RECOVERING THE PALIMPSEST: PROBLEMS IN THE HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY OF SUB-ROMAN BRITAIN

It is now well recognised that social, cultural and political developments in fifth- and sixth-century Britain were obscured and overwritten by subsequent early medieval authors, their efforts having more to do with the propaganda requirements of their own day than with an accurate portrayal of the past.  However, attempts to recover the original 'text' of sub-Roman Britain have been fraught with difficulty.  In a world of shifting paradigms, there exists an array of investigatory devices wielded by the various disciplines but each has its own procedures and limitations and the data produced are often ambiguous, even contradictory.  Moreover, specialists in one field do not necessarily communicate well with those of another.  An historian is no more likely to be familiar with isotope analysis of ancient tooth enamel than a lab archaeologist is with the pitfalls of historiography.

As a consequence, over the past few decades a number of accounts of late and sub-Roman Britain have been published that differ significantly both in their application of available evidence and in the resulting depictions of the place and period.  These difficulties may not be immediately reconcilable, but a clearer understanding of precisely what the difficulties are would be a major step in the right direction.  That is the purpose of my paper.

AMBIGUOUS EROTICISM IN THE EXETER BOOK

The anthology of Anglo-Saxon verse now known as the Exeter Book comprises a selection of poems that are variable in their quality and eclectic in their choice of subjects.  Prayers, hymns, elegies, maxims, bestiaries, riddles and heroic lays intersperse a text in which the sacred coexists with the profane.  It is this unique range of subject matter and its often candid treatment which has ensured that the Exeter Book has continued to be mined for evidence as to the sexual proclivities of the culture which created it.  It is my intention in this paper to continue that enquiry, but with particular reference to some of the poems within the Exeter Book that might appear to present an erotically ambiguous message.

THE POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF EARLY CHRISTIAN INSCRIPTIONS IN WALES

The corpus of early Christian inscriptions in western Britain has been studied extensively by linguists.  As a source of historical evidence, however, they are perhaps under-utilized except in theories on Irish settlement in Wales.  Research has perhaps been constrained by the shortness and similarity of most of the inscriptions.  This neglect in historiography of epigraphical evidence as an important 'transmitted text' is not uncommon.

Yet considering the corpus as a whole provides some notable patterns, particularly in the supposed 'Irishness' of some inscriptions and the considerable 'Romanitas' of others.  Indeed, the forty or so inscriptions clustered in north-west Wales show a remarkable self-consciousness for being Roman.  The names, use of Latin, religious values and secular values claimed by these surviving stones all point to some strange desire on the part of the elite to exaggerate their Romanitas, a phenomenon not seen anywhere else in sub-Roman Britain.

This paper outlines the phenomenon and then attempts to solve it using a combination of textual sources such as Gildas and the later Historia Brittonum, as well as archaeological evidence.  I intend to show that the inscriptions had a political purpose and not a purely religious or social one.  In this way, they add to our understanding of power and legitimacy in fifth- and sixth-century sub-Roman Britain, before the conquest of much of its territory around 600.

IMAGINED ARCHITECTURES AND VISUAL EXEGESIS IN THE ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS OF IBERIAN JEWS

The Tabernacle and the Temple are recurring visual motifs in the illuminated manuscripts of both the Iberian Ashkenazim and Sephardim.  In particular, these images adorn the pages of the Passover haggadot, by far the most popular Jewish text during the Middle Ages.  These illustrations evoked collectively imagined architectures which, when read in parallel with the Biblical texts of the Passover haggadot, allowed the Jewish communities of Spain to place themselves in an eschatological narrative that was capable of making sense of the destruction of the Herodian temple and the dispersal of the Jews to live in foreign lands under rulers of other faiths.  These images, therefore, served more than a merely decorative purpose as passive reflections of accompanying texts.  Rather, they were important exegetical tools, directing the reader toward particular interpretations of the biblical narrative which had immediate, contemporary relevance.  It is essential, therefore, that a historian studying these manuscripts view both textual and illustrative elements as part of a larger, integrated Text.  The purpose of this paper will be to explore the complex interactions between visual and written elements of the Text within a broader socio-cultural context in order to come to an understanding of the particular meanings transmitted to a Medieval audience and, further, to reflect upon the implications of the methodologies used in this study upon the area of manuscript studies as a whole.

