The Prose Preface to the Old English "Pastoral Care"

The Prose Preface to the Pastoral Care, a text concerned with education, translation and wisdom, is, fittingly, one of the texts most often selected for teaching Old English. Its popularity among teachers and students is in part due to its brevity, but also because of the startling immediacy of the voice of King Alfred in this letter to his bishops. The text that follows the preface is an Old English translation of Gregory the Great’s Regula pastoralis, known as the Hierdeboc (‘Shepherd-book’) in Old English, and in Modern English The Pastoral Care.  

            Alfred the Great (c. 849–899) was remembered in the later medieval period and beyond not only for his military successes but for his learning. Several Old English translations feature prefaces which claim Alfred’s authorship, and others were attributed to Alfred after his death. The Prose Preface to the Pastoral Care, however, is the only preface in which Alfred identifies himself as author in his own voice. Credit is given also to his teachers, Archbishop Plegmund, Bishop Asser, and the priests Grimbald and John. In the wake of Malcolm Godden’s 2007 article, ‘Did King Alfred Write Anything?’, doubt about Alfred’s personal authorship of any of the translations attributed to him has been growing. Although the evidence for direct royal involvement is perhaps strongest in the case of the Pastoral Care, Alfred may not have been as involved in the translation process as the preface claims. Moreover, it might be questioned whether the texts attributed to Alfred fulfil the aim, stated in the preface, of translating suma bec, ða ðe niedbeðearfosta sien eallum monnum to wiotonne (‘some books, those which are most necessary for all men to know’). The allusion to translation of Scripture as justification for the translation programme suggests, as Daniel Anlezark argues, that these most necessary books might be the books of the Bible.

            Records from a fire-damaged manuscript (London, British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius B. xi) allow for a fairly precise dating of the Prose Preface and the dissemination of the translation. A note transcribed by Franciscus Junius details that Plegmunde arcebiscepe is agifen his boc and Swiðulfe biscepe and Wærferðe biscepe (‘Archbishop Plegmund has been given his book and Bishop Swithulf and Bishop Wærferth’). Plegmund became Archbishop in 890, and Swithulf died between 893 and 896. The copy of the Prose Preface in Hatton 20 is addressed to Bishop Wærferth of Worcester, and includes the words ÐEOS BOC SCEAL TO WIOGORA CEASTRE (‘this book must [go] to Worcester’) written across the top of the page, in case there was any doubt. Bishop Wærferth must therefore have received his book at some point between the years 890 and 896.

            The purpose of the preface is somewhat difficult to pin down; it certainly does not reveal much about the text that follows, apart from its name. Alfred, or someone writing in his voice, describes the lamentable state of learning in his nation in contrast to a time of financial and intellectual prosperity in the distant past. As a solution, Alfred outlines a twofold literary reform programme, involving both the education of all free-born youths and the translation of important texts into English. The ostensible purpose of the preface is to persuade its primary recipients, the bishops, to assist the king in this reform; he alludes rather flatteringly to the ready supply of gelærde biscepas (‘learned bishops’) nearly everywhere in his kingdom. However, when viewed in the light of the translation that follows, this superficial goal becomes problematic. The Regula pastoralis is, first and foremost, a guide for bishops. The production of an Old English translation of this text might suggest that there were some bishops who could not read the original Latin text. This implication is, in fact, stated outright in the Verse Preface that follows. The Prose Preface, then, seems to simultaneously gesture to two possible roles for the bishops of Alfred’s kingdom: part of the solution to the disastrous state of learning, or part of the problem.

            Part of what makes the object of the Prose Preface so difficult to pin down is its diplomatic style. Rather than giving his bishops direct orders, Alfred says to them:

Ond forðon ic ðe bebiode ðæt ðu do swæ ic geliefe ðæt ðu wille

[And therefore I bid that you do as I believe you wish]

And:

Forðy me ðyncð betre, gif iow swæ ðyncð

[Therefore it seems better to me, if it seems so to you.]

These carefully-worded instructions make the reader’s desire consistent with the king’s intentions. This intimate insight into Alfred’s thought process is also, arguably, part of its persuasive strategy. The preface is structured around the workings of the king’s mind: Ða gemunde ic (‘then I remembered’); Ða ic ða ðis eall gemunde, ða wundrade ic (‘when I remembered all this, then I wondered’); Ac ic ða sona eft me selfum andwyrde (‘but I then immediately answered myself’). The reader is led through Alfred’s remembering, wonderings and internal dialogue. Direct speech is employed not only for the king’s own thoughts, but also when he imagines what the clerics of days gone by might have said about the state of learning.

            The sense of the past and the passing of time is a crucial part of Alfred’s message. As T. A. Shippey has demonstrated, the preface delineates four periods: firstly, a distant golden age of gesæliglica tida (‘happy times’), when Wessex prospered in both material wealth and wisdom. The inhabitants of the second period still benefit from the wealth of the time before, but they have let learning fall into ruin; using a hunting metaphor, Alfred imagines these people saying: Her mon mæg giet gesion hiora swæð, ac we him ne cunnon æfterspyrigean (‘here one can still see their track, but we do not know how to follow it’). In the third period, which Shippey places during the period of conflict with the Vikings earlier in Alfred’s lifetime, Wessex has lost ge ðone welan ge ðone wisdom (‘both wealth and wisdom’). The fourth period is the present day of the 890s: although the state of learning is still poor, peace with the Vikings has been achieved, and there is a small onstal (‘supply’) of teachers.

