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The Old English Life of St Neot and the legends of King Alfred

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abstractThe Old English Life of St Neot has been generally dated to the twelfth century and dismissed as a late and derivative work. The article argues that it was written much earlier, in the fi rst few decades of the eleventh century, and is both a signifi cant example of late Old English hagiographic literature and an important witness to early legends about King Alfred and his posthumous reputation.

The Old English Life of St Neot is important for many reasons. It is one of the small number of surviving legends of saints in Old English prose that are not by Ælfric, and one of only three in that group which deal with English saints.1 It is one of very few examples of Old English literary composition in the period immediately following Ælfric and Wulfstan in the eleventh century, and provides important though hitherto unnoticed evidence for the infl uence of Ælfric on subsequent authors. It has much material on St Neot that is oth-erwise unrecorded and, unlike nearly all the other saints’ lives, appears not to be a translation of a known Latin source. It is the earliest refl ection in English literature of the cultural relations between Anglo- Saxon England and Celtic Cornwall, and relates to a key period in the history of those two regions. Not least, it is much the fullest Old English witness to the posthumous reputation of King Alfred, and one with a strikingly negative view of the king, as well as being one of the earliest witnesses (perhaps the earliest) to the story of Alfred and the cakes. It is thus both an important representative of vernacular litera-ture in late Anglo- Saxon England and a striking record of the way in which Alfred was viewed in that period. Despite all this, it is little read and seldom discussed, and the last published edition was printed nearly a century ago, with no annotation or introduction.2

1 Of approximately sixty- eight surviving saints’ lives in Old English prose, about fi fty are by Ælfric. The other two anonymous lives of English saints are those of Chad and Guthlac. Jane Roberts’s survey of anonymous Old English lives of English saints (‘The English Saints Remembered in Old English Anonymous Homilies’, Old English Prose: Basic Readings, ed. P. E. Szarmach (New York and London, 2000), pp. 433–62) also lists pieces on Mildred, Seaxburh, Paulinus and Augustine of Canterbury but these are all very short notices rather than full lives.

2 Early English Homilies from the Twelfth Century MS Vesp. D. xiv, ed. R. D. N. Warner, EETS os 152 (London, 1917 for 1915), 129–34. There is also an unpublished edition by M. P. Richards,

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The lack of interest may be in part a hangover from the Victorian disparage-ment of the early lives of St Neot because of their negative picture of Alfred, in the work of patriotic historians such as Charles Plummer, who complained in his Ford lectures of 1901: ‘It is pitiable that modern writers should lend even half an ear to these wretched tales, which besmirch the fair fame of our hero king, in order to exalt a phantom saint.’3 But the modern neglect is prob-ably more because of the now dominant consensus that the Life is not an Old English work at all but an early Middle English one, composed in the twelfth century and so too late and too derivative to tell us about Anglo- Saxon litera-ture and history and at the same time too early to be seen as part of Middle English literature. Yet the case for that late date has never been presented in any substance: it is one of those conventions of modern scholarship that are almost universally accepted but need to be questioned. A variety of evidence, including language, relation to other texts, content and the treatment of Alfred and the vikings, coheres to suggest that the Life was composed early in the eleventh century, a good century earlier than the now accepted date, and has much to tell us about the literary and cultural history of that period. That is not to say, of course, that its view of King Alfred is any the more likely to be sound evidence for the historical king, though it does have much to say about his early reputation.

the date and origin of the old english life

Neot was originally a Cornish saint, it seems, probably living in the ninth century, in the last period of Cornish independence, but like Cornwall itself he was steadily taken over by the English.4 The earliest reference to him appears to be the curious story in Asser’s Life of Alfred, supposedly written in 893, which reports that in his youth Alfred visited a church in Cornwall while on a hunting trip and was miraculously healed there, and identifi es the church as the one ‘where St Gueriir rests, and now St Neot lies there too’.5 The phras-ing presumably implies that (the otherwise unknown) St Guerir was buried there at the time of Alfred’s supposed visit in the 860s, but that Neot had

‘An Edition and Translation of the Old English of Seinte Neote’ (unpubl. PhD dissertation, Wisconsin Univ., 1971).

3 C. Plummer, The Life and Times of King Alfred the Great (Oxford, 1902), p. 58. 4 For Neot’s Cornish origins, see N. Orme, The Saints of Cornwall (Oxford, 2000), pp. 200–3.

For the gradual (and apparently largely peaceful) appropriation of Cornwall by West Saxon kings in the ninth and tenth centuries, see esp. C. Insley, ‘Athelstan, Charters and the English in Cornwall’, Charters and Charter Scholarship in Britain and Ireland, ed. M. T. Flanagan and J. A. Green (Basingstoke, 2005), pp. 15–31.

5 Asser’s Life of King Alfred, together with the Annals of Saint Neots erroneously Ascribed to Asser, ed. W. H. Stevenson (Oxford, 1904), reissued with an introduction by Dorothy Whitelock (Oxford, 1959), ch. 74.

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died and been buried there since, or possibly that his body had been moved there from another site. If the reference is original,6 it indicates that there was already some kind of cult of St Neot by 893, centred on a Cornish church which in anecdote at least had a connection with King Alfred, and that Neot was thought to have lived in Alfred’s time, or earlier.7 At some time in the fol-lowing century or so, however, the story of Neot was recycled to present him as an English saint from Glastonbury who had moved to Cornwall in search of solitude in the wilderness. Then around 1000 it was claimed that his body had been stolen from the Cornish church where he had been buried and taken to the monastery of Eynesbury in eastern England, near Cambridge, which became the new centre of his cult and the new St Neots. Shortly afterwards his bones were supposedly transferred again to Crowland in the East Anglian fens, which also claimed him as its saint. In the process, he became a kinsman of King Alfred, in some versions his brother, and his main claim to fame became his key role in the restoration of Wessex after the viking invasion.

The Old English text runs to just two hundred lines in the standard edition. It is cast as a sermon on the saint’s festival, with a peroration on the end of the world, but the body of the text is concerned with Neot himself and King Alfred. It describes Neot’s ascetic and devout life as a youth and then as a priest at Glastonbury, his ordination by St Ælfheah, his seven visits to Rome and his subsequent move to a more isolated life in Cornwall where he is visited by angels and his dropped sandal is miraculously saved from a fox. There too he is visited by King Alfred and Neot rebukes him for his wickedness and fore-tells that he will be expelled from his kingdom, but promises that if he thinks of Neot in the depths of his misery the saint will help him. Neot then dies and is buried with honour in Cornwall. His prediction is soon fulfi lled. The Danes under Guthrum threaten invasion, Alfred fl ees in fear and hides in Athelney where he takes refuge unrecognized with a swineherd, whose wife rebukes him for his gluttony and makes him tend her cakes. But St Neot then appears to him and promises to restore his army and defeat his enemies. This duly comes to pass: Guthrum comes to Alfred seeking baptism and departs the country, Alfred is restored and becomes famous for his learning. The text ends with

6 Stevenson (Asser’s Life, p. 297) thought it an early (pre- 1000) interpolation; Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge (Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and other Contemporary Sources (Harmondsworth, 1983), p. 254), thought it ‘not impossible’ that it was original, but Lapidge in The Annals of St Neots with Vita Prima Sancti Neoti (ed. D. Dumville and M. Lapidge, The AS Chronicle: a Collaborative Edition, ed. D. Dumville and S. Keynes 17 (Cambridge, 1985), lxxxvi) argued that it was original; Alfred Smyth (King Alfred the Great (Oxford, 1995), p. 210) thought it original but viewed the Life itself as the work of Byrhtferth c. 1000.

7 Orme (The Saints of Cornwall) suggests that Neot may have been a priest in attendance at the church at the time of Alfred’s visit.

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a lament for the good times of the past and the tribulations and sins of the present, as the world’s end approaches.

The Life survives only in a manuscript of the mid- twelfth century, London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian D. xiv, ff . 4–169, produced at Rochester or Canterbury.8 But most of the contents of this manuscript are clearly of pre- Conquest origin: thirty- four of the fi fty- three items are the work of Ælfric, and two others are Old English works known from earlier copies. Of the remaining seventeen, only two can be positively dated to the twelfth century: a sermon on the Virgin Mary translated from one by Ralph d’Escures, bishop of Rochester 1108–14 and archbishop of Canterbury 1114–21; and a brief moral treatise translated from a section of the Elucidarium of Honorius Augustodunensis, itself written probably around 1100 when Honorius was in the circle of Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury.9 Most of the items by Ælfric in this manuscript appear to be derived from much earlier copies made in Canterbury and Rochester.10 On the face of it, then, the manuscript con-tains a compilation of mainly pre- Conquest works available in Canterbury or Rochester libraries supplemented with a few post- Conquest items from the same locality.

Early commentators suggested that the Old English Life of Neot was written by Ælfric, largely on the grounds that most of the other items in the manu-script were by him and he was a noted writer of vernacular saints’ lives.11 But Plummer in 1902 and Stevenson in 1904 dismissed this notion on the grounds that Ælfric would not have made the anachronistic reference to St Ælfheah as Neot’s mentor,12 and Stevenson argued that in any case the Life must have been written much later, since ‘it is diffi cult to believe that an English author of the eleventh century could ascribe tyrannical conduct to King Alfred’.13 Plummer too preferred a late date, in the late eleventh or early twelfth century.

8 For the origin and provenance, see M. P. Richards, ‘On the Date and Provenance of MS Cotton Vespasian D. xiv ff . 4–169’, Manuscripta 17 (1973), 31–5; R. Handley, ‘British Museum MS Cotton Vespasian D. xiv’, N&Q 21 (1974), 243–50; E. M. Treharne, ‘The Date and Origins of Three Twelfth- Century Old English Manuscripts’, Anglo- Saxon Manuscripts and Their Heritage, ed. P. Pulsiano and E. M. Treharne (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 227–53. The second part of the manuscript is an entirely unrelated ninth- century volume.

9 For the view that Honorius’s cognomen does not mean ‘of Autun’ and that he was prob-ably German, see V. I. J. Flint, ‘Honorius Augustodunensis (d. c. 1140)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004), [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/53485].

10 See Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: the Second Series, Text, ed. M. R. Godden, EETS ss 5 (Oxford, 1979), xl–xli, lx–lxii.

11 S. Turner, The History of the Anglo- Saxons, 3rd ed., 3 vols. (London 1820) II, 60; R. Wülcker, ‘Ein angelsächsischen Leben des Neot’, Anglia 3 (1880), 102–14, at 104.

12 Plummer, Life and Times, p. 55; Asser’s Life, ed. Stevenson, pp. 258–9.13 Asser’s Life, ed. Stevenson, p. 260.


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Mary Richards writing in 1981 argued for an earlier date, around the middle of the eleventh century,14 but her views have not found favour and a long list of scholars have cited it as a twelfth- century composition, though in most cases without giving reasons.15

Relations with other Old English Texts

Whenever the author wrote, he was remarkably familiar with Old English homiletic and hagiographic writing. Dorothy Whitelock noted the close paral-lel between the Life’s apocalyptic conclusion and the sermons of Wulfstan, and Richards added some striking parallels with the Old English Bede and a Blickling homily.16 The conclusion announcing the coming end of the world is packed with characteristic phrases from Wulfstan’s apocalyptic sermons on the same theme. Compare for instance the Life’s ‘þy hit is þe wyrse wide on eorðe, and beo þan we mugen understanden, þæt hit is neh domesdæge’17 with Wulfstan’s ‘Ac þy hit is þe wyrse wide on earde þe man oft herede þæt man scolde hyrwan’.18 Or again compare ‘Ne spareð nu se fæder þan sune, ne nan mann oðren, ac ælc man winð ongean oðren, and Godes lage ne gemeð, swa swa me scolde’19 with the following from Wulfstan’s Sermo ad Anglos: ‘Ne bearh nu foroft gesib gesibban þe ma þe fremdan, ne fæder his suna, ne hwilum

14 ‘The Medieval Hagiography of St. Neot’, AB 99 (1981), 259–78, at 263.15 Lapidge (citing E. G. Stanley in support), Annals, ed. Dumville and Lapidge, p. cxvi; P.

