1Exploring vice-vocabularies in Old English reveals a fascinating intersection of lexico-semantic innovation and sociolinguistic dynamics. While interest in sin concepts and lexemes dates back to the time of Aldhelm (d. 709 / 710) and Alcuin (c. 740-804), it gained broader traction with the onset of the Benedictine reforms in the tenth century. Initiated by the church with royal support, these reforms aimed not only to revitalize and standardize monastic practices and religious life across England, but also to develop a religious vocabulary that could be associated with this progressive movement, fostering a certain unification of lexical practices (Lenker [2000]). This top-down innovation can be traced at the conceptual and lexical levels through documented diffusion from key figures like Æthelwold and Ælfric to early adopters such as Wulfstan and his anonymous contemporaries, and eventually to the wider populace, as evidenced by confessionals and penitentials. Correspondence between these actors (Godden [1980], [2004]) and the social networks of the clergy (Lenker [2000]) illustrates the negotiation and diffusion of these vocabularies and semantic domains, both among individual writers and to common believers.
2The lexicon of sins in Old English is both polysemous and fuzzy. This has to do with the innovative character of the whole lexical domain within a newly Christianized Anglo-Saxon culture still dominated by military values, as well as with the interconnectedness of the individual concepts and lexemes making up the lexicon of vices. In medieval moral theology, the sins are construed as interrelated, springing from the same evil root and / or as being committed in a sequence. For example, pride leads to vainglory, greed leads to gluttony and gluttony (especially indulgence in alcohol) leads to fornication. Conceptually, as a result, the boundaries between individual sins can become somewhat blurred: vanity is a type of pride (a pride in one’s origins or ambition) and gluttony is a type of greed (greed for food or drink). Conceptual fuzziness is amply reflected at the lexical level, in that many lexemes can denote both the more general and the more specific sin categories: OE gielp is both “pride, arrogance” and “vanity, self-admiration”; OE gīfernes is both “covetousness, avarice” and “gluttony, overeating”. Aware of the polysemy, medieval theologians introduce the sins as lists first and then define and describe them one by one, also suggesting hierarchies within the individual categories (see examples 2-4 below). Such lists are particularly helpful because they offer us a glimpse into medieval linguistic thinking, into a thesaurus-like treatment of concepts and lexemes, which can often be obscured by modern approaches to historical lexis, when pride becomes part of category “07 Opinion” and gluttony that of “04 Material Needs” in the Thesaurus of Old English (TOE). In this essay, we are frequently concerned with lists of sins because dealing with lists will help us disambiguate within sin categories that are prone to polysemy.
3A related conceptual problem is that of how sins are assessed as moral categories within the broader domain of a culture’s immaterial values and, sometimes, whether they even exist as moral categories, for what is a sin in one culture may be a virtue in another culture or may not be conceptualised in another culture at all (Clark [2016: 172-173]). Such conceptual conflicts are likely to come to the fore when an intensive contact between cultures and their languages leads to borrowing and imposition (of concepts and lexemes), and accepted moral judgements suddenly have to be re-evaluated due to new ideas about them. The obvious case in point is the Christianization of pagan Germanic communities, by which many of the virile values of their military elites (boasting, feasting, raging in battle) come under sharp critique from the evangelizing missions propagating humility and moderation. Thus, in newly Christianized communities, including those of Anglo-Saxon England, vices and virtues can be under-conceptualized and under-lexicalized, or conceptualized and lexicalized differently from the source culture of late Roman Christianity. Just how this plays out in the lexico-semantic field of sins in Old English is one of the foci of this paper. More specifically, we deal with how conceptual arbitrariness and semantic fuzziness are reflected at the lexical level, i.e. in semantic borrowings and loan translations of the Old English period, and which individual sin categories exhibit more lexical variation than others.
4Given the prominent place that the sins occupy in medieval Christian thought, we are also interested in how and how far the vocabularies of sins were able to diffuse geographically and socially. So, on the one hand, we look into geographical spread by comparing sin-vocabularies from different parts of England; on the other, we are concerned with inter- and intra-speaker variation as attested in writings by Ælfric, Wulfstan, Byrhtferth and their anonymous colleagues of the late-tenth - early-eleventh century. This second endeavour is particularly exciting because the three named authors not only belonged to the same generation of Benedictine writers that shared an educational background (and therefore inspiration for knowledge and reform of human nature), they also participated in the same ecclesiastical networks and, in the case of Ælfric and Wulfstan, are known to have exchanged letters that dealt explicitly with the points of doctrine to which the vices were particularly pertinent, and to have mutually influenced each other’s lexicons (Godden [1980], [2004]). Another dimension of this sociolinguistic investigation is the extent to which the lexical norms promoted by members of the reformed clergy were able to reach common believers. Here we are well served by such genres as confessionals and penitentials, that is, guidebooks and manuals intended for parish priests and the privileged laity which outlined the sins, and offered advice on eliciting confessions and directives for seeking contrition and penitence. Thus, we track lexical diffusion from the ecclesiastical centres in Winchester, Ramsey, Worcester and York to parish churches and aristocratic households, and try to establish whether the centralization of the church in the late tenth century was able to trigger a kind of lexical standardization in the domain that was central for the doctrine.
5Our analysis is in some ways data-driven because we study the lists and establish the meanings of sin-lexemes on the basis of the collocates within those lists and the usage elsewhere in the same treatise or homily. The Dictionary of Old English web corpus (DOEC) and printed / electronic editions were consulted for this purpose. It is also comparative, that is, we seek to trace individual lexemes across authors, texts and regions, as well as to determine how consistent our authors are in their lexical choices. At the same time, the analysis is data-informed because we use previous research and the TOE, with its semantic hierarchies and definitions, along with the Fontes anglo-saxonici database, which keeps track of the textual links (quotations, translations and paraphrases) between individual sources and authors.
6Our data consists of the following texts (sigla for each text in brackets):
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The Capitula Theodulfi (ThCapA, ThCapB; ed. Sauer [1978]);
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Ælfric: Vices and virtues (ÆLS 16; ed. Clayton [2013]); Letter to Wulfstan (ÆLW; ed. Whitelock [1981]); Catholic homilies II 12.2 (ÆCHom; ed. Godden [1979]); Ælfric Homily 20 B1.4.20 (ÆHom 20; ed. Pope [1968]);
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Byrhtferth: Enchiridion (BEnc; ed. Baker & Lapidge [1995]);
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Wulfstan: Sermo Lupi ad anglos (WSL); Homily Xc (WHomXc); Homily VIIIc, De baptismate (WDB) (all ed. Bethurum [1957]); De uitiis principalibus (WDUP; ed. Wilcox [1991]);
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The Canons of Theodore (ed. Fulk & Jurasinski [2012]);
-
- 1 See also Porck [2013] for CPV and CPT1.
