[Page numbers of the printed text appear at the right in bold.]page 117
Notes
1. Ælfric, Judith , ed. Bruno Assmann, "Abt Ælfric's
angelsächsische Homilie
über das Buch
Judith," Anglia 10 (1888), 76-104; repr. in Angelsächsische Homilien und
Heiligenleben, ed.
Assmann, Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa 3 (Kassel, 1889; repr. with a
supplementary
introduction by Peter Clemoes, Darmstadt, 1964), pp. 102-16. References are to the 1888
edition by line number.
2.
Ælfric, Judith, lines 429-30. Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own.
3.
In his "Letter to Sigeweard on the Old and New Testament," ed. S. J. Crawford, The Old
English Version of the Heptateuch, EETS o.s. 160 (London, 1922), p. 15, Ælfric states
specifically that " is gewrit wæs to anum men gediht ac hit mæg swa eah manegum
fremian"
("This text was com- page 118
posed for one man, but it may nevertheless benefit
many").
4.
Ælfric, Heptateuch, p. 48. A much later hand has substituted above the line for
the
in wæmnum.
5.
For discussion of the various levels of allegory and their relationship to Anglo-Saxon history
in the anonymous Old English poem Judith, see Ann W. Astell, "Holofernes's Head: Tacen and
Teaching in the Old English Judith," Anglo-Saxon England 18 (1989), 117-33.
6.
Ian Pringle, "Judith: The Homily and the Poem," Traditio 31 (1975), 83-97.
7.
Mary Clayton, "Ælfric's Judith: Manipulative or Manipulated?" Anglo-Saxon
England
23
(1994), 215-27, at 217. Clayton's article is to date the most insightful reading of Ælfric's
Judith.
8.
Ælfric's Prefaces, ed. Jonathan Wilcox, Durham Medieval Texts 9 (Durham,
1994), pp.
12,
21.
9.
Wilcox, Ælfric's Prefaces, p. 21.
10.
Although dissonance between texts and their allegorical significance is very common in
both early and later medieval writings, here that dissonance is so great that it leads Ælfric
radically to alter his source texts and invoke additional exemplars. See Clayton, "Ælfric's
Judith," p. 220.
11.
Clayton, "Ælfric's Judith," pp. 220-24.
12.
The last seven lines of the Malchus story are printed by Assmann, "Abt Ælfric's
angelsächsische Homilie," p. 79. For Jerome's Life of St Malchus (BHL 5190; CPL
619),
see
Vita S. Malchi monachi captivi (PL 23.55-62); and Charles C. Mierow, ed. and trans., "Sancti
Eusebii Hieronymi Vita Malchi Monachi Captivi," in Classical Essays Presented to James A.
Kleist, ed. Richard E. Arnold (St. Louis, 1946), pp. 44-49.
13.
Clayton, "Ælfric's Judith," p. 222.
14.
Pringle, "Judith: The Homily and the Poem," p. 86.
15.
On the idea and practice of spiritual marriage, see Dyan Elliott, Spiritual Marriage: Sexual
Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock (Princeton, 1993).
16.
Ælfric, Judith, p. 79.
17.
Clayton, "Ælfric's Judith," pp. 225-26.
18.
The complete text and the two lives that precede it in the manuscript are printed by
Assmann, Angelsächsische Homilien und Heiligenleben, pp. 195-207.
19.
Kenneth Sisam, "An Old English Translation of a Letter from Wynfrith to Eadburga (A.D.
716-17) in Cotton MS. Otho C.1," Modern Language Review 18 (1923), 253-72; repr. in
Sisam,
Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford, 1953), pp. 199-224, at 209-11.
For
further discussion of the manuscript, see Christine Franzen, The Tremulous Hand of
Worcester: A Study of Old English in the Thirteenth Century (Oxford, 1991), pp. 64-65;
and
Peter Jackson, "The Vitas Patrum in Eleventh-Century Worcester," in England in the
Eleventh
Century: Proceedings of the 1990 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Carola Hicks (Stamford,
1992),
pp. 119-34, at 127-28.
20.
On the manuscripts of Ælfric's Judith, see Walter W. Skeat, ed., Ælfric's Lives of
page 119
Saints,
EETS o.s. 76, 82, 94, 114 (London, 1881-1900; repr. in 2 vols., 1966), 2:xxxi.
21.
The Vulgate Book of Judith can be found in Biblia Sacra Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem VII
(Rome, 1950), pp. 210-80. My citations are from Assmann's edition of Judith, which prints the
Latin below the Old English text.
22.
Ælfric, Judith, line 374: "and hi æfre hyndon / hindan mid wæpnum"
("and they
continually injured them from behind with weapons").
23.
Ælfric, Judith, lines 350, 356.
24.
Ælfric, Judith, line 393.
25.
Judith 12.18.
26.
Ælfric, Heptateuch, p. 74.
27.
Ælfric, Judith, line 393.
28.
Ælfric, Judith, line 410.
29.
For a discussion of the ways in which sexual violence is intertwined with both Anglo-Saxon
and contemporary ideologies of warfare, see Karma Lochrie, "Gender, Sexual Violence, and the
Politics of War in the Old English Judith," in Class and Gender in Early English
Literature, ed.
Britton J. Harwood and Gillian R. Overing (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1994), pp. 1-21.
30.
Ælfric, Judith, lines 367-371.
31.
Judith 14.16-17 and 15.1.
32.
For fuller discussion of this issue, see Clayton, "Ælfric's Judith."
33.
See Ælfric, "Preface to the Catholic Homilies," in The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon
Church: The First Part Containing the Sermones Catholici or Homilies of Ælfric, ed.
and
trans.
Benjamin Thorpe, 2 vols. (London, 1844-46; repr. New York and London, 1971), 1:9; and
Ælfric, "Preface to the Lives of the Saints," in Ælfric's Lives of Saints, ed.
Skeat, pp. 3-7.
For
the complete collection of Ælfric's prefaces, see Wilcox, Ælfric's Prefaces.
34.
Ælfric, Judith, lines 434-36, my emphasis.
35.
Ælfric, Judith, lines 404-6, my emphasis.
36.
Quoted by Jackson J. Campbell, "Schematic Technique in Judith," English Literary
History
38 (1971), 155-72, at 159.
37.
I am grateful to Nicholas Howe and Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe for their comments on
earlier versions of this paper.