Clemoes in Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: the First Series, Text, ed. P. Clemoes, EETS ss 17 (Oxford, 1997), 17; D. G. Scragg, ‘The Corpus of Anonymous Lives and their Manuscript Contexts’, Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints’ Lives and their Contexts, ed. P. Szarmach (Albany, 1996), pp. 209–30, at p. 219; Roberts, ‘The English Saints Remembered’, p. 447; J. Proud, ‘Old English Prose Saints’ Lives in the Twelfth Century: the Evidence of the Extant Manuscripts’, Rewriting Old English in the Twelfth Century, ed. M. Swan and E. M. Treharne (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 117–31, at p. 128; Old English Homilies from MS Bodley 343, ed. S. Irvine, EETS os 302 (Oxford, 1993), liii, n. 1; Smyth, King Alfred the Great, p. 327. In an earler article (‘Vernacular Homilies and Prose Saints’ Lives before Ælfric’, ASE 8 (1979), 223–77, at 261) Scragg had listed Neot among pieces that ‘may belong to the pre- Ælfrician tradition’ though that is scarcely possible given the infl uences of Ælfric and Wulfstan noted below. Keynes and Lapidge (Alfred the Great) suggested the late eleventh century or early twelfth, and Elaine Treharne (in ‘Periodization and Categorization: the Silence of (the) English in the Twelfth Century’, New Medieval Literatures 8, ed. R. Copeland, W. Scase and D. Wallace (Brepols, 2007), 248–75, at 265) suggested a date after 1080.

16 Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, ed. D. Whitelock (London, 1939), p. 18, rephrased with more certainty in the third edition (London, 1963); Richards, ‘An Edition’, p. 76.

17 Early English Homilies, ed. Warner, p. 133, lines 32–3, ‘and so things are the worse widely on earth, and from that we can perceive that it is near doomsday’.

18 The Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. D. Bethurum (Oxford, 1957), XXI, lines 14–16, ‘and so things are the worse widely in the land, so that what should be scorned is often praised’.

19 Early English Homilies, ed. Warner, p. 133, lines 34–6, ‘the father does not spare the son, nor anyone another, but everyone strives against others and cares nothing for God’s law, as one ought to do’.

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bearn his agenum fæder, ne broðer oðrum’, and ‘mycel is neodþearf manna gehwylcum þæt he Godes lage gyme’, together with ‘Ne man God ne lufað swa swa man scolde’ from another homily.20 Or this from slightly earlier in the conclusion to the Life: ‘and se þincð nu wærrest and geapest, þe oðerne mæig beswican and his æhte him of anymen’,21 with this from another later sermon by Wulfstan: ‘Ac nu þincð þe wærra and mycele þe snotera se ðe can mid leasungan wæwerdlice werian and mid unsoðe soð oferswiðan.’22

There are echoes too of other Old English homilies in this conclusion. Its ‘Nu is æighwanen heof and wop’ echoes the Blickling homily’s ‘nu is ægh-wonon hream and wop, nu is heaf æghwonon’.23 The reference to the decline of crops, ‘and wæstmes, æigðer gea on wude gea on felde, ne synd swa gode, swa heo iu wæron, ac yfeleð swyðe eall eorðe wæstme’, closely matches the similar passage in the anonymous Sunday letter homily Napier 44: ‘ealle þas eorþlice þing seon ancerrede for manna ungeleaff ulnysse, þæt hio ne sion swa gode, swa hio iu wæron’.24

What has not been noted before is the parallels with the writings of Ælfric, which suggest an author steeped in his works.25 Thus the Life begins with these words: ‘Mæn þa leofeste, we wylleð eow cyðen beo sumen dæle emb þyssen halgen, þe we todæig wurðigeð, þæt eower geleafe þe trumre seo; for þan mancynn behofeð godcundre lare, þæt heo þurh þa mugen to lifes wege becumen.’26 The italicized words combine the opening of Ælfric’s sermon on the Forty Soldiers: ‘We wyllað eow gereccan þæra feowertigra cempena ðrowunge, þæt eower geleafa

20 Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. Bethurum, XX (BH), lines 56–8, 20–1, ‘kinsman has not protected kinsman any more than a stranger, nor father his son, nor at times a child his own father, nor brother his brother’, ‘there is great need for everyone to care for God’s law’; ibid. V, line 29, ‘no one loves God as one ought to’.

21 Early English Homilies, ed. Warner, p. 133, lines 30–2, ‘and he now seems most wary and clever who can deceive another and take his property from him’.

22 Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. Bethurum, XXI, lines 23–5, ‘but he now seems more wary and much the wiser who can most confi dently protect himself with lies and defeat truth with untruth’.

23 Early English Homilies, ed. Warner, p. 133, lines 26–7, ‘now everywhere there is lamentation and weeping’; The Blickling Homilies, ed. R. Morris, EETS os 58, 63, 73 (Oxford, 1874–80, repr. 1967), X, p. 115, lines 15–16, ‘now there is everywhere crying and weeping, there is lamenta-tion everywhere’. (Noted Richards, ‘An Edition’, p. 78.)

24 Early English Homilies, ed. Warner, p. 133, lines 27–9, ‘and crops, both in woods and fi elds, are not as good as they were of old, but all the crops of the earth are becoming much worse’; Wulfstan: Sammlung der ihm zugeschriebenen Homilien nebst Untersuchungen über ihre Echtheit, ed. A. S. Napier (Berlin, 1883), XLIV, p. 220, lines 23–5, ‘all these earthly things are corrupted because of people’s faithlessness, so that they are not as good as they were of old’.

25 Richards (‘Medieval Hagiography’, p. 263) noted a general debt to Ælfric’s saints’ lives but not any verbal correspondences.

26 Early English Homilies, ed. Warner, p. 129, lines 4–7, ‘Beloved people, I want to tell you some-thing about this saint whom we honour today, so that your faith may be the stronger, for men need divine instruction so that they may come through that to the way of life.’


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þe trumre sy þonne ge gehyrað hu þegenlice hi þrowodon for Criste’27 with these words from his preface to the fi rst series of Catholic Homilies: ‘for ðam ðe menn behofi að godre lare’.28

Its account of Neot praying at the moment of death uses an expression that is common in Ælfric’s saints’ lives but not found elsewhere in Old English; compare:

and þa on þan ytemesten dæige his handbreden up to heofone astrehte29

with Ælfric on St Cuthbert:

astrehtum handbredum to heofenlicum rodore;

or on St Benedict:

and his handbredu astrehte wið heofonas weard;

or again on St Oswald:

and swa hwær swa he wæs he wurðode æfre God up awendum handbredum wiþ þæs heofones weard.30

One might note too that the word handbrede in the sense ‘palm of the hand’ is rare in general in Old English and is not recorded again in that sense after the eleventh century. Again, the account of Neot’s resistance to the devil’s invis-ible arrows of temptation: ‘þa ongann se ungeseowenlice feond him togeanes andigen, swa him ælc god ofðincð. Ongann þa sænden his ættrige wæpnen, þæt synd costnungen, togeanes þan halgen were. Ac he þone feond oferswað mid rihten geleafen þurh Godes gescyldnysse’31 is similar to Ælfric’s account of Cuthbert’s resistance: ‘se ðe ær foroft. ða ættrigan fl an. deofl icere costnunge. on him sylfum adwæscte. þurh gescyldnysse. soðes drihtnes’.32 We may note too the account of the departure of Guthrum:

27 Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, ed. W. W. Skeat, EETS os 76, 82, 94, 114 (London, 1881–1900, repr. as two volumes 1966), XI, lines 1–2, ‘I want to tell you about the passion of the forty soldiers, so that your faith may be stronger when you hear how bravely they suff ered for Christ.’

28 CH I, ed. Clemoes, Praefatio, lines 57–8, ‘because men need good instruction’.29 Early English Homilies, ed. Warner, p. 132, lines 4–5, ‘and then on the last day he stretched his

palms up towards heaven’.30 CH II, ed. Godden, X, line 81, ‘with his palms stretched towards the heavenly fi rmament’;

ibid. XI, lines 479–80, ‘and stretched his palms towards heaven’; Ælfric’s Lives, ed. Skeat, XXVI, lines 117–18, ‘and wherever he was he always honoured God with his palms turned up towards heaven’.

31 Early English Homilies, ed. Warner, p. 130, lines 17–21, ‘then the invisible foe began to be hostile to him, as all good off ends him. He began then to send his poisoned weapons, which are trials, against the holy man. But he overcame the foe with true faith through God’s protection.’

32 CH II, ed. Godden, X, lines 129–31, ‘who very often extinguished the poisoned arrows of diabolic trial in himself through the protection of the true Lord’.

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‘and syððen gesund gewende mid his herelafe to his agenen earde mid ealre sibbe’.33

The phrase ‘mid ealre sibbe’ otherwise occurs only in Ælfric’s homily on SS Simon and Jude – ‘and mid ealre sibbe eow underðeodan’34 – and there too forms an alliterative unit in Ælfric’s characteristic fashion, as it does here. The word herelaf ‘remnant of an army’, referring here to the defeat of Guthrum’s viking force, occurs some thirteen times in Old English, ten of them in Ælfric’s work, mainly in alliterative contexts; the others are in The Battle of Brunanburh and a gloss to Aldhelm, suggesting it was not a normal prose word.35 It does not appear again in later English, unless the Life of St Neot is an instance. All of these passages in the Life are part of the narrative of Neot’s life rather than the homiletic opening and conclusion, but none has parallels in its presumed source, the Latin Vita I (to be discussed below). Again, the clause ‘and þærtoecan þæt ece lif’36 is one which the author could have found verbatim in at least two places in Ælfric37 and nowhere else in the extant corpus.

Like Ælfric too, the author picks up characteristic phrasing from Old English verse. His reference to the restored king, ‘and his word wide sprang’, echoes the verse half- lines ‘lof wide sprang’ (Fates of the Apostles) and ‘blæd wide sprang’ (Beowulf), but also parallels Ælfric’s alliterative line ‘swa þæt ure word sprang wide geond þas eorðan’ (Lives of Saints XIII).38

The parallel with the Old English Bede cited by Richards is in some ways more striking than any of these. When Neot appears, after his death, in a vision to King Alfred, in fl ight from his enemies and in the depths of despair, he asks him what he would give if someone would promise him relief: ‘Eala, þu king, hwæt wylt þu to mede gesyllen þan þe þe fram þyssen uneðnyssen alyseð?’39 This is remarkably reminiscent of the Old English Bede’s description of the words of a similar visionary fi gure to the future king Edwin, also in fl ight from his enemies and in similar depths of despair: ‘Ac gesaga me hwylce mede

33 Early English Homilies, ed. Warner, p. 133, lines 16–17, ‘and afterwards returned unharmed with the remainder of his army to his own land, in complete peace’.

34 CH II, ed. Godden, XXXIII, lines 32–3, ‘and [will] receive you in complete peace’.35 The fi gures are taken from The Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, ed. A. diPaolo Healey

(Toronto, 2009) (http://www.doe.utoronto.ca/pub/webcorpus.html). 36 Early English Homilies, ed. Warner, p. 130, line 28; ‘and in addition the eternal life’.37 CH I, ed. Clemoes, IV, line 61; ibid., XXII, lines 195–6.38 Early English Homilies, ed. Warner, p. 133, line 18; Fates of the Apostles 6, in The Vercelli Book, ed.

