St Edmund
The Knights of Saint Edmund

Saint Edmund

"Deus Lo Volt!"


Curse Counter

Quote

"But simple as the tale is there is hardly better historic training for a man than to set him frankly in the streets of a quiet little town like Bury St. Edmunds, and bid him work out the history of the men who lived and died there. In the quiet, quaintly-named streets, in the town-mead and the market-place, in the Lord’s mill beside the stream, in the ruffed and future brasses of its burghers in the church, lies the real life of England and Englishmen, this life of their home and their trade, their ceaseless, sober struggle with oppression, their steady, unwearied battle for self-government. It is just in the pettiness of its details, in its common place incidents, in the want of marked features and striking events, that the real lesson of the whole story lies. For two centuries this little town of Bury St. Edmunds was winning Liberty to itself, and yet we hardly note as we pass from one little step to another little step how surely that Liberty was being won."

John Richard Green (1837-1883), grandfather of British social and cultural history.

Green, J. R., (1876), Stray studies from England and Italy, Macmillan & Co., London p.218-9

Saint Edmund

Knight of St Edmund
Saint Edmund, King of East Anglia ca. 841-869.
After the icon by Anna Dimascio

Whats in a name?

OE Eadmund or Ædmund

The name Edmund, Eadmund or Ædmund in manuscripts, consists of two Old English (OE) words: ead and mund (Bosworth 1898: 225).

OE ead

The word OE ead can occur as an adjective or a noun (Bosworth 1898: 239). It is assumed here to take the noun form. The word OE ead is difficult to translate and is glossed into Latin by a number of different words, for example as possessio, opes, divitiae, prosperitas, felicitas and beatitudo: 'a possession', 'prosperity', 'happiness', 'bliss'. This would suggest that the word OE ead was a particular OE concept for which the Latin-trained writers of Anglo-Saxon England found it difficult to give an easy or straightforward parrallel in Church Latin.

The word has parallels in other Germanic languages; Old Saxon od 'estate' or 'wealth' and in Old High German as ot, which is translated as the Latin word 'praedium'. In Old Norse the word occurs as auðr meaning 'riches' or 'wealth'. In Old Swedish the noun occurs in a masculine form öþer and neuter ödh, originally this meant 'property' or 'wealth' although this has since gained a modern meaning of 'luck' or 'fate' (öde).

In Gothic from the 4th century AD the adjectival form audags meant 'blessed' and had a clearly Christian connection. However, this early use of the term as an adjective would suggest that secondary meanings in Old English of 'happiness', 'bliss', 'blessed' and 'happy' were present before the 9th century and may have been introduced in the 7th century by the conversion of Anglo-Saxon East Anglia to Christianity.

OE mund

OE mund is a far easier word to translate and is normally rendered as in this context 'protection' (Bosworth 1898: 700)

Bosworth has therefore translated the name Edmund to be 'Happy Protection' (Bosworth 1898: 225) . However, his does not quite convey the sense of wealth or property that is implied in the word OE ead. Perhaps a more nuanced interpretation of Edmund as a King's name would be 'protector of the prosperity [of the Kingdom]' or 'protector of the common wealth [of the Kingdom]'.


Bosworth, J., (1898) An Anglo-Saxon dictionary based on the manuscript collections of the late J. Bosworth edited and enlarged by T. Northcote Toller, Vol 1 & 2, Clarendon Press, Oxford
About Us | Contact Us | ©2005-2007 The Knights of Saint Edmund | Page Statistics: (counting since 26/10/2005, after more than 250 visits unrecorded here) | Last modified: