Wælreow, arleas or arfæst cyning? Christian Perspectives on Kingship in the late Old English Apollonius of Tyre

The various writings that constitute the manuscript CCCC 201 also include the Old English translation of the Historia Apollonii regis Tyri (HA). At first glance, the presence of a lay romance within a codex characterised by legal, ecclesiastical, liturgical, and monastic writings might appear odd. Yet, read through a Christian perspective, the deeds of the righteous Apollonius and the wicked behaviour of King Antiochus could lead to another understanding of the novel, and justify their presence in CCCC 201. Amid a variety of themes entwined in the fascinating plot, that of royal governance certainly stands out – especially if one contextualises it with the historical-political events of the milieu in which King Cnut lived and in which the codex was produced. The linguistic analysis focuses on the occurrences of the adjectives “arleas” ‘wicked’, “wælreow” ‘cruel’, and “arfæst” ‘pious’ coupled with words for king/ruler in the HA and its analogues in the Old English corpus. This shows that the translator’s choice of vocabulary rather echoes that found in homilies, lives of Saints, and Christian poetry. Such a lexical proximity to mainly homiletic and hagiographic texts validates an allegorical reading of Apollonius’s and Antiochus’s deeds within the theme of kingship.