Pentecost and Linguistic Self-Consciousness
in Anglo-Saxon England: Bede and Ælfric
Kees Dekker, University
of Groningen
The miracle of Pentecost must have appealed to the imagination of the
Anglo-Saxons. As Germanic settlers in areas inhabited by Romanized Britons,
they had been confronted with linguistic diversity from moment they set
foot on British soil, and their conversion to Christianity by Roman and
Irish missionaries would only have heightened their awareness of linguistic
difference. Fostered by a tradition of scholarship, their linguistic self-consciousness
developed into a tradition of composition and translation in the vernacular
that outshone any contemporary efforts in Germanic Europe.
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