The end of the ninth century produced, as we have seen, few charters, and the first quarter of the tenth is similarly represented by very few texts. [264] Edward the Elder's name is attached to a considerable number of texts, but it is clear that in most of these cases his name has been taken in vain. The Winchester and Malmesbury texts come from very untrustworthy sources, and several of them are evidently forged upon the basis of later royal charters. Two only of the texts ascribed to this king have any claims to rest upon contemporary MSS. One of these, the king's grant to Bishop Frithustan in 909, [265] is in somewhat later handwriting, and its import begets great suspicion in our mind, which is not removed by an examination of the English of the boundaries. The other one, a charter of 903, is equally doubtful. [266] The remarkable thing about the texts ascribed to Edward is the numerous references they contain to the writing of 'new books' or diplomas to replace lost ones. Most of the texts are highly rhetorical, but some of these are demonstrably later. Probably this king's instruments were not noticeable for pomposity.
The same cannot be said of those of his successor Æthelstan, which mark an important stage in the history of the O.E diploma. From this time onwards the charters become noticeable for the pomposity of their language, and it must have been tenth-century charters that inspired the comments of William of Malmesbury upon the turgid language of the instruments of the O.E. kings. [267] In Æthelstan's time this inflated rhetoric reaches its highest development. This monarch's charters are drawn up on well defined lines, and it is evident that his chancery must have been in possession of [a] well defined formulary. Indeed, we can detect the use of different formulas at different periods of his reign. He used several proems, and there are alternative formulas for the other parts of his charters. Several of his formulas were used by his immediate successors, and we find later kings reviving his titles after considerable intervals of disuse. Indeed, the charters of the latter part of his life, which were comparatively simple in form and diction, served as the model of those of his successors, and even his pompous charters seem to have begotten imitation, not reproduction, in the chancery of Æthelred.
The diplomas of Æthelstan contain traces of their ultimate origin in the Mercian charter, disguised as they may be by clouds of words. The Latin of Æthelstan's charters is of a most extraordinary nature. The tendency that we have noticed in the Mercian and ninth-century [charters] towards circumlocution is developed in Æthelstan's chancery to the highest perfection. The object of the compilers of these charters was to express their meaning by the use of the greatest possible number of words and by the choice of the most grandiloquent, bombastic words that they could find. Every sentence is so overloaded by the heaping up of unnecessary words that the meaning is almost buried out sight. The invocation with its appended clauses, opening with pompous and partly alliterative words, will proceed amongst a blaze of verbal fireworks throughout twenty lines of smallish type, and the pyrotechnic display will be maintained with equal magnificence throughout the whole charter, leaving the reader, dazzled by the glaze and blinded by the smoke, in a state of uncertainty as to the meaning of these frequently untranslatable and usually interminable sentences. [268]
The charters are no less remarkable for the length of the sentences than for the extraordinary nature of the words pressed into use, most of which continued in use until the end of the O.E. period. In Latin there is a preference shown for most unusual words, and they are frequently made to bear a perverted meaning that was alien to them. There is a great use of frequentative forms of verbs, and inchoatives in -escere are much affected. There is a passion for substantives in -amen, -usculus, -unculus, etc. and for adverbs in -atim. Verbs, substantives, and adverbs are freely coined with these terminations, which are used not for the expression of any significance varying from the simple words, but merely because they make the word longer and more gaudy. Indeed, words may be said generally to be chosen more for sound than meaning. The resources of the Latin language were inadequate to supply the craving for pompous words, and Greek was freely brought into requisition. A small portion of these came from the Vulgate, such as peripsema, holocaustoma, whilst from the Fathers came such words as protoplastus (applied to Adam), typhus 'pride', paradigma (for a Gospel text), polyandrium 'cemetery', etc. But there are numerous other Greek words, which may have been derived from Latin Greek glosses. There are also a few Hebrew words, such as iduma for yadhayim 'hands', and the Hebrew gebor 'man' occurs in the compound gibonifer. Greek invocations sometimes occur, such as agonista and symphonista for 'evangelist', karisma <mmmm> in the sense of 'charter' or perhaps 'gift', a meaning it bears in the New Testament Greek.
This highly embroidered, flatulent Latinity was an outcome of the rhetorical schools of Italy and Gaul in the fifth century. It is well exemplified in the tumid diction of Theodoric the Great's secretary Cassiodorus. But it was in Celtic hands that it reached the acme of artificiality, pomposity, and obscurity. There are few more curious monuments of pedantic involution of meaning, turgidity, and delphic obscurity than the tract known as Hisperica Famina, [269] which is supposed to be the production of an Irish monk of the sixth century. Some of the words used in this tract are met with in the Latin of Æthelstan's chancery, but they were not, I think, derived directly from the Hisperica Famina. The more immediate source was, I think, the pompous compositions of the English St. Aldhelm, [270] a marvel of learning, if not of literary taste and judgement, for the seventh century. His prose and poetic works in praise of virginity were admired and studied as much for their subject as for their style. Aldhelm was born within half a century or so of the conversion of the English to Christianity, and he had opportunities of learning Greek and Hebrew from Archbishop Theodore and Hadrian. [271] At Malmesbury he was brought under the influence of the Irish monks, and it is, no doubt, to them that we ascribe the credit or blame for his literary stile. The student of Old English will perhaps be inclined to say 'credit', for it was the obscurity of Aldhelm's stile and the abstruse nature of his vocabulary that called into existence the numerous copies of his work with interlinear glosses in O.E. His works have produced the greater part of the O.E. glosses, and the copies containing these glosses prove to us how widely his works were read and studied in England. The occurrence in his works of most of the strange Latin and Greek words used in the chancery Æthelstan and his successors induces me to believe that his works were the quarry whence these words were taken, and the belief is strengthened by meeting in Aldhelm with phrases that are used in Æthelstan's charters.
