The performativity of the written word in two Anglo-Saxon wills

Since scholars first turned their attention to the subject some eighty years ago, one major area of contention in the study of Anglo-Saxon wills has been the function of the written will within Anglo-Saxon culture. Verbal agreements, formalized through oral ceremonies and symbolic actions, were recognized as legally binding; however, many of these agreements were also recorded in writing. Many scholars argue that the written document was superfluous;oral ceremonies were written down only in the case of memory failure and the documents themselves had no real performative function. Others see the existence of the written will to be evidence of a shift toward a more textually-dependent culture, reliant on the written as a way of managing society. It is unlikely, however, that the Anglo-Saxons themselves viewed the oral and written in such a binary manner. Rather, the two forms were intermingled, lending potency and performative power to one another. The present study concentrates on two Anglo-Saxon wills in order to demonstrate the ways in which the verbal and written work together in specific texts. By having such a singular focus, a more nuanced understanding of how the oral and written interanimate each other in ninth-century England can be attained. The vernacular will of Alfred, King of the West Saxons from 871-899, and the Latin will of Æðelric, son of Æðelmund (804), are particularly deserving of close attention. While they contain several features that indicate the authority of the voiced statement, they also demonstrate an exceptionally strong sense of the importance of the written. These two wills suggest a dynamic period in which the worlds of the oral ceremony and written word were still intermingled but clearly moving toward a valuing of the written as dispositive.