Warning that both nuns and clergymen are dressing inappropriately, he adds: “It shames me to speak of the bold impudence of conceit and the fine insolence of stupidity which are found both among nuns who abide under the rule of a settlement, and among the men of the Church … With many-coloured vestments and with elegant adornments, the body is set off and the external form decked out limb by limb.”
As well as lifestyle advice, Aldhelm - an energetic evangelist and early supporter of women’s education - includes biographies of female saints famed for their virginity who he holds up as role models, including Scholastica, the patron saint of nuns and twin sister of St Benedict; Christina, tortured to death for her faith by her pagan father; and Dorothy, executed for her Christianity after turning down a marriage proposal.
Written in Latin in the seventh century, the book is the first known text from England to be aimed at a female readership. At the time, Barking was a country village outside London and its abbey, founded in 666AD, was home to generations of nuns for more than 800 years.
Whilst Aldhelm had no ecclesiastical authority over the abbey, his advice would have been heeded because he was a noted scholar of his day, of royal blood, who founded two monasteries and served as an abbot and a bishop.
The four pages up for auction at Sotheby’s next month are inscribed on vellum - high quality parchment made from sheep skin or calf hide – from a copy of the book produced in around 800AD, and believed to have been owned at one stage by St Dunstan, a tenth-century Archbishop of Canterbury. They are expected to fetch £500,000.
Timothy Bolton, a specialist in western medieval manuscripts at Sotheby’s, said: “Aldhelm’s work is remarkable because there simply aren’t any texts by English authors addressed to women before this.
"He expects the nuns to study and understand his sophisticated writings, raising the bar of education for women to the same level of men, becoming the first English feminist author.”
The extract forms part of an auction of 60 rare manuscripts, spanning more than five millennia, that are expected to fetch more than £2 million in total.
They include fragments of Homer’s The Iliad dating to the year of Christ’s birth which were used by the Egyptians to wrap around a mummy; a document belonging to the father of King Harold, the last Anglo Saxon king; and the earliest surviving text of one of the most important passages from the New Testament, St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans.
They will be sold by Martin Schoyen, a Norwegian collector and heir to a shipping and transport business.
Dr Christopher de Hamel, the fellow librarian of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and an expert on ancient manuscripts, said: “This sale is exceptional in telling the story of Western script from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages. It contains the bare bone relics of the history of the English language.”
The sale includes The Godwine Charter, drawn up for Earl Godwine, the most powerful English lord in the decades before the Norman Conquest and the father of King Harold, who was defeated and killed at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
Dated c. 1013 to 1020 and written on vellum in Anglo Saxon, the document details Earl Godwine’s sale of a swine pasture, believed to be in Kent, to one of his tenants, Leofwine the Red, for “forty pence and two pounds and an allowance of eight ambers of corn”.
Expected to fetch up to £250,000 at auction, it is one of the rarest surviving Anglo Saxon texts from before the Norman Conquest, after which Old English, replaced by Latin and French, ceased to be the language of officialdom.
The sale will also include the Wyman Fragment, the earliest surviving version of an excerpt from St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, widely acknowledged as one of the most famous documents in the history of Christianity.
Dating from the late third century when Christianity was still an illegal cult in the Roman empire, the vellum fragment written in Greek comprises Romans 4:23-5:3 on one side, and on the other, Romans 5:8-13, including the crucial passage on the justification by faith which forms the core of the Epistle and of the theology of Christianity: “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
For this passage of the Epistle, the Wyman Fragment is universally accepted as the earliest surviving version and is expected to fetch up to £200,000 at auction.
The fragment was reportedly found in the early 20th century by a group of Arabs at Fustât, in north-eastern Cairo, Egypt, near the site of the Roman fortress of Babylon.
Mr Schoyen acquired it in 1988 from the heirs of the American anthropologist, Dr Leland Wyman, who bought it from an antiquities dealer in Cairo in 1950.
Fragments from Homer’s The Iliad dating from c. 0 will also feature in the sale. Experts believe the papyrus fragments were once part of a scroll once used by the ancient Egyptians to wrap around a mummy, which survived in the sands of North Africa.
They were first acquired by the Austrian conservator, Dr Anton Fackelmann, in Cairo in 1969 as part of a mummy cartonage. Mr Schoyen acquired them from his heirs in 1998 and they are estimated to fetch £30,000 at auction.
