forward by Richard Gameson,56 namely that it might be doubtful whether in Æthelberht’s own time such a detailed hierarchy of clergy as is contemplated by these clauses could sensibly have existed. Instead, this hierarchy could be explained as an attempt to find approximate Christian equivalents57 for grades of pagan priesthood. One is understandably diffident about pressing too firm a set of conclusions on matters such as these, where the available evidence may well remain too incomplete for matters ever to be placed wholly beyond doubt. Such is, of course, the fascination as well as the challenge of this period. Nevertheless, when regard is had to the difficulties inherent in the ways in which the origins of these clauses have traditionally been explained, the arguments contended for here might be thought not to force the evidence, but rather to follow it to a logical and internallyconsistent conclusion. If these clauses are indeed correctly identified as containing an echo of pre-Christian practices, then they offer us an interesting and instructive insight into a variety of aspects of early Anglo-Saxon society prior to, and at the time of, the Conversion. DOMINIC GIBBS 188 Notwithstanding that it is overwhelmingly likely that by the time of the promulgation of his Laws Æthelberht had himself determined to embrace the Christian faith, and for all of his desire to appear, with his sapientes, to be acting iuxta exempla Romanorum, it would seem that neither he nor his subjects had yet digested sufficiently fully the teachings of their new religion so as to be able to do away with in their entirely all the vestiges of their former pr actices. bibliography Blair, John, ‘Anglo-Saxon Pagan Shrines and their Prototypes’, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History, 8, 1995, 1-28. Bonner, Gerald, David Rollason and Clare Stancliffe (eds), St. Cuthbert: His Cult and Community to AD 120, Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer (2002). Campbell, James, ‘Elements in the Background to the Life of St. Cuthbert and his Early Cult’, in Bonner et al. (eds), pp. 3-10, repr. in Campbell, James, The Anglo-Saxon State, London: Hambledon, 2000, pp. 85-106. Campbell, James, ‘Some Considerations on Religion in Early Anglo-Saxon England’, in Henig, Martin and Tyler Jo Smith (eds), Collectanea Antiqua, Essays in Memory of Sonia Chadwick Hawkes, BAR International Series 1673 (2007), pp. 67-73. Carver, Martin, In Search of Cult: Archaeological Investigations in honour of Philip Rahtz, Woodbridge: Boydell, 1992. Carver, Martin, The Cross Goes North, York: York Medieval Press, 2003, repr. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005. Carver, Martin, Alex Samnark and Sarah Semple (eds), Signals of Belief in Early England, Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2010. Charles-Edwards, Thomas, ‘Early Medieval Kingships in the British Isles’, in Bassett, Steven, The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1989, pp. 28-39. Cockayne, Oswald, Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England, London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts and Green, 1864. Colgrave, Bertram (ed. and trans.), The Life of Bishop Wilfred by Eddius Stephanus, Cambridge: CUP, 1927. Colgrave, Bertram, ‘Bede’s Miracle Stories’, in Thompson, Hamilton (ed.), Bede: His Life, Times and Writings, Oxford: Clarendon, 1935, pp. 200-39. Colgrave, Bertram, and Roger Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Oxford: Clarendon, 1969. Davidson, Hilda Ellis and Leslie Webster, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Burial at Combe (Woodnesborough), Kent’, Medieval Archaeology, 11 (1967), 1-41. Dickenson, Tania, ‘An Anglo-Saxon “cunning woman” from Bidford-on-Avon’, in Carver, Martin (ed.), 1992. Gameson, Richard, ‘Context and Achievement’, in Richard Gameson (ed.), St. Augustine and the Conversion of England (Sutton, 1999), p. 26. Geake, Helen, ‘The Control of Burial Practice in middle Anglo-Saxon England’, in Carver, Martin, 2003/2005. Grierson, Philip and Mark Blackburn, Medieval European Coinage, with a Catalogue of the Coins in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, I: The Early Middle Ages (5th-10th Centuries), Cambridge: CUP, 1986. Hamilton, Kenneth, The Framework of Anglo-Saxon History, Cambridge: CUP, 1973. Hines, John (ed.), The Anglo-Saxons from the Migration Period to the Eighth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective, Woodbridge, Boydell, 1997. PRE-CHRISTIAN TRACES IN THE LAWS OF KING ÆTHELBERT? 