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2013–2014 VOLUME 1 ISSUE 9 1 ISSUE VOLUME UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE COLLEGE OF ARTS & LETTERS ARTS OF COLLEGE JOURNAL OF UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL OF UNDERGRADUATE

JOURNAL OF UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH 2013–2014

Allison Whitlock Scallen Village: a Medieval The Archaeology of Willingham, Cambridgeshire AVAILABLE ONLINE AVAILABLE Michael Mercurio Michael Military and Christian ServiceTertullian Michael Fronk Michael Grendel: Hroðgar’s of Kingdom v. TheBeowulf Legal Customs Mind vs.Mind Body: Consciousness The Compositionof Contemporaryin Narrative Jacqueline Patz IN THIS JOURNAL THIS IN JOURNAL OF UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH

UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME COLLEGE OF ARTS & LETTERS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Journal of Undergraduate Research Editorial Board extends its thanks to Nicholas Russo, Assistant Dean in the College of Arts and Letters, for his generous and sage guidance this year. The Office of the Dean in the College of Arts and Letters continues to guarantee its support of the Journal, which enables the members of our student board to produce a thoroughly professional publication each year and to strengthen their own research and writing by reviewing the college’s best undergraduate projects. We also thank John McGreevy, Dean of the College, and James Brock- mole, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies, who continue to enliven the thesis culture among Notre Dame’s liberal arts students and strive to make the Journal an integral part of that culture. Their leadership makes us confident for the future of the Journal’s quality of content. We thank Ray Mann and Kelly Luna of Service Printers, Inc. of Elkhart, Indiana, who have provided the layout and print production services necessary for a timely publication. Finally, we would like to thank Assistant Deans Joseph Stanfiel and Collin Meissner for their continued encouragement of and involve- ment with the Journal. The Journal draws its material exclusively from undergraduate research in the College of Arts and Letters, and we owe our quality content to the students who submitted their work for consideration. The number of papers we reviewed and the quality of submissions we received demonstrates the academic seriousness and passion of the Arts and Letters undergraduates and their professors. Perhaps most importantly, it is the Journal’s readership that makes this publication possible and meaningful. Thus, we also thank you for picking up our 2013-2014 issue. We hope you take pleasure in the diversity of this year’s publication and pass the Journal along to others.

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EDITORIAL BOARD 2013–2014

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Aubrey Butts ‘14 American Studies, English Meghan Thomassen ‘14 English, Philosophy, Literature

EDITORIAL BOARD

Bianca Almada ‘16 English, Spanish, Journalism Marissa Bowman ‘16 Psychology, International Economics, German Meg Cahill ‘14 Political Science, Public Service Maria Do ‘16 American Studies, History Bridget Doyle ‘16 American Studies, Business- Economics, Irish Kaitlyn Egan ‘14 Psychology, Italian Elise Gruneisen ‘16 English, Business, Economics Kimberly Halstead ‘14 English, Anthropology, Creative Writing Theodora Hannan ‘14 History Sian Kresse ‘14 English, Anthropology Brian Lach ‘16 Business, Film Erin Portman ‘15 Program of Liberal Studies, French, Irish Daniel Sehlhorst ‘16 Political Science, Economics Justin Sena ‘14 Political Science, Theology, Medieval Studies Andrew Spas ‘15 Political Science, Economics John Stallings ‘14 Economics iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

Jacqueline Patz...... 2 “Mind vs. Body: The Composition of Consciousness in Contemporary Narrative”

Michael Fronk...... 32 “Beowulf v. Grendel: The Legal Customs of Hroðgar’s Kingdom”

Michael Mercurio ...... 58 “Tertullian and Christian Military Service”

ONLINE FEATURE

Allison Whitlock Scallen...... 92 “The Archaeology of a Medieval Village: Willingham, Cambridgeshire”

