King Alfred and the Sibyl: sources of praise in the Latin acrostic verses of Bern, Burgerbibliothek, 671

This article offers an analysis of the possible sources that influenced the composition of the sole surviving set of Latin verses that were composed for the Anglo‐Saxon king Alfred the Great. In particular, a hitherto unrecognized textual model is identified, namely the ‘Sibylline acrostic’. Consideration of their potential sources also provides a greater appreciation of the social and cultural values of these Latin verses and of what, in turn, they tells us about the Alfredian milieu in which they were produced, presented and consumed.

Saxon, a scholar and member of King Alfred's court and the sometime abbot of Athelney. Lapidge's argument has proved extremely influential, although it has recently been challenged. 2 Aside from the question of authorship, however, scholars have rarely explored these verses in depth, perhaps due to their pithy and corrupt nature. Nevertheless, they are an important witness to literary activity within one of the most remarkable intellectual and political milieux of the Anglo-Saxon period. The purpose of this article is to draw attention to some of the potential sources that influenced their composition. Primarily, it will examine an earlier set of acrostics, the 'Sibylline acrostic', which is likely to have served as the model for the conceptualization and composition of the first seven lines of these Alfredian hexameters. Such source criticism provides an opportunity to consider the processes from which these verses emerged. It also offers hints at the education and intellectual engagement of the poet, his or her authorial intentions, and the possible audience responses that these verses elicited in a late ninth-century West Saxon context. Opening a window onto Latin performance and cultural aspirations, these verses and their sources enrich our understanding of the court of King Alfred.

The text
To begin, I provide the text of the acrostics as well as a translation. The manuscript in which these verses are preserved, Bern, Burgerbibliothek, 671, is a ninth-century gospelbook of Cornish or Welsh origin. 3 The acrostics were added immediately below the closing passage of the Gospels in a Welsh or Cornish hand of the late ninth or early tenth century, as one can see in Fig. 1. 4 Later in the tenth century, several documents pertaining to the royal estate of Bedwyn, Wiltshire were also added to this codex, offering an additional body of evidence for associating it with the West Saxon royal household. It has even been suggested that at some stage this book may have been in the personal possession of King Alfred. 5 When one considers the corruptions within these verses as they are preserved, however, it seems unlikely that their addition to this manuscript represents the original context in which they were first presented and performed.
Hitherto the verses have been edited four times by other scholars, with Lapidge's edition being the most recent. 6 The following version, which is my own, departs from that of Lapidge in several places, for reasons of grammar, sense and prosody. Most of the readings that differ from those of Lapidge can variously be found in earlier editions. 7 It should be stressed that my alternative readings do not substantially alter the meaning of the verses: Admiranda mihi mens est transcurrere gest A 1 Ex a arce b astrifera cito sed redis c arbiter ind E 2 5 D. Pratt As we can see, the acrostics spell out AELFRED/ELFRED. The scribe of the Bern manuscript also presented the verses as forming telestichsthat is, words spelt by the final letters of the lineswhich read as AELFRED/AELFRED. The poet had clearly sought to create these telestichs, jumbling up in various ways the spelling of words at the ends of lines 3, 9, 10, 11 and 12 in order to finish these verses with the required letter. The solutions to these anagrams are printed above in square brackets but, as one can see in Fig. 1, they are not found in the manuscript. It should be noted, furthermore, that even with the use of anagrams the poet did not fully achieve a telestich for either of the two spellings of Alfred's name; lines 4 to 7 and line 13 do not end with the required letters. To construct an acrostic and telestich while sustaining a hexametric structure is by no means easy and it is quite understandable that it proved to be so challenging for the poet.

8
'My mind is to run through marvellous deeds: / From the starry citadel you [will] return readily, / Just as the law taught figuratively, to foretell Alfred, / At the same time the world's mass will burn in a blazing fire. / O King, you created, but from these flames more agreeably and most rightly the wise one / You rescueand so triumphing, Christ, you yourself destroyed the chaos -/ To enjoy the divine visage above the stars through the ages.' All translations are my own unless otherwise stated.
