The Liminality of the Illiterate “Reader” in Ælfric of Eynsham’s The

Passion of St. Cecilia

The Anglo-Saxons shared the medieval view that the act of reading

brought one closer to God. Ælfric makes explicit the extreme importance

of reading to spiritual elevation by virtually conflating an act of

literacy with baptism in his account of Valerian’s conversion in The

Passion of Saint Cecilia, this strong connection also emphasized by a

Latin analog. Medieval people also believed, however, that even

illiterate individuals could gain spiritual benefit from unmediated

engagement with manuscripts, specifically through apprehension of the

material properties of the text. The two versions of the legend provide

for this possibility, as well, in the person of Tiburtius, Valerian’s

heathen brother who cannot see a pair of divinely-couriered crowns from

Paradise, but can smell them—his appreciation of their divine scents

putting him on a trajectory to conversion and subsequent martyrdom with

Valerian. Ælfric particularly casts his Tiburtius as an illiterate

“reader” by subtly presenting the crowns as symbolic texts.