G. P. Krapp, ASPR 2; Beowulf 18 (Klaeber’s Beowulf, ed. R. D. Fulk, R. E. Bjork and J. D. Niles (Toronto, 2008)); Ælfric’s Lives, ed. Skeat, XIII, line 151.

39 Early English Homilies, ed. Warner, p. 133, lines 3–4, ‘O king, what will you give as a reward to one who releases you from these hardships?’


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þu wille syllan þam men, gif hwylc sy, þætte þec from þissum nearonessum alyse.’40

Some of these parallels may be coincidental, but overall this looks like the work of someone not copying from Old English sources but thoroughly imbued with their language, style and modes of expression and using his famili-arity with them and their techniques to write up the story of St Neot in similar fashion. Knowledge of Ælfric’s work would not be surprising in a twelfth- century author, given the number of manuscripts from that period which include his work, and there is some evidence for a knowledge of Wulfstan’s work in that period, though much less.41 A copy of the Old English version of Bede was glossed by the tremulous scribe of Worcester at the end of the centu-ry.42 But although there is evidence of such Old English texts being excerpted or expanded or occasionally recast in the twelfth century and even into the thirteenth (or at least there are examples of such adaptations which fi rst appear in late manuscripts), the kind of wholesale recomposition using phrases and expressions drawn from Ælfric and Wulfstan and others that we see in the Life of Neot, showing remarkable familiarity with a range of Old English texts, and confi dence in imitating their language and style, is without parallel in the twelfth century, though there are many examples from the eleventh, if mostly less impressive and original than the Neot Life. Similarly, the closing warning about the nearness of doomsday could in principle belong to a later period, but it is decidedly more characteristic of the decades surrounding the year 1000, as in the writings of Wulfstan.

Language

One reason for dating the Life in the twelfth century appears to be the lan-guage, which is cited by some commentators as a factor.43 Certainly the extant version shows the characteristic features of twelfth- century English in spelling

40 The Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. T. A. Miller, EETS os 95 and 96 (London, 1890–91), 128, lines 25–7, ‘but tell me what reward you will give the person, if such there be, who releases you from these privations’. Bede does not identify the visitant but the contemporary Whitby Life of Gregory the Great (The Earliest Life of Gregory the Great by an Anonymous Monk of Whitby, ed. B. Colgrave (Lawrence, KS, 1968), ch. 16), which gives a slightly diff erent form of the story, identifi es him as St Paulinus. Another version of the vision is mentioned in the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto (see below), where the visitant is identifi ed as St Peter.

41 See e.g. M. Swan, ‘Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies in the Twelfth Century’, and J. Wilcox, ‘Wulfstan and the Twelfth Century’, Rewriting Old English in the Twelfth Century, ed. Swan and Treharne, pp. 62–82 and 83–97.

42 See W. Collier, ‘The Tremulous Worcester Hand and Gregory’s Pastoral Care’, Rewriting Old English in the Twelfth Century, ed. Swan and Treharne, pp. 195–208.

43 See e.g. Lapidge, Annals, ed. Dumville and Lapidge, p. cxvi; Scragg, ‘The Corpus’, p. 219.

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and accidence, but that is equally true of the same manuscript’s copies of Ælfric’s writings, which are known to have been originally composed in the period 990–1010, and it tells us nothing of the date of composition. Nothing linguistically distinguishes the passages or phrases borrowed from Ælfric and Wulfstan from the ones apparently composed by the author. The one specifi c item cited by those in favour of a late date, the use of the indefi nite pronoun me, is a case in point: it is indeed characteristic of early Middle English, but since it appears in a twelfth- century copy of an Ælfric homily in another manu-script, for original Old English mon, it is clearly possible for it to have been introduced by scribes copying earlier work.44 The vocabulary and style, on the other hand, are thoroughly characteristic of Old English work. As far as I can discover there is not a single word in the text that was not current in tenth- century English or earlier, and one might expect a text composed in the twelfth century to betray some signs of the changes in lexis that are generally evident at that date. The sermon on the Virgin Mary in the same manuscript, for instance, reveals its twelfth- century origins almost immediately by its diction, with bestud-dede, not found in Old English but apparently derived from French or possibly Medieval Latin, in the opening lines.45 Moreover, some of the vocabulary in the Old English Life would have been distinctly obsolescent by the twelfth century, such as handbredu ‘palm’, herelaf ‘remnants of an army’, and æ ‘law’.46 Nor is there anything in the phrasing or syntax which might suggest a post- Conquest date, apart from changes which might equally be due to a scribe. One cannot rule out the possibility that the Life is a skilful imitation of pre- Conquest writing by a twelfth- century author capable of reproducing the language of an earlier century without stumbling; but the notion that the language actually points to twelfth- century composition has nothing to be said for it.

The Latin vitae

It was long thought that the Old English Life was based on some early lost and unrecorded Latin vita, and that this vita was also the source for the earliest Latin lives, which survive only in manuscripts of the twelfth century and later and were generally thought to have been written after the Conquest.47 But then

44 Scragg, ‘The Corpus’, p. 219; for the Ælfric example, see Old English Homilies, ed. Irvine, III, line 162 and note on p. 75. My colleague Dr Winfried Rudolf tells me that it is also found in the mid- eleventh century Canterbury manuscript, London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A. iii.

45 Early English Homilies, ed. Warner, p. 134, line 10. (For the etymology, see the entry under studien in the Middle English Dictionary at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/.)

46 For æ, see A. Fischer, ‘Lexical Change in Late Old English’, The History and the Dialects of English, ed. A. Fischer (Heidelberg, 1989), pp. 103–14.

47 Asser’s Life, ed. Stevenson, pp. 259–60; G. H. Doble, S. Neot: Patron of St. Neot, Cornwall, and St. Neot’s, Huntingdonshire (Exeter, 1929); Richards, ‘Medieval Hagiography’, p. 273.


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Keynes and Lapidge in their infl uential collection of 1983 proposed a diff er-ent theory, that the Old English Life, which they dated to the late eleventh or early twelfth century, was directly based on one of the surviving Latin lives (designated Vita I ), which they apparently dated early in the eleventh century.48 And in 1985 Lapidge developed that view, arguing that the Life was a twelfth- century work based on Vita I, which he thought was composed around 1050 by an author trained in England but not himself English.49 Vita I is much longer and more verbose than the Old English Life but does tell the same general story and there are a few points of moderately close agreement in detail. Yet on the whole they are very diff erent texts and there is much in the Old English Life that cannot derive from Vita I and nothing that would positively point to the use of the Vita as the primary source. The two passages cited by Lapidge, on the location of the hermitage in Cornwall and the burial of the saint, do agree in content but that does not preclude the earlier theory that both were drawing on an earlier lost Latin vita. If the Old English author did use Vita I, he has radically transformed the structure and content of the story in a way that is unusual with Old English saints’ legends, rearranging the events of his life in a diff erent order, omitting much and adding a great deal of new material. The Vita’s extensive detail on the monastic life of Neot and his relations with his fellow monks is entirely absent from the Old English Life, as is the whole long sequel on the translation of his body, while the Life includes the story of the fox and the sandal, many biblical quotations that are not in the Vita, and much other new detail. Particularly striking is the Life’s failure to mention that Neot was a kinsman of Alfred (specifi cally a brother in two of the manuscripts of the Vita); it seems a surprisingly important detail to ignore if it was in his source.

Another representative diff erence that points towards the earlier view, that the source was an earlier Latin vita, is the reference to Rome. The Old English Life reports that Neot visited Rome seven times, apparently before his move to Cornwall. Vita I records instead that he made a (single) visit to Rome seven years after his move from Glastonbury to the wilder landscape of Cornwall. It seems likely that the two accounts have a common source here and possible that the Old English detail is based on a misinterpretation or textual corruption of something like the reading of the Latin text. But Vita I has the expression ‘uno integro lustro annisque duobus’, that is, one whole lustrum (i.e. a period of

48 Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred the Great, pp. 197–8.49 Annals, ed. Dumville and Lapidge, p. cxvi. For doubts about so early a date of composition for

Vita I, see the reviews of this volume by N. Brooks (EHR 103 (1988), 471–2) and J. Campbell (N&Q 34 (1987), 517–19). On the other hand, Alfred Smyth has argued vigorously for an earlier date, suggesting that the author was in fact Byrhtferth of Ramsey or a close associate, writing around 1000 (King Alfred the Great, pp. 341–54). But the theory of its use for the Old English Life has not I think been questioned.

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fi ve years) and two years. It is impossible that the Old English author misread this as seven journeys, but easy to imagine that Vita I was recasting an earlier and simpler Latin text which did use the numeral septem.50

Further pointers against Vita I as a source are the many points in which the Life agrees not with Vita I but with the other relatively early Latin Vita, known as Vita II.51 This essentially tells the same story as Vita I but in quite diff erent words, with only occasional verbal parallels. It lacks the long fi nal section on the translation of the saint, but includes a sequence of miracles performed by Neot in Cornwall, as well as a diff erent opening section on his parentage. The opening clearly dates it (in its present form) after the Norman Conquest, and it has generally been taken as a rewriting of Vita I,52 but if so the verbal paral-lels are remarkably sparse and the omission of the translation of the saint is surprising. Richards noted several signifi cant points of agreement between the Old English Life and Vita II that are not shared by Vita I,53 and another is the prominent role of the spring (fons, wæterseað). Both texts mention a spring or springs as a feature of Neot’s hermitage:

Erat ibi (ut aiunt) et est usque hodie fons quidam irriguus, qui totum locum reddebat aptiorem, gratam ei conferens amœnitatem.54

and he him þær wununge getimbrode on swyðe fægeren stowe, and myrige wæter-seaðes þær abuten standeð, and þa synden swyðe wynsume of to þycgene.55

Both texts then go on to locate an important miracle at this spring, when the saint is standing in it in his usual fashion saying his psalms:

50 The context in the Life text does not allow the possibility that ‘seven times’ is a scribal error for ‘seven years after’ in the transmission of the Old English text.

51 This was originally edited by Jean Mabillon in his Acta Sanctorum collection (9 vols., Paris, 1668–1701), and reprinted in the Bollandists’ Acta Sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur (Antwerp and Brussels, 1643–1940), July VII (hereafter AS). Citations are from the latter, and hereafter referred to in the text as Vita II.

52 Alfred’s Life, ed. Stevenson, p. 257; Lapidge, Annals, ed. Dumville and Lapidge, p. cxii. Doble (S. Neot, p. 20) was more doubtful, and Richards (‘Medieval Hagiography’, p. 273) concluded that the Old English Life, Vita I and Vita II were independently derived from a lost Latin vita. The manuscript used by Mabillon, now lost, was apparently of the twelfth century and housed at Bec, which by that date was the mother- house of St Neots in Cambridgeshire. The only other known copy is a thirteenth- century manuscript containing lives of four British saints, Winifred, Erkenwald, Neot and Wulfstan, used and probably written at the Cistercian abbey of Holm Cultram (Cumberland). Richards suggested that Vita II was composed at Exeter, Lapidge suggested Glastonbury.

53 Richards, ‘Medieval Hagiography’, p. 274.54 Vita II, AS, §28, ‘There was there, as they say, and is still up to the present day, a well- watered

spring, which made the whole place more fi tting, conferring a welcome beauty to it.’55 Early English Homilies, ed. Warner, p. 130, lines 8–10, ‘And he built a dwelling for himself

there, in a very beautiful spot, and pleasant pools stand around there, and those are very pleasant to drink from.’


