Geþyncðo
Encyclopedia
Geþyncðo meaning “Dignities”, is the title given to an Old English legal tract on status and social mobility, probably written by Wulfstan (II), Archbishop of York between 1002 and 1023. It is sometimes known as one of the so-called 'promotion laws', along with Norðlleoda laga, and both these texts belong to a legal compilation on status, dubbed ‘the Geþyncðu group’ by the historian Patrick Wormald
Patrick Wormald
Charles Patrick Wormald was a British historian born in Neston, Cheshire, son of historian Brian Wormald.He attended Eton College as a King's Scholar...

. Though the extent to which these reflect reality is a topic of some debate, they constitute one of the most valuable primary documents for an understanding of social status in late Anglo-Saxon England.

The Geþyncðu group: manuscripts and texts

Taking the ‘Geþyncðu group’ as a whole, Patrick Wormald distinguishes between two classes of manuscripts. The first originates in Worcester
Anglican Diocese of Worcester
The Diocese of Worcester forms part of the Province of Canterbury in England.The diocese was founded in around 679 by St Theodore of Canterbury at Worcester to minister to the kingdom of the Hwicce, one of the many Anglo Saxon petty-kingdoms of that time...

 and consists of copies of texts in two of Wulfstan's autograph manuscripts: (1) Cambridge, CCC, MS 201 ('D'), which contains all five documents of the group: Geþyncðo, Norðleoda laga (“North-people's law”), Mircna laga (“Mercian law”), (“Oath”) and Hadbot (“Compensation for the ordained”); and (2) Corpus 190 ('O'), which preserves only the last three. The second class was produced at a further remove from its original scriptorium. It is represented by two early 12th-century manuscript families: (a) the Textus Roffensis
Textus Roffensis
The Textus Roffensis, or in full, Textus de Ecclesia Roffensi per Ernulphum episcopum , refers to a manuscript in which two originally separate manuscripts written about the same time, between 1122 and 1124, are bound together...

, a substantial collection of Old English law-texts with Latin translations, and (b) the various manuscripts of the Quadripartitus
Quadripartitus
The title Quadripartitus refers to an extensive legal collection compiled during the reign of Henry I, king of England . The work consists of Anglo-Saxon legal materials in Latin translation as well as a number of Latin texts of legal interest that were produced after the Conquest...

, which offer a vast array of legal texts in Latin translation only. On grounds of style and layout, Wormald argues that the second class of the Geþyncðu group goes back to a common exemplar containing a southern redaction of material from Worcester. This material may have reached Rochester via Canterbury. Both Textus Roffensis and Quadripartitus contain versions of Geþyncðu and Norðleoda laga.

As opposed to the law-codes issued by Anglo-Saxon kings
Anglo-Saxon law
Anglo-Saxon law is a body of written rules and customs that were in place during the Anglo-Saxon period in England, before the Norman conquest. This body of law, along with early Scandinavian law and continental Germanic law, descended from a family of ancient Germanic custom and legal thought...

, the five texts offer no official enactments, but they record what the author or compiler understood to have been church law and customary law in certain regions of England, such as Wessex
Wessex
The Kingdom of Wessex or Kingdom of the West Saxons was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the West Saxons, in South West England, from the 6th century, until the emergence of a united English state in the 10th century, under the Wessex dynasty. It was to be an earldom after Canute the Great's conquest...

, (West) Mercia
Mercia
Mercia was one of the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. It was centred on the valley of the River Trent and its tributaries in the region now known as the English Midlands...

, Danelaw
Danelaw
The Danelaw, as recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , is a historical name given to the part of England in which the laws of the "Danes" held sway and dominated those of the Anglo-Saxons. It is contrasted with "West Saxon law" and "Mercian law". The term has been extended by modern historians to...

 and Northumbria
Northumbria
Northumbria was a medieval kingdom of the Angles, in what is now Northern England and South-East Scotland, becoming subsequently an earldom in a united Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England. The name reflects the approximate southern limit to the kingdom's territory, the Humber Estuary.Northumbria was...