Journal of Undergraduate Research

FROM THE DESK OF THE EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

The Journal this year was blessed with a bounty of great editors who expedited our selection process with alacrity and ease. The evenings spent debat- ing the virtues of submissions over Chinese food seemed less like work and more like a group of intellectually curious friends having a dinner party — in O’Shaughnessy Hall. This spring we learned much about Old English law and medieval villages, heard the story of Tertullian and his writings on the role of Christians in the military, and discussed the divide (if any) between the mind and the body. Monday nights became nights of engagement, fellowship, good food, and hard work. We hope that you will also be able to share in the passion we have for these outstanding papers. Each member contributed their knowledge and critical eye to select the best papers submitted to our Journal. In an effort to involve everyone meaning- fully, we deferred to the choices of the board for paper selection. They then took on the task of editing the chosen papers for publication. The papers featured here represent a diverse set of research topics and research methods from the College of Arts and Letters. We believe that they are informative, well-composed, and meaningful contributions to their different academic areas. However, we, the editors-in-chief, admit that we deferred to our own formatting preferences when preparing the papers for publication. We hope this year’s Journal represents the range of academic minds and passions emerging from Notre Dame. The Journal means to support the thesis culture of the College of Arts and Letters, and we invite you, our readers, to lend your continued support as well by engaging with these papers and perhaps writing and submitting a thesis of your own.

Thank you, Aubrey Butts and Meghan Thomassen

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JACQUELINE PATZ graduated in 2013 with a degree in the Program of Liberal Studies and Honors English. Her PLS-nurtured love of philosophy and literature fused in Professor Kate Marshall’s “Novels By Aliens” course where she became interested in the literary representation of consciousness. Jacqueline currently works at Penguin Random House in New York City.

2 Mind vs. Body: The Composition of Consciousness in Contemporary Narrative

Mind vs. Body: The Composition of Consciousness in Contemporary Narrative

BY JACQUELINE PATZ

INTRODUCTION For many centuries, thinkers have grappled with the question of consciousness: from where does it arise, how can it be defined, and are both the mind and the body necessary to generate consciousness? From Plato to Descartes to Wil- liam James, many have engaged in philosophical dialogue in attempts to explain the self, the soul, and the relationship between the mind and the body. Today, modern neurology lays claim to scientific attempts to define consciousness. Even so, something mysterious remains about consciousness that transcends the firing of neurons and the division of brain lobes. There is an intangible element of consciousness, and many people still question the relationship between the mind and the body. Is it one’s mind that makes a person a conscious “self”? Or does the material body contribute to consciousness as well? I argue that contemporary literature may be understood as entering into the philosophical dialogue on consciousness. Many critics read contemporary literature either as responding to or through the lens of modern science. Such an interpretation, however, risks reducing contemporary literature to commenting only on science and the successes and failings of the brain. Equating the self and consciousness with the brain risks discounting philosophical and social influences on the construction of narrative. Conversely, analyzing contemporary literature within the context of philosophical views of consciousness can produce an impres- sion of how modern writers conceptualize the relationship between the mind and the body. Regardless of neurology’s claims, literature also provides insight into the pragmatic views society constructs of consciousness. I argue that contemporary

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narrative requires interplay between the mind and the body, thus commenting on the composition of consciousness. It does so through intentionally constructing narrators whose consciousnesses are somehow “wrong” due to an imbalance of the mind and the body. Literature thus asks what elements are necessary to create a character that is believably human, and how far can those elements be stretched and distorted before humanity is lost? Before undertaking my examination of consciousness in contemporary literature, it is necessary first to ground my discussion within the broader arc of literary representations of consciousness. Specifically, I look to realism as setting a precedent for the examination of consciousness through narrative. I draw a contrast between realism’s attempt to create an accurate portrayal of consciousness and contemporary literature’s tactic of presenting fractured forms of consciousness to highlight what key elements must not be absent from a healthily formed consciousness. Having oriented the representation of consciousness within literary tradition, I then similarly seek to situate the literary discussion in relation to philosophical and scientific treatments of consciousness. I argue that all three disciplines offer interwoven insights into the shared topic of discussion. Having laid the groundwork for my literary analysis, I finally look to two different groupings of contemporary literature for their contributions to the philosophical dialogue on consciousness. These texts demonstrate the ability of narrative to comment on the function of the mind and the body in consciousness. The first group deals with literature whose narrators’ sources of consciousness come almost entirely from the mind with little outside check from the body. These novels are Enduring Love by Ian McEwan and Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen. Narrators within the second group of literature possess consciousness that is almost entirely defined by the body in the absence of mental evaluation and connection. These novels areRemainder by Tom McCarthy and The Elementary Particlesby Michel Houellebecq. All four novels received critical attention and helped to drive narrative development. They are important cogs in the postmodern literary machine, and I allow these novels to stand in as representatives for experimentation within contemporary narrative as a whole. Both groups present portraits of consciousness that are unhealthy or strange, which suggests that both the mind and the body must contribute to a successful construction of consciousness.