Confessional prayers: London, British Library (BL), Cotton Vespasian D.xx, ff. 87r-92v (CPV); BL Cotton Tiberius C.i, ff. 160r-161r (CPT1); BL Cotton Tiberius C.i, ff. 161r-v (CPT2); BL Royal B.2.v, f.197r-198r (CPR) (all ed. Logeman [1889a])1;
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Directions for confessors: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 190, pp. 414-416 (DC1); Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 320, f.117r–v (DC2); Oxford, Bodleian Laud Misc 482, ff. 46r-47r (DC3) (all ed. Fulk & Jurasinski [2012]);
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Old English penitential: Poenitentiale Pseudo-Ecberhti (OEPen; ed. Raith [1933]);
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- 2 A fragment from CCCC 320 f.170 is also edited by Fulk & Jurasinski [2012: 81].
Old English confessional: the Scriftboc (Scr; ed. Spindler [1934]).2
7In moral theology, the sins started to be theorized by Evagrius in the late-fourth century and elaborated by John Cassian just a generation later. Both writers led an ascetic life and paid special attention to how monks (young monks in particular) could gain control over the flesh, by purging their desire for material things, food and sex. The virtues, as antidotes for the sins, were theorized alongside. Prudentius, writing around the same time, presented an allegorical battle between vices and virtues in his Psychomachia, giving the conflict between body and soul an epic dimension. Later authors, among them the Church Fathers, Gregory the Great and Isidore of Seville, engaged with the sins repeatedly, and the whole conceptual domain gradually became one of the central doctrinal points in Western moral thought (Bloomfield [1967]; Newhauser [2007, 2012]). Its inherent problem was that the concepts developed by and for monks and hermits were adopted and adapted as the principles of lay moral behaviour (Frantzen [1983: 39-49]). Reverberations of this problem will be observed at the lexical level in our source texts.
8In England, the vices featured prominently in Anglo-Saxon Latin works, from Aldhelm and Alcuin in the early period to the Regularis concordia during the Benedictine reform. From the Carolingian period onwards, two works on vices and virtues, encouraging preaching, private confession and reading, emerged as particularly important: De virtutibus et vitiis ad Widonem comitem by Alcuin (c. 800), written for a noble layman (Lees [1985]); and Capitula ad presbyteros parochiae suae by Theodulf of Orléans (c. 800), addressed to parish priests (Sauer [1978]). Both tracts were immensely popular on the Continent and in England, as attested by the high number of surviving manuscripts and a good record in Anglo-Saxon libraries.
9Alcuin’s work is represented in around 140 copies.3 Its Old English translation survives in three fragments, dated between c. 1050 and the second half of the twelfth century, but probably going back to an earlier copy of the translation from some time after 900, and (possibly) to the Alfredian period (Schabram [1965: 73]; Hofstetter [1987: 320]). In his study of pride-vocabulary, Schabram [1965: 72] observes that the extant copies appear to be “saxonisiert”, i.e. changed according to West Saxon lexical norms. The initial translation and its vocabulary may, thus, be derived from a Northumbrian gloss tradition.
10The Capitula Theodulfi survives in forty-six Latin manuscripts, including at least four produced in England, and in two Old English translations, independent of one another (Sauer [1978: 20-55]). The work was used by Ælfric in his pastoral letters and homilies, and by Wulfstan in homilies and legislation (Sauer [1978: 281-291]). Dating to between c. 1000 and c. 1050, the earlier ThCapB version was written in Late West Saxon, with the slightly later ThCapA in Mercian, though the original translations for both extant copies could be up to fifty years older (Sauer [1978: 77-118, 510-513]). Like Alcuin’s tract, the Old English Capitula Theodulfi represents Anglian and West Saxon lexical norms, demonstrating widespread interest in instructional literature for parish priests in both dialectal regions. How these vocabularies fit into the negotiation of lexical norms during the Benedictine reforms is explored further below.
11For most of the studied period, it is typical for authors to discuss eight capital sins. Here is one typical sequence used to refer to the principal concepts (cf. Table 1):
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1. superbia “pride”
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2. (vana gloria / inanis gloria / cenodoxia / iactantia “vanity”)
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3. (invidia “envy”)
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4. ira “wrath”
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5. (accidia or acedia “sloth”)
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6. tristitia “sadness”
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7. avaritia “greed”
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8. gula / gulae concupiscentia / ventis ingluvies / castrimargia “gluttony”
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9. luxuria / fornicatio / philargyria “lust”
12In this sequence, introduced by Gregory the Great in his Moralia in Iob (xxxi.45), pride is seen as the origin of all sins, the vice committed by the fallen angels. There is considerable variation in how vanity, gluttony and lust are lexicalized and in whether Latin or Greek terms are preferred for the concepts. As the brackets in 2, 3 and 5 indicate, variation also exists at the conceptual level, in that, first, as discussed above, vanity is often perceived as an instantiation of pride; second, sloth and sadness are often lumped together, as a kind of “spiritual boredom, apathy”, experienced by people living in seclusion and depriving themselves of bodily needs; third, envy may be omitted from the lists, depending on how 2 and 6 are conceptualized. For example, for Theodulf, accidia and tristitia are the same sin (tertia in example (1); Wenzel [1967: 29]), while inuidia is a distinct entity (sexta), and so are uana gloria (quinta) and superbia (octaua).
(1) Confessiones dandae sunt de omnibus peccatis, que siue in opere siue in cogitatione perpetrantur.
Octo sunt principalia uitia, sine quibus uix ullus inueniri potest. Est enim castrimargia – hoc est uentris ingluuies, secunda fornicatio, tertia accidia siue tristitia, quarta auaritia, quinta uana gloria, sexta inuidia, septima ira, octaua superbia.
Quando ergo quis ad confessionem uenit, diligenter debet inquiri, quomodo aut qua occasione peccatum perpetrauerit, quod peregisse confitetur;
(ThCap i.31 [A], Sauer [1978: 356.3-10])
- 4 All translations by the authors unless otherwise specified.
“Confessions must be given of all sins committed either in action or in thought.
There are eight principal vices, without which no virtue can be obtained. There is castrimargia – that is the gluttony of the belly, the second is fornication, the third sloth or sadness, the fourth avarice, the fifth vainglory, the sixth envy, the seventh wrath, the eighth pride.
Therefore, when one comes to confession, he must be carefully probed as to how or on what occasion he committed the sin which he confesses to have committed.”4
- 5 For a detailed discussion of the differences between the Cassianic and Gregorian treatment of the s (...)
