The Old English "Orosius"
The Old English Orosius is shorthand for the Old English translation of Orosius’s Historiarum adversus paganos libri septem, originally composed by Orosius as an apologetic response to anti-Christian critics in the fifth century and covering the reign of Ninus to the settlement of the Visigoths in the Roman Empire. The popularity of Orosius’s Historiae is attested by over 200 manuscripts and by multiple translations during the Middle Ages. The Old English translation was produced in the West Saxon dialect and associated with the West Saxon royal house in the late ninth and the early tenth centuries. Even though this translation might trace its root to the translation programme of King Alfred (r. 871–899 CE), the possibility of a later composition under Edward the Elder, Æthelflæd or Æthelstan cannot be fully foreclosed.
The Old English Orosius is now preserved in two manuscripts. The earliest extant manuscript, BL Additional 47967, otherwise called the Tollemache Orosius, probably originated from tenth-century Winchester and shares the same scribal hand with the MS A of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle from 892 to 924 (ff. 16v–25v). The Tollemache Orosius is close to another manuscript, BL Cotton Tiberius B i (ff. 3–111v), dating from the eleventh century and including copies of MS C of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Old English poems Menologium and Maxims II (for studies on this manuscript, see Tyler, 2017; Leneghan, 2022). The Old English Orosius was first edited in the eighteenth century. In 1773, Daines Barrington published his translation of the Old English Orosius with notes and an appended commentary on the first book by Johann Reinhold Forster. A century, another edition was published by Henry Sweet, who juxtaposed the Old English Orosius with its Latin source. In 1980, Janet M. Bately based her edition of the Old English Orosius on the Tollemache Orosius, supplementing the Old English text with an extensive commentary. The latest edition appeared in 2016. Malcolm R. Godden, its editor and translator, offered a parallel text with the Old English taken from Cotton Tiberius B i and a modern English translation as well as comments on linguistic features. Godden retitles the Old English Orosius ‘an Anglo-Saxon Rewriting of Orosius’, acknowledging its originality and independence from the original Latin.
The Old English Orosius is certainly more than a simple translation. It shortens Orosius’s original seven books into six, and subtracts pieces of information unfamiliar to its Anglo-Saxon audience while supplementing new sources that hail from classical, patristic and contemporary material. The most eye-catching addition is the voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan, both of whom narrate their seafaring experiences as far as the Arctic and Baltic regions. (To read more about the voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan, click here.) In addition, the Old English Orosius incorporates an up-to-date list of place names such as Regensburg and Bavaria in contemporary East Francia. This addition might indicate a close connection and exchange of knowledge with the Carolingians behind the composition of the Old English Orosius. Against this backdrop, scholars have made a strong case for an imperial ambition within the compilation and translation of the Old English Orosius, which was in keeping with the rise of the West Saxon kingdom and the decline of the Carolingian empire in the late ninth and early tenth centuries (see, for example, Kretzschmar, 1987; Harris, 2001; Leneghan, 2015; Khalaf, 2024).
The Old English translator often restructures his sources from Orosius’s original Historiae and thus creates a new narrative with a discrete focus. See, for example, the Old English Orosius, VI.35–36 (to listen to a recording of this passage, click here):
Ræðe þæs þe Gotan angeaton hu god Theodosius wæs, ægþer ge hie, ge ealle þeoda þe on Sciþþium wæron, gecuron his frið. On þam dagum gecuron Brettanie Maximianus him to casere ofer his willan. Se wære wierðe ealra Romana onwaldes for his monigfealdum duguðum, buton þæt he þa wiþ his hlaford won for oðra monna lare, ond raðe þæs for in Gallie ond Gratianus ofslog, ond Ualentinianus his broðor he adraf ut of Italiam, þæt he oðfleah to Theodosiuse […]. He þa Theodosius wæs þencende hu he Gratianus his hlaford gewrecan mehte ond eac his broðor on þæm onwalde gebringan.
[As soon as the Goths realised how good Theodosius was, both they and all the peoples who were in Scythia chose his protection. At that time the Britons chose Maximus as emperor against his will. He would have been worthy of rule over all the Romans for his many virtues if he had not fought against his own lord through the advice of others. He immediately went to Gaul and killed Gratian and drove his brother Valentinian out of Italy so that he fled to Theodosius…Theodosius then considered how he could avenge his lord Gratian and also restore Gratian’s brother to power.] (Old English text is taken from Bately, 1980, VI.35–36, pp. 153–4; the translation from Godden, 2016, pp. 407–9.)
This excerpt revolves around the virtues of the Byzantine emperor Theodosius I. In the original Latin (Oro. Hist. VII.34.1–4; 9–10. VII.35.2), Orosius contrasted the virtuous Theodosius I with an evil Trajan, since they were both ‘Spaniards' (Hispanum uirum) elected by the previous emperors. The Old English translator drops out this original contrast and gives prominence to the comparison between Theodosius I and Maximus Magnus. While Orosius said that Maximus could have won the title of Augustus, but for his usurpation (Augusto dignus nisi contra sacramenti fidem per tyrannidem emerisset), the translator highlights Maximus’s fighting against his own lord (wiþ his hlaford won). As a result, Maximus was unworthy of rule over all the Romans despite his many virtues (monigfealdum duguðum). In this place, the translator contrasts Maximus’s betrayal with Theodosius I’s loyalty towards his lord, which was typified by his vengeance for Gratian (his hlaford gewrecan) and the restoration of the former lord’s brother (for a fuller analysis, see Tan, 2024). In short, the translator adapts the original content and structure to emphasise that loyalty to lords should be prioritised over many other virtues.