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I. THE NEURONOVEL VS. REALISM Increasingly, critics of contemporary literature are using science as a way of reading texts. In particular, many critics use science of the brain and psychology to provide insight into the function and construction of narrative. The implications of such a reading on the relationship between literature and science are significant. Contemporary literature may begin to be understood not only as representing consciousness but also as shaping the way in which society views and understands consciousness. Literature thus crosses over into scientific territory as it helps to structure and develop modern consciousness. At the same time, science will begin to shape the way in which writers believe they can accurately construct narrative. Fiction is one genre through which science minded writers can test scientific views of consciousness and society through the crafting of narrative voice. One contemporary critic who relates literature to science is Lisa Zun- shine. Zunshine, an English professor and literary critic, speaks of “Theory of Mind” — or mind reading — as the way in which humans attempt to explain the behaviors of others. This theory is one attempt to explain the way in which consciousness functions. Zunshine explains that Theory of Mind is the process through which humans use the thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and desires of others to attribute states of mind to each person (Zunshine 6). These states of mind not only help explain the behavior of others, but they also help humans navigate social interactions. Zunshine claims, “Our ability to interpret the behavior of people in terms of their underlying states of mind seems to be such an integral part of what we are as human beings” (Zunshine 7). She argues that Theory of Mind is important for literature because fictional interpretation requires mind reading. Zunshine comes to this conclusion through the use of science, specifically, by studying autistic individuals and their ability to read literature. Zunshine explains that autism is a disorder that exists across a wide spectrum. The varying degrees of autism correspond to the extent to which an autistic person is able to perform Theory of Mind analysis, which in turn affects his or her ability to enjoy or understand fiction. Specifically, Zunshine claims, “Fiction presents a challenge to people with autism because in many ways it calls for the same kind of mind-reading—that is, the inference of the mental state from the behavior—that is necessary in regular human communication” (Zunshine 9). This scientific tenet is important for literature. Zunshine claims that if autistic individuals do not engage in spontaneous pretense because they lack access

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to their own mental states and the mental states of others, then non-autistic readers enjoy fiction because they are able to “try on” various mental states, distinct from their own. Zunshine concludes that the pleasure derived from literature depends upon the human ability to view a character — a construction of emotions and thoughts that we know is fictional — as a real person whose mind can be read and actions can be predicted (Zunshine 10). This suggests that literature is indeed an attempt to represent consciousness, and the way in which consciousness is constructed allows for readers to interact with and attribute life to a character. Zunshine argues that this ability to make lifeless characters come alive through the construction of consciousness has shaped the current existence of literature. Because of this, Zunshine views the relationship between science and literature as consisting primarily of the former influencing the latter. On the other hand, Zunshine also posits the inverse, or that literature influences science to the extent that literature and its representations of consciousness may help construct people’s conceptions of mental states. Literature’s imaginary approximations of human interaction influence the mental state and perceptions of the reader, perhaps even changing the way in which the reader interacts in real life. Furthermore, Zun- shine says that even literary misinterpretation is satisfying, as fiction still allows minds a rich stimulation through the cognitive adaptations of Theory of Mind. In this view, literature seems to be used as a tool through which Theory of Mind further understands its own construction and that of others by using narrative to uncover differences. Another critic who deals with science and the contemporary novel is Mar- co Roth, co-founder of the literary magazine n+1. He claims that what was once referred to as the psychological novel or novel of consciousness has morphed into the neurological novel, “Wherein the mind becomes the brain” (Roth). He cites several examples of works of literary fiction that feature specific mental diseases and syndromes within the narration. It is his belief that writers of such novels seek inspiration through the scientific field of neurology, following the trend of the 1990s to reject psychoanalysis and equate the mind and brain. Roth argues that the neurological novel moves away from “environmental and relational theories of personality back to the studies of brains themselves, as the source of who we are” (Roth). In this view, consciousness is regarded as scientifically constructed, and the novel is an attempt to depict the workings — and failings — of the brain. To construct that consciousness, literature necessarily must rely upon science rather than

