[Monasteriales Indicia: The Anglo-Saxon Sign Language] [By: Banham, Debby] [December, 1991]

by Debby Banham

The Monasteriales Indicia is one of very few texts which let us see how life was really lived in monasteries in the early Middle Ages. Written in Old English and preserved in a manuscript of the mid-eleventh century, it consists of 127 signs used by Anglo-Saxon monks during the times when the Benedictine Rule forbade them to speak. These indicate the foods the monks ate, the clothes they wore, and the books they used in church and chapter, as well as the tools they used in their daily life, and persons they might meet both in the monastery and outside. The text is printed here with a parallel translation. The introduction gives a summary of the background, both historical and textual, as well as a brief look at the later evidence for monastic sign language in England. Extensive notes provide the reader with details of textual relationships, explore problems of interpretation, and set out the historical implications of the text.

Paperback

First published December 31, 1991

About the author

Debby Banham is a medieval historian, trained in the Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic and Archaeology Departments at the University of Cambridge. After her PhD on Anglo-Saxon diet she took a diploma in Adult Education at Nottingham University. She currently teaches Anglo-Saxon history, Latin and palaeography for Birkbeck College, London and the Cambridge colleges as well as the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education. She has worked on the ‘electronic Thorndike and Kibre’ project, cataloguing the contents of medieval scientific manuscripts. Her main research interests include Anglo-Saxon medicine, diet and agriculture, and monastic sign language. Among her publications are an edition of the Monasteriales indicia (the Old English sign list) and Food and Drink in Anglo Saxon England(Tempus, 2004).