THE GODDESS EOSTRE: BEDE'S TEXT AND CONTEMPORARY PAGAN 'TRADITION(S)'

The Venerable Bede (d. 735) in De Temporum Ratione (On the Reckoning of Time), chapter xv 'The English Month' states that: Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated 'Paschal month', and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month.  Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.

This brief reference has been transmitted in a variety of ways to differing audiences, whose reception of it has differed depending on whether the focus was on the transition from paganism to Christianity, on the retrieval of pagan traditions from Christian writings, and so on.

This paper contrasts the sparse and sober scholarly (though contested) transmission of Bedan traditions regarding the Anglo- Saxon deities with the exuberant and extensive (and even more contested) 'traditions' embraced by modern Germanic heathenry.

OLD WINE IN NEW GOBLETS?  ANGLO-SAXONISM, NATION AND RACE IN COLONIAL AUSTRALIA

In George Emmett's 1869 Robin Hood and the Outlaws of Sherwood Forest, Friar Tuck exhorts 'In wine quite old and goblets new / Drink honour to the Saxon'.  This carousing appeal captures perfectly, though perhaps inadvertently, how for Emmett and his readers the purportedly 'old wine' of Anglo-Saxon identity had come to be toasted in the 'new goblet' of racialised imperial nationalism.  Much has been said about the role of Anglo-Saxonist visions of early medieval England in the development of Victorian English nationalism.  Far less, however, has been said about the transmission of the 'old wine' of Anglo-Saxonist nationalism to the 'new goblet' of the Australian colonial environment.  While Anglo-Saxonism was central to America's sense of its national identity and destiny, it is not yet clear how, or even whether, this discourse can be properly described as nationalist in the Australian colonial context.  Examining a range of Australian fictional texts, particularly a number written in the years approaching Australian Federation, I wish to explore the ways in which an understanding of Australian colonial visions of the Anglo-Saxon past alters our current notions of Anglo-Saxonism as an ideological discourse in the nineteenth century.

WORLD OF WONDERS: THE SHAPING OF REALITY IN MAXIMS I

The Old English verse-collections of maxims have challenged modern understandings of poetry and text.  They have often been dismissed as poetry for being naïve, mechanical and needlessly obscure.  Read as information, they can seem risible: did Anglo-Saxon audiences really need reminding that God lives in heaven, frost freezes, and fire burns wood?  Their abrupt flits from subject to subject have led many to suggest they constitute ill-sorted grab-bags compiled by redactors who felt little concern for their shape and coherence.

Considering selections from Maxims I, I hope to suggest how we might read it as a coherent text which explores the relationship between God and the world of experience. It follows a program more philosophical than theological, in that it consistently probes the specific question of how the unitary fullness of God's creative omnipotence manifests itself across the disparate phenomena perceived by human consciousness.  I wish further to suggest that, alongside the equally undervalued riddles of the Exeter Book, the maxims may embody a focus of imaginative energy more central to the Anglo-Saxon poetic project than modern scholarship has recognised.