13Theodulf’s sequence starts with gastrimargia or uentris ingluuies “gluttony”, the sin that led to the Fall, and places superbia last. Sins are also grouped into sins of the flesh (gluttony and lust) and sins of the spirit (the rest). The groupings are observed in both Theodulf and Gregory, and in both sequences the gravity of the sins of the spirit is greater. The Gregorian lists generally exerted more influence on later writers, but many of them had access to both the Cassianic (eight sins) and Gregorian (seven sins) textual traditions and some, like Aldhelm in his Carmen de uirginitate, attempted to reconcile the two approaches (McDaniel [2007]).5
14Note also that Theodulf instructs parish priests to inquire about the details of when and how the sins were committed, so that appropriate penance could be assigned to the sinner. Thus, the institution of confession, already at this early stage, presupposed mutual engagement of and interaction between the confessor and the penitent, as well as at least some knowledge of the key concepts and lexemes associated with morally reprehensible actions and thoughts. Within this framework, lists of sins also served as plans on the basis of which confessions could be structured and expanded, as individual cases required. The institution then provided an outlet for the dissemination of a subset of religious vocabulary from the clerical elite (including vernacular writers discussed below) to the secular clergy, and from the secular clergy to parishioners.
15Vernacular authors, among them Ælfric, Wulfstan, and Byrhtferth, as well as the anonymous compilers of the Blickling and Vercelli Homilies, and translators of Capitula Theodulfi, regularly engaged with the topic of capital sins. It is not coincidental that all of these authors can be placed within a generation or two of the Benedictine reforms of the tenth century. The reforms themselves, the royal and aristocratic support for the movement, as well as extensive construction of local churches increased lay participation in religious observances (Blair [2005: 346-354, 456-463, 492]), so that the demand for penitential literature rose both among the laity and parish priests. In response to this demand, translations and original works were commissioned. The textual record presented here bears witness to these developments. We begin the analysis with the two roughly contemporary versions of the Old English Capitula Theodulfi (ThCapA is quoted first, following Hans Sauer’s edition of the two texts). For the Latin source underlying them, see example 1 above.
(2) Eahta syndan heafodlice synna þonne is swiðe lyt monna þæt ne sy mid þæm sumum oððe eallum besmiten. An is gyfernes metes, oðer unrihthæmed, þrydde worulde unrotnes, feorðe gytsunge feos, fyfta ydelgylp, syxta æfest, seofoða yrre, eahtoða ofermedla. (ThCapA 31.357.4-6)
“There are eight capital sins, and so there are very few people who are not tainted with some or all of them. One is gluttony for food, the second is unlawful intercourse, the third worldly sadness, the fourth greed for possessions, the fifth vainglory, the sixth envy, the seventh ire, the eighth pride.”
Eahta synt frymþlice leahtras, buton þam earfoþlice ænig mæg beon gemet. Þys hy sindon: se forma is gyfernis, þæt is wambe frecnes, oþer forliger, þridda asolcennes oþþe unrotnes, feorþa gytsung, fifta idel wuldor, syxta anda, seofeþa yrre, eahtoþa ofermodnes. (ThCapB 31.357.3-4)
“There are eight principal sins, without which hardly any virtue can be obtained. They are the following: the first is gluttony, that is voracity of the belly, the second is fornication, the third idleness or sadness, the fourth greed, the fifth idle glory, the sixth malice, the seventh ire, the eighth pride.”
16In both translations, Latin lexemes are not only provided with equivalents but also qualified, especially in ThCapA, with genitive modifiers (gyfernes metes, worulde unrotnes, gytsunge feos) to make the terms more specific, as well as with prefixes (æfest, ofermedla / ofermodnes) and negative adjectives (unrihthæmed) to signal inappropriateness or sinful excess. Although the lists are markedly different, there is agreement on some of the sin-terms: gyfernes, unrotnes, gytsung, and yrre (cf. Tables 1 and 2).
17While Ælfric used Capitula Theodulfi in his later works (Sauer [1978: 281-283]), his earliest list of sins in the Catholic homilies, written in two instalments of forty homilies and possibly commissioned by Archbishop Sigeric and Ealdorman Æthelweard, is derived from Cassian and Alcuin (Fontes: Catholic homilies 2.12). Ælfric completed his opus between 990 and 995, but continued revising it for the next two decades (Kleist [2019: 20-87]). He introduces the list in the Second Series (example 3; Mid-Lent: Secunda sententia), although the individual sins are also discussed earlier, in the First Series. In (3), envy is not listed among the eight sins, while sadness and sloth are distinguished as two separate sins in the Cassianic tradition (Lees [1985: 179]; cf. Table 1).
(3) Swa sceolon eac cristene men ða eahta heafodleahtras mid heora werodum ealle oferwinnan... Se forma heafodleahter is. Gyfernyss. Se oðer is. Galnyss. ðridda. Gytsung. Feorða. Weamet. Fifta. Unrotnys. Sixta. Asolcennyss. Oððe æmelnys. Seofoða. Ydelgylp. Eahteoðe. Modignys; Þas eahta heafodleahtras fordoð and geniðeriað þa unwæran. into helle wite; (ÆCHomII 12.2 Mid-Lent: Secunda sententia 123.479-124.486)
“In the same way, the Christians must destroy all eight capital sins along with their armies... The first capital sin is Gluttony; the second is Lust; the third, Greed; the fourth, Wrath; the fifth, Sadness; the sixth, Sloth, or Weariness; the seventh, Vainglory; the eighth, Pride. These eight capital sins corrupt and condemn the unwary to the torment of hell.”
18Having listed the key terms, Ælfric goes on to elaborate on what makes each of the moral concepts a sin and what other vices can spring from it. In this more detailed discussion, he provides synonyms and subtypes of the eight sins, which offer a glimpse into the hierarchy of moral defects and into the thesaurus-like structuring of the respective lexical subfields.
(4) gyfernys (Dictionary of Old English (DOE) approx. 115 occurrences) / oferflowendnys ætes oððe wætes “excess in food and drink” begets
oferfyll and druncennys “excess in food and drunkenness”, unclænnys lichaman “uncleanness of the body”, modes unstæððignys “unsteadiness of the spirit”, ydel gafettung “idle scoffing”;
galnys (approx. 175 occurrences) / forliger (approx. 125 occurrences) “adultery” leads to
modes mægenleast “impotence of spirit”, ungemetod lufu “immoderate love”, hatung godes beboda “hatred towards God’s commandments”, higeleas plega “foolish play”, fracodlic spræc “shameful speech”, eagena unstæððignys “bad eyesight”;
gytsung (approx. 300 occurrences) / grædig beon “to be greedy” begets
leasung “falseness”, anda “envy”, facn “deceit”, reaflac “rapacity”, stalu “theft”, forsworennys “perjury”, leas gewitnys “false witness”, unmæðlic neadung “excessive violence”;
weamet / nagan modes geweald “to lack control of one’s mind” / yrsung “irascibility” leads to
hream “shouting”, æbilignys “indignation, anger”, dyrstignys “rashness”, mansliht “manslaughter”;
unrotnys begets
yfelnys “evilness”, wacmodnys “moral weakness”, heortan biternys “bitterness of heart”, his sylfes orwennys “despair of one’s self”;
asolcennys / æmelnys begets
idelnys “idleness”, slapolnys “sleepiness”, gemagnys “petulance”, wordlung “idle talk”, worung “rambling”, fyrwitnys “(immoderate) curiosity”;
ydel gylp (approx. 35 occurrences) / idel wuldor / gylp (approx. 200 occurrences) / getot begets
pryte “pomp”, æbilignys “indignation”, ungeðwærnys “discord”, hywung “pretence”, lustfullung lease herunge “delight in false praise”;
modignys begets
forsewennys “contempt”, ungehyrsumnys “disobedience”, anda “envy”, yfelsacung “blasphemy”, ceorung “grudging”, gelomlic tal “constant scorn”.
