TheOrmulum orOrrmulum is atwelfth-century work of biblicalexegesis, written by anAugustinian canon namedOrrm (or Orrmin) and consisting of just under 19,000 lines ofearly Middle English verse. Because of the uniquephonemic orthography adopted by its author, the work preserves many details ofEnglish pronunciation existing at a time when the language was in flux after theNorman Conquest of England. Consequently, it is invaluable tophilologists andhistorical linguists in tracing the development of the language.
After a preface and dedication, the work consists ofhomilies explicating the biblical texts set for the mass throughout theliturgical year. It was intended to be consulted as the texts changed, and is agreed to be tedious and repetitive when read straight through. Only about a fifth of the promised material is in the single manuscript of the work to survive, which is in theBodleian Library in Oxford.
Orrm developed an idiosyncraticspelling system. Modern scholars have noted that the system reflected his concern with priests' ability to speak thevernacular and may have helped to guide his readers in thepronunciation of thevowels. Many local priests may have been regular speakers ofAnglo-Norman French rather than English. Orrm used a strictpoetic metre to ensure that readers know which syllables are to be stressed. Modern scholars use these two features to reconstruct Middle English as Orrm spoke it.[2]
Unusually for work of the period, theOrmulum is neither anonymous nor untitled. Orrm names himself at the end of the dedication:
| Early Middle English | Modern English |
|---|---|
| Icc was þær þær i crisstnedd was | Where I was christened, I was |
| Orrmin bi name nemmnedd | named Orrmin by name(Ded. 323–24) |
At the start of the preface, the author identifies himself again, using a different spelling of his name, and gives the work a title:
| Early Middle English | Modern English |
|---|---|
| Þiss boc iss nemmnedd Orrmulum | This book is named Orrmulum, |
| forrþi þatt Orrm itt wrohhte | for Orrm wrought [created] it(Pref. 1–2)[a] |
The name Orrm derives fromOld Norse, meaningworm,serpent ordragon. With the suffix of "myn" for "man" (hence "Orrmin"), it was a common name throughout theDanelaw area of England. The metre probably dictated the choice between each of the two forms of the name. The title of the poem,Ormulum, is modeled after theLatin wordspeculum ("mirror"),[3] so popular in the title of medieval Latin non-fiction works that the termspeculum literature is used for the genre.
The Danish name is not unexpected; the language of theOrmulum, an East Midlands dialect, is stringently of the Danelaw.[4] It includes numerous Old Norse phrases (particularly doublets, where an English and Old Norse term are co-joined), but there are very fewOld French influences on Orrm's language.[5] Another—likely previous—East Midlands work, thePeterborough Chronicle, shows a great deal of French influence. The linguistic contrast between it and the work of Orrm demonstrates both the sluggishness of the Norman influence in the formerly Danish areas of England and the assimilation of Old Norse features into early Middle English.[6]
According to the work's dedication, Orrm wrote it at the behest of Brother Walter, who was his brother bothaffterr þe flæshess kinde (biologically, "after the flesh's kind") and as a fellowcanon of anAugustinian order.[7] With this information, and the evidence of the dialect of the text, it is possible to propose a place of origin with reasonable certainty. While some scholars, among them Henry Bradley, have regarded the likely origin asElsham Priory in north Lincolnshire,[8] as of the mid-1990s it became widely accepted that Orrm wrote in theBourne Abbey inBourne, Lincolnshire.[9] Two additional pieces of evidence support this conjecture: firstly, Arrouaisian canons established the abbey in 1138, and secondly, the work includes dedicatory prayers toPeter andPaul, the patrons of Bourne Abbey.[10] The Arrouaisian rule was largely that of Augustine, so that its houses often are loosely referred to asAugustinian.[11]
Scholars cannot pinpoint the exact date of composition. Orrm wrote his book over a period of decades and the manuscript shows signs of multiple corrections through time.[12] Since it is an autograph, with two of the three hands in the text generally believed by scholars to be Orrm's own, the date of the manuscript and the date of composition would have been the same. On the evidence of the third hand (that of a collaborator who entered thepericopes at the head of each homily) it is thought that the manuscript was finishedc. 1180, but Orrm may have begun the work as early as 1150.[13] The text has few topical references to specific events that could be used to identify the period of composition more precisely.