THE TRANSMISSION OF INNOCENT I'S EPISTULA 35 TO JOHN OF JERUSALEM IN THE COLLECTIO AVELLANA

Innocent I, bishop of Rome from 402 to 417, wrote to John, bishop of Jerusalem, a letter dated to 417 (Ep. 35 [PL 20.601-602] - JK 325 = Jerome, Ep. 137).  Paula and Eustochium, aristocratic female ascetical virgins who had been living in Bethlehem, had written to the Roman bishop after their monastery had been burnt.  Jerome had written to Innocent and Augustine of Hippo blaming the Pelagians only implicitly.  Not only did Innocent write to Jerome, but he wrote this letter to John, accusing him of not doing enough to protect the innocent in his diocese and threatening him with action to seek redress.  This event in Bethlehem secured Innocent's support for the anti-Pelagian movement.  While Augustine, Jerome and the Pelagian controversy are well known not only to scholars of late antiquity but to a wider audience, Innocent remains a much more unknown figure.  Yet his episcopacy marks a significant point in the transition of the Roman episcopacy into the mediaeval papacy.  While most of Innocent's letters are preserved in canonical decretal collections of the early Middle Ages (he was almost the first Roman bishop to write decretals - a significant point in itself), Epistula 35 is preserved only in the Collectio Avellana, an important collection for our understanding of Innocent's concept of his pastoral ministry in relationship to other bishops (particularly the growing notion of papal primacy) and the transmission of papal letters in the fifth century in general.

ABBOT CEOLFRID'S PASCHAL LETTER

By far the longest chapter in Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Book V Chapter 21 contains the letter of advice on Paschal dating from Ceolfrid to King Nechtan of the Picts.  The letter provides an involved and at times confusing history of the Paschal controversy, which Plummer suggested most readers of HE would have preferred to have been omitted.

There has been conjecture as to the authorship of the letter and the ambiguous introduction of Eo tempore, instead of an AD date, has led to a number of theories regarding events in Pictland.  Certainly this chapter provides the most comprehensive contemporary information regarding King Nechtan and his sophistication is implied by a flattering quote from Plato in the introduction.  Plummer was one of the first scholars to make an excursus on this letter but subsequent academic interest has been limited with little attention from computistical scholars.  I propose to analyse aspects of the letter and its implications on the state of the debate in Pictland and in Northumbria.

BEDE AND THE AUGUSTINE'S OAK CONFERENCES: A CASE IN TRANSMISSION

In Bede's representation of relations between the British church and the Roman church of the Anglo-Saxons, one of the defining events concerns Augustine of Canterbury's two meetings, c.602-4, with a group of British bishops at 'Augustine's Oak' on the border of the West Saxons and the Hwicce.  The Augustine's Oak conferences are the first of Bede's ecclesiastical 'set pieces' which marshal Roman orthodoxy against British and Irish/Columban practice.  Bede is the only source for these meetings and, because of his distance both in time and in location from the events, his description has been labelled as an 'ecclesiastical saga' of uncertain authenticity.  However, there are indications that Bede's account was not simply an imaginative reconstruction.  Bede appears to have relied on both Anglo-Saxon and British sources in his rendering of the meetings.  Although some of the details may be dubious, he reveals a plausible picture of ecclesiastical interaction between the Anglo-Saxons and Britons, which saw the Britons branded as schismatic by the Roman church and which memorialized a pattern of distrust and isolation.  The aim of this paper is to analyse Bede's transmission of the events surrounding the Augustine's Oak conferences and the implications for Anglo-British ecclesiastical interaction during the early Anglo-Saxon period.

A LATE BYZANTINE PILGRIM AS AN ANTIQUARIAN

Bars'kyj was an early eighteenth-century traveller from Kiev whose travelogue survives in a very lengthy autograph manuscript which is accompanied by scores of painstakingly accurate archaeological drawings, mainly of medieval churches and monasteries.  Bars'kyj's travel journal was composed over the best part of quarter of a century when he travelled through Eastern Europe, Italy, the Greek islands, lived in Athos for extended periods of time, travelled extensively throughout the Holy Lands and the Levant, lived in Cyprus and Patmos and finally settled in Constantinople before setting out for home.

There are relatively few studies on mediaeval Byzantine art, archaeology or church culture, which in one way or another do not draw on information supplied by Bars'kyj.  His account is a crucial and basic primary source for much of our knowledge concerning the appearance and contents of the great monasteries of Mount Athos; he is our most comprehensive source for our knowledge of the Orthodox antiquities of Cyprus, as well as for some of the Greek Byzantine churches of Athens, mainland Greece and the Greek islands - particularly Chios and Patmos.  This paper assesses the accuracy of some of Bars'kyj's descriptions and drawings when compared with the surviving monuments and their recent archaeological investigations.