From the time of Æthelstan there is a remarkable change in the sanctions. [272] Hitherto the infringer has been usually notified that he must answer for his trespass before the tribunal of God. Now the decision and sentence of that tribunal is anticipated, and the infractor is condemned to share the punishment [of] the great betrayer, and the rhetorician revels in pompous words describing the sound of the last trump, the rising of the dead, and the sufferings of the unfortunate culprit in the flames of Hell. Other tenth-century sanctions picture the punishment of the recalcitrant one in frying pans of the demons. The resplendent Latinity of the time leads the authors of these anathemas to the anachronism of describing the Christian Hell in the word of the classical netherworld. [273] Not only do demons inhabit Tartarus, but the delinquent is puzzled by the presence of the cool floods of Acheron, Cocytus, and Styx, and he is even threatened with boiling in the pitch-filled cauldron of Vulcan. [274] In a sanction that originated in Æthelstan's chancery and that long remained in use the unfortunate gainsayer is condemned 'to dwell in thrilling regions of thick ribbed ice' and to be subject to the attentions of the Pennine army of malignant spirits - those medieval obsessions whose malignancy is so highly coloured that it not unfrequently broadens into farce.
One of the outcomes of this striving after uncommon words was the use of basileus instead of rex, but this word can scarcely be adduced as proof of the claim of imperial rank. It is used as a more genteel word than rex, and the kings occasionally revert to the latter word. It is doubtful whether Æthelstan used this word in his charters, although there are many instances ascribed to him. If he did use it, he probably did not begin to do so until after the battle of Brunanburh in 937. He is certainly called 'Anglorum basyleos et curagulus totius Bryttaniae' [275] in a contemporary dedication of a copy of the Gospels to Christ Church, Canterbury, a stile that he uses, substituting rex for basileus, in a contemporary charter of 939. [276] The title of basileus is certainly used by Edmund, although he does not use it exclusively, and it continued in use until the end of the O.E. period, and was thus handed on to William the Conqueror.
The charter of Æthelstan just cited presents a strong contrast to the inflated Latinity of the documents of the early part of his reign. It is much shorter in form, although still somewhat rhetorical in places. Evidently this model was the one generally followed by Æthelstan's successors, and some of the formulas contained in it continued long in use. From this time until the end of the O.E. period it may be said that the form of the diploma has become settled. There are several formulas for each constituent part of an instrument, and the chancery of one king may prefer one formula to another, but the formula thus disused may come into use again in the next reign or even after the lapse of several reigns. These variations are especially noticeable in the stiles of the kings, the immunity clause, and the sanction. With one or two doubtful exceptions, the magniloquent proems and sanctions of Æthelstan are not reproduced by his successors. There is a continuity between the usages of the kings. Edmund uses the later formulas of Æthelstan with occasional modifications and with a different stile. He introduces the adjective industrius into his title, and we find instances of this adjective until the days of Edward the Confessor. Eadred similarly inserts the adverb indeclinabiliter, apparently in the sense of 'after mature consideration', 'unchangeably', into his attestation clause, and this has a similar history, and was used even by William the Conqueror. Edgar introduces a few modifications of formulas, and these modifications become stereotyped. After his reign the only change of any moment is that under Æthelred the practice arose of composing special proems for individual deeds, although some of the old proems are also used. In his reign the proems frequently run to an enormous length, and are practically sermons. The vocabulary until the end retains the characteristics acquired in Æthelstan's time, but the language, although inflated and prolix, never again attains the imposing sonority and brazen magniloquence of Æthelstan's time.
The general agreement and common use of formulas thus sketched does not exclude a certain licence and variety that serve to distinguish the charters of one king form those of another. There will be differences in the stile affected by the kings, in the manner in which they attest, and in the form in which the attestations of the witnesses is recorded. The emergence of old formulas from a period of disuse, to which we have referred, strongly suggests that the chancery must have possessed some collection of formulas, and this conclusion is strengthened by the use of interchangeable formulas for a particular section of the charter, and also by the instances in which a certain number of the stereotyped clauses of a particular formula are taken out of their setting and fitted on to parts of another formula. The varying combinations thus produced are numerous.
A curious feature may be mentioned in this connexion: that the occasional re-appearance in the tenth century of two of the formulas of the late Roman private deed that engaged our attention in the first lecture. One is the 'quicquid exinde facerint voluerint liberam in omnibus habeant potestatem faciendi', and the other 'manente tamen hac chartula nihilominus in sua firmitate'. [277] Occasionally, too, the king will use the Roman formula 'propria manu signum crucis expressi'. But as a rule the Roman formulas of the early charters are represented by formulas having nothing in common with them except the purport of the clause, and even that bond is sometimes missing.
The influence of the ecclesiastical origin of the diploma was strong enough to ensure its continuing to be drawn up in Latin until it finally died out in the twelfth century, despite the fact that the English were writing wills and other legal documents in the native tongue from at least the very beginning of the eighth century. We have also an original charter in English by King Beorhtwulf of Mercia in the middle of the ninth century. [278] There are, it is true, in the collections of O.E. charters several other instances of diplomas drawn up in English. But these are clearly to be regarded as translations. In several cases the original Latin texts exist; in others we can detect in the language proof that they are translated from Latin. By the tenth century the boundaries come to be written in English, which wholly displaces Latin for this purpose. After the Norman Conquest, strange to say, we meet with traces of the employment of diplomas drawn up in Latin and in English.