It is not certain whether these thirteen verses represent a single text or two distinct poems and, indeed, there has been some variation in how editors have presented the verses. 10 The first line, for instance, could be interpreted in one of two ways. Given its prefatory tonestating that 'my mind is to run through marvellous deeds'it could be referring to the following six lines, which complete the first spelling of the king's name, yet it could also be referring to all twelve subsequent lines. The remaining verses, however, clearly divide into two, either as two stanzas of a single text or as two separate poems. The division between the two halves is marked not only by the two spellings of 'Alfred', but also by a change of addressee, content and rhythm. The final six lines solemnly address the king directly with heavy, spondaic feet, celebrating his piety with a mixture of future promises, hopeful jussives and admiration for his present life. The first seven lines, on the other hand, are at first more ambiguousit is not immediately clear who the subject isbut they reveal themselves on line 6 to be an address to Christ, describing in vivid, dactylic hexameters how he will rescue Alfred on Judgement Day. Divided by contrasting tones and literary strategies, these thirteen verses are nevertheless presented as one continuous block of text in the manuscript and they are ultimately united in a shared goal: to praise the West Saxon king. It is possible that they are the product of one or more individuals, who in my view must remain anonymous, and there is merit in reading the two passages within their manuscript context as being in conversation. At the same time, however, within a courtly setting the performance of the two sets of hexameters may have been quite different from one another. In the following discussion I will refer to the two halves as two separate textsthe 'first acrostic' referring to the first seven lines and the 'second acrostic' referring to the remaining six lines. 11 For the sake of efficacy, meanwhile, I will refer to a single, anonymous poet.

Some possible sources and influences
Given that no earlier Latin acrostics survive that praise an Anglo-Saxon king, these verses arguably amount to nothing less than a historic cultural phenomenon. As such, it is important to ask how and why they were composed in late ninth-century England. In this respect, these verses need to be set within the framework of a burgeoning 'court culture' in the 880s and 890s, which had emerged thanks to a highly centralized style of rulership and which offered a setting for learned and literary pursuits amidst a dilapidated ecclesiastical landscape. 12 From this context, we find a body of Alfredian literature in which the personal figure of the king is strikingly pervasive; and despite the fact that most texts within this corpus are in the vernacular, these Latin acrostics firmly belong within it. This is not to say that their author was a permanent member of the king's householdmany individuals no doubt moved in and out of the royal circle on a fairly regular basis but it is within this royal milieu that we should envisage their presentation and consumption. 13 It is from this basis that we can begin to enquire about the sources that may have influenced the composition of the acrostics, which is my primary aim here. First, it should be noted that although there are no earlier acrostics praising Anglo-Saxon kings, there is nevertheless a history of acrostic composition in Anglo-Saxon England before the time of King Alfred. Latin examples survive, for example, by Aldhelm, Tatwine and Boniface, 14 while the ninth-century vernacular poet Cynewulf incorporated autographic acrostics into his Juliana, Christ II, Elene and Fates of the Apostles. 15 Anonymous Latin specimens can be identified at Theodore and Hadrian's school at Canterbury in the late seventh century, 16 and within the early ninth-century Book of Cerne. 17 Acrostics in praise of Bede and Guthlac also may well have been composed in pre-tenth-century England. 18 Several of these acrostics invoke prayers, others reveal the solutions to riddles, and many represent opportunities on the part of the poet to demonstrate and celebrate their own ingenuity. To limit our view of the Alfredian acrostics to the Anglo-Saxon world, however, would be a mistake; these verses belong equally, if not more so, to a wider European story. Acrostic and figural poetry had been a lively feature of Latin literary production in Carolingian Francia and, crucially, a significant portion of this material is in praise of secular rulers, unlike any of the earlier insular examples. 19 Indeed, poets in the Carolingian realmof which the Anglo-Saxon Alcuin was one of the most prolifichad embraced figural poetry as a distinct medium for the praise of Charlemagne and his successors. In doing so, they took their inspiration from a body of verse some four hundred years older, namely the poetry of Publilius Optatianus Porphyrius, who had composed such verses in honour of the Emperor Constantine. 20 The decision to celebrate King Alfred in Latin acrostics, therefore, was to embrace a literary form and language with the greatest Christian imperial pedigree possible.  We cannot be certain whether the composer of the Alfredian verses was inspired directly by Porphyrius' poetry, by a Carolingian precedent or by bothor, moreover, whether a late ninth-century Anglo-Saxon audience would have recognized their Constantinian and Carolingian associations. Although Porphyrius' acrostics had reached several ecclesiastical centres in England by the eighth century, 22 this is not to say that they would have been available within the milieu of King Alfred. Indeed, there are no specific words or phrases within the Alfredian acrostics that strongly indicate knowledge of the poetry of Porphyrius. Likewise, it is unclear how much Carolingian poetry would have been in circulation, especially given the relatively limited transmission history of much of the extant corpus. 23 One can at least note the verses embedded in several of the letters from Alcuin to Charlemagne that were copied out in England around the year 900, found in what is now London, Lambeth Palace Library, 218. 24 In addition, it is clear that by the 930s an individual associated with the court of King Alfred's grandson, AEthelstan, was familiar with a poem in honour of Charlemagne by the 'Hibernicus Exul', 25 while at around the same time a copy of Hrabanus Maurus' figural poem, In honorem sanctae crucis, had made its way to Wessex. 26 Indeed, considering the sheer amount of evidence elsewhere for contact, movement and cultural influence between England and Francia in the late ninth century, to my mind a Frankish dimension is extremely likely. We might imagine, therefore, that such verses would have made fine gifts for the discerning reader interested in the recent past of Carolingian Francia.