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Factum est autem in una dierum, ut idem Domini Servus more solito staret in fonte, in quo solitus erat ad rigoris incrementum totum ex integro Psalterium persolvere.56

Hit gelamp sume dæige, þæt se halge were on ærnemorgen digellice ferde to his wæter-seaðe, and þær his drohtnunge and his salmsanges on þan wætere hnacodan leomen adreah, swa his gewune wæs.57

There is nothing remotely similar to this setting in Vita I. But the Life is not here borrowing from Vita II either since the following miracle is quite dif-ferent in the two texts. In the Life the saint is interrupted at his prayers by the sound of approaching horsemen; in his fl ight from them so as not to be seen, he drops a sandal, and later sends his servant to fetch it; the servant arrives to fi nd a fox carrying it off , but God sends the fox into a fatal sleep and the sandal is retrieved from its jaws. In Vita II the saint is interrupted by a hunt pursuing a deer, which he saves from the hounds.58 Vita II has several of these miracle stories involving animals, including an account of wild stags volunteering to take the place of the saint’s stolen yoke- oxen, and all have analogues in the medieval lives of other Cornish saints, as does the story of the fox and the sandal in the Old English Life.59 Given the similar-ity of topography and setting it seems likely that the Old English Life and Vita II were both drawing on a south- western collection of miracles of Neot, whereas Vita I is evidently a product of eastern England and has nothing of that miracle collection.

One detail in particular seems to tell against either Vita I or Vita II as a source for the Old English Life and to suggest an early date for it. The Life reports that ‘It says in writings that this holy man went to Glastonbury in the time of St Ælfheah, the holy bishop, and received the priesthood from him.’60 Both the early Latin vitae mention in passing the bishop who ordained Neot but neither names him or says any more about him. If the author of the Life really did get this fact from writings, the texts in question were not either of these two Latin vitae. But the issue has become confused with what is really

56 Vita II, AS, §33, ‘It happened one day that the Lord’s servant was standing in his usual fashion in the spring, in which he was accustomed to perform the whole psalter, to enhance the austerity.’

57 Early English Homilies, ed. Warner, p. 130, 29–32, ‘It happened one day, that the saint went early in the morning to his pool, and there performed his services and psalm- singing in the water with bare limbs, as his custom was.’

58 Vita II also lacks two signifi cant details which the Life shares with Vita I: the location of Neot’s hermitage near ‘Petrocstow’ and the length of time between his burial and his fi rst translation (for which see below).

59 Doble, S. Neot, pp. 29–30.60 Early English Homilies, ed. Warner, p. 129, lines 24–7: ‘Hit sæigð on gewritan, þæt þes halge

were to Glæstingebyrig gecerred wære on Sanctes Ælfeges dagen þæs halgen biscopes, and æt him underfeng þone halge sacerdhad.’

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a separate point. The vitae say at an earlier stage in the narrative that while at the monastery of Glastonbury Neot gave advice to a fellow- monk called Athelwold, who was afterwards bishop of Winchester, apparently meaning the reformer St Athelwold, who was at Glastonbury in the 940s according to legend. Vita II also identifi es Dunstan as the head of the monastery at the time. One of the four manuscripts of Vita I has ‘Ælfheah’ (or rather Helphego) instead of ‘Athelwold’, and the textual relations suggest that ‘Athelwold’ is the original reading here (however mistaken historically). If so, it might seem to follow that the Old English Life with its ‘Ælfheah’ refl ects a corruption that developed in the transmission of Vita I and must therefore be based on a manuscript of Vita I rather than an antecedent source.61 But the Old English life does not have anything resembling the story involving Athelwold, and its Ælfheah cor-responds not to the Vita’s Athelwold/Ælfheah, monk of Glastonbury, but to the unnamed bishop of the Vita who ordained St Neot.62

But there is further signifi cance in the Life’s reference to St Ælfheah. The only St Ælfheah generally recognized in medieval tradition was the famous archbishop of Canterbury (1005–12) who was captured by the vikings when they stormed the city in 1011, held as a hostage for some time and then brutally killed in 1012. A cult soon developed and he became a major Canterbury saint, until eventually eclipsed by a more famously murdered archbishop, Thomas Becket. But he would be impossibly late to be a contemporary of Neot and Alfred (hence in part the modern belief in a late date of composition for the Life). But there is an alternative Ælfheah, Ælfheah the Bald, who was bishop of Winchester 934–51: he has been discounted on the grounds that he was not a saint, but he was considered one at Winchester at least, in the later tenth and eleventh centuries,63 and his well- known role in ordaining the two great reformers, St Dunstan and St Athelwold, shortly before they moved from King Athelstan’s court to the monastery at Glastonbury, at the outset of the monastic reform movement, would have made him an appropriate fi gure to identify as the bishop who ordained Neot when he went to Glastonbury. The dates are still too late for a supposed contemporary of Alfred but since the two Latin vitae agree with the Old English Life in placing Neot’s period at Glastonbury in the time of Dunstan and Athelwold, despite the anachronism, this would seem to be a feature of the original legend on which all three texts

61 So Lapidge, Annals, ed. Dumville and Lapidge, p. cxvii.62 If the change from Æthelwold to Ælfheah, refl ected in MS B of Vita I, is not just a coinci-

dence, it may refl ect not so much an independent attempt at correction as an alteration to a name known from an alternative, and perhaps earlier, vita.

63 See Wulfstan of Winchester, Vita Sancti Athelwoldi, ed. M. Lapidge and M. Winterbottom (Oxford, 1991), chs. 8 and 14, and p. 12, n. 1.


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draw.64 Nor should such misrepresentations of chronology necessarily suggest that the authors were all writing at some great distance of time when events were long forgotten, as Plummer and Stevenson suggested. The radical incon-sistencies over the date of Dunstan’s birth between the late- tenth- century life of St Dunstan and the contemporary lives of St Athelwold show how quickly discrepancies could develop. If the Life is referring to Ælfheah the Bald, it has implications for the date of composition. For an author writing any time after the 1020s, a reference to ‘the holy bishop St Ælfheah’ would inevitably have implied Ælfheah of Canterbury. If he meant Ælfheah the Bald he was probably writing in the 1020s or earlier.

All told the earlier view seems right, that the Old English Life was not dependent on either of the earliest Latin vitae extant, I or II, but was an adapta-tion of some earlier lost vita which was in some respects closer to the original legend and its Cornish roots. That earlier vita was itself presumably written in the late tenth century or the early eleventh, given its apparent claim that Neot was acquainted early in his life with Dunstan, Athelwold and Ælfheah, since Dunstan died in 988 and Athelwold in 984 and it seems more likely that the vita in this form was written in the decades after their death, when their vitae were being written, than during their lifetime when they would have been able to repudiate this fi ction.

The Burial and Translation of the Saint

The Old English Life reports that at his death Neot was buried in the church that he himself had established in Cornwall, and that seven years later his bones were taken up and buried with honour in another place (stowe), near the altar. The phrase on oðre stowe is vague and could in principle be interpreted as meaning translation to another church, but probably refers to reburial in a place of greater honour in the same church, since that is what Vita I describes, with the same reference to reburial after seven years and location near the altar. The phrase on oðre stowe is used with reference to a similar translation within the original church by Ælfric in his homily on St Furseus: ‘And his lic wearð bebyrged mid micelre arwurðnysse. and eft ymbe feower gear ansund

64 Lapidge’s suggestion (Annals, ed. Dumville and Lapidge, p. xcv, n. 59, developing one by Cyril Hart) that Ælfheah is a corruption of Æthelheah, referring to the bishop of Sherborne from 871, whose diocese would at the time have included Glastonbury, has an attraction, but this would still be somewhat late for the Alfredian story, and it would be hard to explain how all three lives came to link Neot independently with names connected to the 940s. By the eleventh century Glastonbury was in the diocese of Wells. There was another Ælfheah who was bishop of Wells at some time in the period 923–37 and he may conceivably have been the original referent for the Life or its source. But hagiographers of the tenth and eleventh centuries were often cavalier in their treatment of history, especially perhaps at Glastonbury, and we should not expect accuracy in these matters.

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buton gewemmedlicere brosnunge. on oðre stowe bebyriged.’65 He is here fol-lowing the Vita Fursei which describes the saint’s body being moved after four years from a place near the altar to a newly constructed tomb on the eastern side of the altar.66 In both cases the point of the story is of course that it allows the testimony of the incorrupt body without requiring a move to another church.67

Vita I similarly reports that Neot was buried in his own church, apparently the one belonging to the monastery that he had built earlier on the site of his hermitage in Cornwall, and that seven years after his death the church was extended and his body was taken up and moved to the north side of the altar in that same church.68 In a lengthy further section, however, it reports that much later the body was secretly removed by its custodian and taken to a wholly new site ‘in the north’, near Bedford and Huntingdon – evidently Eynesbury or the modern St Neots. Other accounts, from the twelfth century, claim that the body was moved again, to Crowland, apparently early in the eleventh century, though Eynesbury/St Neots still claimed to have the body in 1080, when Anselm confi rmed its presence there and removed part of it to Bec.69 Vita II however has nothing on these later translations of the body, and insists that God continued to work miracles to the glory of the saint at the original church in Cornwall up to the time of writing: ‘Sed et mira et magnifi ca per abbatem Neotum et confessorem præcipuum ibidem usque hodie divina operatur potentia ad ejusdem gloriam atque venerationem.’70

The Old English Life says nothing about any subsequent translation but leaves its readers or listeners to understand that the body of the saint still rests in Cornwall. This raises the question whether the Life could have been written before the removal of the body from Cornwall to Eynesbury (or, to put it more circumspectly, before the church at Eynesbury successfully asserted its claims to have acquired the body), and hence before the Latin Vita I was written, with

65 CH II, ed. Godden, XX, lines 264–6, ‘and his body was buried with great honour, and four years afterwards it was buried again in another place, whole without any defi ling corruption’.

66 Acta Sanctorum, Jan. II. 41.67 If on the other hand it does mean reburial in another church that was distinct from Neot’s

own foundation, that might be compatible with Asser’s report that Neot now lay in St Guerir’s church.

68 That at least seems to be the sense of the Latin text (which, as Lapidge says, ‘is always diffi cult and at times impenetrable’ (Annals, ed. Dumville and Lapidge, p.lxxvi)). Lapidge so interprets it at p. xcii but in his initial summary p. lxxvi refers to reburial in a newly built church. Vita II more clearly states that the original church was extended and the saint reburied near the altar, though it does not specify the number of years after his death when this happened.

69 See Lapidge, Annals, ed. Dumville and Lapidge, p. lxxxix.70 Vita II, AS, §46, ‘But the divine power performs wonderful and splendid miracles through

the abbot and confessor Neot in that same place up until the present day, to his glory and veneration.’


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its lengthy account of the translation. The church at Eynesbury seems to have been founded between 975 and 98471 but there is no reference to the relics of Neot at the time and the earliest evidence for its possession of the body seems to be the testimony of the Old English tract on the resting- places of the saints, Secgan, which was completed some time between 1013 and 1031.72 The twelfth- century reports by William of Malmesbury and Orderic Vitalis that the body had subsequently been moved again for safe- keeping, from Eynesbury to Crowland, in what would appear to be the early decades of the eleventh century, might suggest that the body had come to Eynesbury some time earlier than that. But the testimony is late, and untrustworthy, since Eynesbury con-tinued to claim possession of the body up to 1080 and beyond, and there is no reason to suppose that the later writers had accurate information about the date of the translation to Eynesbury.73 We might then conclude that the Old English Life was written between the promulgation of Wulfstan’s Sermo ad Anglos in 101474 and the latest possible date for the translation of Neot to Eynesbury (or Eynesbury making good its claim to have the body) in 1031. It is however also possible that the author wrote after the supposed translation of the body but thought it unimportant or untrue, or indeed knew nothing of it (and hence, again, that Vita I was not his source). Since Vita II was evidently written or at least revised after the Conquest but has nothing on the translation to Eynesbury or Crowland, and implies that the body remained at St Neot in Cornwall, it may well be that the claims of Eynesbury and Crowland were not universally acknowledged even after 1031.75

71 Lapidge, Annals, ed. Dumville and Lapidge, pp. lxxxvii–viii.72 D. W. Rollason, ‘Lists of Saints’ Resting- places in Anglo- Saxon England’, ASE 7 (1978),

61–93. The earliest possible date for the list, in its extant form, is indicated by the inclusion of St Florentius at Peterborough, since twelfth- century sources, including the Peterborough Chronicle, date the translation of his body there from Normandy to 1013; the latest possible date is 1031 when the earlier of the two copies was apparently made.

