A vernacular genre? Latin and the early English laws

Abstract

ABSTRACT Anglo-Saxon legislation was for the most part written in the vernacular. However, the seventh and eighth centuries may have been more multilingual than the later period. It appears that some of the earliest texts were based closely on Latin sources and that some may even have been composed in Latin. This early multilingualism has been obscured, partly because our view of the period has been shaped by King Alfred’s later promotion of Old English as the sole language of royal law. The practice of vernacular law-writing was not necessarily a feature of the whole Anglo-Saxon period and may only have been firmly established in the late ninth century.