TELLING THE TEXT: DIFFICULTIES IN THE STUDY OF OLD ENGLISH NARRATIVE

The notion of 'transmission', sending across, has an inbuilt assumption of the conduit metaphor of communication, so forcefully critiqued by Michael Reddy in his article of that name and untenable in the light of post-structuralist theorizing of subjectivity and interpretation.  One detail noted by Reddy is the way in which some words of (originally) linguistic reference ('text', 'poem') function in two ways (which he refers to as 'text1', 'text2' etc).  In one use, the word refers to a physical or perceivable object ('in a modern edition, the Old English poem Beowulf has 3,182 lines').  In the other use, the word refers to an interpreted meaning ('the poem Beowulf illustrates the contradictory values of an heroic world').

Post-printing texts, where they are authorized in a standard form, are subjectively variant only in the second, semantic, sense.  Pre-printing texts however, as they survive to us in manuscript form, exhibit instabilities in both the physical and interpreted 'texts' - as the gloss on the conference topic implies.  Is 'The impossibility of text and transmission' the more accurate title for this conference?

In this paper I take up these vague and general questions with a specific reference - to the understanding of narrative in Old English poetry.

OTTOMAN DOCUMENTS AS A KEY TO UNDERSTANDING MEDIEVAL AND ANCIENT HISTORY: A CASE STUDY OF AMASYA

Ottoman documents have been critical in shedding light on many aspects of history, including demographic and economic.  Indeed, recourse to these documents, particularly the Ottoman cadastral register, can enable one to gain a clear picture of the socio-economic history of an entire town or a city during that period.  This paper, through a case study of the town of Amasya, is an empirical investigation of how Ottoman documents can also be used by archaeologists and historians to discover previously unknown aspects of towns and cities.

There is a fairly large number of cadastral registers of Amasya; this paper will focus on the one which is dated 1576 (during Sultan Murad III's reign).  An examination of this register enables one to identify the changing population of the town over four distinct periods: Hellenistic, Roman, Seljukid and Ottoman, as well as its ethnic and cultural development over the centuries.  I will also demonstrate how this register can provide information on the boundaries of the quarters for the periods mentioned and thereby assist archaeologists and historians in their excavations and studies.

The registers and other Ottoman documents provide particularly important information about the mosques, medreses, turbes and other buildings that were the centres of activity for the town's inhabitants.  An examination of the distribution of these buildings is critical for understanding the physical boundaries of the town's quarters as well as their ethnic structure.  Indeed, a close examination of the register provides clear evidence of Amasya's foundation during the Hellenistic period at the foot of the mountain on which the citadel stands today, the development of settlements along the river during the Roman-Byzantine period, expansion beyond the periphery of Christian quarters under the Danishmends and the founding of new quarters around the existing ones and away from the city during the Seljuk and Ottoman periods.  The register is also important in identifying the ethnic and religious make up of the population of Amasya.

The type of information which can be extracted from the Ottoman documents, particularly the cadastral registers, will clearly demonstrate how these papers can serve as a vital tool for both historians and archaeologists in their investigation of the ancient and medieval period.

SEPARATE OR TOGETHER?  QUESTIONING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE ENCYCLOPEDIA AND BESTIARY TRADITIONS

As receivers of texts transmitted by medieval readers and re-writers over time we've necessarily categorized them in terms of genre: romances, chronicles, sermons, bestiaries, encyclopedias and so on.  With hindsight we can see how conventions accrued over the centuries to these different types of text and how specialized fields of study grew around them.  Thus it can reasonably be said, for example, that the encyclopedia manuscript tradition is separate from the bestiary manuscript tradition.