73 On the various traditions see Doble, S. Neot, Richards, ‘Medieval Hagiography’ and Lapidge, Annals. Some modern accounts assume that the body was restored to Eynesbury from Crowland before 1080 but that is perhaps to take these stories too literally. For another instance of competing claims to possession of the body of the same English saint in this period, one might cite the rival claims of Ripon and Canterbury to the body of St Wilfrid in the later tenth century (see Byrhtferth of Ramsey, The Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine, ed. M. Lapidge (Oxford, 2009), p. 170).

74 Or perhaps a decade or so earlier if we accept Whitelock’s suggestion that the debt was not necessarily to the Sermo ad Anglos itelf (and the other sermons with parallels) but to a lost sermon by Wulfstan using similar phrasing.

75 Richards (‘Medieval Hagiography’, p. 268) notes that the festival of the translation to the East Anglian St Neots seems to have been observed only by that church. On the supposed evi-dence of a variant reading in Asser’s Life for the translation of the saint, see below, Appendix, pp. 222–4.

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The Purpose of the Life

The Old English Life was evidently composed for use on St Neot’s festival, in honour of the saint, as its opening address indicates, but its failure to mention the later translation of the body indicates that it cannot have been written for a commemoration at Eynesbury. Doble, followed by Richards, suggested that it may have been composed at Crowland, citing as evidence the reference to Neot praying incessantly day and night in the manner of St Bartholomew, since the apostle was particularly celebrated at Crowland and plays an important part in the legend of its patron saint and founder, St Guthlac: ‘he wolde on dæig gelomen his cneowe gebegen, and eac swylce on niht to þan Ælmihtigen Gode, swa se halge apostel Sanctus Bartholomeus dyde, hund siðen on niht and eall swa oft on dæg’.76 But the reference to praying a hundred times a day and again at night seems to have been something of a devotional commonplace, going back to the Latin Passio Bartholomei, and the example of the apostle is cited by both Walahfrid Strabo and Petrus Cantor in such contexts.77 Again, the failure to mention any connection between Neot’s body and Crowland suggests the latter was not the place of composition or intended delivery.78 Nor can it have been written for delivery at the original Cornish church either, however, since it explains so carefully where that church is (‘ten miles from Petrocstow, at a place called Neotestoc’).

Vernacular saints’ lives apparently served two rather diff erent purposes in late Anglo- Saxon England. Ælfric distinguishes between the saints whose festivals are observed by the laity, who are covered in his Catholic Homilies, and the (much larger number of) saints whose festivals are observed only by the monks, some of whom are covered in his Lives of Saints collection.79 For the former he wrote mainly homiletic pieces apparently addressed to

76 Early English Homilies, ed. Warner, p. 129, lines 29–32, ‘he would bend his knees repeatedly during the day, and also at night, to the Almighty God, as the holy apostle St Bartholomew did, a hundred times at night and just as often in the day’. See Doble, S. Neot, p. 14, n. 1; Richards, ‘Medieval Hagiography’, p. 263.

77 Passio Bartholomei (ed. B. Mombritius, Sanctuarium seu Vitae Sanctorum, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (Paris, 1910) I, 140–4), p. 141, lines 9–10: ‘Centies fl exis genibus per diem, centies per noctem orat dominum’; Walahfrid Strabo, Libellus de exordiis et incrementis quarundam in observationibus ecclesi-asticis rerum, ed. A. Boretius and V. Krause (MGH, Leges, Capitularia regum Francorum, 2, 1890–7): ‘de Bartholomeo etiam legitur apostolo, quod centies in die, centies in nocte fl ex-erit genu’; Petrus Cantor, Summa quae dicitur Uerbum adbreuiatum, ed. M. Boutry, CCCM 196 (Turnhout, 2004): ‘Beatus similiter Bartholomeus centies in die et centies in nocte orando genua fl ectebat ad Deum.’ The topos also occurs in vitae of St Oswald and St Patrick.

78 Richards (‘Medieval Hagiography’, p. 263) also notes several parallels between the Life and Felix’s Vita Guthlaci in support of the attribution to Crowland, but since these nearly all apply to the account of Neot in Latin vitae as well they must indicate infl uence on the foundation legend, not specifi cally on the Old English Life.

79 Ælfric’s Lives, ed. Skeat, Praefatio.


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the laity, while for the latter he wrote mainly longer narrative pieces appar-ently intended for reading. Many of the anonymous Old English saints’ lives deal with saints of the latter type – Guthlac, Chad, Mary of Egypt, Margaret, Seven Sleepers, Eustace, Euphrosyne, Machutus, Pantaleon. These too seem to be mainly reading- pieces not designed for preaching or specifi cally linked to the church festival, and perhaps therefore intended for reading within monastic (or other clerical) communities. Neot too is a saint not observed by the laity but commemorated (at least in the eleventh century) at places like Exeter, Winchester and Sherborne.80 The text however is clearly designed as a sermon for delivery on the saint’s day. It begins in the characteristic manner of Old English sermons and concludes with a homiletic peroration on the troubles of the times. Nothing in its address or its content suggests it was intended for monks. Vernacular saints’ lives were written for monks in this period, but this particular one seems very much designed for the laity. It lacks much of the emphasis on monastic and ascetic practice that dominates Vita I, and emphasizes instead the angelic instruction to preach to all men despite Neot’s supposed pursuit of the eremitic life.81 His virtues are those relevant to all.82 We should perhaps then imagine an occasion when a monas-tic or minster church with an interest in Neot (such as Sherborne or Exeter or Glastonbury but not Crowland or Eynesbury) held a celebration at which the laity were expected.83 The most prominent location in the Life apart from Neotestoc is Glastonbury where the saint is ordained and develops his ascetic reputation and from which he visits Rome seven times (and the legend of Neot takes a prominent place in the medieval account of Glastonbury’s history).84 That may just mean that Glastonbury had an infl uence on the original development of the legend of Neot, or that it was the most plausible monastic setting for a saint of Alfred’s time, given Asser’s assertion that there were no proper monasteries in Wessex until Alfred founded two. But it is striking that whereas Vita I has to explain what and where Glastonbury was (‘there was in those times a famous monastery in the English part of Britain called Urbs Glæstinge’) the Old English Life assumes familiarity on the part of the listener. If the Life was originally written for delivery in a place, or places, such as Glastonbury or Sherborne or Crediton in the West Country,

80 Richards, ‘Medieval Hagiography’, p. 261, citing English Kalendars before A.D. 1100, ed. F. Wormald, HBS LXXII (London, 1934), pp. 39, 81, 193.

81 Early English Homilies, ed. Warner, p. 130, line 21ff . 82 Ibid., p. 130, line 15.83 See M. Clayton, ‘Homiliaries and Preaching in Anglo- Saxon England’, Peritia 4 (1985),

207–42, on texts written for such occasions.84 The Chronicle of Glastonbury Abbey: an Edition, Translation and Study of John of Glastonbury’s ‘Cronica

sive antiquitates Glastoniensis ecclesie’, ed. J. P. Carley (Woodbridge, 1985).

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that might explain the ignorance of, or lack of interest in, the claims of St Neots in the east to possess the body. But clearly a copy had made its way to Canterbury or Rochester by the early twelfth century, and it was presumably in use there.85 The author himself evidently came from a centre where a good range of Old English writing was available, including the work of Ælfric and Wulfstan.

the legend of king alfred

Much the most important aspect of the Life of Neot is arguably its account of King Alfred, which takes up about a quarter of the text. When the king visits the saint for the needs of his soul, Neot rebukes him for his wickedness and urges him to do penance by visiting Rome and taking gifts to the pope.86 Even though Alfred does this and obeys all Neot’s orders, the saint goes on to prophesy the future Danish attacks when the king will be driven from his kingdom and his people scattered, but promises to protect him if he thinks of Neot at his hour of greatest need. When the Danes do attack, after Neot’s death, the Old English Life turns Alfred into a decidedly unheroic, not to say cowardly, fi gure.87 It reports that the heathen king Guthrum with his fi erce army fi rst of all attacked the eastern part of the Saxon land (eastdæle Sexlandes), killing, routing and capturing its people, and when Alfred heard of this he took fright and fl ed, abandoning his troops and generals and all his people, and his treasure, to save his life.

Com þa Guðrum, se hæðene king, mid his wælreowen here ærest on eastdæle Sexlandes, and þær feala manne ofsloh. Sume eac fl eames cepten, and sume on hand eodan. Þa Ælfred king, þe we ær embe spæcon, þæt ofaxode, þæt se here swa stiðlic

85 Neot’s feast day was observed at Christ Church Canterbury in the twelfth century (Richards ‘Medieval Hagiography’, p. 261).

86 What precisely Alfred’s crimes were and why he merited the Danish attacks as punishment is not indicated here or in the Latin Vita I, but it is elaborated in the chronicle known as the Annals of St Neots, which reports that when Alfred was still young some of his subjects came to him begging for help with the necessities of life, but he turned them down and God decided to punish him in this life so that he need not be punished in the next life (Annals, ed. Dumville and Lapidge, p. 77). The annals are dated to the twelfth century by Dumville (Annals, ed. Dumville and Lapidge, p. lxv) but to around 1000 by Hart (‘The East Anglian Chronicle’, JMH 7 (1981), 249–82, at 280) and around 1020–35 by Smyth (King Alfred the Great, p. 164); Lapidge (Annals, ed. Dumville and Lapidge, pp. cxviii–xix) thinks that the chronicle is here adapting Vita I but Dumville (ibid. pp. lviii, lxiv) thinks there was an inter-mediate source.

87 Treharne’s assertion that the Life presents Alfred as ‘the redeeming monarch . . . an English leader who is penitent, pious, heroic, educated, and the ideal of Christian leadership’ (my italics) is baffl ingly at odds with the text (‘Periodization and Categorization’, p. 265). Keynes and Lapidge (Alfred the Great, p.198) and Smyth (King Alfred the Great, p. 327) more accurately note that the Old English Life presents Alfred as a deserter.


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wæs, and swa neh Englelande, he sone forfyrht fl eames cepte, and his cæmpen ealle forlet, and his hertogen, and eall his þeode, madmes and madmfaten, and his life gebearh.88

The reference to ‘Sexland’ is, as Mary Richards says, puzzling.89 The dictionar-ies cite this one instance as meaning England, but there is no other evidence for such a sense and its normal meaning, in the Chronicle and in Middle English, is Saxony, understood as a territory on the Continent.90 The reference to Guthrum being ‘so close to England’ rather than ‘in England’ suggests that that is what the author means here too. There is nothing similar in Vita I, where Guthrum is said to invade ‘Brittannie Anglice insulam’ (the English part of the island of Britain?).91 If the author really means Saxony, he (or his source) was perhaps infl uenced by, or embroidering on, the Anglo- Saxon Chronicle’s refer-ence to the vikings invading Saxony and being opposed by the Saxons and Frisians in 885, seven years after Guthrum’s attack on Wessex. Alternatively, it is perhaps just conceivable that by ‘Sexland’ and ‘England’ he means two diff erent parts of Anglo- Saxon territory and that ‘the eastern part of Sexland’ is meant to designate a distinct part of the country from Alfred’s kingdom. In either case, but especially in the former, Alfred is made to appear an unheroic fi gure and a poor king, as he abandons his army, his people and his treasure to save himself, before the Danes have even reached his own territory. (We might contrast Abbo and Ælfric’s presentation of King Edmund, refusing to take fl ight before the viking onslaught even when his army has been destroyed.)92

88 Early English Homilies, ed. Warner, p. 132, lines 18–24, ‘Then Guthrum the heathen King with his cruel army came fi rst of all into the eastern part of Saxony, and killed many people there. Some also took fl ight and some submitted to him. When King Alfred, whom we mentioned before, heard that the viking army was so strong and so close to England, he immediately took fl ight in fear and abandoned all his troops and his generals and all his people, his treasures and his treasure chests, and saved his life.’