Only one copy of theOrmulum exists, asBodleian LibraryMS Junius 1.[14] In its current state, the manuscript is incomplete: the book's table of contents claims that there were 242 homilies, but only 32 remain.[15] It seems likely that the work was never finished on the scale planned when the table of contents was written, but much of the discrepancy was probably caused by the loss ofgatherings from the manuscript. There is no doubt that such losses have occurred even in modern times, as theDutch antiquarianJan van Vliet, one of its seventeenth-century owners, copied out passages that are not in the present text.[16] The amount of redaction in the text, plus the loss of possible gatherings, ledJ. A. W. Bennett to comment that "only about one fifth survives, and that in the ugliest of manuscripts".[17]
Theparchment used in the manuscript is of the lowest quality, and the text is written untidily, with an eye to economical use of space; it is laid out in continuous lines like prose, with words and lines close together, and with various additions and corrections, new exegesis, and allegorical readings, crammed into the corners of the margins (as can be seen in the reproduction above).Robert Burchfield argues that these indications "suggest that it was a 'workshop' draft which the author intended to have recopied by a professional scribe".[18]
It seems curious that a text so obviously written with the expectation that it would be widely copied should exist in only one manuscript and that, apparently, a draft. Treharne has taken this as suggesting that it is not only modern readers who have found the work tedious.[19] Orrm, however, says in the preface that he wishes Walter to remove any wording that he finds clumsy or incorrect.[20]
Theprovenance of the manuscript before the seventeenth century is unclear. From a signature on the flyleaf we know that it was invan Vliet's collection in 1659. It was auctioned in 1666, after his death, and probably was purchased byFranciscus Junius, from whose library it came to the Bodleian as part of the Junius donation.[21][A]
TheOrmulum consists of 18,956 lines of metrical verse, explaining Christian teaching on each of the texts used in themass throughout the church calendar.[22] As such, it is the first newhomily cycle in English since the works ofÆlfric of Eynsham (c. 990). The motivation was to provide an accessible English text for the benefit of the less educated, which might include some clergy who found it difficult to understand the Latin of theVulgate, and the parishioners who in most cases would not understand spoken Latin at all.[23]
Each homily begins with a paraphrase of aGospel reading (important when the laity did not understand Latin), followed byexegesis.[24] The theological content is derivative; Orrm closely followsBede's exegesis ofLuke, theEnarrationes in Matthoei, and theGlossa Ordinaria of the Bible. Thus, he reads each verse primarilyallegorically rather than literally.[25] Rather than identify individual sources, Orrm refers frequently to "ðe boc" and to the "holy book".[26] Bennett has speculated that theActs of the Apostles,Glossa Ordinaria, and Bede were bound together in a largeVulgate Bible in the abbey so that Orrm truly was getting all of his material from a source that was, to him, a single book.[27]
Although the sermons have been deemed "of little literary or theological value"[28] and though Orrm has been said to possess "only one rhetorical device", that of repetition,[29] theOrmulum never was intended as a book in the modern sense, but rather as a companion to theliturgy. Priests would read, and congregations hear, only a day's entry at a time. The tedium that many experience when attempting to read theOrmulum today would not exist for persons hearing only a single homily each day. Furthermore, although Orrm's poetry is, perhaps, subliterary, the homilies were meant for easy recitation or chanting, not for aesthetic appreciation; everything from the overly strict metre to the orthography might function only to aidoratory.[30]
Although earlier metrical homilies, such as those of Ælfric andWulfstan, were based on the rules ofOld English poetry, they took sufficient liberties with metre to be readable as prose. Orrm does not follow their example. Rather, he adopts a "jog-trot fifteener" for his rhythm, based on the Latiniambicseptenarius, and writes continuously, neither dividing his work into stanzas nor rhyming his lines, again following Latin poetry.[31] Orrm was humble about his oeuvre: he admits in the preface that he frequently has padded the lines to fill out the metre, "to help those who read it", and urges his brother Walter to edit the poetry to make it more meet.[32]
A brief sample may help to illustrate the style of the work. This passage explains the background to theNativity:
| Early Middle English | Modern English | Literal etymological translation |
|---|---|---|
| Forrþrihht anan se time comm | As soon as the time came | Forthright anon the time came |
| þatt ure Drihhtin wollde | that our Lord wanted | That our Drighten would |
| ben borenn i þiss middellærd | to be born in this middle-earth | be born in this middleearth |
| forr all mannkinne nede | for the sake of all mankind, | for all mankind's need |
| he chæs himm sone kinnessmenn | at once he chose kinsmen for himself, | he chose him some kinsmen, |
| all swillke summ he wollde | all just as he wanted, | all such some he would, |
| & whær he wollde borenn ben | and he decided that he would be born | and where he would born be |
| he chæs all att hiss wille. | exactly where he wished. | He chose all at his will.(line 3494, 501)[A] |
Rather than literary or theological merit, the chief scholarly value of theOrmulum derives from Orrm's idiosyncratic orthographical system.[33] He states that since he dislikes the way that people mispronounce English, he will spell words exactly as they are pronounced, and describes a system whereby vowel length and value are indicated unambiguously.[34]
Orrm's main innovation was to employ doubled consonants to show that the preceding vowel is short, and single consonants when thevowel is long.[35] For syllables that ended in vowels, he used accent marks to indicate length. In addition to this, he used three distinct letter forms for the letterg depending on how they sounded. He used insular <ᵹ> for thepalatal approximant[j], a flat-topped <ꟑ> for thevelar stop[ɡ], and a Carolingian <g> for thepalato-alveolar affricate[d͡ʒ],[36] although in printed editions the last two letters may be left undistinguished.[37] His devotion to precise spelling was meticulous. For example, he originally usedeo ande inconsistently for words such asbeon andkneow, which had been spelled witheo inOld English. At line 13,000 he changed his mind and went back to change all theeo spellings in the book, replacing them withe alone (ben andknew), to reflect the pronunciation.[38]
The combination of this system with a rigid metre, and the stress patterns the metre implies, provides enough information to reconstruct his pronunciation with some precision; making the reasonable assumption that Orrm's pronunciation was in no way unusual, this permits scholars of thehistory of English to develop an exceptionally precise snapshot of exactly how Middle English was pronounced in the Midlands in the second half of the twelfth century.[39]
Orrm's book has a number of innovations that make it valuable. As Bennett points out, Orrm's adaptation of a classical metre with fixed stress patterns anticipates future English poets, who would do much the same when encountering foreign language prosodies.[40] TheOrmulum is also the only specimen of the homiletic tradition in England between Ælfric and the fourteenth century, as well as the last example of the Old English verse homily. It also demonstrates what would becomeReceived Standard English two centuries beforeGeoffrey Chaucer.[41] Further, Orrm was concerned with the laity. He sought to make the Gospel comprehensible to the congregation, and he did this perhaps forty years before theFourth Council of the Lateran of 1215 "spurred the clergy as a whole into action".[42] At the same time, Orrm's idiosyncrasies and attempted orthographic reform make his work vital for understanding Middle English. TheOrmulum is, with theAncrene Wisse and theAyenbite of Inwyt, one of the three crucial texts that have enabled philologists to document the transition from Old English to Middle English.[43]