The distinction may be useful for the historian at the receiving end of a textual tradition, but suggests a false dichotomy from the medieval perspective.  The terms as they have emerged in the scholarly tradition represent modern scholarly concepts. This paper reviews evidence that although the so-called encyclopedia and the bestiary appeared early on in different forms and acquired different conventions, they shared features of great importance to medieval people.

KING RECCARED'S EXCHANGE OF LETTERS WITH POPE GREGORY THE GREAT

Scholars have noted the letter sent by King Reccared to the Pope (9.229a, 596-9) and the Pope's replies (9.229b & c, August 599), but they have not closely examined these interesting texts.  The previous letter, to Leander, Bishop of Spain (9.228, July 599), sets the scene for an exchange of papal relics in return for the King's jewelled cup and cloaks for Rome's poor.  The Pope's joy over the King's continued conversion (first in 1.41, 591), and that of all his Arian people, echoes his exultation a year earlier over the conversion of King Ethelbert and the baptism of over ten thousand of the English race (letters 11.37 and 8.29).

The poor quality of the Latin in Reccared's letter will be shown, in contrast to the Pope's fluent prose, as will the different attitudes of King and Pope towards the 'gutless' abbots who were close to shipwreck off Marseilles, and towards the dynamic Bishop of Seville, Leander.  Finally, the Pope neatly solves a problem when texts are burnt in 9.229c.  A Latin/English copy of Reccared's letter will be circulated.

THE SAGA OF FERGUS MAC LÉTI

Fergus mac Léti, King of Ulster, catches some leprechauns.  They give him the power to travel underwater in return for their freedom.  This gift comes with a proviso: that Fergus stays away from Loch Rudraige.  Naturally, he goes into the Loch.  There he confronts a water-monster and is so terrified that his face is distorted by a permanent look of horror.  This blemish compromises Fergus's eligibility for the kingship.  His slave woman, Dorn, taunts him about his blemish and he kills her.  Then he returns to Loch Rudraige, slays the water monster, and dies.

This marvellous tale is the first in which leprechauns make an appearance.  Various aspects of this tale have already been discussed by scholars.  The older versions of the story survive only in legal manuscripts and Binchy has noted how much we owe to its legal redactors.  And yet the legal implications of the story have never been teased out.

In this paper I will look at the saga in its role as a legal teaching tale. I  will attempt to explain the basis of the complicated legal dispute it revolves around, the principles on which the various claims were based and the legal basis on which judgement was finally determined.

OUR RECORD OF BYZANTINE IMPERIAL COURT CEREMONY

'Over a long time much can disappear which while achieved in that time, is also consumed by it.'  With this observation the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII (905-959) introduced his Book of Ceremonies in which he recorded the ancestral customs, complexity and splendour of the court of Constantinople which he so admired and wished to preserve.

The text, itself a complex compilation, survives in only two manuscripts, significantly both of the tenth century, one in palimpsest.  The fate of the work, both in the tenth century and since the first printed edition of 1751-54, has been far different from what Constantine might have anticipated.

THE ART OF EARLY MEDIEVAL NUMBER SYMBOLISM

Christian number symbolism built upon the strong tradition of Platonic philosophy, Pythagorean lore and Babylonian Astronomy.  Numbers such as 1, 7, 8, 12 and 40 had magical and talismanic properties and were strongly represented in the Hebrew Scriptures.  God is praised: 'You have ordered all things in measure, number and weight (Wisdom: 11:21).'  In the Christian Scriptures when John the Divine was perplexed with the events happening around him he was given a golden reed to measure the temple of God, the altar and those who worship within the temple (Revelation, XI:1); understanding would come from the process of measuring.   Augustine claimed that 'To ascend the path towards Wisdom, we discover that numbers transcend our mind and remain unchangeable in their own.'  Numbers had an ethereal existence.  Augustine, Ambrose, Macrobius, Capella, Boethius, Isidore of Seville and Thierry of Chartres praised the divine quality of particular numbers at length.  Numbers were a model for theology and were an analogy of the creation.  This paper examines the manifestation of this number symbolism in early medieval, art, literature and architecture.

