Seasons For Fasting
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Seasons For Fasting
The title "(The) Seasons for Fasting" refers to an incomplete Old English homiletic poem, which deals primarily with the observance of fasts on the appropriate dates of the liturgical calendar, but which also attacks the misbehaviour of lax priests. The piece appears to have been composed by a clergyman and directed at a lay audience, addressed as ' in line 212, whom he perhaps believed to have been potentially misguided. Witnesses The original manuscript, MS Otho B XI, was largely destroyed in the Cotton fire of 1731 and "Seasons for Fasting" was among the losses. The antiquarian Laurence Nowell had made a transcript in 1562, which was recovered by Robin Flower in 1934 and which is now contained in MS Add. 43703 (London, British Library). Moreover, eight lines of the poem were transcribed by Abraham Whelock. Nowell's transcript has the poem on ff. 257-60v, where it breaks off suddenly, and continues on ff. 261r-64v with Old English remedies and leechdoms and on f. 265-67 with a fu ...
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Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literature, Old English literary works date from the mid-7th century. After the Norman conquest of 1066, English was replaced, for a time, by Anglo-Norman language, Anglo-Norman (a langues d'oïl, relative of French) as the language of the upper classes. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, since during this period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into a phase known now as Middle English in England and Early Scots in Scotland. Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian languages, Anglo-Frisian or Ingvaeonic dialects originally spoken by Germanic peoples, Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles, Sa ...
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Fasting
Fasting is the abstention from eating and sometimes drinking. From a purely physiological context, "fasting" may refer to the metabolic status of a person who has not eaten overnight (see " Breakfast"), or to the metabolic state achieved after complete digestion and absorption of a meal. Metabolic changes in the fasting state begin after absorption of a meal (typically 3–5 hours after eating). A diagnostic fast refers to prolonged fasting from 1 to 100 hours (depending on age) conducted under observation to facilitate the investigation of a health complication, usually hypoglycemia. Many people may also fast as part of a medical procedure or a check-up, such as preceding a colonoscopy or surgery, or before certain medical tests. Intermittent fasting is a technique sometimes used for weight loss that incorporates regular fasting into a person's dietary schedule. Fasting may also be part of a religious ritual, often associated with specifically scheduled fast days, as determ ...
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Liturgical Calendar
The liturgical year, also called the church year, Christian year or kalendar, consists of the cycle of liturgical seasons in Christian churches that determines when feast days, including celebrations of saints, are to be observed, and which portions of Scripture are to be read either in an annual cycle or in a cycle of several years. Distinct liturgical colours may be used in connection with different seasons of the liturgical year. The dates of the festivals vary somewhat among the different churches, although the sequence and logic is largely the same. Liturgical cycle The liturgical cycle divides the year into a series of seasons, each with their own mood, theological emphases, and modes of prayer, which can be signified by different ways of decorating churches, colours of paraments and vestments for clergy, scriptural readings, themes for preaching and even different traditions and practices often observed personally or in the home. In churches that follow the liturg ...
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Cotton Library
The Cotton or Cottonian library is a collection of manuscripts once owned by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton MP (1571–1631), an antiquarian and bibliophile. It later became the basis of what is now the British Library, which still holds the collection. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, many priceless and ancient manuscripts that had belonged to the monastic libraries began to be disseminated among various owners, many of whom were unaware of the cultural value of the manuscripts. Cotton's skill lay in finding, purchasing and preserving these ancient documents. The leading scholars of the era, including Francis Bacon, Walter Raleigh, and James Ussher, came to use Sir Robert's library. Richard James acted as his librarian. The library is of special importance for having preserved the only copy of several works, such as happened with ''Beowulf'' and ''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight''. History Origins At the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, official state records and i ...
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Laurence Nowell
Laurence (or Lawrence) Nowell (1530 – c.1570) was an English antiquarian, cartographer and pioneering scholar of Anglo-Saxon language and literature. Life Laurence Nowell was born around 1530 in Whalley, Lancashire, the second son of Alexander Nowell of Read Hall and Grace Catterall of Great Mitton, Lancashire. He may have started school at Whalley Abbey and sometime later may have attended Westminster School, where his cousin Alexander Nowell was a master from 1543 on, until in 1549 he attended Christ Church, Oxford, where he received an M.A. in 1552. He travelled to Paris, in 1553, then to Rouen, Antwerp, Louvain, Geneva, Venice, Padua and Rome by 1557/58. Another round of extensive travelling ensued, this time around England, Ireland and perhaps Wales, in the company of William Lambarde, during and/or after which he gathered information on Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and English place-names. By 1563, he was living in the London house of his patron, Sir William Cecil. Nowell ...
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Robin Flower
Robin Ernest William Flower (16 October 1881 – 16 January 1946) was an English poet and scholar, a Celticist, Anglo-Saxonist and translator from the Irish language. He is commonly known in Ireland as "Bláithín" (Little Flower). Life He was born at Meanwood in Yorkshire, and educated at Leeds Grammar School. His parents, Marmaduke and Jane, were from families with Irish ancestry. He was awarded a scholarship to study Classics at Pembroke College, Oxford and graduated with first honours in 1904, before obtaining work as an assistant in the British Museum in 1906. It was during his early years at the museum that he began learning Irish, with the museum authorities supporting his study of the language in Ireland. He married Ida Mary Streeter in 1911. He worked from 1929 as ''Deputy Keeper of Manuscripts'' in the British Museum and, completing the work of Standish Hayes O'Grady, compiled a catalogue of the Irish manuscripts there. He wrote several collections of poetry, transl ...
