Wonder, Derision, and Fear: the Uses of Doubt in Anglo-Saxon Saints’ Lives
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
WONDER, DERISION, AND FEAR: THE USES OF DOUBT IN ANGLO-SAXON SAINTS’ LIVES DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By Sarah Joy Adams, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 2007 Dissertation Committee: Approved by: Professor Christopher Jones, Adviser Professor Richard Green Professor Leslie Lockett Adviser English Graduate Program ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the narrative depiction and uses of incidents of doubt in Anglo-Saxon hagiography. Considered against Michael Goodich’s findings about the hagiographic use of doubt in the later Middle Ages, Anglo-Saxon hagiography shows a much wider range both in the ways doubt is depicted and the purposes for which it is deployed. Anglo-Saxon hagiography has examples of not one, but four broad types of doubt: questions about the saint, accusations against the saint that sow doubt in the minds of others, self-doubt on the part of the saint, and postmortem doubt which derides the saint’s sanctity and assumes the saint is powerless to act. Unlike the examples Goodich cites, not all hagiographies treat doubt as sinful. Some doubt merely results from a lack of understanding, the misleading of others, or a need for further information. When doubt is sinful it stems from a wide variety of motives. Furthermore, not all sinful doubt is punished; some hagiographers treat doubt much more leniently than others. Anglo-Saxon hagiographers had several patristic sources available to them which offered incidents upon which a theology of doubt could have been modeled, but they did not settle on one. It was not that the hagiographers of this period were uninterested in the issue of doubt. Quite the opposite. They wrote in the period leading up to the establishment of the canonization process, one in which doubts about a saint’s sanctity could not be automatically answered by pointing to the approval of Rome. When canonization became a formal process, subject to the central control of Rome, doubt was, ii in a sense, institutionalized as a part of the canonization process. Prior to this, written accounts were fast becoming essential to canonization, but were not yet part of a formal process. A written document was a way of creating and solidifying the memory of the saint so that the memory (and hence the veneration) of a saint would not be lost to forgetfulness or to the doubts of others. To write doubt was, to one degree or another, to risk writing against the cult’s success because it introduced into the text the very thing the text was intended to allay. Considered against their historic contexts, the moments in which hagiographers chose to use doubt and the ways in which they chose to portray it show a high correspondence between the concerns, agendas and pressures under which the hagiographer wrote and the way in which doubt is treated in the hagiography. Several hagiographers introduce or reproduce doubting incidents in ways which address threats to the cult of their saint. Other hagiographers, Bede and Ælfric, use incidents of doubt to model virtues or characteristics which they wish to spread through the English people. This reminds us that, despite hagiography’s investment in the universal and eternal, each hagiography was still directly bound to the concerns and issues of the time and place in which it was written. Those hagiographers who take the narrative risk of using doubt reveal those pressures and concerns under which they wrote. iii Dedicated to my parents, Regina Moore Adams and Philip Joseph Adams Thank you. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my adviser, Dr. Christopher Jones, and the other members of my committee, Dr. Richard Firth Green and Dr. Leslie Lockett, for their intellectual support and their patience in correcting my stylistic and translation errors. I am eternally grateful to Emily Leverett for her unflagging personal support, along with the other members of the Stauf’s Coffee House dissertation group, Henry Griffy, Andrew Vogel, and Richard Raider. If not for their pragmatic advice, insightful critiques, and good humor, this dissertation would not have been written. I am also thankful to Jason Corner and Christopher Manion for their encouragement and advice over many years. I also wish to thank the many members of Grace Presbyterian Church who provided sympathetic ears and prayers. Chief among them are Hazel and Bill Kessler, Jason Cecil, Nancy Frailey, Becky and Michael Larson, and Leslie Schutz, who also proofread the final draft of this work. Finally, I wish to thank my brothers, John Adams, Seth Adams, and Daniel Adams, for their kind encouragement via phone and email. v VITA June 1, 1976...................................................Born - Philadelphia, PA 2001...............................................................M.A., English, The Ohio State University 1998...............................................................BA, Comparative Literature, Case Western Reserve University 2007...............................................................Adjunct Faculty, English Department, Ohio State University 2006-2007......................................................Adjunct Faculty, Germanic Languages and Literature Department, Ohio State University 2006-2007 ...................................................Adjunct Faculty, English Department, Ohio Dominican University 2006 ..............................................................Secretary, Ohio Department of Education 2004-2005......................................................Administrative Assistant, Ohio State University Rhetoric, Composition and Literacy Program 2000-2005 ....................................................Graduate Teaching Assistant, English Department, Ohio State University FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract................................................................................................................................ii Dedication...........................................................................................................................iv Acknowledgments................................................................................................................v Vita......................................................................................................................................vi Abbreviations....................................................................................................................viii Chapters: 1. Introduction: Why Doubt?......................................................................................1 2. Questions: Are You a Saint?.................................................................................39 3. Accusations: He’s No Saint!...............................................................................118 4. Self-Doubt: I’m Not That Holy..........................................................................179 5. Postmortem Derision: He Wasn’t That Holy......................................................246 6. Conclusion...........................................................................................................298 Bibliography....................................................................................................................301 vii ABBREVIATIONS CH I Ælfric, The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church, The First Part, Containing the Sermones Catholici, or Homilies of Ælfric Beowulf Howell D. Chickering, ed. and trans., Beowulf: A Dual-language Edition HE Bede, Historia ecclesiastica Historia Anonymous, Historia de Sancto Cuthberto Libellus Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis, ecclesie LS Skeat, Ælfric’s Lives of the Saints MC Anonymous, Capitula de miraculis et translationibus Sancti Cuthberti MO Eadmer, Miracula Sancti Oswaldi OEG Anonymous, Old English Life of Guthlac VA Eadmer, Vita Anselmi VÆ(W) Wulfstan of Winchester, Vita Sancti Æthelwoldi VÆ(Æ) Ælfric, Vita Sancti Æthelwoldi VCA Anonymous, Vita Sancti Cuthberti VC(Æ) Ælfric, Vita Sancti Cuthberti, Catholic Homilies II VCM Bede, Vita Sancti Cuthberti metrica VCP Bede, Vita Sancti Cuthberti prosaica VD(B) B., Vita Sancti Dunstani viii VD(E) Eadmer, Vita Sancti Dunstani VD(O) Osbern, Vita Sancti Dunstani VD(W) William of Malmesbury, Vita Dunstani VG Felix, Vita Sancti Guthlaci VO(Æ) Ælfric, Vita Sancti Oswaldi VO(B) Byrhtferth, Vita Oswaldi archiepiscopi Eboracensis VOdonis Eadmer, Vita Sancti Odonis VW(W) William of Malmesbury, Vita Wulfstani Latin quotations from the Bible are taken from Biblia sacra vulgata , found at <http://www.drbo.org/lvb>. Where the specific Latin wording of a Biblical story is not at issue, the reader is referred to the Online Douay-Rheims Bible found at <http://www.scriptours.com/bible/>. In quotations from Latin sources, I have substituted v for consonantal u throughout. ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: WHY DOUBT? This dissertation examines the ways in which Anglo-Saxon hagiographies narrate incidents of doubt directed at a saint and the ways in which these incidents are used to further the hagiographies’ purposes. Incidents of doubt violate a basic hagiographic paradigm by admitting into the narrative, however briefly or carefully, the possibility that the saint might not be self-evidently holy and, worse, that he might not be holy at all. As Barbara Yorke, among others, has pointed out, “one of [hagiographies’] main functions was to promote the cult.” 1 This