19It becomes apparent that Ælfric not only explores the conceptual field of vices and their interconnectedness, but also moulds and negotiates his vocabulary in search of accurate and transparent terms. The sins have a hierarchical structure; they “beget” each other, and by contemplating human moral faults and their consequences, Ælfric is able to articulate his sin-thesaurus in a more elaborate way. As he does so, it becomes clear that some lexemes cause him more anxiety than others. For instance, the conceptual fuzziness of sadness-sloth (Wenzel [1967: 23-26]) translates into terminological uncertainty. Ælfric refers to sloth as asolcennyss oððe æmelnys. Of these the former is introduced for the first time as a term for “laziness, negligence” (not in connection with the capital sins) in the opening lines of the Old English translation of the Benedictine Rule, a generation before Ælfric (cf. Sauer [1978: 224]). DOEC suggests that neither term has wide currency in Old English: asolcennys is attested about 35 times in the surviving corpus, most frequently in Ælfric, while æmelnys occurs only 14 times, exclusively in Ælfric. So, we can see that he both repurposes the words that were used by his teacher Æthelwold and coins new ones.
20In the Lives of saints, completed between c. 993 and c. 998 and revised c. 1006 (Kleist [2019: 135-144]), Ælfric returns to the topic with renewed zeal and updated vocabulary, this time calibrating it against the benchmark of Latin terms. An abbreviated quotation from the “Memory of saints” is given in (5).
(5) Nu syndon eahta heafodleahtras, þe us onwinnað swiðe. An is gecwæden gula, þæt is gyfernyss on Englisc, seo deð þæt þæt man yt ær timan and drincð, oððe he eft to micel nimð on æte oððe on wæte.
Se oðer leahtor is forligr and ungemetegod galnyss. Se is gehaten fornication. …
Se þridda leahter is auaritia, þæt is seo yfele gitsung … heo is helle gelic . forðan þe hi habbað butu unafylledlice grædignysse þæt hi fulle ne beoð næfre.
Se feorða leahtor is ira, þæt is on Englisc weamodnyss …
Se fifta is tristitia, þæt is ðissere worulde unrotnyss …
Se sixta leahter is accidia gehaten, þæt is asolcennyss oþþe slæwð on Englisc …
Se seofoða leahter is iactantia gecweden, þæt is ydelgylp on ængliscre spræce …
Seo eahteoðe leahter is superbia gehaten, þæt is on ænglisc modignyss gecweden… (ÆLS XVI Memory of Saints 267-307)
“Now there are eight capital sins, which greatly oppress us. One is called gula, which is gluttony in English; it makes one eat and drink before the proper time, or consume too much food or drink. The second sin is adultery and immoderate lust. It is called fornicatio [...] The third sin is auaritia, which is evil avarice [...] it is like hell, because they both have insatiable greed, so they are never full. The fourth sin is ira, which is called wrath in English [...] The fifth is tristitia, which is the sadness of this world [...] The sixth sin is called accidia, which is laziness or sloth in English. [...] The seventh sin is called iactantia, which is vainglory in English [...] The eighth sin is called superbia, which is pride in English [...]”
21Ælfric has introduced a number of adjustments into his keywords (cf. Tables 1 and 2): forligr is now at the fore as a term for lust, grædignys (one of the only two survivors into the present day) is used in the definition of greed, weamodnys has replaced weamet as a term for wrath (later in the Life (l. 336) Ælfric also employs yrre), and, in the binomial previously used for sloth, the second slot is now occupied by slæwð instead of æmelnys. Unsurprisingly, uncertainly still surrounds the latter concept, as Ælfric’s sources are contradictory on its status in relation to sadness. Ælfric adds slæwð to his terminological pool, which, although a late arrival and a relatively infrequent word in the DOEC (37 occurrences in total), is the only lexeme that survives into the present day as part of the list of sins.
22Weamodnes, n. “woe-mood-ness” > “wrath” is another rare word on the list. It has no attestations in poetry and only 14 occurrences in prose: seven in Ælfric, of which four appear in þæt is on englisc-clauses as in (4), four in confessionals, two in the Alfredian translation of the Cura pastoralis, and one in Wulfstan (see below). It does not appear to be any more accurate than the weamet he has used on previous occasions – both are defined as “anger, passionateness, irascibility” in Bosworth-Toller (BT, [s.v. wéamódness]). Its attractiveness may lie in the morphology, as together with several other sin-lexemes, as well as virtue-lexemes (clænnes “chastity”, eadmodnes “humility”, etc.) it fits a recognizable morphological pattern of feminine abstract nouns and allows for stylistic and rhetorical embellishments, a point to which we return below.
23Finally, one more text by Ælfric allows us to reconstruct not only the evolution of his own sin-vocabulary but also the spread of some of the lexemes from Ælfric, and the Winchester school more generally, to Wulfstan and his community at York. Our two protagonists have long been known to have written letters to each other. Until recently this correspondence was documented only from Ælfric’s side through the pastoral letters he had written in response to Wulfstan’s commissions. However, Winfried Rudolf [2019: 275-280] has recently been able to identify a possible draft of Wulfstan’s letter to Ælfric (in BL, Additional 38651, f.57v), dating to the early years of the eleventh century, in response to which Ælfric wrote one of his Latin letters to Wulfstan (in Whitelock [1981: 247-255]). Replying to another undocumented request from Wulfstan, Ælfric put together a short treatise, known as Second Old English Letter for Wulfstan (c. 1006), on pastoral care and clerical conduct, in which among other doctrinal and moral issues, he discusses the capital sins. As before, we present an abridged version:
(6) Se forma heafodleahtor is on leden superbia and on englisc modygniss …
Se oðer heafodleahtor is castrimargia uel gula, þæt is on englisc gyferniss. … drunconnysse … and on oferflowednysse …
Seo þridda heafodleahtor is Fornicatio, þæt is seo galniss …
Seo feorða heafodleahtor is Auaritia on leden and on englisc gytsuncg …
Se fifta is Ira, þæt is weamodniss …
Se sixta is accidia, þæt is asolcennyss, ðæt is modes swærniss and ungemetegod slapulniss …
Se seofoða heafodleahtor is Tristitia on leden, þæt is on englisc unrotnyss for mislicum gelimpum …
Se eahtoðe heafodleahtor is: cenodoxia, id est, iactantia uel uana gloria, þæt is gylp on englisc oððe getot, gereht, þæt se mann beo leofgeorn and mid gylpe afylled [ll. 401-459]
“The first capital sin is in Latin superbia and in English pride … The second capital sin is castrimargia or gula, which in English is gluttony … drunkenness … and in overindulgence … The third capital sin is fornicatio, which is lust … The fourth capital sin is avaritia in Latin and in English greed … The fifth is ira, which is wrath … The sixth is accidia, which is sloth, that is mental indolence and excessive sloppiness … The seventh capital sin is tristitia in Latin, which in English is sadness for various misfortunes … The eighth capital sin is cenodoxia, that is, iactantia or uana gloria, which is vanity in English or pomp, cockiness, when a person is eager for praise and filled with vanity.”
