The Old English Pastoral Care is perhaps best known for its prose preface, a letter written in the voice of Alfred the Great (c. 849–899), identifying the king as translator. The translation is accompanied by a further metrical preface, as well as a metrical epilogue, not to mention the Old English translations of the preface and epilogue found in the Latin source text. This paratextual material offers such rich potential for discussion and debate, not least because of the royal connection, that the text itself, lying at the centre of these prefaces and epilogues, is sometimes neglected. However, whether or not Alfred was involved, the Pastoral Care is an important witness to the late ninth-century flourishing of English prose.
The Latin source for the Pastoral Care is Pope Gregory I’s Regula pastoralis (Pastoral Rule), otherwise known as the Cura pastoralis (Pastoral Care). Gregory’s influential handbook for bishops outlines the correct means of exercising ecclesiastical authority in order to best care for one’s flock. While a large part of Gregory’s text is devoted to the different types of admonition suitable for different types of people (Book III), a substantial section of the text also deals with how the bishop should monitor their own inner self in order to guard against the dangers of pride and self-aggrandizing. One of the central preoccupations is the balance between the active life of supporting the community and the contemplative life of prayer, a balance sometimes known as the “mixed life”.
Although Gregory’s work is targeted at an episcopal audience, frequent use of the terms lareow (‘teacher’) and reccere (‘ruler’) in the Old English version might suggest a wider, possibly even secular audience, for the translation. However, tempting as it may be to imagine Alfred translating or commissioning the Pastoral Care for his ealdormen, much of the instruction within the text is specific to ecclesiastical leadership. Bishops, moreover, are the addressees of the prose preface, and the metrical preface refers directly to the circulation of the translation among bishops, forðæm hi his sume ðorfton, / ða ðe Lædenspræce læste cuðon (‘because some of them needed it, those who least understood Latin’, lines 15b–16).
Given this widespread circulation, it is perhaps unsurprising that more manuscripts of the Pastoral Care survive than any other translation attributed to Alfred. The manuscripts are:
- Cambridge, University Library, MS Ii. 2. 4, a manuscript dating from the third quarter of the eleventh century, containing a copy of the prose preface, addressed to Bishop Wulfsige, and the verse preface
- Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 12, dating from the latter half of the tenth century, with both prose and verse prefaces and the verse epilogue
- Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R. 5. 22 (717), ff. 72–158, a late tenth- or early eleventh-century manuscript containing the verse preface, but lacking the prose preface and epilogue
- London, British Library, MS Cotton Otho B. ii, with London, British Library, MS Cotton Otho B. x, ff. 61, 63, 64, a fire-damaged copy of the translation dating from the latter part of the tenth or early eleventh century, derived from the copy sent to Bishop Hehstan
- London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B. xi, with Kassel, Gesamthochschulbibliothek 4° MS. theol. 131, fragments from a fire-damaged manuscript datable to 890–96, preserved in a copy by Junius, containing both prefaces and a note detailing the bishops to whom a copy of the translation had been sent
- Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 20 (S.C. 4113), also datable to 890–96, featuring both prefaces, the prose addressed to Bishop Wærferth, and the epilogue
The Old English translation is on the whole very close to the Latin Regula pastoralis. Unlike some of the other translations associated with Alfred, such as the Old English Boethius and Soliloquies, there is very little in the way of original addition, amplification or revision. While this fidelity to the source text might give the impression of a rather dull rendering of Gregory’s Latin, in fact, in the individual translation decisions there is evidence of a considered and sometimes creative response to the challenge of rendering Gregory’s theology and philosophy in the vernacular. For example, at the beginning of Book I, Chapter 9, Gregory makes a distinction between the outer surface of the mind and its inner core:
Sed plerumque hii qui subire magisterium pastorale cupiunt, nonnulla quoque bona opera animo proponunt; et quamuis hoc elationis intentione appetant, operaturos tamen se magna pertractant; fitque ut aliud in imis intentio supprimat, aliud tractantis animo superficies cogitationis ostendat. Nam saepe sibi de se mens ipsa mentitur, et fingit se de bono opere amare quod non amat, de mundi autem gloria non amare quod amat
(Regula pastoralis I.9)
[Generally those who aspire to pastoral ruling are also proposing to themselves some good works as well, and though they have such aspirations from the motive of pride, busy themselves thinking that they will do great things. Hence it is that the motive hidden within is one thing, and what is taking place on the surface of their conscious mind is another. For the mind often lies to itself about itself, and makes believe that it loves the good work, when actually it does not, and that it does not wish for mundane glory, when, in fact, it does.]
(Translation from Gregory I, Pastoral Care, ed. and trans. Davis, p. 36).
The Old English translator finds figurative language to express the different layers of the mind that Gregory alludes to:
Ac ðonne he wilnað to underfonne ða are & ðone ealdordome, he ðencð on ðam oferbrædelse his modes ðæt he sciele monig god weorc ðæron wyrcan, & he ðencð mid innewearde mode ðæt he gierneð for gilpe & for upahafenesse ðæs folgoðes, smeageað ðeah & ðeahtigað on hiera modes rinde monig god weorc to wyrcanne, ac on ðam piðan bið oðer gehyded. Ac on uteweardum his mode he liehð him selfum ymbe hine selfne bie ðæm godum weorcum; licet ðæt he lufige ðæt he ne lufað: ðisses middangeardes gilp he lufað, & he licett swelce he ðone onscunige, & him ondræde.