6 Mind vs. Body: The Composition of Consciousness in Contemporary Narrative the old “informal psychological explorations of novelists” (Roth). As an example of such a neurological novel, Roth turns to Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love, a text I myself will examine in the third section. According to Roth, “In 1997, McEwan was still the sort of writer to challenge somewhat the correctness of Joe’s [the narrator] neurological reductionism” (Roth). Roth explains that McEwan’s later novels, particularly Saturday (2005), take the side of neurology as the true explanation for human behavior, again narrating through the psyche of a science-centered man. According to Roth, “In McEwan’s work, the neurologically abnormal are foils more than actual characters; their main purpose is to be defeated by normals of the better sort” (Roth). If Roth is correct, McEwan’s novels explicitly use science as the guide for construction of consciousness. His characters analyze others with science as opposed to emotion or psychological abstraction. Roth speaks of the neuronovel as attempting to merge the pathological and universal. He says, “Even as [the neuronovel] relies on something like a readerly meaning impulse — we want to be able to generalize or approximate or metaphorize the rare neurological condition into some kind of experience compatible with our own — it also baffles and frus- trates the same impulse” (Roth). It appears that there is more to the reading of consciousness than simply interpretation or simply science. What work, then, does the neuronovel do? “The aesthetic sensation a reader gets from the neuronovel is not the pleasure of finding the general in the particular,” says Roth, “but a frustra- tion born of the defeat of the metaphoric impulse … The reader has to admit to himself that his brain doesn’t work like an autistic person’s [or] a Capgras sufferer’s” (Roth). It appears that even if consciousness is simply biological, reading a novel’s representation of consciousness allows one to identify qualities in the neurology of a narrator that are different from his or her own. Roth acknowledges that science has not yet completely understood or explained consciousness, positing that writers of neuronovels must anticipate scientific discoveries, not merely respond to them. This allows for the possibility that novels may still shape readers’ conceptions of consciousness, which may in turn affect the neurology that so many believe to be the source of consciousness in the first place. I suggest that there is an alternative way in which contemporary literature may be interpreted, and that is by reading through a philosophical lens. Simply because literature deals with consciousness and its peculiarities does not necessitate a neurological background. In today’s culture, philosophy is at risk of being over-

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written by science as people turn to materialistic explanations for human existence. At the same time, the very act of composing fiction suggests a desire to better understand the human condition and what is necessary to represent consciousness. “I think therefore I am.” Descartes’ philosophical statement, meant to summarize the crux of being, may be applied to narrative as well. The literary version may look like this: A character or narrator is thinking, therefore narrative voice exists. Unlike movies, popular, non-experimental literature is still bound to the word and uses language — not images — to construct being. The existence of narrative depends upon the thinking of a narrator. The way in which that character thinks, acts and relates to others represents the way in which a particular narrative regards consciousness. In this way, literature can be said to use narrative to construct a portrait of consciousness, with the characteristics of the narrator serving as components that create such consciousness. Within my interpretation, realism is a form of literature that reflects the attempt to accurately portray consciousness. In the world of realism, not only do events need to be “believable,” but so too does the source of narrative. Whether through indirect discourse, third- person omniscient narrators, or even first person narrators, the representation of a character’s thoughts and reasoning process must strike readers and critics as accurate and plausible within realism. I will later provide examples of contemporary literature that does not wish to represent “normal” or “believable” consciousness. In a negative sense, these narrators may reveal just as much about consciousness as does realism, but they do so by drawing attentions to abnormalities within narration. Realism attempts to construct the most true to life narrative it can. To understand the way in which realism constructs consciousness, I will look to Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, a work that may be treated as representative of the genre of realism. Realism began in the mid-19th century and remained prevalent until the early-20th century. Realism still influences the construction of many works of popular fiction today, as writers attempt to create realistic historical fiction or true-to-life romances, for example.War and Peace, published in 1869, uses a third-person omniscient narrator to guide readers through the lives of quite a few characters during the years of the Napoleonic Era. The narrator has access to the characters’ consciousnesses, and there are also moments of indirect discourse wherein the narration appears to take the form, tone, and voice of a particular character.