24Rearranging the order of the list (cf. Table 1), Ælfric now starts with pride, so all other sins move by one position, whereas sloth and sadness are inverted (Appendix 1). He follows a familiar pattern, in which some of the concepts are clarified by providing synonyms of the eight vices or other wicked deeds they may lead to. Thus, asolcennyss “sloth” is defined through modes swærniss and ungemetegod slapulniss “mental indolence and excessive sloppiness”; gyferniss “gluttony” begets drunconnysse “drunkenness” and oferflowednysse “overindulgence” (cf. (4)). Vanity is defined against the background of Greek and Latin terms as gylp “lit. glory”, getot “pomp” and gereht “cockiness”. It is an attractive theory that some of Ælfric’s lexical choices and differences with the previous lists might have been conditioned by Wulfstan’s request (Appendix 1). A few facts below may point in the same direction.
25What seems certain is that Wulfstan was working on sins in parallel to Ælfric, using Alcuin’s De virtutibus et vitiis as his main source (Bethurum [1957: 328]; Wilcox [1991: 9-10]). An early short tract by Wulfstan, De uitis principalibus, derives its ordering of sins from Alcuin: 1) superbia, 2) gula, 3) fornicatio, 4) avaritia, 5) ira, 6) acedia, 7) tristitia, 8) cenodoxia / vana gloria (De virtutibus et vitiis [xxvii–xxxiv]). Wulfstan replicates the same order in Old English with a few interesting additions to our thesaurus.
(7) DE UITIS PRINCIPALIBUS Micel is eac neodþearf. manna gehwilcum þæt he wið deofolscin. scilde him georne 7 wið þa deofollican eahta leahtras. dæges 7 nihtes. warnige symle. þæt is .i. modignes. .ii. gifernes. .iii. galnes. .iiii. Gitigendnes. .v. weamodnes. .vi. Asolcennes. .vii. hohfulnes. .viii Gilpgeornes. Of þissan eahta deofles cræftan. ealle unðeawas. up aspringað. 7 siððan tobredað ealles to wide. (Wilcox [1991: 9])
“On the Principal Vices. It is also very necessary for every person that he diligently shield himself against devilishness and against the devilish eight sins, day and night, always be wary. That is against: .i. pride, .ii. gluttony, .iii. lust, .iiii. avarice, .v. wrath, .vi. sloth, .vii. anxiety, .viii. vainglory. From these eight devilish crafts, all evil habits spring up and then spread widely.
26Wulfstan introduces three new items: gitigendnes “avarice”, hohfulnes “anxiety, sadness”, and gilpgeornes “glory-eagerness, vanity”. Gitigendnes, a hapax, seems to be derived from the same verbal stem as gitsung (> gitsian “to covet, desire”) but uses a different derivational suffix. Hohfulnes is attested five times in the DOEC: four in the The rule of St. Benet, glossing Latin sollicitudo (“anxiety, uneasiness”), and one in a charter attributed to King Æthelred (S914 of doubtful authenticity but dated to c. 1006). Gilpgeornes is used two more times, both by Wulfstan. It is conceivable that around this time exchanges between Wulfstan and Ælfric took place, perhaps even involving Wulfstan seeking Ælfric’s opinion on his equivalents to the Latin lexemes. The fact that the order of sins in Ælfric’s Second Letter to Wulfstan matches that in Wulfstan’s short tract and its Alcuinian source, while departing from Ælfric’s earlier practice (Lees [1985]), supports this notion. Wulfstan’s commission may have prompted Ælfric to revisit Alcuin’s treatise and respond accordingly (example 6). In York, Alcuin’s heritage was particularly pronounced; once Wulfstan moved there, he likely gained access to a local vernacular lexicon derived from De virtutibus et vitiis with fewer parallels to other regional traditions.
27Whatever the exact nature of the communications between the two authors on this doctrinal point, Wulfstan’s subsequent treatment of the lexemes belonging to the sin list in Homily Xc is a revision and a compromise between his earlier usage and that of Ælfric (cf. Tables 1 and 2).
(8) La, hu mæg man eaðost gehwyrfan fram yfele & fram unrihte, butan þæt man deofol georne forbuge & his undæda ealle oferhogie & wið his unlara geornlice scylde & wið þa deoflican eahta <leahtras> dæges & nihtes warnie symle? Ðæt is gitsung & gifernes, galnes & weamodnys, unrotnys & asolcennys, gylpgeornys & ofermodignys. Of ðyson eahta deofles cræftan ealle unþeawas up aspringað & syðþan tobrædað ealles to wide. (WHomXc [Bethurum 1957: 202.60-203.66])
“Lo, how can one most easily turn away from evil and from injustice, unless one diligently avoids the devil and proudly overcomes all his evils and steadfastly shields against his false teachings and constantly guards against the devilish eight vices day and night? That is against greed and gluttony, lust and wrath, sadness and sloth, vanity and pride. From these eight crafts of the devil, all vices arise and then spread far and wide.”
28Wulfstan retains þa deofollican eahta leahtras “the devilish eight vices” (rather than heafodleahtras “capital sins” we find in Ælfric) and gylpgeornys (vs. gylp), but gives up his gitigendnes and hohfulnes in favour of gitsung and unrotnys. His ordering now places pride at the end and aligns with the lists we have seen in Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies and Lives of Saints, except for gitsung which moves into the first slot (Appendix 1). As a result, all four binomials also form appealing semantic, morphological, metrical as well as rhyming and alliterating units.
- 6 For an investigation of the meaning of ofermod in The Battle of Maldon, see Gneuss [1976].
