Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The entry for the Birth of Christ in the Old English Martyrology includes a list of Livian portents taking place at Christ’s birth.1 These portents are as follows: three suns; three moons; a fiery ball and golden ball falling from the sky; ears of wheat growing on trees; blood flowing from a loaf of bread as though from a wound; milk raining from the sky; a lamb speaking in Egypt; and an ox speaking to a ploughman in Rome. Though James Cross and Thomas Hall have demonstrated that many of these portents are commonplace in annalistic and homiletic texts, the talking lamb is rarely attested, and absent from any extant book of Livy.2 Moreover, as Cross notes, the portent’s Egyptian location ‘could preclude Livy’.3 A heretofore unnoticed analogue and antecedent source for the portent of the speaking lamb in Egypt is to be found in Eusebius’ Chronicon, via Jerome’s Latin translation. This source considerably pre-dates the analogues previously identified and therefore grants further insight into the (as yet unknown) collection of portents employed by the martyrologist as a source for this section. Moreover, Eusebius’ depiction of the talking lamb is in itself indebted to an earlier Egyptian tradition. The use of this portent in the Old English Martyrology therefore represents a complex history of transmission and adaptation and highlights the ways in which North African and Greek knowledge were transformed and appropriated into an Insular context. In the Old English Martyrology, the portent of the lamb is described as follows: And þi geare man geseah […] lamb spæcan on mennisc gecinde mi Egiptum. And oxa spæc on Rome to þam ergendum, and he cwæð: ‘Tohwon sticast þu me? God hwæte geweaxeð togeare, ac ne bist ðu þonne, ne his ne abitest’ [And in that year people saw […] a lamb speaking like a human being among the Egyptians. And an ox spoke to the ploughman in Rome, and said: ‘Why do you poke me? Good wheat will grow in this year, yet you will not live to eat it.’] Two previous analogues for this portent have been identified, both within a largely Insular milieu. These sources are Patrick of Dublin’s Incipit de signis et prodigiis and a homily in Cambridge, Pembroke College 25. Neither can have functioned as a direct source. J. E. Cross identified that the lamb portent occurs in Patrick of Dublin’s eleventh-century Incipit de signis et prodigiis (ll. 1–30 of Versus Sancti Patricii Episcopi de mirabilibus Hibernie), but found no ‘earlier reference’.4 Patrick’s lamb similarly occurs in a list of portents, accompanied by the talking ox: Agnus in Egipto mire fuit ore locutus. Bos loquitur Rome stimulanti uoce prophete : ‘Copia farris erit uobis hominesque peribunt’ [A lamb in Egypt miraculously spoke with its mouth. An ox in Rome speaks to the one goading him with the voice of a prophet: ‘There will be an abundance of wheat, but men will die’]5 Patrick’s account post-dates the Old English Martyrology by some two centuries, but the two texts clearly share a number of close similarities (the two speaking animals, their order, and the contents of the ox’s speech). This close similarity led Cross to suggest that they both drew upon pre-made collections of portents, as yet unidentified.6 Moreover, he argued for the particularly ‘insular’ nature of this collection, owing to the similarities between the Martyrology and the Versus Sancti Patricii.7 The second analogue, also identified by Cross, is found in the homiliary contained in Cambridge, Pembroke College 25.8 Pembroke 25 ultimately derives from the ninth or early-tenth century Homiliary of Saint-Père de Chartres.9 Though the Homiliary probably originated somewhere in Francia, it enjoyed widespread usage in England, and six of the nine extant manuscripts were English productions.10 This analogue contains both talking animals, but is notably different in its details, and therefore cannot have served as the immediate source for the Old English Martyrology: In eius tempore animalia fari humana locutione non dubitatur. Bos enim in Roma sub misterio natiuitatis eius locutus est, nihilominus et agnus in Egypto humana usus est loquela. [There is no doubt that in his time animals spoke with human language, for an ox in Rome spoke at the observance of his birth, and a lamb in Egypt, no less, made use of human speech]11 The three