Lexical echoes offer hints of other sources. Here it should be noted that the poet, particularly in the second acrostic passage, employs several curious phrasesone thinks especially of the 'happy crossroads', 'sacred that can be associated with King AEthelstan's court). 32 As the Carmen de uirginitate is the earliest of these three texts, arcs astrifera appears, therefore, to be a coinage of Aldhelm, an author whose works were read widely and whose phraseology in particular was deeply influential on later generations of Latin writers, especially in the insular world. 33 That the composer of this verse may have been familiar with the writings of Aldhelm is not surprising. 34 Possible influences are also suggested by the somewhat murkier evidence of shared themes and concepts. In this regard, we can identify several features particularly in the treatment of Alfred's kingship that bring us back within the West Saxon royal milieu. First, there is the clear relationship in both the first and second acrostic between Alfred and wisdom. The king is directly praised in the second passage for his rejection of worldly concerns in favour of spiritual nourishment. In the first acrostic, meanwhile, this relationship is implied with the notion of the 'divine visage' and with the word gnarus ('wise one'), which appears to be referring to Alfred himself. The praise heaped on Alfred in these verses is of a king seeking not earthly riches and success, but the true understanding and vision that only wisdom can provide; Alfred is, in other words, a decidedly Solomonic king. As David Pratt has noted, the reference within the acrostics to sight and its implicit emphasis on the impermanence of worldly wealth has echoes in several other Alfredian artefacts. 35 34 It should also be noted that while all three of these earlier instances of arcs astrifera occur within hexameter verses, it is only in the Aldhelmian line that we find either arcs or astrifera occupying the same part of the hexameter as in the Alfredian acrostic. As in the Alfredian acrostic, astrifera in Aldhelm's verse is in the ablative and it occupies the entirety of the second foot and the arsis of the third foot. In the use of astrifera, the Alfredian poet may, therefore, have been enacting an instance of 'lexical localization'. biography of the king, meanwhile, Asser directly compares Alfred to Solomon, 37 while in the preface to the Old English Pastoral Care, the king's lament concerning the state of learning in England perpetuates this same model of the king as a lover of wisdom. 38 Further parallels can be drawn in terms of the emphasis on Alfred's moral leadership. In the second acrostic, the poet makes a fleeting reference to Alfred as a teacher with the phrase 'recte doces' ('rightly you teach'). In the first acrostic, the poet stresses the king's exceptional status on a much grander scale, by establishing a relationship between Alfred and Christ. We see this simply in the fact that Christ is addressed in a poem that is flanked by the name 'Alfred' and with the suggestion that Christ will save Alfred on Judgement Day; yet more profoundly, the poet also appears to elevate their relationship to that of two comparable figures. This is done through the suspension of the name of the addressee, Christ, until the sixth line of the poem. Up to this point, it is unclear quite who the judge (arbiter) or he who teaches (docere) isand this could well be intentional, since these are both roles that Alfred inhabits in a variety of other contemporary artefacts. For instance, prescriptive and descriptive accounts of Alfredian kingshiprepresented by the first royal ordo, with which Alfred was consecrated, and by Asser's biographyplace great emphasis on the king as a just judge; 39 the prose preface to Old English Pastoral Care, meanwhile, positions Alfred as a spiritual guide and teacher. 40 Ultimately, however, the role to which the first acrostic may well be alluding is that of God's representative on earth, of Alfred as an earthly Christ. Both J.M. Wallace-Hadrill and Richard Abels have argued for such a Christological imagining of kingship in Alfred's law codes and the Old English Pastoral Care, 41 and it is perhaps also present in the iconography of the Alfred Jewel. 