29On modignes, Wilcox [1991: 10] observes that ““De Uitis Principalibus” [ex. 7] contains a surprising lexical choice in view of Wulfstan’s authorship: Wulfstan never uses the word “modignes” elsewhere to express the sin superbia”. If Wulfstan knew Ælfric’s work on the vices and solicited his advice on terminology, it stands to reason that he was willing to negotiate the individual terms and to try out some of the Winchester words. In the end, Wulfstan adopted ofermodignes (ex. 8) as his preferred term. The reasons for that may lie in the potentially positive semantics of modignes. Modignes “pride” is a Winchester coinage (Schabram [1965]; Hofstetter [1987]). It has 157 occurrences in prose but no attestations in poetry. When its base modig is used in verse it is connoted positively and occasionally comes up in emphatically positive constructions: þæt wæs modig secg (Beo 1812; “that was a noble man”) referring to Beowulf; Þæt wæs modig cyn (Dan 7; “that was a noble people”) of the Jews preparing to leave Egypt. Hebrew patriarchs in Hell (43-46) are described as monig modig eorl “many a noble hero” (cf. German mutig). It must have been difficult to construe the derivative of modig as something sinful. A conflict with secular values was too strong. So, what ofermodignes achieves is that it signals that only the excess of modignes is reprehensible (but see ex. 10 below).6
30What Ælfric’s and Wulfstan’s lists ultimately achieve is the creation of a lexicon of sin-words that are all morphologically feminine. This is significant because these lexemes mirror the morphology of their Latin counterparts – seemingly, a deliberate choice. In the iconography of vices, such as the illuminations in the Psychomachia in BL, Cotton Cleopatra C.viii (ff. 15v and 19r), vices are depicted as female figures. Moreover, the majority of these lexemes end in ‑nes, which, along with occasional alliterations, creates ample opportunities for rhyme and other stylistic embellishments, e.g., Crist wunað on eaðmodnysse, and deofol on modignysse (ChrodR 1 1.12) “Christ lives in humility, and the devil in pride”.
31Beyond the works of Ælfric and Wulfstan, the capital sins also appear in texts by Byrhtferth and, as might be expected, in vernacular penitential literature. Byrhtferth’s lists of sins appear in his Enchiridion (BEnc), a bilingual commentary on his computus (see Tables 1 and 2). From the evidence of his surviving works, it is “reasonable to infer that he was master at the Ramsey [Abbey] school” (Baker & Lapidge [1995: xxvi]), and in his youth he had been deeply impressed by the visit of Abbo of Fleury to Ramsey in 985-987. Writing in 1011, he was a contemporary of Ælfric and Wulfstan; however, his sin list does not fully align with the one we see being negotiated by those two writers. The sins are discussed twice in BEnc. In the first instance, towards the end of the work, Byrhtferth demonstrates the moral application of arithmology, listing eight capital sins:
(9) Hyt ys gecweden and on halgum gewritum geræd þæt eahta synd heafodgyltas. Se forma is ælces yfeles ord, se ys superbia gehaten. Se oðer inuidia, þæt <ys> anda. Se þridda ys ira, þæt <ys> yrre. Se feorða ys tristitia, þæt ys unrotnyss. Se fifta ys auaritia, þæt ys gitsung. Se syxta ys uentris ingluuies, þæt ys oferfyll. Se seofoða ys luxuria, þæt ys galscype. Se eahtoða ys uana gloria, þæt ys idel gylp
“It is said, and we read in sacred scriptures, that there are eight deadly sins. The first, the source of every evil, is called superbia [pride]. The second is invidia, or envy. The third is ira, or anger. The fourth is tristitia, or sadness. The fifth is auaritia, or avarice. The sixth is uentris ingluuies, or gluttony. The seventh is luxuria, or lechery. The eighth is uana gloria, or empty boasting” [ed. and trans. Baker & Lapidge [1995: 238-9]).
32BEnc is notable for its bilingual layout, with many Latin sections followed by an Old English equivalent, and Stephenson [2015: 39] suggests that it may have been created as a supplement to Byrhtferth’s teaching activities. In keeping with this organizational rationale, Byrhtferth’s list pairs the Latin sins with their Old English equivalents, and following Theodulf does not have separate categories for sadness and sloth. One exception, superbia (“pride”), is named only in Latin; however, when Byrhtferth expands on its treatment as the root of all evil in a postscript (the Ammonitio amici), he names the sin in the vernacular as well as in Latin, as he exhorts readers to keep fasts and avoid sin:
(10) Ærest stæpð se modiga deofol to mid his gefilce and wyle wið minre sawle campian and me upgebredan ælc þære þing þe ic wið God agylte þurh modignysse. þæt byð modignys þæt ænig man forseo Godes beboda and þa forgymeleasige. Seo modignyss ys ealra unþeawe angin and ealra mægna hryre. Æfter þam modigan unþeawe ingæð seo fule fornicatio, seo hatte fylðe on Englisc [...] Ealra swyðust deofol gewylt mancyn mid þissum twam unþeawum, þæt ys mid modignysse and galscipe
“First the proud devil approaches with his army and wishes to battle for my soul and to reproach me with every occasion when I sinned against God through pride. It is pride when any man rejects and neglects God’s commands. Pride is the origin of all sins and the ruination of all virtues. After the sin of pride the foul fornicatio (called uncleanness in English) attacks [...] The devil subdues mankind most of all with these two sins, that is, with pride and lechery” (ed. and trans. Baker & Lapidge [1995: 246-7]).
33Although one sin is depicted as leading to another, as in ÆCHom, here only two sins are mentioned. While Ælfric begins his list with greed as the begetter of lust, for Byrhtferth lust develops from pride. In this vision, the devil targets mankind through these twin sins as a gateway to sins of the mind (through pride) and the body (through lust), and Byrhtferth’s wider point warns against making the soul and body a dwelling-place (eardungstow) for the devil.
34In its vocabulary choices, too, Byrhtferth’s main list fails to align with those of Ælfric or Wulfstan. By choosing yrre over Ælfric’s weamodness, the Enchiridion shows affinities with lists from older traditions, such as ThCapA and ThCapB, and the second confessional prayer in the Cotton Tiberius manuscript (CPT2), while oferfylle (“greed”) only appears in the confessional prayer in the Royal manuscript (CPR) and the Canons of Theodore. In its ordering of the sins, Byrhtferth’s list partially coincides with that of the Old English Penitential (OEPen) and shares its first three sins, starting with pride and followed by envy and wrath. However, the labels used for each sin differ; Byrhtferth’s superbia, anda and yrre have no counterparts in OEPen’s ofermetta, nið / æfesta and hatheortnes. For the remainder of the list, the two texts disagree on the order of the sins and even on which ones to include, as OEPen omits sadness and vainglory (although it does include many of the sins discussed in other penitential works, e.g., stealing, magic and manslaughter). The only two terms on which they agree are gitsung (“avarice”), which is fairly stable across the sin lexicon, and galscyp (“lust”).
