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University of Groningen the Apocryphal Acts of John Bremmer University of Groningen The Apocryphal Acts Of John Bremmer, Jan N. IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below. Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Publication date: 1995 Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database Citation for published version (APA): Bremmer, J. N. (1995). The Apocryphal Acts Of John. s.n. Copyright Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum. Download date: 27-09-2021 X. The reception of the Acts of John in Anglo-Saxon England ROLF H. BREMMER JR Events from the Acts of John have been known to Anglo-Saxon theologians in one way or another from fairly soon after the introduction of Christianity into England around 600.' Almost simultaneously, missionary activities were launched from Rome and Ireland. St Augustine was sent by Pope Gregory the Great and arrived in Kent in 597. St Aidan landed in Iona early in the se- venth century, and from there he spread the faith and ecclesiastical customs as shaped by a Celtic frame of mind and a century-long isolation from developments on the Continent. The two traditions clashed in the middle of the seventh century and the famous Synod of Whitby (664) settled the controversies in favour of Rome. This outcome led to a withdrawal of Irish ecclesiastics from England with quite a few followers. However, their spiritual legacy proved of tremendous importance. The Anglo-Saxon Christian literature, whether vernacular or Latin, is intricately linked up with Irish works or echoes thereof.' Particularly, the Irish taste for the apocryphal and the fantastic found a fertile soil among Anglo-Saxon theologian^.^ 1 Anglo-Saxon England is the term for England from the invasion and settlements of Germanic tribes in the course of the fifth century to one generation after the Norman Conquest of 1066. 2 For a concise survey, see M. Lapidge, 'The Anglo-Latin Back- ground', in S.B. Greenfield and D.G. Calder, A New Critical Histoiy of Old English Literature (New York, 1986) 5-37. 3 A recent survey: C.D. Wright, The Irish Tradition in Old English Literature (Cambridge, 1993). 184 ACTS OF JOHN IN ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND This is not to say that the Acta. Johannis was introduced in England by Irish monks, although the possibility should not be dismissed off-hand. The first Anglo-Saxon to show knowledge of incidents from John's extra-biblical adventures is Aldhelm (c. 640- 709), who received his education in the monastery of Malmesbury from Maildhub, its Irish founder. Intrigued by the new impulses of learning that were being given to the school of Canterbury, he moved to the capital of Kent about 670. Theodore of Tarsus and Hadrian, appointed by the Pope in 669 as archbishop of Canterbury and abbot of its monastery of SS Paul and Peter, in an effort to reorganize the Anglo-Saxon church, had brought an impressive amount of books with them, including a number of Greek texts. To what extent Greek was read by Anglo-Saxon monks is hard to assess, but some knowledge was current for some time.4 Aldhelm, then, included several events from the Acts in the prose version of his De Virginitate: John's miraculously restoring of the crushed precious stones to their former state, his bringing an unnamed matron - the widow Drusiana - back to life, and his accepting the challenge to drink poison and subsequent resur- rection of two victims of the poison.' Several sources could have been used by Aldhelm for his information. The apocryphal life of St John became first known in the West in a collection of lives translated from Greek in the sixth century in Gaul, known as Pseudo-Abdias' Historiae Apo~tolicae.~No manuscripts of this 4 Cf. B. Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (eds and transls), Bede's Eccle- siastical History of the English People (Oxford, 199 1 ; impr. edn.) IV.2. It is relevant to mention this fact, for it leaves a possibility for the Acta Johannis to have been known in its original Greek version ascribed to Abdias, although I do not think this very likely. 5 Cf. De Virginitate, ed. R. Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera Omnia (Berlin, 1919) 254115-17, 254117-25513 and 25513-8. For a translation of Ald- helm's text, see Aldhelm: The Prose Works, trsl. and ed. M. Lapidge and M. Herren (Cambridge and Totowa, NJ, 1979) 80f. 6 J.A. Fabricius (ed), Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti, 2 vols (Hamburg, 17 19*) 11, 402-742. ROLF H. BREMMER JR 185 work survive from Anglo-Saxon England, which reduces its claim for Aldhelm's source.' Aldhelm's contemporary, the Venerable Bede, was familiar but not very pleased with the Pseudo-Abdias.= A more likely candidate is Pseudo-Mellitus' Passio Johanni~,~ which was certainly known in Anglo-Saxon ~n~1and.I'As the order of events is not synchronous with those in the Pseudo-Mel- litus," Aldhelm must have used another source, perhaps Isidore of Seville's De Ortu et Obitu Patrum.I2 Despite Aldhelm's im- mense popularity, no one after him seemed to have been interested in using the legendary exploits of St John for a long time, at least if we rely on manuscript evidence. Renewed interest in the apocryphal life of St John appears during the Benedictine Revival, a movement which had started in Flanders and Northern France and reached England in the middle 7 Cf. F.M. Biggs, T.D. Hill, P.E. Szarmach (eds), Sources of Anglo- Saxon Literary Culture. A Trial Version (Binghampton, NY, 1990) 5 If, s.v. Ps Abdias (C.D. Wright). However, a manuscript of the Pseudo- Abdias, produced in an Anglo-Saxon monastery on the Continent in the eighth century, survives in the University Library of Wiirzburg, cf. J.E. Cross, 'Cynewulf s Tradition about the Apostles in Fates of the Apos- tles', Anglo-Saxon England 8 (1979) 163-75, esp. 166. 8 Bedae Venerabilis, Expositio Actuum Apostolorum et Retractio, ed. M.L.W. Laistner (Cambridge, MA, 1939) Retractio 1.13195-6 and VIII.11 120., cf. Cross, 'Cynewulf s Tradition', 165 n.3. 9 Edited in Patrologia Graeca 5, cols 1241-50. The author's name also occurs as Melitus and Miletus. 10 See Biggs et al., Sources, 57, s.v. Ps Mellitus (C.D. Wright), a very usehl survey. 11 Aldhelm's passages correspond to the contents (not the text) of Ps Mellitus' Passio Johannis, 1242120-1243122, 1241132-1242120, and 1247138- 124916. 12 PL 83, ch. 72, cols. 151-2, as suggested by Lapidge and Herren, Aldhelm: The Prose Works, 176, but Aldhelm gives details which are not to be found in isidore's text. Cross, 'Cynewulf s Tradition', 165, sug- gests the Pseudo-Mellitus as Aldhelm's source, which for reasons of narrative order seems unlikely. Neither work therefore can be Aldhelm's immediate source. 186 ACTS OF JOHN lN ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND of the tenth century. A strong concem for religious instruction becomes clear from cycles of homilies that are linked with this movement. Two Latin homiliaries from the turn of the millennium survive that both include a version of the Passio Johannis, which in turn have served as the source for a vernacular sermon by Elfric (c. 955-1017?), abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Eynsham near Oxford. Both Pseudo-Abdias' and Pseudo-Mellitus' accounts of St John were used for two sermons (items 9 and 10) in an eleventh century collection of Latin homilies preserved in Cambridge. Quite a few vernacular sermons go back to items included in this cycle (though not necessarily this manuscript), and thus testify to its popularity. The collection itself may have been compiled either in the British Isles or on the Continent, probably sometime during the ninth century.I3 Item 9, preceded and concluded by homiletic matter, gives the opening parts of the Ps Mellitus text which deals with the resurrection of Drusiana and the conversion of Graton and his two pupils (PG 5, 1241117-1243122). Item 10 treats of John's assumption, and, besides a passage taken from the Mellitus (12491- 27-39), is mainly taken from the Pseudo-Abdias with some omissions and adaptations. l4 Another witness to the Mellitus text is found in the so-called Cotton-Corpus legendary, a collection of Latin hagiographical texts covering some 160 feasts of the ecclesiastical year, and thus the largest representative of its kind. The legendary has been pre- served in five manuscripts, though not always complete nor always in the same order and recension. Most of these manuscripts date from between 1060 to 1150175, but the collection must have been known in England before 1000, as the extensive use shows that Elfric made of it for his cycle of Old English Catholic Homilies. Elfric is one of the most prominent representatives of the Benedictine Revival in England and exerted himself to reach the 13 On these matters, cf.
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