accounts have three key details in common: (1) that the lamb spoke in a human manner, (2) that it did so in Egypt and (3) that a similar event involving a talking ox occurred in Rome. A previously unnoticed and much earlier analogue and potential antecedent source for the talking lamb is to be found in Jerome’s Latin translation of Eusebius’ Chronicon. The Chronicon was an important source (or antecedent source) for early medieval English writers, as attested by its frequent citation in works by Aldhelm, Ælfric of Eynsham, and Bede.12 Though James Cross identified that the speaking ox derives from Eusebius via Jerome’s translation, he did not note that the lamb also appears in this text.13 During first Olympiad, Jerome narrates that: Bocchoris Aegyptiis iura constituit, sub quo agnus locutus est. [Bocchoris established laws for the Egyptians: in his reign a lamb spoke]14 Here we have the information that the lamb spoke and that it did so in Egypt. Moreover, in the same text (albeit at some remove), the speaking ox appears. As such, Jerome’s text contains almost all the major details of the portent, and likely served as the antecedent source. However, it is more likely that the martyrologist accessed this material via an intermediary text than directly from Jerome, given that the two other analogues also combine this information. I suggest that the portents of the speaking lamb and ox were first collocated in such a collection of portents not only because of their similarity of content but also because of their shared source. This source perhaps introduced clarification about the lamb speaking in a ‘human manner’, although it is possible that this detail was independently added by later writers, given that all four versions use different wording in this regard. Based on the martyrologist’s use of the term mennisc elsewhere in the Martyrology, I suggest that either his source contained wording similar to that in Pembroke 25, or that he added this detail independently. The phrase ‘humana … loquela’ found in Pembroke 25 is closer to the Martyrology version than Patrick of Dublin’s ‘ore locutus’, since the martyrologist usually uses mennisc to translate the Latin adjective humanus. For example, all of ‘humano generi’/‘mennisc cynn’ will be resurrected (‘humankind’, §50); Mary Magdalen abstains from ‘cibum humanum’/‘mænniscne mete’ (‘human food’, §133); the footprints of Christ resist being covered by ‘quaecumque … humana’/‘hwæt mennisces’ (‘anything human’, §79); and a camel which speaks ‘humana voce’ is translated as speaking ‘mid menniscre stefne’ (‘with a human voice’, §198).15 However, there are also several instances where the martyrologist seems to add mennisc where there was no equivalent Latin lemma. As previously noted by Kotzor, the martyrologist frequently adds phrases which clarify the content he found in his Latin sources to such a degree that he tends towards, in the words of Kotzor, ‘over-explicitness’.16 His use of the term mennisc sometimes seems to reflect this desire for over-explicit clarity: for example, the Latin ‘carnis’ (‘body’) becomes ‘mænniscan lichoman’ (‘human body’, §17).17 The only other use of the phrase ‘mennisc gecynd’ within the Martyrology similarly appears to clarify the Latin text: in the entry for Arsenius (19 July, §131), the phrase translates the Latin ‘ipsam naturam’.18 In this instance, gecynd is a close rendering of natura, but mennisc further clarifies the pronoun ipse. It is possible that these instances derived from a variant manuscript version of the martyrologist’s Latin sources, but they may also reflect his own addition or clarification. As such, it is possible that the martyrologist inserted the phrase ‘mennisc gecynd’ into his depiction of the talking lamb. The identification of this analogue highlights the global networks underpinning early medieval English thought. The account in Jerome-Eusebius represents a witness to a much larger literary tradition, and the talking lamb in the Old English Martyrology has a long history in Greek and Egyptian sources. It is, of course, highly unlikely that the martyrologist was aware of the tradition that lay behind his sources. Nonetheless, that the speaking lamb originated in Egyptian literature many centuries before its usage in a Mercian encyclopaedia highlights the global nature of the learning contained within the Old