89 Richards, ‘An Edition’, p. 74.90 J. Bosworth and T. N. Toller, An Anglo- Saxon Dictionary (Oxford, 1898); T. N. Toller,

Supplement (Oxford, 1972), with Revised and Enlarged Addenda by A. Campbell (Oxford, 1972), and J. R. Clark Hall, A Concise Anglo- Saxon Dictionary, 4th ed., with a supplement by H. D. Merritt (Cambridge, 1960), s.v. Seaxland; The Anglo- Saxon Chronicle MS C, ed. K. O’Brien O’Keeff e, The AS Chronicle: a Collaborative Edition, ed. D. Dumville and S. Keynes 5 (Cambridge, 2001), s.a. 1054; The Anglo- Saxon Chronicle MS E, ed. S. Irvine, The AS Chronicle: a Collaborative Edition, ed. D. Dumville and S. Keynes 7 (Cambridge, 2004), s.a. 1106, 1127, 1129; Middle English Dictionary, ed. H. Kurath, S. M. Kuhn, et al. (Ann Arbor, 1952– ), s.v. Saxe.

91 According to the Anglo- Saxon Chronicle, Asser and subsequent historians, the army of Guthrum had moved to Wessex from the neighbourhood of Cambridge. If the Old English Life was using a source which described the vikings as fi rst occupying the territory of the East Saxons and then attacking the land of the ‘western Angles’ as Vita II calls Wessex (‘occidentales Anglicos attentavit invadere’, §49), that might explain the Old English author’s account.

92 Three Lives of English Saints, ed. M. Winterbottom (Toronto, 1972), p. 75; Ælfric’s Lives, ed. Skeat, XXXII, esp. lines 64–80.

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The point is underlined by Neot’s earlier prophecy which draws a parallel with the Biblical verse ‘when the shepherd is put to fl ight and killed, then the sheep will all be scattered’. The verse, Matthew XXVI.31, has only ‘percutiam pastorem’, ‘I will strike the shepherd’, and the Old English author’s addition of afl emed, ‘put to fl ight’, clearly refers to Alfred’s later fl ight and the subsequent scattering of his army.93

The Life goes on to describe Alfred, apparently alone, skulking along the roads and hiding among hedges and woods until he reaches Athelney, where he seeks shelter from a swineherd and quickly learns to obey the orders of his aggressive wife. Eventually Neot appears to him in a vision, promising that if he trusts in God’s power Alfred will return to his kingdom, his scattered army will regroup and Neot will go before them, dispersing his enemies and converting their king to the faith. This all happened as he said, reports the Life, without giving the details or reporting any fi ghting. Guthrum came to Alfred to make peace and seek baptism, and then returned with his army to his own country.

This account of Alfred’s experiences loosely parallels the very much longer one in Vita I, but the Latin text has a much more positive picture of the king and gives him a more substantial military role. Indeed, it positively makes a point of excusing his fl ight: Guthrum has penetrated his kingdom, destroyed his army, driving some of the forces out of the country, and located his current place of refuge before Alfred decides to take fl ight to shelter in Athelney, and await a change of fortune. After sinking to the depths at the swineherd’s hut he collects some forces and renews the confl ict with the Danes, until Neot appears in a vision and promises victory. Alfred rouses his troops, urges them on with promises of Neot’s support, and plunges into the fray, before the Danes eventually fl ee. Vita II’s account is generally similar.

All three accounts were evidently drawing on the legend of Alfred’s fl ight to the marshes which had acquired mythic proportions by the end of the tenth century. The Anglo- Saxon Chronicle says only that the viking army made a sudden attack on Chippenham early in January 878, occupied Wessex and subdued most of the population, while Alfred with a small force moved with diffi culty through the woods and the safe places (or strongholds) in the moors, and then in late March built a fortress at Athelney as a base for attacking the vikings, with the support of the forces of Somerset.94 Within three months of the Danish attack he had reassembled his army and heavily defeated the viking forces and apparently recovered his position. There is nothing to suggest that the king was

93 Early English Homilies, ed. Warner, p. 131, line 34.94 The Anglo- Saxon Chronicle MS A, ed. J. Bately, The AS Chronicle: a Collaborative Edition, ed.

D. Dumville and S. Keynes 3 (Cambridge, 1986), s.a. 878.


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in fl ight, or isolated, or without military forces and other resources. But Asser develops the story and builds up the king’s desperate circumstances, record-ing that after the viking attack he led a troubled life with just a few nobles and some thegns (or servants) among the woods and marshes of Somerset, in great hardship; he survived only by raiding the vikings and the English who had submitted to them (presumably for food and other supplies).95 Æthelweard similarly records that Alfred ‘was in greater straits than was befi tting’ and that he continued fi ghting the vikings with the support of the Somerset forces and ‘no other help except for the servants who had royal maintenance’.96

A further elaboration involved the intervention and miraculous assistance of St Cuthbert. This story is given in the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, which reports that the Danes invaded southern England and killed all of the royal line except Alfred, who hid in the Glastonbury marshes for three years, in great poverty.97 At length, when he had almost nothing left, St Cuthbert appeared to him in a vision and promised to help him defeat the Danes, advis-ing him to sound his horn in the morning, summon his troops and lead them into battle against the Danes. Alfred follows his instructions and achieves victory. A similar story, not apparently dependent on the Historia, appears later in William of Malmesbury, who locates the vision at Athelney, and in twelfth- century Durham sources.98 There is also a brief reference to it in the late- tenth- century Historia attributed to Byrhtferth of Ramsey, embedded in the later Historia Regum compiled by Simeon of Durham: ‘Elfred uero rex his diebus magnas sustinuit tribulationes et inquietam uitam agebat. Rex Elfredus apto confortatus oraculo per Sanctum Cuthbertum, contra Danos pugnauit, et quo ipse sanctus iusserat tempore et loco, uictoria positus est, semperque deinceps hostibus terribilis et inuincibilis erat, sanctumque Cuthbertum pre-cipue honori habuerat.’99 Quite when this legend developed is uncertain. The Historia de Sancto Cuthberto is thought to have originated in the tenth century

95 Asser’s Life, ed. Stevenson, ch. 52–5. 96 Chronicon Æthelweardi, ed. A. Campbell (London, 1962), pp. 42–3. Asser and Æthelweard also

agree in reporting that the viking army wintered in Wessex, which is more than the Chronicle actually says (indeed, it indicates that the army spent the fi rst half of the winter in Mercia).

97 Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, ed. T. J. South (Cambridge, 2002). 98 William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, ed. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson and M.

Winterbottom, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1998) I, ii.121; South, Historia, p. 90. 99 Byrhtferth’s Northumbrian Chronicle: an Edition and Translation of the Old English and Latin Annals,

ed. C. Hart (Lewiston, 2006), p. 214, ‘King Alfred at this time suff ered great tribulation, and led an anxious life. Encouraged by St Cuthbert in a fi tting prophecy, Alfred fought against the Danes, and obtained the victory at the time and place which the saint had ordered; and was always afterwards terrible and invincible to his enemies, and held St. Cuthbert in espe-cial honour.’ The statement that the battle was fought at the time and place specifi ed by the saint aligns the story with the version in the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto rather than William’s version.

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but has eleventh- century additions.100 The reference in Byrhtferth’s Historia would appear to be evidence for tenth- century circulation but may be a twelfth- century interpolation.101 Neither Æthelweard in his Chronicle nor Ælfric in his homily on St Cuthbert at the end of the tenth century refers to it, though Ælfric does mention Alfred as an example of an English king who achieved victories through divine help.102 But there is much current support for the view that the story of Alfred’s exile in the marshes and the legend of Cuthbert’s vision and assistance developed in some form in the fi rst half of the tenth century in association with the appropriation of the Cuthbert cult by Alfred’s grandson, King Athelstan.103

As a model or precedent for its story of Cuthbert and Alfred, the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto cites the appearance of St Peter to the future king Edwin when he too was an exile, promising him the crown and urging his conversion. This seems to be a version of the stories told by Bede and the anonymous Whitby Life of Gregory, and it may well have been an infl uence on the development of the Cuthbert story.104 Another probable infl uence is Felix’s life of St Guthlac. There the future King of Mercia, Aethelbald, is in exile and on the run, and comes to see the hermit saint Guthlac in his fenland retreat when at his lowest depths, and the saint prophesies that he will gain his throne with the help of God, thanks to Guthlac’s prayers. Later, on hearing of Guthlac’s death, Aethelbald comes to his grave and prays and weeps and Guthlac then appears to him in a vision and promises that he will achieve power in a year’s time. The exile asks for a sign that the vision is authentic and Guthlac says that in the morning food will appear from an unexpected source. And in the morning some men arrive with some unexpected food at the landing stage. Aethelbald then becomes King and still reigns at the time of writing.105 Similarly, in

100 See esp. L. Simpson, ‘The King Alfred/St Cuthbert Episode in the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto: its Signifi cance for Mid- Tenth- Century English History’, St. Cuthbert, his Cult and his Community to AD 1200, ed. G. Bonner, D. Rollason and C. Stancliff e (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 397–412; D. Rollason, ‘St Cuthbert and Wessex’, ibid. pp. 413–24.

101 Hart (Byrhtferth’s Northumbrian Chronicle) suggests at p. c that it is an interpolation but at p. 215 that it is original; South, Historia, 91.

102 The Old English Heptateuch and Ælfric’s Libellus de Veteri Testamento et Novo, I, ed. R. Marsden, EETS os 330 (Oxford, 2008), 200.

103 South, Historia, pp. 90–5; A. Thacker, ‘Dynastic Monasteries and Family Cults: Edward the Elder’s Sainted Kindred’, Edward the Elder 899–924, ed. N. J. Higham and D. H. Hill (London, 2001), pp. 230–47; Rollason, ‘St Cuthbert’; Simpson, ‘The King Alfred/St Cuthbert Episode’.

104 Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), 2.12; Colgrave, The Earliest Life, ch. 16. The fact that the Life of St Neot borrows a sentence from the Old English Bede’s account of that vision perhaps suggests no more than another mind seeing the same parallels.

105 Felix’s Life of Saint Guthlac, ed. B. Colgrave (Cambridge, 1985), chs. 49, 52.


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William of Malmesbury’s account of Cuthbert’s help for Alfred, the saint off ers as a sign of the authenticity of his prophecy an assurance that food will appear unexpectedly soon after, and accordingly Alfred’s men arrive with a huge and unusual catch of fi sh.