            The index of national prosperity in the Prose Preface is the measure of both wela (‘wealth’) and wisdom, as in the quotation above. This pairing recalls the Old Testament King Solomon, who was renowned for both his wealth and wisdom (see 1 Kings 3:5-14). The meeting of wealth and wisdom is, moreover, captured in the mysterious artefact mentioned at the very end of the Prose Preface, the æstel. The preface tells us that each copy of the Old English Pastoral Care will be accompanied by an æstel; all the preface tells us about them is that these gifts are very costly, and should be kept with the manuscript. The best candidates in the archaeological record are the four jewelled pointers discovered in Wessex, of which the most famous is the Alfred Jewel. All the jewels feature an aperture which might have once held a wooden rod, suggesting that the jewels could have been used as pointers. The Alfred Jewel is unique in its inscription: Ælfred mec heht gewyrcan (‘Alfred ordered me to be made’). The dual gift of book and jewel epitomises Alfred’s message in the Prose Preface: the pursuit of wisdom leads not only to spiritual gains, but to earthly prosperity.

To learn more about King Alfred and his literary reform, read the blogs by Francis Leneghan (here) and Eleanor Parker (here).

Digitised manuscripts

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 20

Editions

Fulk, R. D. The Old English Pastoral Care (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021).

Irvine, Susan, ed., Alfredian Prologues and Epilogues (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023).

Criticism

Anlezark, Daniel, ‘The Old English Pastoral Care: Date, Readership, and Authorship’, in The Age of Alfred: Rethinking English Literary Culture c. 850–950, ed. Amy Faulkner and Francis Leneghan, Studies in Old English Literature 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2024), pp. 229-56.

-- Alfred the Great (Kalamazoo, MI: Arc Humanities Press, 2017).

-- ‘Which Books are “Most Necessary” to Know? The Old English Pastoral Care and King Alfred’s Educational Reform’, English Studies 98 (2017), 759-80.

Bately, Janet M., ‘Did Alfred Actually Translate Anything? The Integrity of the Alfredian Canon Revisited’, Medium Ævum 78 (2009), 189-215.

Discenza, Nicole Guenther, ‘Wealth and Wisdom: Symbolic Capital and the Ruler in the Translational Program of Alfred the Great’, Exemplaria 13 (2001), 433-67.

Faulkner, Amy, ‘Private Study and Opportune Words: Wisdom in the Old English Pastoral Care’, English Studies 106 (2025), 317-36.

Faulkner, Amy, and Francis Leneghan, ‘Introduction: Rethinking English Literary Culture c. 850-950’, in The Age of Alfred: Rethinking English Literary Culture c. 850-950, ed. Amy Faulkner and Francis Leneghan, Studies in Old English Literature 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2024), pp. 17-48.

Godden, Malcolm, ‘Prologues and Epilogues in the Old English Pastoral Care, and their Carolingian Models’, JEGP 110 (2011), 441-73.

-- ‘Did King Alfred Write Anything?’ Medium Ævum 76 (2007), 1-23.

-- ‘King Alfred’s Preface and Teaching Latin’, EHR 117 (2002), 596-604.

Gneuss, Helmut, ‘King Alfred and the History of Anglo-Saxon Libraries’, in Modes of Interpretation in Old English Literature: Essays in Honour of Stanley B. Greenfield, ed. Phyllis Rugg Brown, Georgina Ronan Crampton and Fred C. Robinson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), pp. 29-49.

Hinton, David Alban, The Alfred Jewel and Other Late Anglo-Saxon Decorated Metalwork (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2008).

Irvine, Susan, ‘The Alfredian Prefaces and Epilogues’, in A Companion to Alfred the Great, ed. Nicole Guenther Discenza and Paul E. Szarmach, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 58 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 143-70.

Morrish, Jennifer, ‘King Alfred’s Letter as a Source of Learning in England in the Ninth Century’, in Studies in Earlier Old English Prose: Sixteen Original Contributions, ed. Paul E. Szarmach (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), pp. 87-107.

Nelson, Janet L., ‘Wealth and Wisdom: The Politics of Alfred the Great’, in Kings and Kingship, ed. Joel Rosenthal, Acta 11 (Binghampton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghampton, 1986 [for 1984]), pp. 31-52.

Orton, P. R., ‘King Alfred’s Prose Preface to the Old English Pastoral Care, ll. 30-41’, Peritia 2 (1983), 140-48.

Pitt, Georgina, The Persuasive Agency of Objects and Practices in Alfred the Great’s Reform Program, CARMEN Visual and Material Cultures (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2024).

Schreiber, Carolin, ‘Searoðonca Hord: Alfred’s Translation of Gregory the Great’s Regula Pastoralis’, in A Companion to Alfred the Great, ed. Nicole Guenther Discenza and Paul E. Szarmach, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 58 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 171-99.

Shippey, Thomas A., ‘Wealth and Wisdom in King Alfred’s Preface to the Old English Pastoral Care’, EHR 94 (1979), 346-55.

Sisam, Kenneth, ‘The Publication of Alfred’s Pastoral Care’, in Studies in the History of Old English Literature, ed. Kenneth Sisam (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), pp. 140-47.

Stanley, Eric Gerald, ‘King Alfred’s Prefaces’, RES n.s. 39 (1988), 349-64.

Webster, Leslie, ‘The Art of Alfred and His Times’, in A Companion to Alfred the Great, ed. Nicole Guenther Discenza and Paul E. Szarmach, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 58 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 47-81.

Whitelock, Dorothy, ‘The Prose of Alfred’s Reign’, in Continuations and Beginnings: Studies in Old English Literature, ed. Eric Gerald Stanley (London: Nelson, 1966), pp. 67-103.

Amy Faulkner is a Lecturer in Old and Middle English Language and Literature at UCL. She is the author of Wealth and the Material World in the Old English Alfredian Corpus (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2023) and co-editor (with Francis Leneghan) of The Age of Alfred: Rethinking English Literary Culture c. 850–950 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2024).