![]() In 1992, Stephanie Hollis and Michael Wright took stock of secular learning in the vernacular, in their monumental annotated bibliography "Old English Prose of Secular Learning". The fruits of Anglo-Saxon learning continue to captivate Anglo-Saxonists and scholars of natural science and medicine, witness recent publications such as Martin Blake’s edition of Ælfric's "De temporibus anni" (2009), and the proceedings of the "Storehouses of Wholesome Learning" and "Leornungcræft" projects. To understand blood’s significance in Anglo-Saxon culture, this thesis uses case studies from a range of genres, including poetry, homilies, hagiography, and leechbooks or medicinal texts. Through close critical reading of Old English and Latin texts and analysis of the semantic fields of key words, this thesis explores the symbolism of blood from an Anglo-Saxon perspective and discusses where in Anglo-Saxon literature blood is actually described or articulated rather than where it is assumed or is implied to be. ![]() As the first detailed analysis of the meaning of blood in Anglo-Saxon literature, this thesis fills a critical gap in our knowledge of the early Middle Ages, contributing to the study of the historical semantics of the word ‘blood’ as well as the study of its meanings in religious, medical, and poetic discourses. This thesis explores two critical issues: first, it redresses the lack of research into discourses of blood in Old English literature, and second, it explores whether or not this discourse has the same cultural meanings and symbolization as that of later periods of the Middle Ages. 550-1150), if considered at all in these studies, is thought of as a precursor to the more developed and significant symbolism of blood in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, to which it contributes nothing but the underdeveloped seeds of the ideas of later times. 1200-1500), and the mass is argued to be the most important cultural function of blood in medieval times. Much has been written on the feast of Corpus Christi and the worship of the Holy Blood in the later Middle Ages (c. The topic of blood in the later Middle Ages has acquired considerable critical attention over the last twenty years, but this literature consistently glosses over or completely ignores the Anglo-Saxon period. By using medical and scientific terms in religious texts, the writers of Anglo-Saxon Marian texts clearly ground Mary’s pregnancy and labor in the human world and establish that Christ’s birth was not, indeed, a “celestial childbirth” accomplished “beyond the human way,” but one which was accomplished very much in the human way. By using scientific or medical terms for the womb, pregnancy, and labor which are also used in medical texts such as the Old English Herbarium, Bald’s Leechbook, and the Lacnunga, the authors of Anglo-Saxon religious texts can confirm Mary’s human pregnancy and labor without explicitly discussing the flesh and blood of childbirth. This paper discusses that conflict, and argues that the result is a “sanitized” language, which hovers between literal and figurative, used in Marian texts to discuss Mary’s body and Christ’s birth. ![]() This challenge was complicated by many Anglo-Saxon religious writers’ unwillingness to discuss Mary’s pregnant body and her childbirth-which, being completely human, would include blood, physical labor, and the impurity associated with such from which Mary was exempt-in a graphic, visceral manner. The paradox evident in Mary’s nature reflects the conflict faced by Anglo-Saxon religious writers, who wished to stress Mary’s human nature and the human physicality of Christ’s birth in order to establish Christ as both human and divine, but also wished to make clear Mary’s purity, for instance, through her exemption from traditional Jewish ritual purity requirements after childbirth. As a woman performing such an extraordinary role, Mary also had an extraordinary nature: virginal and pure, but fertile and completely human. The Virgin Mary was the subject of significant Anglo-Saxon Christian devotion, particularly for her role as the mother of Christ and the channel through which he took on humanity.
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