REGIMEN DE INFRACCIONES Y SANCIONES Capítulo I

The pattern of the usage of esne in the gloss to the Durham Ritual is broadly similar to that in the gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels, as both were composed by Aldred.506 _{The Durham Ritual,}

Durham Cathedral A. IV. 19, is a collectar containing various liturgical material, produced in the South of England but present in Northumbria by the late tenth century.507 _{Esne is by far the most}

common term used to gloss servus in the Durham Ritual. Out of twenty-two uses of servus, twenty are glossed by esne, one by þræl, and one by þeow.508 _{This shows some differences from the patterns}

established in Aldred’s Lindisfarne gloss, most notably the absence of þegn and the scarcity of þræl. However, it also demonstrates that Aldred’s dominant use of esne is neither an isolated curiosity nor a feature of a particular genre, but rather this item is a key slave word within his dialect, closely associated with the Latin servus. As in the Lindisfarne Gospels, this relationship is borne out by the use of esne in the calque ‘efne-esne’ for conservus (p. 70). The most prominent difference is the use of esne to gloss famulus, which occurs five times in the Durham Ritual, four times in a single cluster (pp. 95-97, 123). Esne is not the most common term which Aldred uses to gloss famulus.

506 _{Pelteret deals with the two texts together, albeit with extreme brevity (Pelteret, Slavery, p. 273).}

507 _{‘Manuscript Du’, in Early English Laws <http://www.earlyenglishlaws.ac.uk> [accessed 13th August} 2014].

508 _{Rituale Ecclesiae Dunelmensis: The Durham Collectar, ed. by U. Lindelöf, Publications of the Surtees} Society, 140, rev. edn (Durham: Andrews, 1927), pp. 1-17⒏ All references are to this edition and are given parenthetically in the body of the text.

Out of the twenty-four uses of famulus in total, ten are glossed by þeow, eight by þegn, five by esne, and one by hiwan (pp. 7-170).509 _{This suggests that while esne was seen as a direct and obvious}

translation for servus, its relationship to famulus was more tentative. It had not entirely displaced the older alternatives, þeow and þegn. Famulus does not occur in the Latin text of the gospels, so we cannot know whether genre plays a part in this distinction. As no Latin term denoting YOUTH appears in the Durham Ritual, it is similarly not possible to trace the development of this meaning. Apart from the omission of þræl, the pattern here strongly resembles the distribution of slave words in Aldred’s gloss to Matthew. This suggests that Aldred moved from a cautious approach which sought to approximate West Saxon terminology to one which is more confident in a selection of specifically Anglian terminology.

The feminine form famula occurs thirteen times in the Durham Ritual, all within a relative short space. Famula is glossed by forms of þeowe such as ‘ðio’ and ‘ðiven’ (pp. 103-09). It is never glossed by esne. Taken together with the material from the Lindisfarne and Rushworth Gospels, in which esne never glosses ancilla, it is clear that, in the Northumbrian dialect, esne was not used for female slaves, and lacked a feminine form analogous to þeowe. While some of the groups of slaves referred to in the plural may have included female slaves as well as male, it is not used of wholly female groups. Thus, these terms were supplied by other roots. The development of the sense MAN in Late West Saxon texts indicates that there was a sense of masculinity attached to

esne, possibly due to its etymological and historical associations with certain kinds of labour, which

may have obstructed the development of a feminine form of the word.

509 _{The plural noun hiwan, sometimes spelt with <g>, usually denotes ‘members of a household, of a religious} house, a family’ (Bosworth and Toller, Dictionary, p. 538) and also ‘the domestics of a household’ (Toller, Supplement, p. 546). The Proto-Germanic noun was *hīwa, ‘member of the family, spouse’ and the majority of the Germanic cognates refer to family members and close social units (A Gothic Etymological Dictionary, ed. by Winfred Philip Lehmannn [Leiden: Brill, 1986], pp. 181-82). The form ‘higo’ also occurs in the Durham Ritual, glossing familia (p. 34). While this unusual use of hiwan for ‘famulis’ (p. 30) may draw upon the etymological relationship between famulus and familia, it is also likely that this unusual usage of hiwan was influenced by the Old Norse hjún, which sometimes denoted ‘domestics, household people’ and hýi, ‘a domestic, servant’ (Cleasby and Vigfusson, Dictionary, pp. 268, 304). The use of famulus in a servus Dei construction here may have made ‘higum’ a particularly apt choice for the Old English gloss, combining the ‘native’ association of hiwan with religious communities with the servile sense borrowed from Old Norse.