189 Hodges, Richard, The Anglo-Saxon Achievement, London: Duckworth, 1989. Hofstra, Telle, Luuk Houwen and Alasdair MacDonald (eds), Pagans and Christians, Germania Latina 2, Groningen: Forsten, 1995. Holleyman, George, ‘Harrow Hill Excavations, 1936’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 78 (1937), 230-51. John, Eric, Reassessing Anglo-Saxon England, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. Jones, Charles, Bedae opera de temporibus, Medieval Academy of America Publications 41, Cambridge, MA, 1943, pp. 1-28. Karkov, Catherine (ed.), The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England: Basic Readings, New York: Garland, 1999. Lendinara, Patrizia, ‘The Kentish Laws’, in Hines, John (ed.), 1997. Liebermann, Felix, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, Halle, Niemeyer, 1897-1916. Meaney, Audrey, ‘Woden in England: A Reconsideration of the Evidence’, Folklore 77 (1966), 105-15. Meaney, Audrey, ‘Pagan English Sanctuaries, Place-Names and Hundred Meeting Places’, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History, 8, 1995, 29-42. Morris, John (ed. and trans.), Nennius, British History and the Welsh Annals, London and Chichester: Phillimore, 1980. Oliver, Lisi, The Language of the Early English Laws, ph.d. thesis presented to Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1995. Oliver, Lisi, The Beginnings of English Law, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2002. Page, Raymond, ‘Anglo-Saxon Paganism: The Evidence of Bede’, in Hofstra, Telle et al. (eds), 1995, pp. 99-129. Richardson, Henry and George Osborne Sayles, Law and Legislation, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1966. Ryan, John, ‘Othin in England: Evidence from the Poetry for a Cult of Woden in Anglo- Saxon England’, Folklore, 74 (1963), 460-80. Stenton, Frank, ‘The Historical Bearing of Place-Name Studies: Anglo-Saxon Heathenism’, The Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th series, xxiii (1941), pp. 1ff., repr. Stenton, Doris (ed.), Preparatory to Anglo-Saxon England, Oxford, Clarendon, pp. 281-97. Stenton, Doris (ed.), Preparatory to Anglo-Saxon England, Oxford, Clarendon, 1970. Sutherland, Carol Humphrey Vivian, Anglo-Saxon Gold Coinage in the light of the Crondall hoard, Oxford, Clarendon, 1948. Tacitus, Cornelius, Opera Minora, ed. Furneaux, Henry, Oxford, Clarendon, 1899. Thompson, Hamilton, (ed.), Bede: His Life, Times and Writings, Oxford: Clarendon, 1935. Wallace-Hadrill, Michael, Early Germanic Kingship in England and on the Continent, Oxford: Clarendon, 1971. Wormald, Patrick, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, Vol. I: Legislation and its Limits, Oxford: Blackwell, 1999. endnotes 1 Particularly worthy of examination in this context are the continental sources, which in comparison to the Scandinavian material have not received so much attention. Though he is rather more guarded regarding the potential benefits of comparative study, a useful starting point is the discussion of Eric John, Reassessing Anglo-Saxon England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), p. 22. 