[But when he wishes to undertake honour and authority, he thinks on the covering of his mind that he will do many good works, and he thinks with inward mind that he yearns for glory and for exaltation of the office; though he considers and counsels in the bark of his mind to do many good works, in the pith something else is hid. But on the outside of his mind he lies to himself about himself concerning the good work; he feigns that he loves what he does not love; he loves the glory of this earth, and he feigns as though he shuns that, and fears it.]
In this warning against the subconscious desire for glory in the hidden parts of the ruler’s mind, the translator chooses the Old English words rind (‘bark’) and piða (‘pith’) as a means of expressing the complex idea that one’s inner self may foster a motivation unknown to the surface of the mind. This figurative technique, employing a familiar and tangible motif to describe the workings of the mind, can also be found in the metrical epilogue, in which the image of a leaky pitcher (ðyrelne kylle, line 27b) represents the mind of a forgetful or careless reader.
Gregory’s advice to bishops is supported throughout by scriptural quotation. The Old English rendering of these quotations results in a substantial body of Old English biblical translation at a relatively early stage in the period. While Gregory tends to refer in quite general terms to the source of the quote in Scripture, the Old English translator has a habit of introducing more detail. For example, a quotation from Ecclesiastes is attributed to Solomon: Ac gehiere ge feohgitseras hwæt be eow gecweden is on Salomonnes bocum (‘But hear you avaricious ones what is said about you in Solomon’s book’; Eccles. 5.9), as is a quotation from Proverbs: Ac se wisa Salomon sædde ðætte swiðe deop pol wære gewered on ðæs wisan monnes mode, and swiðe lytel unnyttes utfleowe (‘But the wise Solomon said that a very deep pool was damned up in the wise man’s mind, and very little flowed out uselessly’; Prov. 18.4). These adaptations, though relatively minor, offer some insight into the translator’s background and concerns. For example, the epithet wisa (‘wise’) for Solomon chimes with the value ascribed to wisdom across the texts associated with Alfred.
Though lacking in the striking additions and departures found in other Alfredian translations, the Old English Pastoral Care repays careful study. The translator’s negotiation of Gregory’s Latin is evident in individual word choices, and the result is an early example of an Old English prose response to a major patristic work, encompassing not only biblical quotation but also exegesis.
Select Bibliography
Editions
Fulk, R. D., ed. and trans. The Old English Pastoral Care, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 72 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021).
Grégoire le Grand. Règle Pastorale, ed. and trans. Bruno Judic, Floribert Rommel, Charles Morel, 2 vols, Sources Chrétiennes 381 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1992).
Gregory I. Pastoral Care, ed. and trans. H. Davis, Ancient Christian Writers 11 (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1950).
Irvine, Susan, ed. and trans. Alfredian Prologues and Epilogues (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023).
Secondary reading
Anlezark, Daniel. ‘Which Books are “Most Necessary” to Know? The Old English Pastoral Care and King Alfred’s Educational Reform’, English Studies 98 (2017), 759–80.
——. ‘The Old English Pastoral Care: Date, Readership, and Authorship’, in The Age of Alfred: Rethinking English Literary Culture c. 850–950, ed. Amy Faulkner and Francis Leneghan, Studies in Old English Literature 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2024), pp. 229–56.
Faulkner, Amy. ‘Royal Authority in the Biblical Quotations of the Old English Pastoral Care’, Neophilologus 102 (2018), 125–40.
——. Wealth and the Material World in the Old English Alfredian Corpus, Anglo-Saxon Studies 46 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2023), chapter 2.
——. ‘Private Study and Opportune Words: Wisdom in the Old English Pastoral Care,’ English Studies 106 (2025), 317–36.
Leneghan, Francis. ‘Teaching the Teachers: The Vercelli Book and the Mixed Life’, English Studies 94 (2013), 627–58.
Lorden, Jennifer A. ‘The Desiring Mind: Embodying Affect in the Old English Pastoral Care’, in Textual Identities in Early Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, ed. Jacqueline Fay, Rebecca Stephenson and Renée R. Trilling, Anglo-Saxon Studies 42 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2022), pp. 54–69.
O’Brien O’Keeffe, Katherine. ‘Inside, Outside, Conduct and Judgment: King Alfred Reads the Regula pastoralis’, in Un tuo serto di fiori in man recando: Scritti in onore di Maria Amalia D’Aronco, ed. Silvana Serafin and Patrizia Lendinara, 2 vols (Undine: Forum, 2008), II, pp. 333–45.
Saltzman, Benjamin A. ‘The Mind, Perception and the Reflexivity of Forgetting in Alfred’s Pastoral Care’, Anglo-Saxon England 42 (2013), 147–82.
Schreiber, Carolin. King Alfred’s Old English Translation of Pope Gregory the Great’s “Regula Pastoralis” and its Cultural Context: a study and partial edition according to all surviving manuscripts based on Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 12, Münchner Universitätsschriften, Texte und Untersuchungen zur englischen Philologie 25 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2003).
——. ‘Searoðonca Hord: Alfred’s Translation of Gregory the Great’s Regula Pastoralis’, in A Companion to Alfred the Great, ed. Nicole Guenther Discenza and Paul E. Szarmach, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 58 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 171–99.
About the author
Amy Faulkner is a Lecturer in Old and Middle English Language and Literature at UCL. She is the author of Wealth and the Material World in the Old English Alfredian Corpus (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2023) and co-editor (with Francis Leneghan) of The Age of Alfred: Rethinking English Literary Culture c. 850–950 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2024).