By far the most common use of esne in the Durham Ritual is in the servus Dei trope, particularly in the prayers and blessings which form a substantial part of the text.510 _{In this, there}

is no difference between those instances in which it is used to gloss servus and those in which it is used to gloss famulus. For instance, esne is used to gloss servus in the prayer ‘Pro fratribus nostris absentibus’: ‘halo do esnas ðino god min hyhtende on ðec’ [keep safe your esnas who trust in you, my God] (p. 174), and two similar versions of the same phrase in other prayers (pp. 176, 178). Here, the servus Dei trope translated by esne applies specifically to monks as slaves of God. This association is found elsewhere in the Durham Ritual, such as in those prayers associated with the taking of holy orders, including the prayer on the shaving of the beard, ‘Ora’ ad barbas tondendas’: ‘giher beodo vs’ of ’ ðiosne esne ðin gigoð’ ældo’ wlite wynsvmiende ond æristvm/frūmū frehtū to scearanne’ [hear our prayers over this your esne of young age, rejoicing with the ornament and first privileges of shaving] (p. 97). Both here and in ‘Postquam tonsorati est…’ (p. 96) esne glosses

famulus where the latter refers to monks as servi Dei. Thus, while, numerically speaking, Aldred

uses esne differently to gloss servus and famulus, there is no semantic or contextual distinction. Conversely, in the prayer ‘Ora’ ad capilaturam’, which falls between ‘Postquam tonsorati est’ and ‘Ora’ ad barbas tondendas’, the phrase ‘hunc famulum tuum’ [this your slave] is translated not with

esne but with þeow (p. 97). These three prayers form a cohesive set, and, as such, esne and þeow refer

to the same individual or concept. Thus, the choice between esne and þeow is not one of semantics but of taste. In addition to the use of the servus Dei trope for monks, this trope is also used in the paraphrase of Isaiah 4⒐5: ‘ðas cvoeð driht’. bisinde/sceop mec of hrife esne him ic salde ðec on leht cynna þte sie hælo mino oð to við vtmeste earðes’ [the lord, who formed me from the womb to be his esne, says this: ‘I have given you as a light to the peoples, so that you may be my salvation to the ends of the earth’] (p. 55). The subject is often identified as Christ, and is described as the slave of God, whose work is to restore Israel.511 _{Therefore it is clear that the use of esne in this formula is}

generic and not restricted only to certain individuals.

510 _{This category covers blessings over ale (p. 116) and over water (p. 117), and prayers for protection against} certain evils (p. 118), as well as a prayer to be spared from secrets (pp. 168, 172).

511 _{The heading to Isaiah 49 in the King James Bible reads ‘Christ sent to the Gentiles with gracious} promises’ (Carroll and Prickett, Bible, OT, p. 811); Vulgate, Isaiah 4⒐5-⒍

While the nature of the Durham Ritual means that the servus Dei trope is the most common form in which esne appears, it also refers to the slaves who summon the guests to the wedding banquet in Matthew 22, appearing five times in this context (p. 108). As in Aldred’s gloss on the Lindisfarne Gospels, these slaves have both a literal and a metaphorical function. As a metaphor, they are those who summon the ‘guests’ to heaven, while, literally, they undertake tasks which are the preserve of chattel slaves in real life. The strength of the metaphor of slavery and of the parable form lies in the ability of the image to function on multiple levels simultaneously. The use of esne in this context is congruent with Aldred’s terminology in the Lindisfarne gloss, indicating the stability of his use of this term. On the other hand, in the same passage in Lindisfarne, Aldred uses þegn for servus (Matthew 2⒉3-10, pp. 177-79), showing that he did not copy this passage directly from one text to the other, nor were his lexical choices here dependent on his earlier choices.