. The core of the group is made up by a number of texts on wergild.

Authorship and date

Since 1950, when Dorothy Bethurum's study on the five documents of the group was published, the composition of Geþyncðu is usually attributed to Wulfstan (II), Archbishop of York between 1002 and 1023, who was also responsible for drafting official law-codes for kings Æthelred and Cnut. Wormald dates the text some time between 1008 and 1014, when the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos
Sermo Lupi ad Anglos
The Sermo Lupi ad Anglos is the title given to a homily composed in England between 1010-1016 by Wulfstan II, Archbishop of York , who commonly styled himself Lupus, or 'wolf' after the first element in his name [wulf-stan = 'wolf-stone']. Though the title is Latin, the work itself is written in...

appears to have been written.

Contents

The introductory statement strikes a nostalgic chord about a golden age in which society was stratified by law and custom:
“Once it used to be that people and rights went by dignities [geþyncðo], and councillors of the people were then entitled to honour, each according to his rank, whether noble [eorl] or ceorl, retainer or lord.”


What follows may well be the most famous line of the text, which lists the requirements of wealth and service by which once a ceorl could rise to thegnhood:
"And if a ceorl prospered, that he possessed fully five hides of land
Hide (unit)
The hide was originally an amount of land sufficient to support a household, but later in Anglo-Saxon England became a unit used in assessing land for liability to "geld", or land tax. The geld would be collected at a stated rate per hide...

of his own a bell and a castle-gate, a seat and special office in the king's hall, then was he henceforth entitled to the rights of a thegn."


The text goes on to distinguish between four different types of thegn and their qualifications: at the top stood the thegn who rode in the king's household band (hired) and had a 'median thegn' to serve him and to represent him in court with a preliminary oath (for-að). A less privileged type is the king's thegn who was without any such representative. On the next level is the median thegn, who likewise held five hides of his own, but served a king's thegn, attended him in the king's hall and was qualified to represent him with an oath. Finally, there was also a lower type of median thegn, who did not (yet) meet these requirements of land and service. The southern redaction in the Textus Roffensis adds two further clauses. One is on the thegn who is promoted to earl (eorl) and acquires the rights of an earl, and the other on the merchant who becomes a thegn by virtue of having made three voyages at his own cost. The next clause proceeds with the ecclesiastical component to social promotion. In a general way, it asserts that the scholar who distinguished himself through learning and "took orders", was entitled to more honour and protection, provided that he remained chaste. The final clause suggests that cases of physical and verbal violence against ecclesiastics and strangers were at all times to be heard at the royal or episcopal court, whoever the suspect might be.

Sources

  • Abels, R.P. Lordship and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon England. London, 1988. pp. 108, 110, 112-3, 141-2.
  • Bethurum, Dorothy. "Six Anonymous Old English Codes." Journal of English and Germanic Philology 49 (1950). 449-63.
  • Charles-Edwards, T.M. “Kinship, Status and the Origin of the Hide.” Past and Present 56 (1972). pp. 3–33.
  • Runciman, W.G. “Accelerating Social Mobility. The Case of Anglo-Saxon England.” Past and Present 104 (1984). 3-30.
  • Stenton, Frank. "The Thriving of the Anglo-Saxon ceorl." In Preparatory to Anglo-Saxon England, ed. D.M. Stenton, Oxford 1970. pp. 383–93.
  • Whitelock, Dorothy (tr.). English Historical Documents vol. 1, c. 500-1042. pp. 468–71 (no. 51).
  • Williams, Ann. “A bell-house and a burh-geat. Lordly residences in England before the Norman Conquest.” In Anglo-Norman Castles, ed. Robert Liddiard. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003. Previously published in Medieval Knighthood IV. Papers from the Fifth Strawberry Hill Conference 1990, ed. Ch. Harper-Billl and R.Harvey. Woodbridge, 1992. pp. 221–40.
  • Wormald, Patrick. The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1999.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK