Welsh Journals

The reader is rightly reminded that the written records of Anglo-Saxon history are almost exclusively monastic in origin, but Dr. Kirby's deter- mination to counter the bias of these writings exposes his work to criticism. We are told something of the Irish half-uncial (p. 188), but nothing about the Mediterranean uncial whose widespread use in England is an important witness to the strength of Roman influence. The missionary phase is represented too much in nationalistic terms. It was not only some of the Irish monks who left Lindisfarne after 664; many of the English monks went with them (p. 47). The chant introduced into England was Roman, but not specifically Gregorian. It was Gregory II (715-31), not Gregory the Great, who introduced the liturgical reforms resulting in the Gregorian chant (p. 209). If heresy 'was rare in the early English Church' (p. 210), why did Bede devote so much space to its refutation in his Biblical commentaries, and how can it be said that Bede 'chose not to write about' (p. 51) the history of the church in his own day when two of the five books of the Ecclesiastical History and the whole of the History of the Abbots are concerned with times through which he himself had lived ? Dr. Kirby argues, rightly, that over-much emphasis has been placed on the monastic aspect of the church in the tenth century, but his representation of the great monastic reformers, particularly Dunstan, as little more than scheming politicians seems unbalanced. Yet, strangely, when he is writing of the reigns of Ethelred the Unready and Cnut, he makes no reference to Archbishop Wulfstan, now surely established as an ecclesiastical statesman of major importance. Some pages of the book are too heavily laden with detail and there are inaccuracies as well as loose writing. 'Bede describes the title of bretwalda as (p. 54), but Bede never uses the title bretwalda. 'The cottager held only five hides of land (p. 230), where hides ought to read acres. How do we assess a military strength described as 'not nearly so non- existent' (p. 81), and how shall we treat 'the major and permanent head- aches of any Anglo-Saxon ruler' (p. 179)? On the last page of his book Dr. Kirby writes: 'It is, of course, important for the historian to appreciate that what mattered to most men and women then as now was good heath, adequate food, essential clothing and reasonable accommodation' (p. 278). Herein lie both the qualities and the defects of his book. He allows us to see the furrow across the field, the smoke from the hearthside, but for him The Dream of the Rood has become a mere assemblage of runes carved on the Ruthwell Cross. He does not let us see that what mattered most to the dying Bede and to the hard-pressed Alfred was that their countrymen should be able to read in English St. John's Gospel, Gregory's Pastoral Care and Boethius's On the Consolation of Philosophy. PETER HUNTER BLAIR Emmanuel College, Cambridge