English Martyrology. As has been frequently noted, the motif of the talking lamb during the reign of Bocchoris appears in various Greek and Egyptian sources.19 These sources have been identified and examined by numerous scholars: I give only the briefest of overviews here so as to demonstrate the difference between these materials and the Old English and Latin ones described above. Eusebius’ own source for the speaking lamb is Manetho’s Aegyptica, a history of Egyptian rulers, written in Greek, and dating from approximately the third century BC.20 Manetho’s full text does not survive, and is only accessible in fragments preserved in the works of others. As such, it is impossible to reconstruct exactly which details were included in his account, but the statement that ‘a lamb spoke’ (‘ἀρνίον ἐφθέγζατο’) was quoted and transmitted in various later sources such as the chronographies of Syncellus and Sextus Julius Africanus.21 As scholars such as Loren Johns previously noted, the talking lamb also appears in Aelian’s On Animals XII.3, where it is said to have eight feet, two heads and four horns.22 Eduard Meyer argued that this double physiognomy represented Aelian’s addition of Greek flavour to the Egyptian story.23 Further reference in a Graeco-Egyptian text is found in the Oracle of the Potter (P.Oxy. XXII 2332), which says that a lamb spoke to Bocchoris.24 The most extended extant treatment of the speaking lamb is found in a Demotic papyrus, dated to 4 AD, sometimes known as The Prophecy of the Lamb (P. Vienna D. 10,000).25 In this (now fragmentary) text, a lamb prophesies catastrophe in Egypt to an Egyptian priest during the reign of Bocchoris.26 The lamb says that Egypt will be invaded and plundered by foreign armies, but promises restoration of the country and its property in 900 years. After giving the prophecy, the lamb dies and is buried in a golden shrine. The speaking lamb therefore had two very different transmission histories: one in a North African and Greek context, and another in the European, Latinate tradition. The Greek and Egyptian tradition presents the lamb as a warning, but also potentially as a sign of future triumph for the Egyptians, and ties the portent to a specific ruler (Bocchoris). This version of the lamb is distinctly localised, and tied to specific political and historical circumstances. Indeed, László Kákosy argued that the Portent of the Lamb earned its popularity in Egyptian sources owing to its ‘promise of a better future to the oppressed Egyptians’.27 By contrast, the Latinate tradition, which has so far been noticed in a mostly insular context, reworked the lamb into a sign associated with the year of Christ’s birth, largely detached from its Egyptian origins in all but toponym. Nonetheless, as seen above, the fact that the portent occurred in Egypt remained significant for Latin and vernacular writers, perhaps owing to the broad, global view or else simply the syntactical elegance of ‘in Egypt a lamb… in Rome an ox…’. The talking lamb in the Old English Martyrology therefore relied upon centuries of literary adaptation across continents and languages. I have suggested, then, that the talking lamb of the Old English Martyrology ultimately came to the martyrologist from Jerome, most likely via an intermediary. Based on the phrase ‘mennisc gecynd’, I suggest that intermediary was likely to have been closer to the wording found in the analogue of the episode in Pembroke 25 than that found in Patrick of Dublin’s version, but that it is equally possible that the martyrologist added this phrase himself. Moreover, in demonstrating that this portent came to the martyrologist through Jerome translating Eusebius quoting Manetho, I have highlighted that this motif was ultimately indebted to Greek and North African sources. That the Egyptian portent of the speaking lamb developed a distinctly Insular, Christian tradition highlights the widespread networks of transmission and adaptation underpinning early medieval textual practice and reminds us that even those most supposedly ‘insular’ of literary phenomena may have had their roots in extensive global networks of learning and knowledge.
Source: Notes and Queries
Author: Luisa Ostacchini
Institution: University of Oxford
Language: English
Subfield: Classics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,296
OpenAlex ID: W4410348753