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British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British Library receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and Ireland, including a significant proportion of overseas titles distributed in the UK. The Library is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The British Library is a major research library, with items in many languages and in many formats, both print and digital: books, manuscripts, journals, newspapers, magazines, sound and music recordings, videos, play-scripts, patents, databases, maps, stamps, prints, drawings. The Library's collections include around 14 million books, along with substantial holdings of manuscripts and items dating as far back as 2000 BC. The library maintains a programme for content acquis ...
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Abraham Whelock
Abraham Wheelock (1593 in Whitchurch, Shropshire – 25 September 1653) was an English linguist. He was the first Cambridge professor of Arabic. Cambridge He graduated MA from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1618, and became Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge in 1619. He was the first Adams Professor of Arabic at the University of Cambridge, from around 1632. According to Robert Irwin, he regarded it as part of his academic duty to discourage students from taking up the subject. Thomas Hyde was one of his pupils. Clergyman He was ordained deacon in the Church of England by the Bishop of London in 1619 and priest by the Bishop of Peterborough in 1622. He served as vicar of St Sepulchre's, Cambridge, from 1622 to 1642, of Passenham, Northamptonshire, in 1626–27, and of Middleton, Norfolk. Librarian Wheelock was appointed librarian of the "Public Library" (i. e. Cambridge University Library) in 1629, and was also Reader in Anglo-Saxon. In 1632 he oversaw the transfer of Thomas v ...
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Lacnunga
The ''Lacnunga'' ('Remedies') is a collection of miscellaneous Anglo-Saxon medical texts and prayers, written mainly in Old English and Latin. The title ''Lacnunga'', an Old English word meaning 'remedies', is not in the manuscript: it was given to the collection by its first editor, Oswald Cockayne, in the nineteenth century.Alaric Hall, ''Elves in Anglo-Saxon England: Matters of Belief, Health, Gender, and Identity'', Anglo-Saxon Studies, 8 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007), p. 1. It is found, following other medical texts, in London, British Library Harley MS 585, a codex probably compiled in England in the late tenth or early eleventh century. Many of its herbal remedies are also found, in variant form, in ''Bald's Leechbook'', another Anglo-Saxon medical compendium. The ''Lacnunga'' contains many unique texts, including numerous charms, some of which provide rare glimpses into Anglo-Saxon popular religion and healing practices. Among the charms are several incantations in Old Englis ...
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Æthelstan
Æthelstan or Athelstan (; ang, Æðelstān ; on, Aðalsteinn; ; – 27 October 939) was King of the Anglo-Saxons from 924 to 927 and King of the English from 927 to his death in 939. He was the son of King Edward the Elder and his first wife, Ecgwynn. Modern historians regard him as the first King of England and one of the "greatest Anglo-Saxon kings". He never married and had no children; he was succeeded by his half-brother, Edmund I. When Edward died in July 924, Æthelstan was accepted by the Mercians as king. His half-brother Ælfweard may have been recognised as king in Wessex, but died within three weeks of their father's death. Æthelstan encountered resistance in Wessex for several months, and was not crowned until September 925. In 927 he conquered the last remaining Viking kingdom, York, making him the first Anglo-Saxon ruler of the whole of England. In 934 he invaded Scotland and forced Constantine II to submit to him. Æthelstan's rule was resented by the S ...
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Humfrey Wanley
Humfrey Wanley (21 March 1672 – 6 July 1726) was an English librarian, palaeographer and scholar of Old English, employed by manuscript collectors such as Robert and Edward Harley. He was the first keeper of the Harleian Library, now the Harleian Collection. Early life and education Wanley was born at Coventry on 21 March 1671/2 and baptised on 10 April, the son of Nathaniel Wanley. Around 1687, he was apprenticed to a draper called Wright at Coventry, and remained with him until 1694, but spent every vacant hour in studying old books and documents and in copying the various styles of handwriting. His studies are said to have begun with a transcript of the Anglo-Saxon dictionary of William Somner. His skill in unravelling ancient writing became known to William Lloyd, the bishop of Lichfield, who at a visitation sent for him, and ultimately obtained his entrance, as a commoner, at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University, where the theologian John Mill, was principal. He matricu ...
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Cotton Otho
This is an incomplete list of some of the manuscripts from the Cotton library that today form the Cotton collection of the British Library. Some manuscripts were destroyed or damaged in a fire at Ashburnham House in 1731, and a few are kept in other libraries and collections. Robert Bruce Cotton organized his library in a room long by six feet wide filled with bookpresses, each with the bust of a figure from classical antiquity on top. Counterclockwise, these were Julius Caesar, Augustus, Cleopatra, Faustina, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. (Domitian had only one shelf, perhaps because it was over the door). In each press, each shelf was assigned a letter; manuscripts were identified by the bust over the press, the shelf letter, and the position of the manuscript (in Roman numerals) counting from the left side of the shelf. Thus, the Lindisfarne Gospels, Nero B.iv, was the fourth manuscript from the left on the second sh ...
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