PASE logo

The PASE logo was devised in 2001, when the website was first established. It is a combination of two separate elements.

The background text forms part of the witness-list of a charter of King Æthelred the Unready for his thegn Clofig, dated 1001. It represents the foundation of knowledge on which the project depends: a profusion of recorded names, here occurring in a closely dated and localised context, but in need of further analysis.

	Image of Ælfwine in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 11 (the ‘Cædmon Manuscript’), p. 2		The image of a person, here superimposed on the charter, symbolises the challenge that we face. It derives from the lower margin of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 11 (the ‘Cædmon Manuscript’), p. 2. The man has pursed lips, big hair, and a pleasantly smug expression, as if to display the lack of concern for reality characteristic of all those Anglo-Saxons who (in Carlyle's inimitable phrase) lumbered about in pot-bellied equanimity. He is identified as ‘Ælfwine’, making this image all the more tantalising as a portrait of a named person. It is tempting to assume that he was patron, scribe, illuminator or owner of this most famous book. Our wishful thoughts range from Ælfwine, the minister and scriptor to whom King Æthelred granted land in Oxfordshire in 984, to Ælfwine, dean of the New Minster, Winchester, in the 1020s, and abbot of the New Minster (1031-57), well known for his prayer-book and for his role in the production of the New Minster's Liber Vitae. In truth, of course, we do not have a clue who this Ælfwine was, or what he is doing in the book.

Any suggestions for the identification of Ælfwine in other sources will be gratefully received.

PASE logo	Original logo