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
Victim of a horrifying 'gang initiation': This young woman was clawed in the face by a female attacker as she walked in the park - Daily Mail
- Leanne, 22, may be left with permanent scarring after the unprovoked attack in Southend, Essex
- Three men kicked her legs and body as she lay on the floor before fleeing with her bag
- Officers issue an e-fit of the attacker they are hunting following the 'unjustified and disgraceful' incident
By Rob Cooper
|
This shocking picture shows how a young woman's face was savagely ripped apart by a female gang member as part of an 'initiation ceremony'.
The victim, named only as Leanne, 22, was set upon as she walked alone through a park in Southend, Essex.
She was dragged to the floor by her hair before the crazed attacker repeatedly scratched her fingernails down her face.
Attack: Leanne, 22, is left with a bloodied face after being clawed by a suspected gang member in an unprovoked park attack in Southend, Essex
Three men kicked her in the legs and body as she lay in a bloody mess before fleeing with her black Nike bag.
Police fear the attacker targeted Leanne as part of an initiation process for a gang responsible for a recent spate of street robberies in Southend, Leigh and Westcliff, Essex.
She has released this bloodied picture of herself to help police catch the woman and the gang of four men she was with.
The incident happened as she was walking through Southchurch Park, near Woodgrange Drive, Southend.
Attacker: This is an efit of the woman yob police are hunting over the lunchtime park attack on Leanne, 22
Leanne, who lives in Southend, was so traumatised that when she called 999 she was unable to even give them her surname.
A passer-by comforted her until police and paramedics arrived, and took her to Southend Hospital for treatment.
She could now be left with permanent scarring. Police have also released an e-fit of the woman attacker.
Southend Inspector Matt Bennett said: 'There seems to be a completely unnecessary level of violence that's quite horrific.
'There's no reason why this level of violence has been used, it was totally unprovoked.
'There are theories as to why this happened - maybe somebody tried to prove themselves to the gang, but that's only a theory at the moment.
'Whatever the motivation, it's thoroughly unjustified and disgraceful behaviour.'
Leanne was robbed of her bag containing 62 cash, a gold chain, store cards and documents.
The woman who led the attack was thought to be in her early 20s, about 5ft 1in tall, either tanned or of mixed race with dark-coloured hair in a pony tail.
She wore a grey tracksuit, and would have had blood all over her trousers.
Three of the men with her were black, and the victim described them as aged about 25.
One was wearing a red hooded top and the others had black hoodies. One of them had a red bandana over his face.
A fourth man helped drag the woman to the ground. He was white, in his 20s, skinny and wearing a black jumper.
Source: www.dailymail.co.uk
Preview: Kent v Surrey - Kent News
Kent Spitfires play Surrey Lions at Beckenham today. Picture by Ady Kerry.
Greg Miles, Twitter: @greg_KOS_sport
Sunday, June 17, 2012
11:00 AM
Kent Spitfires to take on Surrey Lions in first t20 encounter
Kent will be looking to put a miserable fortnight behind them when they take on Surrey in their first t20 match.
The Spitfires entertain Surrey Lions at Beckenham tomorrow in a 3pm start, weather permitting.
And it’s the weather that has dominated Kent’s preparations for this game, which would have been their second in the competition had Tuesday’s match against Sussex Sharks not been rained off.
The match was originally set to take place at Tunbridge Wells’ Nevill Ground in the final fixture of the cricket festival, but flooding forced a venue change to Canterbury, but it was again rained off.
Surrey however have managed two matches this week in the t20, first on Wednesday they beat Essex by 17 runs, while on Thursday they beat Middlesex by 28 runs on the Duckworth Lewis method.
There have been sixteen matches between the two sides with Surrey having won ten of the encounters. However, after a run of seven victories from the first seven games in the competition, Kent have fared much better, winning six of the last nine.
Last year Kent achieved the double with a six wicket victory at Beckenham with Martin van Jaarsveld and Azhar Mahmood scoring 112 in twelve overs.
At the Oval three weeks later in front of 15,000 Kent won by 15 runs after Mahmood and Darren Stevens clubbed 67 off 33 balls. The crowd that day had been dwarfed three years earlier with a sell-out 23,000 witnessing another fine Kent victory by 13 runs.
The highest aggregate of runs between the two sides in T20 was recorded in 2004 with 367 for 16 wickets on Surrey’s home ground.
Source: www.kentnews.co.uk
There are so many cowards walking around loose. They should be locked up until they are middle aged and their good years have gone whilst the rest of us take walks on the beach or in the countryside, go to restaurants, see movies, sleep in late. Have bacon and eggs on the week ends. Watch a late night film. Buy a pork pie and pint of beer. They should be deprived of every civilised pleasure.
- Pass the Dynamite, London, 15/6/2012 17:16
Report abuse