Studies: Date, Historical Background

• Cockayne, O., ed., The Shrine: A Collection of Occasional Papers on Dry Subjects (London, 1864-70), pp. 33-5, 44-6 and 157 [commentary on his edition of what he calls ‘King Ælfred's Book of Martyrs'; identifies the Old English Martyrology as a ninth-century text, ‘of the age of Alfred and doubtless composed under his direction']
• Wülker, R., Grundriss zur Geschichte der angelsächsischen Litteratur (Leipzig, 1885), p. 450 [on the possible Alfredian background, neutral]
• Brooke, S. A., English Literature from the Beginning to the Norman Conquest (London, 1898), p. 237 [Old English Martyrology possibly Alfredian]
• Herzfeld, G., ed., An Old English Martyrology, Early English Text Society os 116 (London, 1900), pp. xix-xxxii
• Liebermann, F., ‘Zum Old English Martyrology', Archiv 105 (1900), 86-7 [discussion of saints' cults and their implication for the dating of the text]
• Besant, W., The Story of King Alfred (London, 1901), p. 178 [attributed to King Alfred]
• Harrison, R., The Writings of King Alfred (New York, 1901), pp. 8-9 [possibly linked to King Alfred]
• Plummer, C., The Life and Times of Alfred the Great (Oxford, 1902), pp. 34-5, 146 [Old English Martyrology possibly Alfredian]
• Thomas, P. G., 'Alfred and the Old English Prose of his Reign', The Cambridge History of English Literature, ed. A. W. Ward and A. R. Waller (Cambridge, 1920), I, 105-6 [misleading]
• Browne, G. F., King Alfred's Books (New York, 1920), pp. xv-xvi [on the possible Alfredian background of the Old English Martyrology: 'there is nothing to connect its compilation or translation with the King, though it has been named King Alfred's Book of Martyrs']
• Anderson, G. K., The Literature of the Anglo-Saxons (Princeton NJ, 1949) [p. 295, entirely misleading]
• Vleeskruyer, R. ed., The Life of St. Chad: An Old English Homily (Amsterdam, 1953), pp. 38-71 [on the ninth-century ‘Mercian Literary Dialect', of which the Old English Martyrology is, in Vleeskruyer's view, an example]
• Sisam, C., ‘An Early Fragment of the Old English Martyrology', Review of English Studies ns 4 (1953), 209-20, at 212-14
• Greenfield, S. B., A Critical History of Old English Literature (London, 1965) [the Old English Martyrology in the context of ‘a Mercian ‘school' of translation']
• Whitelock, D., ‘The Prose of Alfred's Reign', Continuations and Beginnings, ed. E. G. Stanley (London, 1966), pp. 67-103, repr. in her From Bede to Alfred: Studies in Early Anglo-Saxon Literature and History (London, 1980), item VI [on the possible Alfredian background]
• Cross, J. E., ‘‘Legimus in ecclesiasticis historiis': A Sermon for All Saints, and its use in Old English Prose', Traditio 33 (1977), 101-35 [identification of a ninth-century source text; dating implications]
• Kotzor, G., ed., Das altenglische Martyrologium, 2 vols., Abhandlungen der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Kl., ns 88.1-2 (Munich, 1981), I, 9 -33 and 443-54 [Forschungsbericht and summary]
• Morrish, J. J., 'An Examination of Literacy and Learning in England in the Ninth Century' (diss., Oxford, 1982), pp. 148-9, 154-7 [briefly on the ninth-century context]
• Alexander, M., Old English Literature (Oxford, 1983), p. 145 [brief reference]
• Clayton, M., [Review of G. Kotzor, ed., Das altenglische Martyrologium], Review of English Studies 35 (1984), 347-9 [on the feast of All Saints and its implications for the dating of the text]
• Greenfield, S. B. and D. G. Calder, A New Critical History of Old English Literature (New York, 1986) [brief note on the Old English Martyrology and a possible Alfredian context]
• Frantzen, A. J., King Alfred (Boston, 1986), p. 8 ['Alfred advanced the more general aims of his educational reform by requesting translations to be undertaken by others, and it is under this category that [the Old English Martyrology] should now be placed']
• Bately, J. M., ‘Old English Prose before and during the Reign of Alfred', Anglo-Saxon England 17 (1988), 93-138 [on the date and ninth-century prose context]
