Interpolation at 877.
§ 20. I have pointed out in another place[95] that the printed text of Asser contains two accounts of the events of the year 877[96]. With the exception of a few words relating to the division of Mercia by the Danes, neither of these versions, according to Wise, existed in the oldest MS. That they were not in Florence’s MS. of Asser seems indicated by the fact, that this is one of the annals in which he resorts directly to the Saxon Chronicle. They therefore must also be expunged. I still, however, retain the conviction that the former of the two versions, though not traceable higher than Roger of Wendover in the thirteenth century, is yet perfectly genuine as history, and furnishes a valuable supplement to the account of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
Earlier interpolations. Story of Alfred’s illness.
§ 21. So far our task has been comparatively simple. We have only had to remove what are obviously later accretions. But the question must now be faced whether the text, as we can prove it to have existed about the year 974, had not already suffered from the hand of the interpolator. From this point of view the most suspicious passage is that which describes the mysterious illness with which Alfred is said to have been attacked at his wedding-feast[97]. This passage has already been severely criticised by Pauli[98], though he has not exhausted all the arguments which can be brought against it.
Analysis.
In the first place it is entirely out of position. Though it refers to Alfred’s wedding, which has already been given, probably correctly, under 868, when Alfred was about twenty years old, it is inserted between the events of the year 884[99] and those of 886. The substance of the story is as follows:—During the marriage festivities Alfred was suddenly attacked by an intolerable pain, from which he has suffered, as those who daily see it know, without intermission, from his twentieth to his fortieth year, or longer. No one could trace its origin. Some thought it was ‘fascination,’ that is, the evil eye, due to the applause of the multitude; others, that it was the envy of the devil; others, some strange kind of fever; others, the disease called ‘ficus,’ from which he had suffered from his infancy. Once, when he was hunting in Cornwall, he turned aside to pray in a church, where St. Guerier reposes, and now also St. Neot rests, and entreated that some lighter affliction might be substituted for that from which he was suffering; such, however, as would not be externally apparent, like blindness or leprosy, so as to make him contemptible and incapable of discharging his functions. Shortly afterwards he was divinely healed of the ‘ficus.’ Though, indeed, this very ‘ficus’ had been given him in answer to prayer; for, in the first flower of his youth, before his marriage, feeling the assaults of carnal desire, he would often rise secretly and visit churches and relics of the saints, praying that God would strengthen him by sending him some infirmity, such, however, as would not make him unworthy or incapable in worldly matters. In answer to this prayer he shortly after received the ‘ficus,’ from which he suffered for many years, until it was removed by prayer. But alas, on its removal a worse affliction came upon him at his marriage which lasted from his twentieth to his forty-fifth year without intermission; and even if it leaves him for a single hour, the fear and horror of it never quit him, but render him, as he deems, almost useless in things divine and human.
Inconsistencies in the story. Improbability of the story.
§ 22. It would be difficult to cram more inconsistencies into so short a space. First of all, though the whole point of the story is to show that the wedding-feast disease was different from, and in substitution for, the ‘ficus,’ the writer ineptly says, that some people thought it was the ‘ficus.’ This is inserted in order to introduce the statement that Alfred had suffered from the latter disease ‘from infancy.’ Then, after telling how it was removed by prayer at the Cornish shrine, he adds that this same disease was sent in answer to prayer, when Alfred was ‘in the flower of his youth.’ We can hardly place this period earlier than (say) the seventeenth year (a very different thing from infancy); yet he suffered from it ‘for many years,’ though it had certainly ceased before his marriage in his twentieth year. Again, the condition that the visitation sent should not be disfiguring or incapacitating, is in one place attached to the substituted disease, lower down it is attached to the original trouble. It may be noted that the original disease does fulfil this condition, the substituted one certainly did not, seeing that it rendered Alfred ‘almost useless in things divine and human.’ And yet a main point of the passage is to illustrate the efficacy of Alfred’s prayers. Once more, at the beginning of the passage the substituted disease lasts from Alfred’s twentieth year to rather over his fortieth; towards the close it extends from the same date to his forty-fifth year—a very rapid growth. After all this it seems somewhat tame to remark that leprosy and blindness hardly come under one’s idea of ‘lighter infirmities.’
Possible conflation.
§ 23. In this triumph of ineptitude we may, I think, detect a conflation of two separate traditions; one of which represented Alfred as suffering from infancy from a disease for which in answer to prayer another was substituted; while, according to the other version, the original disease was granted in answer to prayer, and though removed by the same means, only departed to make way for a heavier visitation. But the whole passage is a concoction in the worst hagiological manner, to the source of which we are guided by the mention of St. Neot; for if the legendary Alfred was reformed by the legendary St. Neot, there is no doubt that the historical Alfred has been deformed in an extraordinary degree by the same agency. And in the present instance we may be glad, I think, to free the historical Alfred from the atmosphere of morbid religiosity which taints this whole passage. It may be noted that Florence, with his usual good sense, has entirely recast the incident, so as to remove most of the absurdities above enumerated. Whether the other two passages, which refer to Alfred’s illness[100], are also to be rejected is less easy to say. In one of them the language is very nearly akin to that of the present passage; but that might be due to the compiler having made use of it for his own bad purposes. Personally, I should not be sorry to let all these passages go; for it seems to me quite inconceivable that Alfred could have accomplished what he did under the hourly pressure of incapacitating disease[101]. Still we must distinguish between what is historically doubtful and what is textually suspicious. There are several things in Asser which, as we shall see, come under the former category, though I could not bring them under the latter.