2 Audrey Meaney, ‘Woden in England: a Reconsideration of the Evidence’, Folklore 77 (1966), pp. 105-15, intended largely as a rebuttal of the incautious John Ryan, ‘Othin in England: Evidence from the Poetry for a Cult of Woden in Anglo-Saxon England’, Folklore 74 (1963), pp. 460-80. DOMINIC GIBBS 190 3 Michael Carver, Alex Samnark and Sarah Semple (eds), Signals of Belief in Early England (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2010), passim, and Sarah Semple, ‘Converting Ritual Landscape: Perspectives from Anglo-Saxon England’, unpubl. paper presented to the conference Conversion to Christianity in the Insular World, University of Cambridge, September 2011. 4 See Tania Dickenson, ‘An Anglo-Saxon “cunning woman” from Bidford-on-Avon’, in Michael Carver (ed.), In Search of Cult: Archaeological Investigations in honour of Philip Rahtz (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1992), pp. 45-54, repr. with a revised introduction in Catherine Karkov (ed.), The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England: Basic Readings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1999), pp. 359-73, and Helen Geake, ‘The Control of Burial Practice in middle Anglo-Saxon England’, in Michael Carver (ed.) The Cross Goes North (York: York Medieval Press, 2003; repr. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005), pp. 259-270. 5 Or perhaps one should more accurately say proto-literate. Aside from the evidence of pre- Christian runes from sixth-century Kent on both metalwork and pottery – see, for example, John Hines, ‘The writing of English in Kent: contexts and influences from the 6th to 9th centuries’, Nowele 50-1 (2007), pp. 63-92 – it must be supposed that Bishop Liudhard and his entourage, and possibly even Bertha too, were well able to read and write in the Latin alphabet. Even at the relatively sophisticated court of King Æthelberht, however, there is no evidence for literacy in the Latin alphabet having permeated any more deeply into Kentish society prior to the arrival of the Augustinian mission. For some novel and powerful arguments recently presented by the late Nicholas Brooks concerning literacy in the Runic alphabet, see note 33 below. 6 Raymond Page, ‘Anglo-Saxon Paganism: The Evidence of Bede’, in Telle Hofstra, Luuk Houwen and Alasdair MacDonald (eds), Pagans and Christians, Germania Latina 2 (Groningen, 1995), pp. 99-129, especially pp. 124-27. 7 ‘…uidelicet quia fana idolorum destrui in eadem gente maxime debeant, sed ipsa quae in eis sunt idola destruantur, aqua benedicta fiat, in eiusdem fanis aspergatur, alteria construantur, reliquiae ponantur. Quia, si fana eadem bene constructa sunt, necesse est ut a cultu daemonum in obsequio veri Dei debeant commutari….’. Colgrave and Mynors (eds), H.E. i. 30, pp. 106/107. 8 ‘…boues solent in sacrificio daemonum multos occidere ...’. Colgrave and Mynors (eds), H.E. i. 30, pp. 106 and 108/107 and 109. 9 Audrey Meaney, ‘Pagan English Sanctuaries, Place-Names and Hundred Meeting Places’, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 8, 1995, pp. 29-42, particularly at p. 31. 10 George Holleyman, ‘Harrow Hill Excavations, 1936’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 78 (1937), 230-51. 11 ‘…aras et fana idolorum cum septis quibus erant circumdata’, Colgrave and Mynors (eds), H.E. ii. 13, pp. 184/185. 12 Ibid. 13 J. Blair, ‘Anglo-Saxon Pagan Shrines and their Prototypes’, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History, 8, 1995, pp. 1-28. 14 Charles Jones (ed.), Bedae opera de temporibus, Medieval Academy of America Publications 41 (Cambridge, MA, 1943), pp. 211-3. 15 Kenneth Harrison, The Framework of Anglo-Saxon History (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 3-5. 16 On itineration, see Thomas Charles-Edwards, ‘Early Medieval Kingships in the British Isles’, in Steven Bassett (ed.), The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (Leicester, 1989), pp. 28-39. 17 Such as those excavated by Andrew Reynolds at Saltwood, Kent, described inter alia in his ‘Landscapes of Governance in Anglo-Saxon England’, unpubl. lecture given at University College, London, December 2011. 