42 Such Solomonic and Christological meditations on kingship are not unique to late ninth-century Wessex, but the frequency with which they appear in contemporary material suggests that the composer of the acrostics was familiar with the ideas being developed at and emanating from the West Saxon royal court. With this thematic dimension, however, and with the aforementioned literary and lexical hints of influence, the key question must be: which, if any, of these sources represent intentional allusions? Any answer relies to a degree on intuition; we can but weigh up the likelihood of intentionality against the factors of how easily identifiable a source would have been and what function an intentional allusion may have served. For instance, I believe that the fundamental decision to compose a praise poem in Latin and in the form of an acrostic was a conscious act of Carolingian (and possibly Constantinian) emulationand this association is highly suggestive of the cultural capital that these verses would have possessed for their composer and subject. As to the vocabulary that we have seen so far, it seems assured, considering the fundamental importance of the Bible to medieval Christendom, that the poet was indeed seeking to refer to the biblical 'parable of the talents'; in doing so, the poet was encouraging Alfred to expend his energies wisely. The lexical echoes of works by Prudentius and Aldhelm, on the other hand, are small and inconclusive. Moreover, they do not appear to be conceptually meaningful. Instead, they are indications of the possible range of literature with which the poet was familiar and, more compellingly, they are useful case studies for considering the compositional technique and priorities of the poet. Finally, as to the thematic parallels with other Alfredian material, we see that the poet was embracing and replicating visions of kingship that contemporaries (not least, the king himself) were articulating in other mediastrikingly, for the most part in another language (Old English). Such are the frequency and prominence of these themes within the acrostics that it is highly likely that the poet was quite aware of their poignancy in an Alfredian milieu. In turn, these thematic strands indicate that the primary context in which these verses were to be consumed acted as a source of influence in their composition; there was, in other words, a dynamic relationship between poet and audience.

The Sibylline acrostic
These varying sources of influence set the scene for a crucial yet hitherto unrecognized textual model for understanding the first of the Alfredian acrosticsa model that had a decisive impact on the structure, themes and vocabulary that the poet chose to employ. This is the 'Sibylline acrostic', a poetic tradition with a long and rich history, to which the first seven lines in praise of Alfred represent a distinct Anglo-Saxon contribution.
The Sibyls were a group of ancient Greek pagan prophetesses and a source of enduring fascination for ancient and medieval authors. 43 References to various Sibyls can be found, for instance, in the writings of Plato, Cicero, Varro, Virgil, Augustine of Hippo and Isidore of Seville. Interest in these prophetesses was sustained largely thanks to their prediction of the birth of Christ and of his second coming on Judgement Day. The source for much of the Sibylline tradition is the Oracula Sibyllina, a set of Greek hexameters divided into several books, which included in the eighth book a thirty-four line acrostic that described in dramatic detail the return of Christ and the destruction of the world. 44 This Greek poem was translated on numerous occasions into Latin, most notably by Augustine of Hippo, who included a translation within his De ciuitate Dei thatunlike some other renderingssought to retain the acrostic hexametric form. 45 Augustine's poem was evidently popular, being incorporated into several later works, including Quodvultdeus' Sermo contra Iudaeos, paganos et Arianos, the Homilary of Paul the Deacon and Hrabanus Maurus' De uniuerso; it would also be transmitted as an independent text. The Sibylline traditionand more specifically, the Sibylline acrosticwould find application in a variety of liturgical, theological, pedagogical and political contexts throughout the medieval period, attesting to the fundamental importance of eschatological and Christological thought to many medieval minds.
That the composition of the first Alfredian acrostic was inspired by the Sibylline tradition is suggested by a number of points. Most fundamentally, we are dealing with a description of Judgement Day set within the framework of a hexametric acrostic. In addition, Christ is prominent in both the Alfredian and the Sibylline texts, with each poem telling us in its second verse that he ('the king') will return from heaven. 46 In both the Oracula Sibyllina and Augustine's translation, Christ's name is spelt out in the acrostic; the Alfredian poet, on the other hand, names Alfred within its acrostic and telestich. This, as I have already noted, appears to imply a Christological vision of West Saxon kingshipa point that is also suggested by the fact that at the opening of the Alfredian acrostic the addressee is first named simply as an arbiter; similar emphasis on judgement is stressed at the beginning of the Sibylline acrostic. Indeed, here and elsewhere in the poem, comparison with Augustine's Latin rendering is particularly fruitful, as vocabulary and its relative placement within the internal structure of the poem reinforce these echoes. Although Augustine does not use the term arbiter, the opening word of his poem is iudicium; this is followed on the third and sixth lines by the verb iudicare. Elsewhere, in describing the destruction of the world both Augustine and the Alfredian poet refer to astrae, ignis and flammae; most strikingly of all, nearing the end of their poems both authors employ the term chaos. 47 Collectively, these thematic, structural and lexical parallels make for a compelling relationship with the Sibylline acrostic, particularly with Augustine's adaptation. 48 The Alfredian poet was, I believe, consciously alluding to this earlier work. 46 With regard to the Greek acrostic, it should be noted that in manuscripts the first line can be found preceded by a rubric (Lendinara, 'The Versus Sibyllae de die iudicii', p. 87 n. 12). As Collins has stressed, this rubric is not a line in the poem but is its title: Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, p. 423, n. h2. The reference to the 'king' (βασιλεύς) is on the second line following this rubric. In Augustine's translation, the reference to the rex is likewise in the second verse. What, then, inspired the poet to turn to the Sibylline acrostic? Its form would have made it immediately attractive, given the aforementioned Constinantinian and Carolingian associations that Latin acrostics possessed. Its inclusion in De ciuitate Dei possibly enhanced its Carolingian aura, since Einhard had recalled that Augustine's work was a particular favourite of Charlemagne. 49 The poet was also possibly aware of earlier literature that praised or criticized kings within an eschatological discourse, such as the anonymous vision of King AEthelbald of Mercia burning in hell or Walahfrid Strabo's description of Charlemagne in hell; 50 the poet was perhaps even aware of earlier political appropriations of the Sibylline tradition in such a vein. 51 Indeed, in this respect, the penultimate line of the Sibylline acrostic is particularly significant, stating as it was rendered by Augustine that 'et coram hic Domino reges sistentur ad unum' ('and here all kings will be caused to stand in the presence of the Lord'). The Alfredian text suggests this same sentiment, telling Alfred (likewise in the penultimate verse) that he will be saved. By doing so, the poet transformed what was originally a prophetic warning into a backdrop for the ultimate form of kingly praise -Christ's approval of Alfred as a man and king.
The appeal of the Sibylline acrostic would no doubt have been strengthened by the fact that the poet could have expected at least some within the West Saxon royal circle to recognize the allusion. Here we should note the abundance of evidence for knowledge of the Sibylline acrosticand the Sibylline tradition more generallyin neighbouring ninth-century Francia. Augustine's De ciuitate Dei was well known to many scholars there, 52 and knowledge of the Sibyls would have been supplemented by their discussion in such texts as Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae and Hrabanus Maurus' De uniuerso (which, as I have already noted, includes Augustine's acrostic). By the end of the century, the Augustinian acrostic had even been set to 49  music. 53 The evidence for knowledge of the Sibyls in Alfredian England is far thinner, despite the fact that an unusually large number of versions of the Sibylline acrostic survive in manuscripts with Anglo-Saxon provenances. 54 We have a contemporary incomplete copy of Isidore's Etymologiae, the script of which suggests that it was produced within the sphere of influence of the West Saxon royal court. 55 Within the list of possible sources available to the authors of the Old English Soliloquies and the Old English Orosius, meanwhile, we find both Isidore's Etymologiae and Augustine's De ciuitate Dei. 56 These are but hints of knowledge, yet the wealth of evidence from contemporary Francia alone is a good indicator that at least some individuals at Alfred's court would have been familiar with the Sibylline tradition. As Asser tells us, Alfred had invited numerous scholars from Francia to his court in order to enhance learning and it is highly likely that these individuals would have brought literature with them. 57 This is a point strongly supported by the range of texts found in manuscripts that were produced in England during the late ninth and early tenth centuries. 