THE MIRACLES OF SAINTS CYRUS AND JOHN

The text entitled The Miracles of Saints Cyrus and John was composed by Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem (634-638), in Greek.  The text concerns the miracles of two healing saints: Cyrus, supposedly a physician of Alexandria, and John, a soldier in Egypt.  Their cult was established by the 'discovery' of their relics by Cyril of Alexandria in the fifth century.  Their cult replaced the local Egyptian cult of Isis.  After the Arab conquest of Egypt it spread to Rome and Constantinople and an Arabic legend of the saints' healings developed.  Sophronius' text was translated into Latin by Anastasius Bibliothecarius in the late ninth century.  We will look at the role played by Anastasius' translation in the Western dissemination of this cult.  The Latin version survives in a single manuscript (Vat. lat. 5410) and a comparison with the Greek text as edited by Angelo Mai (1840) and N. Fernandez Marcos (1975) reveals some interesting departures from the original.

FORCHHEIM - BIRTHPLACE OF GERMANY?

No one says so as far as I know, but this place on the border of the duchies of Franconia and Bavaria was at least the sort of place where Germany came from at the turn of the ninth into the tenth centuries.  This is demonstrated by surveying 'important dates in its history' (from a modern inscription in the town).  Yet there is more.  Where nobles had met to choose one of themselves as the first real German king after the Carolingian dynasty ran out in 911 CE, so rebel nobles met to choose one of themselves to replace the Salian dynasty during the Investiture Contest: at Forchheim.  This was no coincidence, and reveals the latter's self-conscious notion of participating in an elective monarchy.  Thus Forchheim witnessed the origin both of the early medieval German kingdom and of its devolution.

'READING' CROSS-MARKED STONES IN DALRIADA AND BEYOND

The extensive corpus of stone sculpture in Scottish Dalriada includes a large quantity of stones with simple incised crosses, as well as a range of more complex cross-marked stones.  These incised crosses are difficult to provenance, but are generally accepted as being of early medieval date and Christian context.  There have been many attempts to 'read' this corpus and to extrapolate some sort of text from it, such as attempts to use incised crosses as evidence for a Columban presence in Iceland.  Alternatively, the corpus has been read as a map of the transmission of Christianity throughout and beyond Dalriada.  This paper explores the early medieval stone sculpture of Dalriada and considers the variety of texts it presents to modern scholars and how they can be read.

MATER LITTERATA: CONSTRUCTING THE LATIN-LITERATE DHUODA AND HER LIBER MANUALIS IN THE POST-MEDIEVAL PERIOD - A COMPARISON WITH HELOISE

This paper explores how the characterisation of these two women - one as devoted wife and mother, the other as wanton lover and blasphemous nun - affected the reception of their Latin writings and acceptance of the authenticity of their authorship.  Tracing the reception and philological construction from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries of Dhuoda's ninth-century Liber manualis for her son, this paper reveals the ways in which the difficult intersections of female authorship with Latin literacy were negotiated with respect to this text.  It argues that because Dhuoda writes like a woman might be supposed to (maternally, humbly, morally and without complaint) her Latinate authorship never undergoes the suspicion applied to Heloise's twelfth-century Letters, since Heloise writes in a manner not like a woman, or rather, like a man (self-consciously rhetorically, in full acknowledgment of her sexuality, laden with complaints against God and man, and with no overt mention of her child). Thus the paper deals with issues of literary gender and the expectations applied to women's writing, particularly the writings of medieval mothers.

THE LIMINALITY OF BODY AND SOUL IN EARLY MEDIEVAL IRISH LITERATURE

What induces a man to fly?  Why does a fallen angel become a bird? The delicate debate of the mind, body, soul connection is not only addressed in New Age expos, but also appears in the textual world of Early Medieval Ireland.  Indeed, Early Irish literature illustrates a prominent regard for occasions of liminality in both time and space: the time between day and night as well as the coexistence of the physical and non-physical worlds.

