The Old English "Soliloquies"

The Old English Soliloquies is a reworking of a dialogue written by St. Augustine of Hippo not long after his conversion to Christianity in the late fourth century. The Old English version maintains the dialogue’s form, characters, and themes, but it does not always hold closely to St. Augustine’s wording. Eventually, it abandons the Latin text and takes its own approach to answering the dialogue’s ultimate concern: to demonstrate human immortality through the mind’s knowledge of and relationship with God.

The Old English Soliloquies was written in the late ninth or early tenth century. Since it came to light in the modern period, its authorship was for many years almost universally attributed to King Alfred. Early in the twenty-first century that attribution began to lose credibility. Even so, it often remains associated with Alfred’s educational initiatives. The only surviving copy of the Old English Soliloquies is preserved in London, British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius A. XV. This volume is a composite of two codices bound together in the early modern period: the Southwick Codex (c. 1150–1175) and the Nowell Codex, famous for its unique copy of Beowulf (c. 1000). The Old English Soliloquies is the first of three complete, or nearly complete, texts in the Southwick Codex, which belonged to the Southwick Priory, probably until the Dissolution in 1538. Having been copied a century after the Norman Conquest, this Old English dialogue must have had enduring value for English speakers in Anglo-Norman times. The text formally begins with an introduction on the fourth page of the codex (f. 5v in the British Library’s foliation): Sanctus Augustinus cartaina bisceop worhte twa bec be his agnum Ingeþance þa bec sint gehatene Soliloquiorum (‘Saint Augustine, Bishop of Carthage, made two books about his own inner thought; the books are called Soliloquiorum’). The first three pages of the codex, coming right before this introduction, describe a devout forester building a rural homestead in preparation for his eternal home. These three pages do not speak about the Old English Soliloquies, but have traditionally been read as its preface.

Image 1. Cotton Vitellius A XV f. 5v, © British Library Board

The Old English Soliloquies begins. The first letter, a large capital S, has been lost to damage.

There is also pair of excerpts from the Old English Soliloquies in London, British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius A. III (c. 1050–1100), which is a miscellany of religious writings. The two excerpts were drawn from Augustine’s long prayer early in the first book and spliced together to form a unity. The original Latin version of Augustine’s prayer was also sometimes copied independently from the Soliloquies, usually in its entirety.

Image 2. Cotton Vitellius A XV f. 14v, © British Library Board

The transition from Augustine’s prayer back to the dialogue, with an ornate capital thorn (Þ)

Although it eventually departs from the Latin version, the Old English Soliloquies maintains the original dialogue’s interests and themes. Augustine’s Soliloquies is among his earliest writings. In it he develops the practice of attentiveness to oneself as a subject in relation to the divine presence. Through his return to God as the ground of his selfhood, he also returns to himself. In the Soliloquies, he develops an original and groundbreaking form of the philosophical dialogue. The exchange between his own persona and his personified Reason is wholly interior. He begins the first book by saying that he has been per multo dies sedulo querenti memetipsum ac bonum meum quidve mali evitandum esset ('intensely questing after himself and his good, and what evil he must avoid'). Suddenly, he hears the voice of Reason (Ratio) and the dialogue ensues. The first book takes up his stated desire to know God and the soul (Deum et animum scire cupio). It focuses mostly on the soul and its capacity for knowledge, whether of God or others. In explaining the soul’s capacity for truth, Reason concludes the first book by declaring that the soul must be immortal because truth can exist only in what is permanent. The second book begins with the same goal as the first, restated briefly in an opening prayer: Deus semper idem, noverim me, noverim te ('O God, forever the same, let me know myself, let me know you'). This prayer leads directly into the topic of the second book, which is human immortality, particularly in regard to its enduring capacity for knowledge and understanding. Augustine’s Soliloquies was meant to continue after the second book. It ends on a promise to resume and address Augustine’s anxieties about the state of the soul after death, whether it may regress into something akin to infantile oblivion. Augustine soon drafted a work called de Immortalitate Animae as a trial for the third book of the Soliloquies. But he was unsatisfied with it and the Soliloquies remained incomplete.