58 Not only would at least some of these scholars have been able to recognize the Sibylline allusion, but they also could have explained its significance to those around them, in what no doubt would have been a socially powerful demonstration of intellect. Perhaps the most compelling evidence, however, for contemporary Anglo-Saxon knowledge of the Sibylline tradition comes from Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 173, fols 57-83, an eighth-century Southumbrian manuscript that on its final three surviving pages contains, as the rubric reads, 'uaticiniae sibilae' ('Sibylline prophecies'), strong chord with a king who had spent much of his reign combating Viking aggressorsindividuals who are consistently referred to as pagani in the major Latin text to survive from his reign, Asser's biography of King Alfred. 65 Such a dramatic performance would, furthermore, have only been enhanced by the fact that the verses were in Latin, a language that would have been deeply familiar through liturgy and royal diplomas, but which may have struck some as a somewhat unusualand rather Carolingianmedium through which to praise the king, especially in verse. We should also not forget the manuscript setting in which the acrostics are preserved. As we have seen, the acrostics were copied out by a roughly contemporary hand into a gospelbook, though given the corruption of several aspects of the verses, this witness is unlikely to represent the original context in which the acrostics were first presented to the king. Even so, the Sibylline theme continues to be extremely apt when one remembers that the popularity of the Sibylline tradition had been in part due to, in the words of Anke Holdenried, its 'independent non-Christian confirmation of the truth of the Gospel'. 66 The placement of this acrostic within a gospelbook, therefore, enhanced both the Christological framing of Alfredian kingship and its claim concerning Alfred's personal salvation.

Conclusion
In considering the sources that influenced the composition of the Alfredian acrostics, we gain a deeper understanding of how and why these verses were composed; by understanding the network of cultural references and historical circumstances in which the poet wrote, the verses begin to make more sense. As we have seen, the linguistic and literary decisions made by the poet to an extent appear to have been following Carolingian precedent, while the poet also appears to have been well attuned to the cultural output of the West Saxon royal milieu. These two influences are wholly appropriate together, given the considerable evidence elsewhere that many of the intellectual interests present in late ninth-century England were inspired by Carolingian developments; one might even say that one of these interests was the Carolingians themselves. While the adoption of the Latin acrostic for kingly praise was, therefore, entirely in keeping with the cultural interests of the Alfredian court, both the form and language of these verses were, nevertheless, unusual in a late ninth-century Anglo-Saxon contextand the poet no doubt would have been aware of the exceptionality of such literature, which served only to enhance the status and value of the acrostics.
The source criticism that this discussion has undertaken does not allow us to reveal the identity of the poet, but the findings do allow us to see the imprint of authorial learning. Providing clues as to the education of the poet, we must then assess which, if any, of these pieces of evidence are likely to amount to deliberate allusion, which of these sources are likely to have enhanced the performance of the text, and which are most telling about the cultural aspirations of the poet and of the milieu in which these acrostics were composed and consumed. The evocation of a 'Solomonic' ideology of kingship that abounded in contemporary media would have been pleasing to a West Saxon audiencenot least, the king himselfand it points towards a poet engaged with the visions and discussions of the royal milieu. Of the influences detectable in these verses, however, the most remarkable is undoubtedly that of the Sibylline tradition. Here we find the poet imaginatively appropriating an earlier text that touches on the theme of the judgement of kings while sustaining the Latin acrostic forman earlier text, in other words, that makes great sense as a model for Carolingian-inspired kingly praise. By drawing on the Sibylline tradition, the poem brings an apocalyptic dimension to the fore in discussions of Alfred's personal qualities and rule, implicitly judging Alfred alongside all other kings from history and marking him out as worthy of salvation. It is a superlative moment of praise, a mighty statement compacted into just seven lines of verse, and a striking Anglo-Saxon contribution to medieval visions of kingship at the end of days. 67 For us, moreover, the identification of this textual model is particularly interesting for its possible implications as to how Latin verse may have been performed and consumed at the West Saxon royal court: a succinct moment of drama, a visual and metrical declaration, set in the language of the Bible, invoking ancient pagan prophecy, and placing the personal character of King Alfred within a universal narrative. As such, the Alfredian acrostics and their sources offer an important point of comparison for considering the performative qualities and cultural capital of other Latin (and vernacular) literature that may be considered in a West Saxon royal context.