REGIMEN TRANSITORIO DEL SISTEMA DE AHORRO PARA PENSIONES Capítulo I

Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion is an early eleventh-century commentary on Byrhtferth’s own computus, written at Ramsey Abbey.527 _{Here, esne is used solely with the meaning MAN. Slave words are}

extremely rare in this text: neither wealh nor þræl occurs, while þeow occurs only a single time, in the compound þeowdom (p. 116).528 _{The explicit contrast with ‘freodome’ here indicates that}

þeowdom has its normal meaning.529 _{Þegn occurs five times, with a mixture of meanings, including}

in the phrase ‘Godes þegnas’ (p. 114).530 _{Thus, it is not possible to tell whether Byrhtferth could} 526 _{Richard Jordan, Eigentümlichkeiten des anglischen Wortschatzes: Eine wortgeographische Untersuchen mit} etymologischen Anmerkungen (Heidelberg: Winter, 1906), pp. 91-9⒉

527 _{Byrhtferth, Enchiridion, pp. xxvi-xxviii, xxxiii-xxxiv.}

528 _{A fragmentary search of the Dictionary of Old English corpus for both ‘þeow’ and ‘ðeow’, restricted to this} text returns only this instance (DOE Corpus [accessed 12th April 2014]). I conducted similar searches for the other Old English slave words and returned no results.

529 _{Bosworth and Toller, Dictionary, p. 105⒌}

530 _{DOE Corpus [accessed 12th April 2014], using a ‘fragmentary’ search for ‘þegn’ and ‘ðegn’, restricted to} this text.

use esne to denote chattel slaves but did not use it here because his references to slaves were scarce, or whether esne in his idiolect only applied to masculine human beings with no reference to legal status. On the other hand, Clemoes notes that this use of esne solely for MAN was part of a pattern of vocabulary preferences shared with the anonymous portions of the Old English Heptateuch.531 _If

Clemoes’ assumption about the relationship of these two texts is correct, then it is likely that MAN is the sole possible meaning of esne in the Enchiridion.

Overall, esne occurs five times in the Enchiridion.532 _{In the majority of these instances, it is}

very clear that esne neither denotes a slave nor carries servile denotations, but refers unambiguously to masculine human beings of no given legal status. In Book II, Byrhtferth writes that ‘hig habbað ascrutnod Serium and Priscianum and þurhsmogun Catus cwydas þæs calwan esnes and Bedan gesetnysse þæs arwurðan boceres’ [they have examined Sergius and Priscian and investigated the sayings of Cato the bald esne and the compositions of the venerable scholar Bede](p. 120). In a similar vein, in the discussion of the dyple peristigmene, we find Zenodotus described thus: ‘þys hiw ealde uðwittan gesettan agen þam þingum þe Zenodotus se Eficisa esne unwræstlice gesette’ [old scholars placed this figure next to the things which the Ephesian esne Zenodotus set down inaccurately] (p. 178). These two passages clearly share an underlying formula: NAME (the) ADJECTIVE MAN. This formula could be rewritten with any Old English term used to denote a generic masculine human being, but here Byrhtferth chooses to use esne. The formula requires esne to act as a ‘placeholder’ term without strong connotations of its own. Instead, it is the adjectives, ‘calwan’ and ‘Eficisa’ which are most significant here in terms of the meaning of the formula. A noun with strong connotations would skew this relationship. As a placeholder, the strong connotation of masculinity present elsewhere, including the anonymous portions of the Heptateuch, is somewhat diminished, although not absent. If this semantic bleaching was part of an ongoing process, by which it became little more than a synonym for the vastly more common

531 _{The Old English Illustrated Hexateuch: British Museum Cotton Claudius B. IV, ed. by C. R. Dodwell and} Peter Clemoes, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, 18 (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1974), pp. 42-53; Byrhtferth, Enchiridion, p. cxi.

man, this development offers a possible explanation for the disappearance of esne in Middle

English.

Similarly, Byrhtferth uses the phrase ‘rimcræftige esnas’ [esnas skilled in computation] to denote computists when listing the symbols which these computists use to denote various weights (pp. 178-79). Rimcræftig means ‘skilled in computation’, and rimcræft is ‘the science of numbers, arithmetic’.533 _{Here, this adjective refers to their skill in using this system of notation. For}

Byrhtferth’s purposes, this adjective is the most significant feature of this phrase, while esnas adds little in terms of meaning. As in the two cases discussed above, esne refers to scholars of renown who are clearly not slaves or in a servile position, nor is there any reason to presume a metaphorical construct drawing upon the image of the slave. Thus, esne is evidently an integrated element of Byrhtferth’s language, rather than an unusual element chosen for a specific purpose.

The semantics of the final two instances of esne in Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion are not as immediately obvious, but still point to a meaning MAN. In the first case, Byrhtferth constructs an elaborate comparison between the labour of a bee and that of human beings and concludes ‘swa gedafenað esnum þam orpedan, þonne he god weorc ongynð, þæt he þæt geornlice beswynce, þeah hine deofol mid his lymum wylle gedreccan and his barspere beotige to ofsticianne’ [so it befits the bold esne, when he begins a good work, that he should exert himself earnestly at that, although the devil with his henchmen will vex him and threatens to pierce him with his boar-spear] (p. 128). There is no evidence to suggest a servile dimension to this work, which is itself a metaphor, both the bee and the labouring man, for the scholarly study of Easter (III.⒈113-36, p. 128). Once again, there is no suggestion of a servus Dei construction which might justify the application of slave words to such high-status pursuits. As in the constructions discussed above, the emphasis of the passage lies not on the esne but on his actions and attributes.

While Baker and Lapidge otherwise gloss esne as ‘man’, they refine this to ‘young man’ in III.⒊1-3: ‘ðæt byð snotrum were med swyðe arwurðlic beforan Godes gesihðe, gif he wisdomes lare geleaffullum esne cyð to soðe’ [there is a great honour before the sight of God for the wise

man, if he gives the knowledge of wisdom to the faithful esne] (pp. 162).534 _{There is an implied}

hierarchy of knowledge between the ‘snotrum were’ and the ‘geleaffullum esne’, which may in society have often been accompanied by an age differential, but the passage does not refer to this. The assumption that esne means ‘young man’ here is a product of the assumption that it denotes YOUTH in a wide variety of texts, when this meaning is, in reality, a limited development, closely associated with the meaning SLAVE. Both wer and esne refer to masculine human beings,535 and here they are used as equivalents, providing literary variation without semantic impact. Once again, the qualifying adjectives are the critical meaningful elements in this passage. Baker and Lapidge are essentially correct in their gloss on esne, but this final usage should not be treated as an exception.