At first, the Old English Soliloquies behaves like a loose translation, making some telling adjustments along the way. For instance, the Latin text begins succinctly by announcing Augustine’s quest after himself, his good, and what evil to avoid. The Old English version is more expansive, amplifying the restless tone, anticipating Augustine’s stated desire to know God, and foregrounding his anxieties about immortality (to listen to a recording of this passage, click here):

ða reahte he hys mod. for oft gastende and smeagende mislicu and selcuð þing, and ealles swiðust ymbe hyne sylfne, hwæt he sylf wære, hwæþer hys mod and hys sawel deadlic were and gewitendlice, þe heo were alibbendu and ecu, and eft ymbe hys God, hwæt he were, and hwilce he were, and hwilc good him were betst to donne; and hwilc yfel betst to forletende.           

[He then described his mind. It often went pondering and probing various and strange things, and above all especially concerning himself, what he himself might be, whether his mind and his soul would be mortal and transitory or everlasting and eternal; and then about his God, what he might be and what sort he might be, and what sort of good would be best for him to practice and what sort of evil best to forsake.]

From the outset the Old English Soliloquies concerns itself with explicating the Latin text and bringing its themes into greater relief. Its expansiveness also serves to create a heightened devotional tone. Often, it uses lively imagery to do so. For instance, in the Latin text Augustine offers a brief analogy about the intellect’s superiority to the senses: mihi citius videtur in terra posse navigari quam geometricam sensibus percipi (‘it seems to that one could sail a ship on land more quickly than figure out geometry with the senses’). In the Old English version, Augustine says mid ðam eagum (‘with the eyes’) for sensibus. This wording prompts Sceadwisnes (Reason) to reflect on the contemplative use of the ‘eyes of mind’ (to listen to a recording of this passage, click here):

Ða cwæð heo, for þam þingum is ðearf þæt þu rihte hawie mid inodes æagum to gode swa rihte swa swa scipes ancerstreng byð aþenæd on gerihte fram þam scype to þam ancræ, and gefastna þa eagan þines modes on gode swa se ancer byd gefastnoð on ðære eorðan.

[Then she said, it is because of these things that you have the need to look straight to God with the eyes of the inward self, as straight as a ship’s hawser stretches directly from the ship to the anchor. And fix the eyes of your mind on God, like the anchor fixed in the earth.]

Nothing in the Latin text suggests this metaphor. Its insertion adds to the dialogue’s spiritual instruction. The first book carries on in this mode, adding material and omitting material, still tracking along the lines of the Latin text.

However, once the second book establishes its theme of demonstrating human immortality, the Old English version ventures off on its own. It holds to the same theme but treats it in a different way, appealing to Scripture and Christian doctrine rather than dialectic. Sceadwisnes declares that the soul’s capacity to know increases after its separation from the body, but gains greater capacity after the Day of Judgment. Remarkably, she argues that the soul instinctively knows its own eternity because it has already existed since the creation of the first man. The pre-existence of the soul is not in keeping with Augustinian teaching, but is reminiscent of Carolingian disputes about the soul’s pre-existence. Ultimately, however, Sceadwisnes argues for the soul’s immortality on the basis of Scriptural and Patristic authority. In a moment of historical verisimilitude, she illustrates the nature of authority through an analogy to the Emperors Theodosius and Honorius, who ruled during St. Augustine’s lifetime. At the end of the second book, Augustine complains to Sceadwisnes that she has not sufficiently dealt with the soul’s intelligence in the afterlife, whether it grows or diminishes. She suggests that he read the book called De Videndo Deo. This is an odd metatextual moment, because De Videndo Deo is St. Augustine’s own lengthy epistle to his friend Paulina on the question whether it is possible to see God.