• Hohler, C., ‘Theodore and the Liturgy', Archbishop Theodore: Commemorative Studies on his Life and Influence, ed. M. Lapidge, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 11 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 222-35 [on Cyricus and Julitta, Mary Magdalene, Milus of Susa, and the Capuan saints]
• Lapidge, M., ‘Latin Learning in Ninth-Century England', in his Anglo-Latin Literature 600-899 (London, 1996), pp. 409-39, at 437-8
• Roberts, J., 'Fela martyra 'many martyrs': A Different View of Orosius's City', Alfred the Wise: Studies in Honour of Janet Bately on the Occasion of her Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. J. Roberts, J. L. Nelson and M. Godden (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 155-78 [contains list of place-names used in the Old English Martyrology]
• Fulk, R. D., C. M. Gain, and R. S. Anderson, A History of Old English Literature (Oxford, 2003), pp. 133-4 [brief introduction]
• Magennis, H., 'Anonymous: Old English Martyrology', The Literary Encyclopedia (2003) [concise survey of contents and historical background]
• Irvine, S., 'The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Idea of Rome in Alfredian Literature', Alfred the Great: Papers from the Eleventh-Centenary Conferences, ed. T. Reuter (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 63-77 [brief reference, p. 73]
• Lapidge, M., 'Acca of Hexham and the Origin of the Old English Martyrology', Analecta Bollandiana 123 (2005), 29-78 [suggests that the text is a translation of a Latin martyrology composed by Acca, 731 x 740]
• Thijs, C., 'Levels of Learning in Anglo-Saxon Worcester: The Evidence Re-Assessed', Leeds Studies in English 36 (2005), 105-31
• Rauer, C., ‘Usage of the Old English Martyrology’, Foundations of Learning: The Transfer of Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages, ed. R. H. Bremmer jr. and K. Dekker, Medievalia Groningana ns 9 (Leuven, 2007), pp. 125-46
• Godden, M., 'The Alfredian Project and its Aftermath: Rethinking the Literary History of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries', Proceedings of the British Academy 162 (2009), 93-122 [suggests that the Alfredian texts are individually perhaps as freestanding as the Old English Martyrology]
• Godden, M., 'Glosses to the Consolation of Philosophy in Late Anglo-Saxon England: Their Origins and their Uses', Rethinking and Recontextualizing Glosses: New Perspectives in the Study of Late Anglo-Saxon Glossography, ed. P. Lendinara, L. Lazzari and C. Di Sciacca, Textes et études du moyen âge 54 (Porto: Fédération international des Instituts d’études médiévales, 2011), pp. 67-91, at 84 [on ninth-century text production]
• Rauer, C., ‘Female Hagiography in the Old English Martyrology’, Writing Women Saints in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. P. E. Szarmach (Toronto, 2013), pp. 13-29
• Rauer, C., ed., The Old English Martyrology: Edition, Translation and Commentary, Anglo-Saxon Texts 10 (Cambridge, 2013), esp. pp. 1-25
• Dendle, P., Demonic Possession in Anglo-Saxon England (Kalamazoo, 2014), pp. 12 and 16 [brief contextualisation of demonic imagery in 133 Mary Magdalene and 211 Hilarion]
• Bately, J. M., 'Alfred as Author and Translator', A Companion to Alfred the Great, ed. N. G. Discenza and P. E. Szarmach, Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition 58 (Leiden, 2015), pp. 113-42, at 114-15 [very brief comments on the manuscripts and authorship of the Old English Martyrology]
• Discenza, N. G. and P. E. Szarmach, ed., A Companion to Alfred the Great, ed. N. G. Discenza and P. E. Szarmach, Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition 58 (Leiden, 2015), pp. 399 and 405-6 [very brief comments on Cockayne's and Herzfeld's editions and their theories of authorship of the Old English Martyrology]
• Rauer, C., ‘Old English Literature before Alfred: The Mercian Dimension’, The Age of Alfred: Rethinking English Literary Culture c.850–950, ed. F. Leneghan and A. Faulkner, Studies in Old English Literature 3 (Turnhout, 2024), pp. 51-71

Back to Contents