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.The date, recorded by the  Northumbrian(?York) Annals , is surely not mere chance.It was the  Heavenlybirthday of the seventh-century Northumbrian king and eventuallymartyr-king, Oswald, entered as such in Willibrord s personal cal-endar and in the early calendar or calendars underlying those in themanuscripts Berlin Phillips 1869 and Milan Ambr.M.12 sup.; andÆthelwald almost certainly lacked royal blood.329The annalistic Continuation goes on to say that in the second yearof Æthelwald s reign there was a distressing outbreak of  pestilencewhich lasted for nearly two years, the population suffering from sick-nesses of various kinds but especially the wasting-effects of dysen-tery.330 Æthelwald s rule, moreover, was not unchallenged: in 761 anunidentified Oswine (from a royal line? a patricius?) was killed in openwarfare.The winter of 763 4 was an exceptionally hard one all overnorth-west Europe, like no other in living memory, so that trees andplants withered and  marine animals were found dead; later in theyear towns in several kingdoms, including southern NorthumbrianDoncaster and York, were devastated by fire.331 In 765 Northumbria329Cont.Bedae, ed.Colgrave and Mynors, p.574; HR ed.Arnold, 2, 41.Calendars:of Willibrord, ed.Wilson, pp.10 and 36 ( apparently by the original hand ); Phillips,ed.Borst, Karolingische Kalenderreform, p.281; Ambr., ed.Bischoff, p.253.August 5was a Saturday in 758, a Sunday (Pent.VIII) in 759.We do not know what mass-set would have been used on that day, but it is probable that the Gospel-lectionfor Pent.VIII was Mc 8.1 9 ( the Feeding of the Four Thousand ).Janet Nelson snotable studies of royal inauguration rituals in the eighth and ninth centuries, con-veniently brought together in Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London andRonceverte, 1986), pp.239 360, do not (I think) consider the evidence forNorthumbrian practice before Eardwulf s consecration in 796: but see generally Inauguration Rituals , ibid., pp.284 7, and her arguments for the presence in theroyal ordines in the earliest English pontificals of Insular material of very much ear-lier date:  The earliest surviving royal ordo , ibid., pp.341 60, and esp.pp.350 9.330Cont.Bedae, ed.Colgrave and Mynors, pp.574 6.For mortalitas s semanticshift in early Christian texts and their early-medieval successors, see Herren, HispericaFamina 2, 114, noting that in  the Book of Cerne ( Lorica of Laidcenn , Kuypers,Book of Cerne, p.85 and pl.) the OE gloss is wòl.But in the seventh and eighth cen-tury it does not necessarily or only refer to bubonic plague (cf.Herren, cit., Wallace-Hadrill, Bede Commentary, p.131): in the  Vatican Gelasian sacramentary , the massesin Bk.III xxxviii xli (ed.Wilson, pp.255 7, ed.Mohlberg nos 1377 92) with theheading Orationes tempore quod absit mortalitatis are followed (III xlii: ed.Wilson, pp.257 8, ed.Mohlberg nos 1393 97) by Orationes pro mortalitate animalium.331For annalistic references to the long and bitter freeze-up see, e.g., the Northumbrian Annals in HR ed.Arnold, 2, 42, Ann.Ulst., ed.Mac Airt and MacNiocaill, p.216 (nix magna.iii.bus fere mensibus) and Ann.s.Amandi, ed.Pertz, MGHSS I, p.10, which gives the precise dates 14 December (763) to 16 March.Seealso the letter from the abbot of Jarrow, Epist.Select.1, ed.Tangl, no.116.bullough/f3/125-251 8/27/03 9:53 AM Page 240240 chapter oneexperienced what seem to have been severe electrical storms.Thisis very much the conjunction of disasters that the anonymous Irishauthor of the  Twelve Abuses  associates with theUnjust King, and the ?Englishman Cathwulf summarises from anintermediate source, with a listing of some of their opposites, whenwriting to Charlemagne in the mid 770s.332 At the end of OctoberÆthelwald abdicated; the location, the unidentified Wincanheale wheretwo Northumbrian church councils were subsequently held, in con-junction with Irish evidence for his clerical tonsuring, strongly sug-gests that in his case this was involuntary.333His successor was a previously undocumented Alchred,  sprung,as some say, from the stock of King Ida via a father Eanwine: whichsuggests that his royal ancestry was at least dubious, but accordswith other indications that his territorial connections were with theBernician north, rather than (as were Æthelwald s) with the Deiransouth.In spite of Æthelwald s manifest failure as a ruler, later evi-dence all of it circumstantial but cumulatively powerful suggeststhat Alcuin none the less identified himself and his primary loyaltiesthereafter with the deposed king s line, not that of Eadberht or anyother claimants to the throne, although with increasing reservations:and this gives added point to his remark in a letter to Æthelwald sson nearly thirty years later (the earliest of his  admonitory lettersaddressed to a king) that anyone reading the Holy Scriptures andreflecting on Histories of older days and considering how things turnout in the World  will find that kings have lost kingdoms and peo-ples have lost their homeland for their misbehaviour.334Whether Alcuin s attachment reflects an earlier family connectionwith the patricius as its lord or unrecorded favours to the young cler-332De XII Abusivis, ed.Hellmann, pp.51 3 (fuller details below, ch.2, pp.275 6and n.71; MGH Epp.IV, p.503, with the recent comments of J.Story,  Cathwulf,kingship and the royal abbey of Saint-Denis , Speculum, 74 (1999), 3 21, esp.7 11,20 1, and M.Garrison,  Letters to a king and biblical exempla: the examples ofCathuulf and Clemens Peregrinus , Early Medieval Europe 7/iii (1998), 305 28.333HR ed.Arnold, 2, 43: for Wincanheale, cf.idem, 51 (also ASC  E s.a.788, whichis not to be confused with the legatine synod of 786), 59 60; Annals  of Tigernach ,ed.W.Stokes, in Revue Celtique 17 (1896), p.262: Moll rì Saxan clericus eficitur.334Ep.no.16 (only in the  English collections , and apparently therefore sinceit was written in Francia the  recipient s text ), p.43.For the language, compare York poem , lines 110 12: eventus venientis dicta probavit/ hospitis: occubuit statim rex ensenefando/invidus imperii vitae simul illius atque; and the two OT passages Gn 41.13,14,postea rei probavit eventus.ad regis imperium eductum, and Sir 18.33.in saeculo (so amajority of early testimonies, including the pre-Alcuin Tours manuscripts and theAlcuin Bibles, for the correct in sacculo) eris enim invidus tuae vitae.bullough/f3/125-251 8/27/03 9:53 AM Page 241northumbrian alcuin 241icus by the king is not now determinable [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]