35Byrhtferth’s term for lust, galscyp, shares its first element gal- (“lust”, “wantonness”) with galnes, the more usual term found in the sin lists. Galscip is recorded 22 times in the DOEC beyond its use in BEnc and OEPen. Among these are three examples from texts by Wulfstan (his homily on baptism (WDB); Institutes of Polity and Cnut’s lawcode (Cnut1)); it is notable that in WDB galscyp appears alongside oferfylle, clearly showing links between Wulfstan, Byrhtferth and more confessional-orientated works:
(11) Scyldað eow wið gitsunga 7 wið gifornessa [...] And scyldað eow wið galscypas 7 swyðe georne wið æwbrecas, 7 wið oferfylle beorgað eow georne (WDB 161-165; Bethurum [1957: 183-184])
“Protect yourself against avarice and lust [...] and shield yourself against fornication, and especially against adultery, and carefully protect yourself against gluttony”.
36The other notable use of galscyp occurs in various glosses and glossaries, accounting for 10 of the total 22 instances. Three of these are glosses to the Liber Scintillarum, three to Aldhelm’s prose De virginitate (DLV), and one each to Book 3 of Abbo of St Germain’s Bella parisiacae urbis (BPU) and the London-Antwerp Glossaries. Porter [2024] makes the case for the Aldhelm and Abbo glosses, and the London-Antwerp glossaries, being produced by a group of scribes working in a monastic school setting (possibly Canterbury, and possibly related to Ælfric’s pupil, Ælfric Bata), strongly influenced by Ælfric’s pedagogical works (his Glossary and Grammar). As schoolmaster at Ramsey, it would be unsurprising for Byrhtferth to have had knowledge of works like DLV and BPU (and possibly their glossaries), as they formed the cornerstone of more advanced Latin learning in the Anglo-Saxon school curriculum (Porter [2024]), although in many cases the exact manuscripts he had access to remains unknown (Lapidge [1998], [2012]). Nevertheless, it is also apparent that Byrhtferth had a love of (and was strongly influenced by) the language of glosses and glossaries: he “loved the sound of learned, glossary-derived words, in both Latin and Old English, and it is striking that there is considerable overlap between Byrhtferth’s ornate, “hermeneutic” vocabulary and the glosses in a small number of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts” (Lapidge [1998: 37]). Indeed, Baker and Lapidge state that, rather than being influenced by the language of glosses from any particular centre, “he was influenced by the language of glosses, whatever their origin” [1995: cx]. It seems, therefore, that Byrhtferth’s influences in his sin vocabulary come partly from confessional / penitential sources, and partly from sources related to the Benedictine reform. Unlike Ælfric, he was not directly influenced by Bishop Æthelwold (Ramsey was founded by Bishop Oswald in 966); rather, influence seems to have been more indirect, through glossed teaching texts, some of which seem to have been shaped by scholarly methods developed by a group related to, though perhaps at some remove from, Æthelwold.
37The capital sins are also detailed in confessional prayers, examples of which can be found in British Library manuscripts Cotton Tiberius C.i (two versions, CP1 and CP2), Cotton Vespasian D.xx (CPV), and Royal 2 B.v (CPR) (see Tables 1 and 2). These prayers form part of what Frantzen calls the “literature of penance”, that is, texts designed to aid the administration of penance, which include penitentials outlining various misdeeds and their accompanying penitential tariff, homilies exhorting their hearers to confession, instructions for confessors, and prayers to be recited by the penitent during private or public confession (Frantzen [1982: 23]). It is clear that these documents were envisaged as playing an important role in the spiritual life of the secular population (Hamilton [2005]), and that confessors were to “teach the laity how to live” (Cubitt [2006: 52]); in his letter to Bishop Wulfsige, Ælfric mentions penitentials as one of the books necessary for priests to own (Dyson [2019: 35]). Nevertheless, the appearance of a confessional prayer in the vernacular does not automatically indicate its intended use by lay penitents; Cubitt [2006: 54] notes that the prayer found in CPV is “an encyclopaedic confession which includes admissions of sins for one in orders, including negligence in office and in psalm-singing”. Penance was a top-down initiative, and the textual and manuscript evidence shows the involvement of senior churchmen (including Wulfstan) in the development and / or production of texts enabling its administration (Heyworth [2007]). Despite the continued interest of eleventh-century writers and copyists in penitentials and confessional prayers, such material had a long (though perhaps not unbroken) tradition in Anglo-Saxon England, as earlier Latin texts had been exported to Continental Europe in the eighth and ninth centuries, and subsequently reimported by the reformers along with Carolingian penitential works (Frantzen [1983: ch.4]).
38What is notable about the lists of capital sins provided by the confessional prayers is the wide range of vocabulary used to describe them, a trait the prayers share with the directions for confessors. For example, among the gluttony vocabulary we find druncennys (“drunkenness”), gifernes (“greediness, avarice, voracity, gluttony”), gifernes metes 7 drinces (“greed for food and drink”), oferfylle (“excessive eating and drinking”), oferdruncennes (“drunkenness, intoxication”), æræt (“eating before the proper time”), gytsung (“greed”) and yfele gewilnung (“bad appetites”). The confessional texts thus take the opportunity to explore different instantiations of each sin; gluttony is not confined to one meaning, but is variously described as voracity for food and drink, and excessive appetites:
(12) Ic eom ondetta sodomiscre synne þe hie on gegyltan þæt is geligre, leasunga, gitsunga, getreowleasnesse, yfelre recceleasnesse 7 ðristlæcnesse minra synna. Ic ondette gifernesse metes 7 drinces ærtidum 7 in tide ge eac oferriht tide. Ic ondette ælcre gitsunge cynne þe ic æfre beeode. Ic ondette æfste 7 tælnesse, twyspræcnesse 7 leasunge, ellenhete 7 nið, unnyttes gylpes bigong 7 idle glengas, uncyste 7 idelre oferhygde, orgello [...] (CPV; Logeman [1889a: 98])
“I confess the sins of Sodom which they were guilty of, that is fornication, lying, avarice, faithlessness, evil recklessness and the boldness of my sins, I confess gluttony for food and drink, before, during and after the normal time. I confess every kind of greed which I ever committed. I confess envy and calumny, deceit and lying, jealousy and envy, the undertaking of vain boasting and idle ornament, miserliness and idle arrogance, pride…”
39Here, the penitent confesses not only to gluttony for food and drink, but also to overindulgence before, after and at dinner time. Many sins are paired; ellenhete and nið (“envy”), æfste and tælnesse (“envy” and “calumny”), twyspræcnesse and leasunge (“deceit” and “lies”). In this way, the penitent is able to explore the different facets of their own sinful behaviour. Uncyste and idelre oferhygde (“avarice” and “idle pride”), while at first sight incongruous compared to the previous pairings, illustrate how the sins can lead from one to another; vanity and vain ornament (unnyttes gylpes and idle glengas) lead to miserliness or avarice, but also to pride. In this way, the variation found in penitential texts is functional, and allows them to be used both for public and private penance.