The story of Neot’s visionary appearance to King Alfred in the marshes leading to his victory over Guthrum and restoration to power closely resembles this legend of St Cuthbert, as has often been noted.106 The match is particularly close with William’s version, where the vision is similarly located at Athelney (the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto version is at Glastonbury) and set in the context of Guthrum’s subsequent defeat and submission. The originator of the Neot legend which lies behind the Old English Life and the two Latin vitae would seem to have adapted the Cuthbert story, or a West Saxon tradition of that nature, to suit St Neot.107 He no doubt took his cue for associating Neot with Alfred from Asser’s account of Alfred visiting the church in Cornwall where Neot was subsequently buried and being miraculously cured there, with its implication that Neot was a contemporary and perhaps a patron of Alfred – unless Asser’s account is taken to imply the existence of a fuller connec-tion beween Alfred and St Neot which was known to Asser and the original Neot author but for which we have no other evidence. But in the process he emphasized still further the depths to which the king had sunk. Whereas in the other accounts of Alfred’s fl ight to the marshes he still has some companions, including his wife or mother in the Cuthbert version, here he takes fl ight alone and is forced to take refuge with a swineherd who fails to recognize the king.108 And whereas in the Cuthbert legend he is reduced to poverty and saved by a miraculous catch of fi sh through the help of the saint, in the Neot version he is reduced to watching the cakes hungrily in the swineherd’s hovel. The swine-herd’s wife complains that Alfred is a great eater and tells him angrily to help out by turning cakes in the oven.109

There is moreover nothing in any of the accounts involving Cuthbert that would suggest Alfred was a sinner and tyrant, or that his fall from power was due to his own failings, or of course that he had dealings with the saint

106 Lapidge, Annals, ed. Dumville and Lapidge, p. cv; Smyth, King Alfred the Great, p. 342; South, Historia, pp. 90–5.

107 Lapidge, ibid., suggests that there were oral traditions about King Alfred’s visions which were adapted by the Neot author.

108 It is hard not to see a parallel here with the passage in the Old English Boethius which imag-ines a powerful king being stripped of his retinue, his power and his robes and being revealed as no better than his followers. The Old English Boethius, ed. Godden and Irvine, I, B 37.

109 The story also appears in the early printed version of Asser’s life, but seems to be a sixteenth- century interpolation taken from the Annals of St Neots.

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during the latter’s lifetime.110 Those seem to be developments associated with the transfer of the story to Neot. In adapting the story the Neot author was no doubt, like all other hagiographers of the period, drawing on other saints’ legends for ideas and incidents. One likely infl uence, as Mary Richards has argued, is again Felix’s Life of St Guthlac.111 The Felix story and the Neot legend agree in having the saint foretell future power and success to the exile while still alive, and then confi rming it later in a post- mortem vision. Felix has nothing however to suggest the picture of Alfred as a tyrant and the cause of his own fall. A striking parallel, and likely model, for this element is Gregory the Great’s account of St Benedict’s dealings with the Gothic king Totilla, in book 2 of his Dialogues, an extremely well known text that would have been particularly familiar to Benedictine monks. In book 2 of the Dialogues, Totilla hears of Benedict’s gifts of prophecy and sends a retainer to test him. He discovers that the reports are true and approaches Benedict himself and falls down on the ground before him. Benedict raises him up, rebukes him for his crimes and foretells his future – he will enter Rome, cross the sea and die in the tenth year. The king is terrifi ed, asks for a blessing and departs, and Benedict’s prophecy eventually becomes true.112 Similarly, according to Vita I, King Alfred heard of the fame of Neot and enquired whether the things reported of him were true. He learnt that they were and soon approached the saint with devotion, lying on the ground before him and begging for his bless-ing ‘in the ancient manner’. Neot blessed him, welcomed him as his kinsman, rebuked him for his wicked actions and taught him what belonged to Christian kingship. Alfred then, having received a further blessing, returned to his men in fear. At a subsequent meeting with Neot, the saint rebuked him again for his wickedness, warned of future punishment, foretold the loss of his kingdom at the hands of pagan invaders and urged him to send emissaries to Rome. The actual wording of the two texts is mostly diff erent, but there are some similari-ties. Cf Vita I: ‘de suis nequissimis actionibus increpauit . . .. “Tanta”, inquit ‘rex ab aduersantibus infortunia pateris; atqui tam multa adhuc patieris’.113 with Gregory: ‘de suis actibus increpauit . . . dicens: “Multa mala facis, multa fecisti”.’114

110 William of Malmesbury (Gesta Regum, I, ii.121) suggests that the viking raids are punishment for the sins of the English generally.

111 Richards, ‘Medieval Hagiography’, pp. 263–4.112 Grégoire le Grand, Dialogues, ed. A. de Vogüé and P. Antin, Sources chrétiennes, 251, 260, 265

(Paris, 1978–80) II, xiv–xv.113 Annals, ed. Dumville and Lapidge, §9, ‘He rebuked him for his wicked actions . . . “Such great

misfortunes, king, you suff er from your enemies, and as many you will yet suff er”.’114 Dialogues, de Vogüé and Antin, II, xv, ‘he rebuked him for his actions . . . saying, “you do

much evil, you have done much evil”.’


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A particularly striking parallel is the reference to Alfred doubting the saint’s powers: this is without context in the Neot story and taken no further but is a more important part of the story involving Benedict.115

If the two Latin vitae are a fair guide to the nature of this earlier lost legend of Neot, then the author of the Old English Life further accentuated the negative aspect of the king’s portrait, underlining his cowardice and his com-plete lack of military capacity and general passivity in the face of the Danes, and rather ignored the savagery of the vikings. The negative aspect is hard to parallel in the period. Byrhtferth and the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto present Alfred in wholly positive terms, as do Ælfric and Æthelweard. As noted above, Stevenson argued that the Life had to have been written after the eleventh century since no earlier English writer would have depicted King Alfred as a tyrant, but that argument is undermined by the fact that Vita I gives the same view of the king and is now thought to have been written in the middle of the eleventh century or earlier, and in an Anglo- Saxon context. The notion that a negative view of the king was more likely after 1066, at least in writ-ings designed for English speakers (whatever the views of Normans), might be doubted, especially given the growing reputation of Alfred as a fi gure of wisdom in the post- Conquest period.116 And the idea of Alfred as the national hero of whom no Anglo- Saxon would speak ill is perhaps more of a Victorian picture than an Anglo- Saxon one. Anglo- Saxon texts are just as likely to speak of Edgar or Athelstan as the great kings of the late Anglo- Saxon period, and it is worth noting (as others have pointed out)117 that later Anglo- Saxon kings carried the same name as Alfred’s predecessor, Æthelred, and his successor, Edward, but none of them was called Alfred. The only royal Alfred was the youngest and ill- fated son of Æthelred the Unready. And one might argue that if the Life is, as appears, an early eleventh- century composition from the time of Cnut and his sons, then a text which blames the collapse of Wessex on the iniquities of the English king and sees the vikings as the instruments of divine punishment, and says nothing about the viking slaughter of the English or

115 The biblical account of Nebuchadnezzar, another king driven from power into exile and misery because of his own misdeeds, no doubt had infl uence too, and the story of St Ambrose’s rebuke to the Emperor Theodosius may also have been a model; it is retold in this period for instance by Ælfric (Homilies of Ælfric: a Supplementary Collection, ed. J. C. Pope, EETS os 259, 260 (London, 1967–68) II, xxvi.

116 There was a tradition in post- Conquest ecclesiastical circles that Alfred had appropriated monastic estates, for which he is criticised in the twelfth- century Abingdon Chronicle, but that is a diff erent story; see e.g. R. Fleming, ‘Monastic Lands and England’s Defence in the Viking Age’, EHR 100 (1985), 246–65.

117 B. Yorke, ‘Alfredism: the Use and Abuse of King Alfred’s Reputation in Later Centuries’, Alfred the Great: Papers from the Eleventh- Centenary Conferences (Aldershot, 2003), ed. T. Reuter, pp. 361–80, at p. 362.

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their own subsequent defeat, would fi t rather easily into that period. Its view of Alfred would be entirely consonant with the view of Æthelred voiced by some texts in this period.

What Alfred was celebrated for in the late Anglo- Saxon period was not so much his salvation of England as his supposed learning and his writing of books. The Latin vitae have nothing to say on this subject, but it is an important feature of the last phase of the story in the Old English Life. After the defeat and conversion of Guthrum and the restoration of the king to his throne, the Life records that Alfred’s kingdom then fl ourished, his fame as a man well instructed in religious writings spread, so that he surpassed the bishops and clerics, and that he wrote many books: ‘Þa weox Ælfredes cynerice, and his word wide sprang, þæt he on godcunden gewriten wel gelæred wæs, swa þæt he oferðeah biscopes and mæssepreostes and hehdiacones, and cristendom wel þeah on þan gode time. Eac is to wytene, þæt se king Ælfred manega bec þurh Godes gast gedyhte.’118 The Life is evidently here building on another aspect of the Alfredian legend that had developed in the course of the tenth century. That Alfred was well instructed in religious writings is a story that apparently starts in the king’s own lifetime with Asser’s account of the king recruiting a whole team of scholars, including Asser himself, to teach him, and it continues with the accounts of the king in the chronicles of Æthelweard and Byrhtferth at the end of the tenth century. But Asser says nothing about Alfred writing books. This tradition no doubt takes its origins from the claims in the prefaces to the Pastoral Care that the king had personally translated the whole of that work into English, with a little help from his friends.119 That is picked up in the early tenth century by the prefaces to the Old English Boethius, which claim that he both translated the whole Latin text and turned parts of it into verse.120 Then in the late tenth century there is Ælfric’s story that Alfred had translated books of gospel teaching into English, as well as Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica, and Æthelweard’s Chronicle, which ends its account of Alfred by describing him as a learned man steeped in godly writings beyond all other things who had translated an unknown number of books from Latin into English, including the book of Boethius.121 Byrhtferth has a similarly infl ated expression in his

118 Early English Homilies, ed. Warner, p. 133, lines 18–22, ‘Then Alfred’s kingdom prospered and his fame spread far, that he was learned in godly writings, so that he surpassed bishops and priests and deacons, and Christianity fl ourished in that good time. Moreover, King Alfred composed many books through God’s spirit.’

119 King Alfred’s West- Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care, ed. H. Sweet, EETS os 45, 50 (London, 1871–2; repr. 1988), pp. 3–9.

120 The Old English Boethius: an Edition of the Old English Versions of Boethius’s ‘De consolatione Philosophiae’, ed. M. Godden and S. Irvine, 2 vols. (Oxford, 2009) II, 239, B Preface.

121 CHI, ed. Clemoes, p. 174; CHII, ed. Godden, IX, lines 6–8; Chronicon Æthelweardi, ed. Campbell, p. 51.


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Historia: ‘the peace- loving king was elevated above all the kings of the earth by his teachers’ doctrine and erudition’.122 Closer still is the comment by Geff rei Gaimar, Estoire des Engleis, of the early twelfth century, when recording Alfred’s death: ‘There was no cleric more learned than he, because he had been edu-cated from an early age.’123 The story of Alfred the author was then continued by William of Malmesbury, who provided a list of the king’s supposed writings – though William is rather dismissive of Alfred’s learning.124 The Life is in this respect thoroughly in tune with the Alfred legend of the time.

conclusion

What emerges from this study of the Old English Life of St Neot and its context, then, is a picture of Alfred not as the resourceful and commanding fi gure of the Alfredian chronicle but as a king overwhelmed by his enemies and reduced to the uttermost depths of exile, poverty, solitude and scorn in the Somerset fens, and then being saved and restored to his throne by the intervention of a powerful saint and the help of God. And in the view of the Neot legend at least this fall was due to his own injustices as king and his cowardice in the face of the enemy. The accounts of Neot evidently exploit the fi gure of King Alfred to enhance their picture of an English saint who had the courage and virtue to rebuke powerful tyrants and the posthumous power and infl uence to help them recover power and achieve fame when they were struck down for their sins and learnt to repent. In doing so they drew on the legend of St Cuthbert and no doubt on the stories of other kings and saints, as well as other traditions about Alfred. But the willingness of an English author, writing for an English- speaking lay audience early in the eleventh century and steeped in the traditions of Old English prose texts, to develop out of these materials such a negative, indeed rather comic, picture of Alfred, as a failed and unheroic king, driven from his kingdom because of his own crimes and his cowardice, reduced to the lowest depths, harrassed by a swineherd’s harridan wife, and eventually restored to power by the saint, is a striking testimony to what was possible in late Anglo- Saxon England. For one Anglo- Saxon writer at least, King Alfred the Great was not a hero but a salutary example of the way in which overbearing kings could be brought to the uttermost depths and still be redeemed by a powerful English saint.