18 James Campbell, ‘Some Considerations on Religion in Early Anglo-Saxon England’, in Martin Henig and Tyler Jo Smith (eds), Collectanea Antiqua, Essays in Memory of Sonia Chadwick Hawkes, BAR International Series 1673 (2007), pp. 67-73. 19 ‘Navigantibus quoque eis de Gallia Britannicum mare cum beatae memoriae Wilfritho episcopo ….Flante namque vento euroaustro dure, albescentia undarum culmina in regionem Australium Saxonum, quam non noverant, proiecerunt eos….Gentiles autem cum ingenti exercitu venientes, navem arripere, praedam sibi pecuniae dividere, captivos subiugatos deducere resistentesque gladio occidere incunctanter proposuerunt…. Stans quoque princeps sacerdotum idolatriae coram paganis in tumulo excelso, sicut Balaam, maledicere populum Dei et suis magicis artibus manus eorum PRE-CHRISTIAN TRACES IN THE LAWS OF KING ÆTHELBERT? 191 alligare nitebatur’. Bertram Colgrave (ed. and trans.), The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus (Cambridge, 1927), pp. 26, 27-9. The Life is considered to have been written within a decade or so of the saint’s death in 709. 20 Bertram Colgrave, ‘Bede’s Miracle Stories’, in Hamilton Thompson (ed.), Bede: His Life, Times and Writings (Oxford, 1935), pp. 200-229. 21 ‘erant enim cxx viri in numero Mosaicae aetatis’, note 18, ante, pp. 28 and 29. 22 James Campbell, ‘Elements in the Background to the Life of St. Cuthbert and his Early Cult’, in Gerald Bonner, David Rollason and Clare Stancliffe (eds), St. Cuthbert: His Cult and Community to AD 1200 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer), pp. 3-19, repr. in James Campbell, The Anglo-Saxon State (London: Hambledon, 2000), pp. 85-106 at p. 104. 23 Historia Ecclesiastica, ii, 5. 24 ‘...ipse victor fuit per diabolicam artem’, John Morris (ed. and trans.), Nennius, British History and the Welsh Annals (London and Chichester: Phillimore, 1980), pp. 80 and 39. 25 ‘...effigiesque et signa quaedam detracta huis in proelium ferunt...: Cornelius Tacitus, Opera Minora, ed. Henry Furneaux (Oxford, 1899), Germania, ch. 7. 26 Frank Stenton, ‘The Historical Bearing of Place-Name Studies: Anglo-Saxon Heathenism’, The Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th series, xxiii (1941), pp. 1ff., repr. Doris Stenton (ed.), Preparatory to Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1970), pp. 281-97. 27 Gordon Ward, ‘The River Limen at Ruckinge’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 45 (1933), 123-32. 28 E.g. in the Domesday Monachorum, Canterbury D&C MS. E.28, fo. 1r. 29 See Hilda Ellis Davidson and Leslie Webster, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Burial at Coombe (Woodnesborough), Kent’, Medieval Archaeology, 11 (1967), pp. 1-41 at pp. 6-8. 30 Oswald Cockayne (ed.), Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England, iii, London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts and Green, 1864, pp. 422-8. 31 Blair, ‘Anglo-Saxon Pagan Shrines’. 32 University of Toronto Press, 2002. 33 Nicholas Brooks, ‘The Laws of the kings of Kent reconsidered’, unpubl. paper (forthcoming as ‘The Laws of King Æthelberht of Kent: Preservation, Content and Composition’, in Bambi, Barbara and Bruce O’Brien, Textus Roffensis: Law, Language and Libraries in Early Medieval England (Brepols, in press)) presented to The Textus Roffensis Conference, University of Kent, July 2010. 34 Halle: Niemeyer, 1897-1916. 35 Liebermann treats them as a single clause, but the manuscript o ffers no support for this. 36 Most emphatically, Richardson and Sayles, Law and Legislation (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1966), p. 2. 37 Oliver, Beginnings, p. 45. 38 Such was, for example, the view of the late Patrick Wormald: see his The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, Vol. 1: Legislation and its Limits (Oxford, 1999), p. 95. 39 Brooks, ‘The Laws of the Kings of Kent reconsidered’. 40 ‘Hloþhære 7 Eadric, Cantwara cyningas, ecton þa æ þa ðe heora aldoras ær geworhton ðyssum domum, þe hyr efter sægeþ’: Oliver, Beginnings, p. 127. 