Earlier this year I attended (via Zoom) the 2021 Anselm Lecture, Practices of Writing in England, 1050-1250 at the University of Kent, which this year was presented by Elaine Treharne. The lecture piqued my interest simply because (cue gasps of horror) I had never heard of the Tremulous Hand of Worcester, and I wanted to know who this dude was and why they were so important.
Elaine is an expert speaker – erudite, but also really down to earth and more than able to put complex ideas into plain speak for listeners such as myself. She covered, in amazing detail given the timescale of the lecture, the research involved in attempting to date a bilingual manuscript from the second half of the 12th century. She covered things like individual letter shapes, scribal hands, and chucked in some info on Leofric of Exeter, Thomas Becket and the Tremulous Hand, and led us to think about what use palaeography is to us, and how digital tools can enhance manuscript studies.
The bit that really got me, however, was when Elaine read out an excerpt from The Grave.
MS Bodley 343 is a collection of Ælfric’s homilies, alongside saints’ lives and other homiletic material by Wulfstan, some Latin sermons coupled with occasional musical annotations to jazz things up a bit. It’s never been digitized in full, save for a few errant folio on the Bodleian Library website which themselves aren’t recently captured digital images of the actual manuscript, but are taken from the 35mm slides. So, aside from some mildly interesting initials and a sketch of maybe-Wulfstan, there’s not a great deal to write home about.
However, at some point in the manuscript’s history a scribe (or two) made a little addition to the manuscript, which can be seen on f.170. This poem, known as The Grave, was the one read by Elaine at the Anselm Lecture this year, and it’s the one that has blown my mind with what it potentially has to say about liminal spaces in medieval manuscripts (yes, I’m banging on about that again).
Ðe wes bold gebyld.
er þu iboren were.
ðe wes molde imynt.
er ðu of moder come.For you a house was built,
before you were born.
For you the earth was meant,
before you came from mother.
The Grave, MS Bodley 343 f.170
The poem, at first glance, seems to be from the Body & Soul tradition of medieval writing – where the soul speaks to the body at the moment of death. But it’s not quite in the same vein as that: the poem isn’t a discussion between the body and the soul, after all, but seems to be a narrative from a distinct Other who outlines to the reader what will happen to them after death, and the space within which all that will occur.
We are quickly disabused of any Little House on the Prairie type notions about what house was built for the reader (unless its one of these episodes, in which case you’re right on board with the general vibe). it is, of course, the grave, and the reader is being plainly shown the inevitability of death. This house was built for you before you were born, probably before you were even conceived. Within this house you will live ‘stone cold in the earth’, (wunien ful calde) and & wurmes þe todeleð (‘worms will share you’). And after this house? Well, who knows what’s next?
The Grave is a poem with a strange power, and it lost none of that power in a recitation over Zoom. If anything, for me, it gained something in its digital retelling: a kind of reawakening, as if something so strange shouldn’t be read out loud online, in case something out there in the crackling darkness hears it.
I was surprised to discover that Bodley 343 in its entirety, and The Grave in particular, haven’t been digitised. Not just because I love it and therefore it should be digitised (the bitter refrain of many an academic) but because the manuscript, and this poem in particular, have been getting quite a bit more academic attention over the last few years for myriad reasons; not least because the manuscript exists on a ‘theoretical fault line’ which places it on the cusp of great change in the literary landscape of the time. It:
‘simultaneously look[s] backward to pre-Conquest traditions of Body and Soul literature, alliterative lyrical expression, and doctrinal wisdom coupled with forward-looking post-Conquest subjectivity, realism, devotional focus, and lively didactism.’
Elaine Treharne (2021)
The physical space of the grave is, without a doubt, a liminal one – the place between what was, and what will be. Between life, and what lies beyond. However, in this case, the liminal space has a voice. It tells us in detail what will happen to us within it:
Dimme & deorcæ
þet den fulæt on honde
Dureleas is þæt hus
& dearc hit is wiðinnen.
In dimness and darkness
that den decays at your hand.
Doorless is that house
and dark it is within.
The Grave, MS Bodley 343 f.170
The liminal space isn’t just, of course, a geographical/architectural term: it can also be found in anthropology, and is ‘the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete’ (Turner, 1974, Liminal to liminoid in play, flow and ritual: An essay in comparative symbology). f.170, for me, captures this moment; the ambiguity, the disorientation of the body in the moment they find themselves within the liminal space of the grave – the body just at the point between the living person and the decomposed corpse we meet by the end of the poem.
for sone þu bist ladlic
& lad to iseonne
for sone bið þin hæfet
faxes bireued
al bið ðes faxes
feirnes forsceden
næle hit nan mit fingres
feire stracien.
For soon you are loathsome
and horrifying to be seen.
For soon your head
is bereft of hair.
All the fairness
of your hair is ravaged.
No longer will it be stroked
by fair fingers.
In the horror movie Host, the participants in the Zoom call host an online seance. The digital in this context provides the conduit for the transmission of a malevolent spirit, who murders the absolute fuck out of everyone involved in the Zoom call (a prime example of a meeting that should’ve been an email). Here, in the digital domain, on the threshold between the old gods and the new, the digital is shown as a conduit for a malignant other via the liminal space.
So, what happens if we digitise The Grave?
I’m not for one second suggesting that digitising Bodley 343, and The Grave in particular, might release into the world a murder-death demon bent on dragging the souls of Zoom callers screaming into Hell, but I’m also not saying that won’t happen. It’s best to cover both bases when dealing with the liminal.
What I am saying is a digitisation strategy which includes the whole manuscript and not simply a small selection of images based on 35mm, would allow us to really examine the manuscript’s place on the pre and post-Conquest faultline identified by Elaine Treharne: furthermore, we could indulge in some really chewy theory relating to liminal spaces, and the impact of digitisation on materiality, as well as the spirituality inherent in the digitisation of medieval manuscripts. The digital already allows us to move between two worlds – a poem about the threshold of the grave, online in a digital liminal space? Let me sink my teeth in.
The excerpts of The Grave I’ve included in this blog post are taken from Chris Jones’ amazing chapter ‘Re-lining The Grave: A Slow Reading of MS Bodley 343, fol. 170r1′, which can be found in Slow Scholarship: Medieval Research and the Neoliberal University, edited by Catherine E. Karkov.
Dr Keri Thomas 
2 Comments Add yours