What has Ingeld to do with Lindisfarne?

Abstract

In the course of a long letter written in 797 to Speratus, bishop of an unnamed English see, Alcuin declares:Verba Dei legantur in sacerdotali convivio: ibi decet lectorem audiri, non citharistam, sermones patrum, non carmina gentilium. Quid Hinieldus cum Christo?Nowhere else in the substantial corpus of his letters does Alcuin name a known figure in early Germanic legend and literature – the Ingeld ofBeowulfandWidsith– or refer specifically to the vernacular literature of his home country. Unsurprisingly, since the publication of the first complete and correct text of the letter in 1873, this passage has been quotedin toto(in varying translations) or alluded to in virtually every history of Old English literature and every commentary onBeowulf. Jaffé, however, in the notes he left with his transcript when he died prematurely in 1870, had proposed an identification of the addressee, Speratus, with Bishop Hygbald of Lindisfarne, recorded from 780 to 803. Dümmler adopted Jaffé's view in his editions of the letter: and he has been followed without demur by every subsequent scholar who has quoted or referred to it. Furthermore, for most of the century it has been tacitly assumed that the letter was directed not merely to the bishop in person but also to the community of which he was head – a monastic one, even after the disasters of 793; and that Alcuin's exhortations, whether or not they were a response to the actual practice of Lindisfarne and other Northumbrian houses, are evidence of the acceptability (and indeed, cultural importance) of secular vernacular verse in eighth-century English monasteries.