41 ‘Ðam mildestan cyninge Cantwara Wihtrede, rixgendum þe fiftan wintra his rices, þy niguðan gebanne, sextan dæge Rugernes, in þaere stowe þy hatte Berghamstyde, ðær wæs gesamnad eadrige ge[þ]eahtendlic ymcyme: [….] Ðær ða eadigan fundon mid ealra gemedum ðas domas 7 Cantwara rihtum þeawum æcton, swa hit hyr efter segeþ 7 cwyþ’: Oliver, Beginnings, p. 153. Rugern means ‘rye-harvest’, and was probably in September. 42 ‘Qui inter cetera bona quae genti suae consulendo conferebat, etiam decreta illi iudiciorum iuxta exempla Romanorum cum consilio sapientium constituit; quae conscripta Anglorum sermone hactenus habentur et obseruantur ab ea’. Bede, H.E. ii. 5, Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 150-151. 43 ‘In quibus primitus posuit, qualiter id emendare deberet, qui aliquid rerum uel ecclesiae uel episcopi uel reliquorum ordinum furto auferret, uolens scilicet tuitionem eis, quos et quorum doctrinam susceperat, praestare’. Bede, H.E. ii. 5, Colgrave and Mynors, pp.150-151. 44 Michael Wallace-Hadrill, in the Ford Lectures for 1970, published as Early Germanic Kingship in England and on the Continent (Oxford, 1971), p. 40. DOMINIC GIBBS 192 45 ‘III: Interrogatio Augustini: Obsecro, quid pati debeat, siquis aliquid de ecclesia furtu abstulit. Respondit Gregorius: Hoc tua fraternitas ex persona furis pensare potest, qualiter ualeat corrigi. Sunt enim quidam, qui habenter subsidia furtum perpetrant, et sunt alii, qui hac in re inopia delinquent; unde necesse est, ut quidam damnis, quiddam uero uerberibus, et quidam districtius, quidam autem lenius corrigantur … Addes etiam quomodo ea, quae furtu de ecclesiis abstulerint reddere debeant. Sed asit ut ecclesia cum augment recipiat quod de terrenis rebus uideatur amittere, et lucre de uanis quaerere’. Bede, H.E. i. 27, Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 82-83. 46 Humphrey Sutherland, Anglo-Saxon Gold Coinage in the light of the Crondall hoard (Oxford, 1948). 47 Richardson and Sayles, Law and Legislation, p. 9. 48 Ibid., p. 3. 49 As described by David Dumville, discussing Patrizia Lendinara, ‘The Kentish Laws’, in John Hines (ed.), The Anglo-Saxons from the Migration Period to the Eighth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective (Studies in Historical Archaeoethnology 2, Boydell, 1997), pp. 211-68 at 231. 50 Sutherland is followed by Richard Hodges, The Anglo-Saxon Achievement (London: Duckworth, 1989), p. 92, who asserts that ‘money had a real circulation in Kent as early as the time of Æthelberht’. Other scholars put the position more cautiously, observing that it is not clear whether these continental coins, even if used in trade, functioned as money at such an early date. Much of the archaeological evidence for the circulation of continental coinage in sixth-century Kent is accompanied, particularly in Kentish graves, by balances, consistent with the coins being traded according to their bullion, rather than their monetary, value. See, for example, P. Grierson and M. Blackburn, Medieval European Coinage, with a Catalogue of the Coins in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, I: The Early Middle Ages (5th-10th Centuries) (CUP, 1986), which doubts the existence of a circulating currency at quite such an early date. 51 Ante, note 48. 52 These contended-for Anglian influences are both phonological and lexical: see Lisi Oliver, The Language of the Early English Laws, ph.d thesis presented to Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, 1995), and Lendinara, ‘The Kentish Laws’, ante, note 48. 53 Oliver, Beginnings of English Law, p. 48. 54 Wallace-Hadrill, Early Germanic Kingship, p. 41. 55 Brooks, ‘The laws of the Kings of Kent reconsidered’. 56 Richard Gameson, ‘Context and Achievement’, in Richard Gameson (ed.), St. Augustine and the Conversion of England (Sutton, 1999), p. 26. 57 Oliver, Beginnings of English Law, p. 84, has diligently found possible exemplars in both the Laws of Justinian and the writings of Isidore of Seville.