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What is notable about this text is its dedication to depicting the reality of human experience, highlighting the similarities between functioning during war and during peace. There are three major ways in which Tolstoy accomplishes this: the epic length of the work, the characters’ confused motivations, and the characters’ difficulties interpreting the thoughts and actions of others. First, the epic length of the work attempts to reproduce the flow of time. This helps to situate consciousness within its temporal restrictions. To do so, the novel does not only narrate overtly significant events, glazing over seemingly plotless action in- between. Instead, Tolstoy spends hundreds of pages focusing on potentially trivial conversations, building up expected events and portraying the everyday existence of humans. As George Clifton Edwards explains, “[War and Peace] is a panorama, on a canvas so large as to be called stupendous, of Russia in the time of Napoleon,” and the portrayals are “accurate and marvelously full in detail” (Edwards 461). This might seem frustrating compared with novels that reproduce only significant events, cutting out any non-essential material. The effect Tolstoy’s narrative produces is to force its readers through the same experience as the novel’s characters. The readers, like the characters, must wade through superfluous conversations, waiting to see which scenes will prove important for the main plot. This calls to mind the temporal limits of consciousness, or the inability to predict the future or draw conclusions from the past and understand its implications. Conscious- ness exists within a particular time and a particular body and is bound by those circumstances. Tolstoy also uses his characters to demonstrate his conception of the way in which consciousness functions internally. Tolstoy’s narrative focuses on specific characters’ thoughts for much of the novel, and these thoughts are often linked to or prompted by external, bodily experiences. At the same time, thoughts allow characters to transcend physical situations, attributing meaning to seemingly sense- less experiences. This suggests that the narration ofWar and Peace highlights the inherently linked nature of the mind and the body, while still attempting to draw distinctions between the limits and abilities of each. An example of supremacy of the mind is the narrative’s tendency to follow intense physical experiences with deep philosophical reflection. One instance of this occurs when Prince Andrew is at war — a very physical, sense-driven experience — and he falls, wounded, and enters into an internal monologue. Andrew looks up at the sky, thinking, “How quiet, peaceful, and solemn; not at all as I

9 Journal of Undergraduate Research ran…not as we ran, shouting and fighting…All is vanity all falsehood, except that infinite sky” (Tolstoy 244). This demonstrates the limits of the body, or the point at which the mind must take over. Andrew was motivated to enter the war for glory and to distract himself from his boredom with his old life. These physical motivations initially do not include mental reasoning, save for a desire to make his circumstances somehow better. When Andrew sees the reality of war, or the physical destruction of others driven by the sensory world, he recognizes its perversion. This major revelation involves no action; in fact, Andrew is lying injured on the ground. It is only with the mind that Andrew is able to come to a realization of what is important to him — peace and truth. That cannot be found within war or within the body. Tolstoy’s narrative suggests that the mind must elevate Andrew to contemplation of the sky and of the infinite. At the same time, characters also struggle to understand the actions or truth of other people’s thoughts. This demonstrates the limits of the mind to interpret and direct the body. When Tolstoy’s characters try to extend their consciousnesses outside their own minds, they fail. For example, many originally conceive of Napoleon as a great leader, particularly Prince Andrew. It is not until after Andrew sees the failures of war and encounters Napoleon in person that he realizes, “So mean did his hero himself with his paltry vanity and joy in victory appear… Look- ing into Napoleon’s eyes Prince Andrew thought of the insignificance of greatness” (254). This is one case of many within War and Peace in which Tolstoy creates characters who struggle to perceive the distinction between the way in which others appear and the internal motivation and thoughts of those same people. This repeated emphasis forces readers to confront the notion that a person’s external representation varies from their internal truth. It also highlights the inability of one mind to be omniscient or to interpret the truth of others. In this way, Tolstoy illustrates the limits of the mind, in addition to his glorification of the mind as discussed above. Thus, Tolstoy has created a representation of consciousness as a necessary interplay of the mind and the body, both limited on their own but together forming a functioning consciousness that can interact with the world. It is possible to view realism’s representation of life as an answer to the philosophical question of the nature of the relationship between the mind and the body. Realism, like philosophy, is an attempt to determine the proper construction of consciousness. Narrative is the way in which realism tests its theories of consciousness. Contemporary literature, in which narratives are oftentimes strange and

10 Mind vs. Body: The Composition of Consciousness in Contemporary Narrative somehow unreal, can also be interpreted from a philosophical perspective concerning the connection between the mind and the body. It is first necessary, however, to consider this philosophical dialogue in order to better understand contemporary literature’s potential intervention.

