Sarah Larratt Keefer

As Volume One in the Sancta Crux/Halig Rod series, this collection of new research offers fascinating glimpses into how the way the cross, the central image of Christianity in the Anglo-Saxon period, was textualized, reified, visualized, and performed. The cross in early medieval England was so ubiquitous it became invisible to the modern eye, and yet it played an innovative role in Anglo-Saxon culture, medicine, and popular practice. It represented one of the most powerful relics, emblems, and images in medieval culture because it could be duplicated in many forms and was accessible to every layer of society. The volume speaks to critical issues of cultural interpretation for Anglo-Saxonists, medievalists of all disciplines, and those interested in cultural studies in general.

This comprehensive study explores the relationship between Old English translations of Latin psalters and a unique Old English verse paraphrase of psalm 50 containing Latin psalm-verses in its text. A date and place of composition for the -Kentish Psalm 50- can be proposed by comparing it with the vernacular vocabulary of the glossed psalter versions of psalm 50. Discussion of the Latin psalter-texts of psalm 50, the poem in its manuscript, the liturgical tradition of penance behind this psalm, and the lexical comparison present new insight into the writing of liturgical verse like -Kentish Psalm 50-."