Translatio and the use of the classical past in early medieval England

Abstract

This thesis studies the works of three prominent historiographers from the eighth and ninth centuries. The first is the eighth-century historian Bede (672/3–735), who was the first English scholar to attempt to interweave the history of the Anglo-Saxons into a universal historiographical framework that included the Romans. The connection between the Romans and the English in Bede’s work was seized upon by the second author that this thesis explores: the Anglo-Saxon scholar and poet Alcuin of York (c. 735–804). The third early medieval English historiographer under discussion in this thesis is the author of the Old English Orosius, a free translation and/or adaptation of Orosius’s Historiae Adversus Paganos usually associated with the reign of Alfred the Great (871–899). These three authors and their works are related to one another. Bede and Alcuin came from a similar Northumbrian scholarly environment and were well-reputed in Alfredian England, which means the Old English translator of Orosius might have been familiar with Bede’s and Alcuin’s works. All the three authors shared a similar end and similar narrative strategies, which make them suitable individual case-studies showing an overarching theme of the use of the past. Each of these authors, as this thesis will demonstrate, appropriated Roman heritage to construct their own histories and address contemporary concerns. They were driven by the pursuit of imperial and ecclesiastical unity, intellectual renewal and their own place within the wider Christendom.