II. WHERE SCIENCE MEETS PHILOSOPHY Long before the supremacy of science took hold of Western civilization, philosophy was asking many of the same questions that neurology is expected to answer today. With increasing amounts of scientific articles, books, and news stories providing commentary on the workings of the brain, many laypeople and scientists alike argue that philosophy only poses questions while science offers explanations. When it comes to any conception of the soul, the self, or even the brain, however, science cannot provide every answer. In many other instances, science may provide much more sophisticated and even correct explanations for events that philosophy previously attempted to answer. Even so, many philosophical questions first raised in antiquity remain in conversation today. Philosophy’s persistence as an academic field is itself evidence of the human desire for understanding that science cannot provide. Contemporary literature’s narrative constructions of consciousness can reasonably be understood as related to or even stemming from advancements within science. It is detrimental, however, to ignore philosophy and its age-old discussion concerning the definition of consciousness and the self. Even in scientific examinations of consciousness, neurology can determine correlation between various parts of the brain and certain thoughts or activities, but it cannot yet prove causation. This means that there is still an element of consciousness and the self that is not understood, even by science. There is value in understanding philosophy’s attempt to examine the concept of consciousness not through a scientific lens but through a metaphysical lens. The term metaphysics itself suggests topics that are outside of the typical realm of existence or scientific explanation. To provide context for the modern conception of consciousness, I will trace the development of the philosophical conversation as it progresses from ancient metaphysics according to Plato and Aristotle, to writers such as William James whose philosophical perspectives invite the contribution of scientific views to philosophical explanation. The key to a modern understanding of consciousness is to integrate science and philosophy rather than assume the two are opposed.

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Although the ancient worldview is vastly different from modern conceptions of life, many metaphysical questions that persist today can trace their origins to antiquity. For example, ancient philosophers were obsessed with the concept of change. The external world does not appear to remain constant, which could present a problem. If the world is in constant flux, then there are no true statements, and yet it is clear that much of the world continually changes: humans age, food grows rotten, the seasons change. Various philosophers found different ways to reconcile such change with the existence of a true, reliable world. Plato, for example, looked to a stark divide between the mind and the body to explain change. Plato’s most famous theory, the theory of the forms, is a way of dividing the mind/soul from the physical, material world — the part of existence that is in flux. For Plato, there are abstract forms — such as the form of beauty — that exist, and the material world in which humans live is simply a lesser reflection of those true forms. The material world, or the world of sensation, is not considered true and in fact can blind humans from truth. In his Republic, Plato uses his allegory of the cave to describe the way in which humans are enchained in the world of shadows, or the material world of sensation, and to describe the necessary, mental ascent to the world of the forms. For Plato, humans are bound by their bodies and the material world, but their minds or souls are what are true and unchanging (Plato). Aristotle, famous for opposing Plato in many areas of thought, disagreed with such a classification of the physical world. For Aristotle, the physical world is what is true. Aristotle values the senses and even attempts the beginnings of what is now called science, using sense perception to draw conclusions about the world around him. Aristotle defines the soul as the form of the body, claiming that all living things, even plants and animals, have souls. This material conception of the soul seems to elevate the body. Although Aristotle does view the mind as immaterial and therefore distinct from the body, he does not discredit the body in the way that Plato does. Whereas the body is what holds the soul back from the forms for Plato, the body and the soul are inextricably linked for Aristotle. These strains of ancient thought concerning the soul/mind and the body were picked up centuries later by Christianity. The Christian perspective on personal identity as articulated by Augustine was held by many for hundreds of years: the Theology of Resurrection. Similarly to Aristotle’s perspective, the Christian Scriptures teach that the world is a gift from God, which imbues the physical world with truth and meaning; creation is a means through which humans come to know