Select Bibliography
Manuscripts
BL Additional 47967
BL Cotton Tiberius B i.
Bodleian Library MS Eng. Hist. e. 49 (30481) (Fragment)
Vatican Library MS Reg. Lat. 497 (Fragment)
Facsimile
Campbell, Alistair. The Tollemache Orosius (British Museum Additional MS 47967) (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1953).
Editions and Translations
Barrington, D., ed. and trans. The Anglo-Saxon Version from the Historian Orosius by Ælfred the Great. Together with an English Translation from the Anglo-Saxon (London: W. Bowyer and J. Nichols, 1773).
Sweet, H., ed. King Alfred’s Orosius, EETS o.s. 79 (London: Clarendon Press, 1883).
Bately, J. M., ed. The Old English Orosius, EETS s.s. 6 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980).
Bosworth, Jospeh, ed. King Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon Version of the Compendious History of the World by Orosius (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1859).
Godden, M. R., ed. and trans. The Old English History of the World: An Anglo-Saxon Rewriting of Orosius, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 44 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016).
Criticism
Appleton, Helen. ‘The Northern World of the Anglo-Saxon Mappa Mundi’, Anglo-Saxon England 47 (2018), 275–305.
Bately, Janet M. ‘The Old English Orosius’, in A Companion to Alfred the Great, ed. Nicole Guenther Discenza and Paul E. Szarmach (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 313–43.
Godden, M. R. ‘The Anglo-Saxons and the Goths: Rewriting the Sack of Rome’. Anglo-Saxon England 31 (2002), 47–68. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0263675102000030.
———. ‘The Old English Orosius and Its Sources’. Anglia 129 (2011), 297–320. https://doi.org/10.1515/angl.2011.040.
———. ‘The Old English Orosius and Its Context: Who Wrote It, for Whom, and Why?’ Quaestio Insularis 12 (2011), 1–30.
Harris, Stephen J. ‘The Alfredian ‘World History’ and Anglo-Saxon Identity’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 100 (2001), 482–510.
Hurley, Mary Kate. ‘Alfredian Temporalities: Time and Translation in the Old English Orosius’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 112 (2013), 405–32.
Khalaf, Omar, ‘A study on the translator’s omissions and instances of adaptation in The Old English Orosius: The Case of Alexander the Great’, Filologia Germanica 5 (2013), 195–222.
———. ‘Ælfred se casere: Kingship and Imperial Legitimation in the Old English Orosius’, in The Age of Alfred: Rethinking English Literary Culture c. 850–950, ed. Amy Faulkner and Francis Leneghan (Turnhout: Brepols, 2024), pp. 457–76.
Kretzschmar, William A. ‘Adaptation and Anweald in the Old English Orosius’, Anglo-Saxon England 16 (1987), 127–45. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0263675100003872.
Leneghan, Francis. ‘Translatio Imperii: The Old English Orosius and the Rise of Wessex’. Anglia 133 (2015), 656–705.
———. ‘End of Empire? Reading The Death of Edward in MS Cotton Tiberius B I’, in Ideas of the World in Early Medieval English Literature, ed Mark Atherton, Kazutomo Karasawa and Francis Leneghan (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 403–34.
Pezzarossa, Lucrezia. ‘Reading Orosius in the Viking Age: An influential yet problematic model’, Filologia Germanica 5 (2013), 223–40.
Potter, Simeon. ‘Commentary on King Alfred’s Orosius’, Anglia 71 (1953), 385–437.
Tan, Song. ‘The Representation of Disloyalty in the Old English Orosius’, in Il bene e il male nel medioevo germanico, ed. L. Ferroni, R. Gavilli, and G. Marmora, (Milan: Ledizioni, 2024), pp. 45–64.
Tyler, Elizabeth M. ‘Writing Universal History in Eleventh-Century England: Cotton Tiberius B. i, German Imperial History-Writing and Vernacular Lay Literacy’, in Universal Chronicles in the High Middle Ages, ed. Henry Bainton and Michele Campopiano (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2017), pp. 65–94. https://doi.org/10.7722/j.ctt1pwt59f.8.
————. ‘Translatio imperii et studii: Translating Orosius’s Histories and the making of Old English’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies (2025).
Walker, Victoria E. H. ‘Historical Models of Male and Female Power: The Old English Orosius in the Tenth Century’, in Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, and Women in Tenth-Century England, ed. Rebecca Hardie (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2023), pp. 253–76.
Song Tan is a PhD candidate at Leiden University. His ongoing research focuses on the reception and translation of Orosius's universal history in Carolingian Francia and Anglo-Saxon England.