The Old English Soliloquies adds a third section to continue the unfinished discussion. Augustine reminds Sceadwisnes that she has not yet answered his last question, so she directs him again to the book just mentioned. But he is constrained for time and asks her simply to tell him whether those who had died can remember their friends in this world and help them in any way. The third section is not based on the De Videndo Deo, but is a pastiche of various sources, blended with the author’s own contributions. It is difficult to follow in the manuscript, because the scribe’s exemplar was faulty. Large sections are out of sequence and some of it appears to be missing. Karl Jost proposed a rearrangement of the text to make better sense of it. Endter and Carnicelli use his solution in their editions. Malcolm Godden made some adjustments to Jost’s solution, which Lockett follows in her edition. The discussion in the third section is grounded in the Biblical parable of Dives and Lazarus. Abraham’s conversation with Dives leads into an expanded portrayal of the afterlife, where all humankind is gathered into a hierarchical society. There individuals experience widely differing conditions that range from the highly honoured in heaven down to the condemned in hell. All, however, will have an increase in knowledge, whether to their joy or sorrow. The discussion ends with Augustine concluding that the only wise course is to cultivate one’s soul here and now in preparation for the expansiveness of the eternal and heavenly life:  

 þi me þincð swiðe dysig man and swiðe unlæde þe nele hys andgyt æcan þa hwile þe he is on þisse weorulde byð, and simle wiscan and willnian þæt he mote cuman to ðam æcan lyfe, þær us nanwiht ne byð dygles.

[He therefore seems to me a very foolish man and a very miserable one, who does not want to increase his intelligence while he is in this world and constantly wish and yearn that he may come to eternal life, where nothing will be hid from us.]

It is commonly understood that the same author composed the Old English Soliloquies and the Old English Boethius, producing the first philosophical inquiries in the English language. The two texts had a strong affinity even before being reworked into Old English. Boethius drew upon the example of Augustine’s Soliloquies to create his internal dialogue with Philosophia. Both texts address deep existential anxieties. Both played a role in Carolingian education and scholarship. The author of the Old English adaptations of these two texts reworked them in several ways, but chiefly they sought to bring into the English language their shared teaching on the means to participation in the divine life, both in this world and in eternity.

Select bibliography

Digitised manuscripts

London, British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius A. XV (in the Southwick Codex, ff. 4-59)

https://www.bl.uk/research/digitised-manuscripts/ [currently unavailable]

https://ebeowulf.uky.edu/ebeo4.0/CD/main.html

London, British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius A. III (two conjoined excerpts from Augustine’s prayer, ff. 50v-51v)

https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100057891094.0x000001

Editions and Translations

Carnicelli, Thomas A., ed. King Alfred’s Version of St. Augustine’s Soliloquies, ed. Thomas A. Carnicelli (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969).

Cockayne, Thomas Oswald, ed. ‘Blooms by King Alfred’, in The Shrine: A Collection of Occasional Papers on Dry Subjects (London: William and Norgate, 1869), pp. 163–204.

Endter, Wilhelm, ed. König Alfreds des Grossen Bearbeitung der Soliloquien des Augustinus.

Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa 11 (Hamburg: Georg H. Wigand, 1922; reprint, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1964).

Foley, Michael P. trans. Soliloquies. St. Augustine’s Cassiciacum Dialogues, Vol. 4 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020).

Godden, Malcolm, and Susan Irvine, ed. and trans. The Old English Boethius: An Edition of the Old English Versions of Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae, Vol. 1 & 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

Hargrove, Henry Lee, ed. King Alfred’s Old English Version of Saint Augustine’s Soliloquies (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1902).

— —, trans. King Alfred’s Old English Version of Saint Augustine’s Soliloquies (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1904).

Hörmann, Wolfgang, ed. Soliloquiorum Libri Duo, De inmortalitate animae, De quantitate animae. Corpus Sciptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (CSEL) (Turnhout: Brepols, 1986).

Hulme, William Henry, ed. ‘Blooms von König Alfred’, Englische Studien: Zeitschrift für Englische Philologie 18 (1893), 331–56.

Lockett, Leslie, ed. and trans. Augustine’s Soliloquies in Old English and in Latin (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2022).

Criticism

Anlezark, Daniel. ‘The Soul in the Old English Soliloquies and Ninth-Century Neoplatonism’, in Germano-Celtica: A Festschrift for Brian Taylor, ed. Anders Ahlqvist and Pamela O’Neill (Sydney: The University of Sydney, 2017), pp. 36–59.

Faulkner, Amy. ‘The Familiar and the Strange: The Old English Soliloquies’, in her Wealth and the Material World in the Old English Alfredian Corpus (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2023), pp. 115–43.