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God. Even so, strains of Platonism emerge as Christianity maintains that God can never be fully known in this life. Mental ascent to God finds its completion only after death. How, then, is the relationship between the mind and the body to be defined? Augustine explains the Theology of Resurrection by looking to Scripture to discover the immortal existence of mankind. Although the body dies and the soul is initially resurrected, Augustine claims that the final state of mankind in heaven includes the resurrected body as well. The immortal entity will be the same self as each living person possessed, which includes both the soul and the body. These spiritual bodies will even bear similarities to earthly bodies in that they will be made of flesh and will be heavy. For Augustine, both the mind and the body are sacred, and together they constitute the human person. In the 17th century, René Descartes became the father of dualism. Picking up on the aforementioned threads of philosophical conversation, Descartes added his voice to the clamor of classifications of consciousness. Mind/body dualism is the conception of consciousness as a division between the mind and the body. Des- cartes was the first to articulate such a literal division within the human person. It can be argued retroactively that Plato first contributed to the dualistic conceptions of the world, whereas Aristotle and Augustine may fall more on the side of connect- ing the two entities. Descartes, however, went further than any previous thinker in identifying the mind as the only source of truth. He divided the person into res extensa (extended substance) or matter/body and res inextensa (thinking substance) or mind. For Descartes, the body is but a machine that is unnecessary for the mind. Descartes’ division of the mind and body forms the basis for the intervention of contemporary literature into the philosophical dialogue on consciousness. As such, it is necessary to delve further into the development of Descartes’ ideas. In order to understand Descartes’ philosophy, the process by which he came to his ideas must be taken into consideration. This is because, whereas the previously mentioned philosophers used their lived experience to determine their views on the world, Descartes viewed the world as suspect, drawing philosophical conclusions that are not directly observed from lived experience. Specifically, Descartes’ division of the mind and the body appears to contradict lived reality, rendering the explanation of his train of thought particularly important. Descartes began his life with a strong and conventional education before abandoning “the study of letters” for “the great book of the world” (Descartes 5). As he expanded his cultural horizons, Descartes “learned not to believe anything too firmly of which

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I had been persuaded only by example and custom” (Descartes 6). This led Des- cartes to an internal examination of his own beliefs and reasoning capabilities, using a predetermined method to proceed as logically as possible. In this process, Descartes decided, “I reject as absolutely false everything in which I could imagine the least doubt,” a class of falsehood to which Descartes attributes the deception of the senses (Descartes 18). Descartes also rejected all reasoning he had held as dem- onstrations, due to the high instance of mistakes made in the reasoning of others. Descartes concluded his examination into what he knows with a bold statement: When contemplating the ideas and concepts he thought he “knew,” Descartes realized that he could not trust any of them. What then, Descartes wondered, was true? The answer is the act of thinking. Sense experience is, for Descartes, unreliable. The act of thinking and the recognition of that act, however, do not involve the senses. As such, Descartes concludes that the one thing he knows is that he exists, and he knows this because he is conscious of the fact that he is thinking. This is the origin of the famous phrase, “I think therefore I am.” Perhaps a more accurate understanding of this statement is “I am thinking, therefore I am.” Because sense experience is unreliable for Descartes, the only time one can be certain of one’s existence is during the process of thinking — an act in which there is no sensory deception involved. This conclusion illustrates the way in which Descartes believes that the mind exists and functions independently of the machinery of the body. Descartes proved further that the mind and body are separate, as he explains that the essence of the body is extension within space whereas the essence of the mind is thought. This distinction highlights the juxtaposition of the body’s materiality and the mind’s immateriality. The body, which is not immediately known to one as the mind is, leads to unreliable perceptions of secondary qualities. Fur- thermore, Descartes claimed, “The rational soul…can in no way be derived from the potentiality of matter” (Descartes 33). For Descartes, the mind and body are entirely separate, with the mind holding rationality and humanness and the body serving the same function as machinery. After Descartes, psychological evaluations of consciousness and the self began to emerge as precursors to modern neurological explanations. For example, John Locke defined man as the combination of body and the immaterial spirit or soul. As does Descartes, Locke requires a person to be a thinking and intelligent being with reason and reflection that can consider itself as itself. For Locke, for one being to be a self, there must be continuity of consciousness, or memory and