As for the Old English Life of St Neot itself, it emerges as one of the live-lier and more imaginative of Old English saints’ lives, with its story of the fox stealing the saint’s sandal and Alfred being scolded by the swineherd’s wife,

122 Byrhtferth’s Northumbrian Chronicle, ed. Hart, p. 226.123 Geff rei Gaimar, Estoire des Engleis, ed. and trans. I. Short (Oxford, 2009), pp. 188–9.124 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, I, ii.123.

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as well as being an important witness to late Anglo- Saxon ideas about Alfred and about Cornwall. It was probably composed not in the twelfth century but early in the eleventh (that is, probably 1015 × 1030), by an author who was extremely well- read in the works of Ælfric and Wulfstan and other Old English prose and verse writings and working within a well- established tradition of vernacular prose hagiography, for delivery as a sermon to lay or mixed audi-ences on the saint’s festival, possibly in a monastic setting. He was not using any of the extant Latin vitae but adapting an unrecorded earlier vita, probably in Latin, in which the stories of the saint’s Glastonbury origins and his dealings with King Alfred had already been added to an originally Cornish legend, but in which some of the later inventions, such as Neot being a kinsman of King Alfred, had not yet developed. The evident diff erences from the extant Latin lives, which probably draw independently on the same lost vita, suggest that it was a rather inventive adaptation of that earlier lost life.

appendixthe text of asser’s chapter 74 and the supposed marginal note

on neot’s translation

In his Life and Times of Alfred the Great of 1902, Charles Plummer raised a problem about the text of Asser’s reference to St Neot:

In the description of Alfred’s visit to the Cornish shrine, already alluded to, the following sentence occurs: – ‘Cum . . . ad quandam ecclesiam . . . diuertisset, in qua S. Gueryr requiescit, et nunc etiam S. Neotus ibidem pausat, subleuatus est (erat enim sedulus sanctorum locorum uisitator, . . . ) diu in oratione prostratus . . . Domini misericordiam deprecabatur,’ etc. Here the words ‘subleuatus est’ can by no possibility be construed, either with what goes before, or with what follows.125

He ingeniously concluded that the phrase subleuatus est originated as a marginal comment in an early manuscript and had been erroneously incorporated into the text in the Cotton manuscript of c. 1000 (itself destroyed in the fi re of 1731) on which all subsequent editions depend; the phrase meant ‘he has been taken up’, he suggested, and had been added to that early manuscript in reference to the recent removal of Neot’s body from the original tomb in the Cornish church in, as Plummer thought, 974. Plummer was using an edition of Asser’s Life which ultimately depended on the version printed by Matthew Parker in 1594. He was apparently unaware that the phrase does not occur in the sixteenth- century transcript of the Cotton manuscript, preserved in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 100, which instead has suatim utens, ‘acting as

125 Plummer, Life and Times, p. 29.


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was his wont’. Stevenson’s edition of Asser, published two years later, followed the reading of that transcript: ‘Sed quodam tempore, divino nutu, antea, cum Cornubiam venandi causa adiret, et ad quandam ecclesiam orandi causa divertisset, in qua Sanctus Gueriir requiescit, et nunc etiam Sanctus Niot ibidem pausat, suatim utens – erat enim sedulus sanctorum locorum visitator . . . ’126 He noted, however, the reading sublevatus est in Parker’s edition, and asked, in an apparent echo of Plummer (though without attribution), ‘Was this falsifi cation of the text derived from a marginal note, which Parker regarded as a gloss upon, or correction of, “suatim utens”? As it stands in the text this interpolation is unintelligible.’127 (Given the text available to Stevenson, the phrase was of course not an interpolation as Plummer had thought but a substitution.) Keynes and Lapidge similarly suggest a marginal note in the Cotton manuscript, com-menting: ‘The words sublevatus est (‘he has been taken up’) were apparently added in the Cotton manuscript near the reference to St Neot, presumably by someone in the eleventh century or thereafter who felt it necessary to draw attention to the fact that the saint’s remains were no longer in Cornwall.’128

What Stevenson failed to point out, however, was that the phrase suatim utens occurs three times in his text of Asser’s Life but each time it is unique to the Corpus transcript, and the Parkerian version, together with the British Library transcript and subsequent editions, has diff erent words each time, substituting sua ipsius in chapter 56 and advocatos in chapter 106. The phrase suatim utens seems to be original, since it appears in the adap-tation of ch. 56 in the Annals of St Neots, but was an unusual and unfamiliar expression (suatim is an archaic word much favoured by Anglo- Latin writers).129 To suppose that in all three places there happened to be a marginal note near by in the Cotton manu-script which Parker misinterpreted as a correction would surely be absurd. Presumably Parker or his associate found the phrase suatim utens meaningless and replaced it with something that made sense, assuming a corruption. In both ch 56 and ch 106 of the Parker version the substituted words make good sense though not the sense that Asser intended. The same has surely happened at ch. 74. In fact the words sublevatus est make perfectly reasonable sense despite the objections of Plummer and Stevenson, and have nothing to do with disinterring bodies. If the sentence is allowed to fi nish with these words, as it does in Parker’s edition and the BL transcript, it reads: ‘Sed quodam tempore diuino nutu antea cum Cornubiam venandi causa adiret; et ad quandam eccle-siam orandi causa divertisset; in qua Sanctus Gueriir requiescit; et nunc etiam Sanctus Neotus ibidem pausat, subleuatus est.’130 The phrase evidently refers to Alfred and his illness, not Neot and his translation, and the sense is: ‘At a certain time previously, by divine providence, when he went to Cornwall to hunt and turned aside to a certain church where St Guerir rested, and now St Neot lies there too, he was relieved (from

126 Asser’s Life, ed. Stevenson, ch. 74.127 Ibid. p. 298, n. 1.128 Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred the Great, p. 255, with a reference to Plummer. 129 Wulfstan of Winchester, The Life of St Æthelwold, ed. M. Lapidge and M. Winterbottom, OMT

(Oxford, 1991), p. 24, n. 2.130 Ælfredi Regis res gestae (London: Printed by John Day, 1574).

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the disease and anxiety which had been affl icting him)’. There was no marginal note - except by Parker himself perhaps - and no reference to the translation of St Neot.

alfred’s flight from chippenham

The notion that when the vikings seized Chippenham in January 878 Alfred himself was there celebrating Christmas, was taken totally by surprise and only narrowly escaped capture, is a well- established part of modern popular tradition. It also appears in some very recent scholarly and authoritative accounts of the period. The entry on Alfred in the Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo- Saxon England in 1999 reports that ‘at the beginning of 878 Alfred narrowly escaped capture in a surprise attack on his residence at Chippenham. He fl ed to the Somerset marshes.’131 The biography of the king in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, written by Patrick Wormald, reported it as fact and extended the story with a picture of viking scheming: ‘But almost at once Guthrum (using knowledge of the church calendar that was one viking asset) nearly captured Alfred in twelfth night carousal at Chippenham.’132 Alfred Smyth expands consider-ably on the tradition, remarking that ‘it is clear that in the winter of 877–8, Alfred followed Guthrum north and settled down to celebrate Christmas at Chippenham’. He goes on to suggest that the king’s purpose was to shadow the Viking army, but concludes ‘it was none the less unwise of Alfred to have spent Christmas seemingly in a state of unreadiness on what had now become an exposed frontier of his kingdom’.133 Keynes and Lapidge more cautiously note it as a possibility: ‘It is possible that the two Viking armies were operating in collusion with one another, and that their intention had been to capture King Alfred, who may himself have been celebrating Christmas at Chippenham (an important royal estate).’134 No one however gives a source for this story, and indeed it is hard to fi nd one: there is no hint in the Anglo- Saxon Chronicle or Asser or Æthelweard or Byrhtferth or William of Malmesbury or John of Worcester or Henry of Huntingdon. The present- day historians whom I have consulted tell me it is an inference from the record in the Anglo- Saxon Chronicle, but it is diffi cult to see anything in the annal that it could be inferred from. The Chronicle says nothing of Alfred’s presence in or near Chippenham but records him at Exeter late in 877 and next in Somerset early in 878, so there is nothing to suggest that he had been further north to Chippenham in the meantime. Nothing can be inferred from its reference to

131 The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo- Saxon England, ed. M. Lapidge, J. Blair, S. Keynes and D. Scragg (Oxford, 1999), pp. 27–8, at p. 27. The entry was written by Barbara Yorke, who also refers to ‘Alfred’s fl ight from Chippenham’ in ‘Edward as Ætheling’, Edward the Elder 899–924, ed. N. J. Higham and D. H. Hill (London, 2001), pp. 25–39, at p. 35.

132 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols. (Oxford, 2004), vol. I [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/183]. Wormald makes a similar point in an earlier account, in J. Campbell, E. John and P. Wormald, The Anglo- Saxons (Harmondsworth, 1991), p. 132.

133 Smyth, King Alfred the Great, p. 72.134 Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred the Great, p. 21.


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the vikings ‘stealing’ to Chippenham (bestæl ) since it uses the same word of the viking entry into Wareham in 876 and of several other movements by the viking armies, and by others including the Irish pilgrims of 892. The earliest reference to the story that I have been able to fi nd is a speculative deduction in a note on the annal in Plummer’s 1899 revision of Earle’s edition of the Chronicle: ‘It is clear from Alfred’s will, notes Prof. Earle, that Alfred had a “ham” at Chippenham; and we also fi nd Edward there . . .. . It looks as if the Danes had tried to capture Alfred in his winter home.’135 Nothing similar appears in Earle’s own published edition, so it would seem that this was a per-sonal communication, or a reference to some other work by Earle, or derived from Earle’s papers. The deduction is of course untenable. Chippenham was just one of many royal estates mentioned in Alfred’s will, and there is no evidence that he spent Christmas at any of them, at any time. Nor, as Smyth notes, would it have been remotely sensible to spend Christmas ‘carousing’ in Chippenham without an army, with the viking army apparently poised in Gloucester. The story was presumably produced by Plummer in order to help explain why Alfred his ‘hero- king’ apparently made so little resistance to the vikings and allowed them to overrun his kingdom while he took refuge in the Somerset marshes with only a small troop.136 There is perhaps a trace here of the infl u-ence of the Latin Vitae of St Neot which report that Guthrum learnt from fugitives where the king was wintering, but they do not mention Chippenham or suggest that Guthrum tried to capture the king in his winter quarters. In any case Plummer is very dismissive of the notion that the Vitae had any historical value, so he should not have given them credence on this topic. The story appears to be a modern myth.137

135 Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, a Revised Text, ed. C. Plummer on the basis of an edition by J. Earle, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1892–99) II, 92.

136 There was perhaps too a topical relevance for Plummer in 1899, since he subsequently drew a parallel with the supposedly deceptive or dishonourable tactics of the South African Boers in their ongoing wars with the British: ‘It looks as if the Danes, with Boer “slimness”, had tried to surprise Alfred in his winter home’ (Plummer, Life and Times, p. 59). ‘Slimness’ was contemporary slang for craftiness, much used at the time in reference to the Boers.

137 Grateful thanks are due to Mary Clayton, Rohini Jayatilaka and Simon Keynes for their helpful discussions of this article.

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St Neot in Anglo-saxon England, 2010, 39, p. 193-225

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