Ganze, Ronald J. ‘The Individual in the Afterlife: Theological and Sociopolitical Concerns in King Alfred’s Translation of Augustine’s Soliloquies’, Studia Neophilologica 83, 1 (2011), 21–40.

Gatch, Milton McC. ‘King Alfred’s Version of Augustine’s Soliloquia: Some Suggestions on Its Rationale and Unity’, in Studies in Earlier Old English Prose, ed. Paul E. Szarmach (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), pp. 17–45.

Godden, Malcolm. ‘Text and Eschatology in Book III of the Old English Soliloquies’, Anglia 121 (2003), 79–188.

Harbus, Antonina. ‘Metaphors of Authority in Alfred’s Prefaces’, Neophilologus 91, 4 (2007), 717–27.

Hindley, Katherine. ‘Sight and Understanding: Visual Imagery as Metaphor in the Old English Boethius and Soliloquies’, in The Five Senses in Medieval and Early Modern England, ed. Annette Kern-Stähler, Beatrix Busse, and Wietse de Boer (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 21–35.

Hitch, Susan. ‘Alfred’s Cræft: Imagery in Alfred’s Version of Augustine’s Soliloquies’. Journal of the Department of English, University of Calcutta 22 (1986–1987), 130–47.

Hubbard, Frank G. ‘The Relation of the “Blooms of King Alfred” to the Anglosaxon Translation of Boethius’, Modern Language Notes 9, 6 (1894), 161–71.

Jones, Jasmine. ‘The lady and the letter: Two ecclesiastical analogies in the Old English Soliloquies’, SELIM 26 (2021), 1–23.

Karl Jost, ‘Zur Textkritik der altenglischen Soliloquienbearbeitung’. Beiblatt zur Anglia 31 (1920), 259–72, 280–90, and 32 (1921), 8–16.

Kiernan, Kevin. Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript. (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan Press, 1981; revised and reprinted, 1996).

Lockett, Leslie. Anglo-Saxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011).

— —. ‘Towards an Understanding of the Lost Exemplar of Augustine’s Soliloquia consulted by the Translator of the Old English Soliloquies,’ The Journal of Medieval Latin 32 (2022), 81–153.

Marenbon, John. From the Circle of Alcuin to the School of Auxerre: Logic, Theology, and Philosophy in the Early Middle Ages. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1981).

Szarmach, Paul. ‘Alfred’s Soliloquies in London, BL, Cotton Tiberius A. iii (art. 9g, fols. 50v–51v)’, in Latin Learning and English Lore, ed. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe and Andy Orchard, Vol. 2 (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2014), pp. 153–79.

Thomas, Rebecca. ‘The Binding Force of Friendship in King Alfred’s Consolation and Soliloquies’, Ball State University Forum 29, 1 (1988), 5–20.

Treschow, Michael. ‘Echoes of the Periphyseon in Alfred’s Soliloquies’, Notes & Queries 238 (NS 40), 3 (1993), 281–86.

— —. ‘Easing Unease in the Old English Soliloquies and Boethius’, in The Age of Alfred, ed. Amy Faulkner and Francis Leneghan (Turnhout: Brepols, 2024), pp. 363–88.

Wallace, D.P. ‘King Alfred’s version of St Augustine’s Soliloquies, III, 23-26, The Vision of the Damned’, Notes and Queries, 235 (NS 37), 2 (1990), 141–43.

Waterhouse, Ruth. ‘Tone in Alfred’s Version of Augustine’s Soliloquies’, in Studies in Earlier Old English Prose, ed. Paul E. Szarmach (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), pp. 71–78.

Wilcox, Miranda. ‘Alfred’s epistemological metaphors: eagan modes and scipes modes’, Anglo-Saxon England 35 (2006), 179–217.

Michael Treschow is Associate Professor of English at the University of British Columbia. He is co-editor (with Willemien Otten and Walter Hannam) of Divine Creation in Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern Thought: Essays Presented to the Rev’d Dr. Robert D. Crouse (Leiden: Brill, 2007). He has published studies on various texts amongst the Alfredian translations and is currently working on the paratexts in the Old English Soliloquies.