Likewise, these tales suggest an individual, inward space, where the boundaries between the soul and body are blurred.  When the soul appears out of balance, the physical body is oftentimes directly affected, generally gaining new supernatural or, more likely, unnatural capabilities.  This paper will explore the delicate balance between reason and madness, sinfulness and sanctity, and the impact each has on the natural form of individuals in Early Irish sagas and hagiography.

THE LIFE AND VISIONS OF FURSA

This paper proposes to look at the Vita and Visions of Fursey/Fursa.  He is the earliest recorded Irish monastic leader to work, in the company of his blood brothers Foillan and Ultan, in England.  He was welcomed to East Anglia by Siebert and given a site called 'Cnobheressburg' - thought to be the Roman 'Saxon Shore' fort of Burgh Castle.  One of his most influential contributions to the Christianity of the seventh century in Ireland, Britain and the Continent are his Visions.  One of these describes his journey in the company of angels in which he was able to see the delights of the blessed and the torments of the damned-immortalised by Dante in his Paradisio and Inferno.  However, Fursey's vision is more subtle.  He is torn between active and contemplative undertakings.  Is this dilemma true to the Celtic monastic tradition?

THERE AND BACK AGAIN: THE TRAVELS OF THE CALVERLEY-RUDSTON FAMILY ARCHIVES FROM EAST YORKSHIRE TO NSW AND BACK AGAIN

'AND THEN THERE WAS SILENCE': THE LACK OF TRANSMISSION OF ANGLO-SAXON ATTITUDES TOWARDS SUICIDE

While the themes of death and Judgement Day appear to be central to Anglo-Saxon literature, there is a considerable lack of reference to suicide in both the literature and law.  St Augustine's detailed account in the City of God is possibly the only text that directly addresses the subject of suicide.  He declares that no Christian has the authority to commit suicide, and hence describes suicide as a horrendous crime against God.

This paper will explore the attitude of the Anglo-Saxons towards suicide by assessing the literature surrounding death, Judgement Day and the afterlife.  It will also investigate the archaeological evidence of burial practices in the early Christian period in an attempt to decipher the Anglo-Saxon attitudes towards death in general, and more specifically attitudes towards those who had taken their own life.  Through this investigation it is hoped that the gap with respect to suicide between Late Antiquity and the late Medieval period will be bridged.

MYRDDIN/MERLIN: TEXT, TRANSMISSION AND THE FIGURE OF THE 'WISE MAN'

The figure of Myrddin appears in the Welsh mythological cycles as embodying mystery, prophecy and wisdom.  Over the centuries his persona and name have morphed into an archetypal figure that is instantly recognisable today as 'Merlin'.  This paper examines poems concerning/by Myrddin found in the Black Book of Caermarthen, namely Apple trees (Afallennau) and The Dialogue between Myrddin and Taliesin (Ymddiddan Myrddin a Thaliesin), tracing their socio-historical origins and the progression of Myrddin into Merlin into later texts.  I will explore Geoffrey of Monmouth's supposed translation of the Prophecy of Merlin in the twelfth century, attempting to source any links and consistencies between the Welsh Myrddin texts and later presentations of the Myrddin/Merlin figure within Arthurian literature.  The paper will consider how textualised figures and events evolve through time.  Of interest is which elements of the original poems and the mythology surrounding them are recognisable in later texts.  I focus on why certain aspects and plot features survive better, being found not only in Welsh texts but also Scottish and Irish literature.  This is evidenced in the various accounts of a wild, forest, prophetic hermit who appears in several historical accounts, which in hindsight are viewed as textual evidence for both Myrddin's existence and his supposed immortal status.  The paper will also examine which aspects are changed and altered (eg the renaming of Myrddin as Merlin, which is said to have occurred when Geoffrey of Monmouth attempted to Latinise the Welsh Myrddin).