40Some of the sin terms found in these texts are peculiar to penitential literature, for example hatheortnes (“anger”; CPV, OEPen, Scr), whose popularity may be due in part to the contrast it forms with the mildheortness (“mercy, compassion”) the penitents seek from God in the confessional prayers (e.g., CPV 89-90). What is certain is that many penitential texts contain dialectally or socially distinctive vocabulary, for example, morðor (“murder, mortal sin”; CPT1, DC1, DC2, Scr), oferhygd (“pride”; CPV, DC1) and the phrase dyrne geligro (“fornication”; OEPen and Scr), which are restricted to Anglian texts (Jordan [1906: 106]; Wenisch [1979: 189, 280]; Schabram [1965]). Socially restricted terms are found in þristlæcnes (“boldness, audacity”; CPV), ofermetto (“pride”; CPV, CPR, OEPen, DC3), and ThCapA’s ofermedla, which fall into Hofstetter’s [1987] category C words, that is, ones which are avoided by Æthelwold and his Winchester followers. Their varied language underlines the diverse origins and evolution of the penitential and confessional texts.
41Not only do the confessional prayers and directions for confessors employ numerous terms to describe each sin, they also encompass a wider range of sins than texts such as the Capitula Theodulfi or those by Ælfric. In addition to the capital sins, such expanded lists include sins of speech such as leasunga (“lying”), lease gewitnysse (“bearing false witness”), mæne aþas (“swearing false oaths”), tælnes (“calumny”), geflitfulnes (“quarrelling”), unnytte word (“idle speech”); breaches of Christian faith: unhyrsumnesse (“disobedience”) and lyblac (“occult arts”); and the further sins of twyspræcnysse (“deceit”), æðbrycas (“oath breaking”), stala (“theft”), and morþor (“murder”). Many items in this list have their roots in the Ten Commandments (Lees [1985: 181-3]), and there are, moreover, some parallels with the sins enumerated by Wulfstan in his Sermo Lupi:
(13) ac wearð þes þeodscipe, swa hit þyncan mæg, swyðe forsyngod þurh mænigfealda synna 7 þurh fela misdæda: ðurh morðdæla 7 ðurh mandæda, ðurh gytsunge 7 ðurh gifernesse, ðurh stala 7 ðurh strudunga, ðurh mansylene 7 ðurh hæðene unsida, ðurh swicdomas 7 ðurh searocræftas, ðurh lahbrycas 7 ðurh æswicas, ðurh mægræsas 7 ðurh manslihtas, ðurh hadbrycas 7 ðurh æwbrycas, ðurh siblegeru 7 ðurh mistlice forlegeru. (WHomXX; Bethurum [1957: 264.129-265.136])
“but these people, it seems, have sinned so greatly through manifold sins and through many transgressions: through deadly sins and evil deeds, through avarice and through greed, through theft and through robbery, through the wrongful selling of men into slavery and through heathen customs, through deceit and cunning, through law-breaking and through sedition, through attacks on kinsmen and through manslaughter, through violation of holy orders and through adultery, through incest and through various fornications”.
42It is in his homilies, with their extensive explorations of his audience’s misdeeds, that Wulfstan’s discussion of the sins most resembles the lists in penitential literature (see Table 1). Perhaps this should not surprise us, as homilists – including Wulfstan – are well known for their recombining and reuse of earlier material. Bethurum [1957: 318] notes that in WDB, lines 156-174, Wulfstan reworks material both from his own homilies (including the selection from WHomXc in example 8), along with the Canons of Edgar. However, such textual borrowing is not a one-way affair; Wulfstan’s sin list from WHomXc was reused and added to the end of a confessional text in British Library, Cotton Tiberius A.iii (ff. 54v-55r; Logeman [1889b: 518]), while Byrhtferth’s list (example 9) was used along with Wulfstanian material as the basis of the anonymous homily Napier 47 (Napier [1883: 245]; Fontes: Byrhtferth Enchiridion). It is possible, then, that the homilies are where we see most evidence of the sin vocabulary being reworked for the needs of a lay audience.
43The data on Ælfric and Wulfstan offer a unique lens into the lexical development of both authors, providing insights into their mutual influence and relation to other contemporary sources. They demonstrate that writers who participated in the reform movement continued to work towards a lexicon that could perform a unifying function for church institutions, among which penance was particularly prominent. As the two decades on either side of the year 1000 witnessed a surge in vernacular literature addressing the sins and confession, aimed at educating both the laity and the secular clergy, a compromise between different local traditions, archaic and innovative terms, their secular and religious connotations, as well as Latin sources and vernacular equivalents was probably more than welcome.
44Since monks of the reformed monasteries, like Ælfric and Byrhtferth, and churchmen of high status, such as Wulfstan, enjoyed considerable prestige, their influence extended to a degree of lexical prescriptivism. The terms they legitimized in their writings had the potential to become standard. Indeed, some of these terms – such as gifernes, gitsung or unrotnes – achieved wide geographical and chronological reach, while others, particularly those for “pride” or “sloth”, exhibited considerable variation. Certain lexemes, especially derivatives ending in -nes, like weamodnes, appear more “artificial”, created to establish equivalence with Latin terms by replicating their grammatical gender and morphological structure.
45This aspect of the lexicon might have been very appealing to the high-brow monastic intellectuals like Ælfric. Leaders with a broader audience in mind were willing to adopt such terminology, but they were also aware that, to reach their lay congregations and lesser-educated lower clergy, they needed to move beyond abstract debates about the nature of tristitia and acedia and address more immediate and widespread transgressions. Thus, in Wulfstan’s homilies and in the penitentials and confessionals, the sins are lexicalized and categorized differently, in a more practical, hands-on manner. Moreover, the terms in these documents are often found in the company of a wider range of transgressions, allowing listeners or penitents to explore and more precisely identify their own shortcomings.
46In the end, did the centralized reforms of religious practice lead to lexical standardization? There is limited evidence for the diffusion of some lexemes through individual social ties. On the whole, however, the standardizing process seems to have made little progress between c. 1000, when Ælfric and Wulfstan corresponded, and the end of the Old English period. While some focusing and selection of terms may have taken place, our data suggest that the negotiation process was still ongoing. Consequently, when the events of 1066 occurred, these processes were vulnerable to disruption, with the result that today, none of the terms coined by Ælfric, Wulfstan, or Byrhtferth have survived. The lexical efforts of our protagonists reflected their intellectual ambitions and practical needs, but were not sufficiently consolidated by the time of the Norman Conquest, leading to their eventual disappearance from the language.