14 Mind vs. Body: The Composition of Consciousness in Contemporary Narrative thought and any gaps in memory such as a coma, drunkenness, or insanity are termed as different “selves” than the original self. Even dreams constitute a different self than when one is awake. This means that, although Locke has moved to a potentially more “scientific” evaluation of the mental definition of a self, that self is still to a certain extent independent of the body, for it is one’s mental state that defines continuity of consciousness and the self — independent of the body. At the same time, Locke never used any concept of the soul as an explanation for psychology, and his explanation of the mind as a tabula rasa or blank tablet dispels any notion of innate ideas, requiring all knowledge to be acquired from experience and sense perception. In the mid- to late-19th century, William James went a step further in disassociating any notion of a soul from the self. James defined the self as a composition of one’s spiritual, material, and social selves and pure ego. This account takes mental thoughts into consideration but also defines external relationships and material objects such as one’s clothing or possessions as part of the self. This allow- ance of the physical world to contribute to the composition of self is a precursor to the act of turning thoughts themselves into material occurrences determined by the brain. Just before James’ time, the study of phrenology took hold. Phrenology looked to different depressions and bumps on the head to explain and identify various dispositions. Although phrenology was eventually dismissed as a pseudo-science, this way of looking to the physical body to explain the self and the mind does not seem vastly separate from the materialistic use of neurology to explain the self. It appears that as philosophy struggled with questions concerning consciousness, the self, and the relationship between the mind and the body, science began to insert itself into the conversation, offering new vantage points from which to view the issue. Philosophy morphed into psychology, which morphed into hard science. Yet even today, with science established and revered as holding great ex- planatory power for human life, philosophy persists. Some even claim that the direction of scientific examination taken today arose from ontological frameworks of “brainhood,” as is the argument of Fernando Vidal, a researcher studying the relationship between the human and natural sciences, in his essay “Brainhood, anthropological figure of modernity.” According to Vidal, the idea that the brain is the location of the modern self is what prompted the study of neurology, not vice versa. In Vidal’s view, “The cerebral subject is the anthropological figure inherent to

15 Journal of Undergraduate Research modernity” (Vidal 6). This interpretation of modern scientific explanations of self suggests that this view is a cultural product rather than objective truth. Could using neurology as an explanation for consciousness, the mind and the self be yet another twist in the philosophical examination of such concepts? Is science overstepping its bounds in equating the person with the mind? What grounds has science to offer definitive interpretations in the realm of metaphysics? This is where contemporary literature enters into the conversation. Al- though it is produced during a time in which science in general and neurology in particular are used to explain human actions and emotions, must all contemporary literature be symptomatic of such ideals of “brainhood,” as Marco Roth suggested in his essay on the neuronovel? I argue that contemporary literature need not only be evaluated and understood through a scientific framework. Independent of a novel’s connection to neurological explanations of the self, its construction of consciousness through narrative should also be viewed as a contribution to the philosophical understanding of human composition, particularly in regard to the relationship between the mind and the body. If Descartes can look to his own personal experience of the world to determine the relationship of the mind and the body, what is to stop literature from accomplishing the same task through narrative? Nar- rative can be viewed as a similar thought experiment to that of Descartes; it is an attempt to construct human consciousness, and to do so requires determining what factors make up that consciousness. I observe that contemporary narrative suggests that the mind and the body must be mixed together in a particular formula to create a “believable” person.

III.I: TOO MUCH MIND I have made the claim that within realism, novels attempt to create a picture of consciousness that engages the mind and the body in a balanced manner, as Tolstoy did in War and Peace. These texts attempt to produce a representation of consciousness that is accurate. The narratives are meant to convince readers of the characters’ possibility to be real people, not to create uneasiness over the character’s believability and reliability. This means that to construct such a narrative, writers need to have an idea of how they define consciousness personally, as well as how their readers conceive of consciousness. These narratives, then, suggest that the perceived construction of consciousness requires interplay between the mind and the body in proper proportion.

16 Mind vs. Body: The Composition of Consciousness in Contemporary Narrative

Constructing an accurate portrait of consciousness, however, is not the only way in which literature can point to the necessity of mind and body for consciousness. Literature can produce narratives that somehow feel wrong — the characters seem strange, possibly unreliable or lacking interiority. By excluding certain qualities from a character’s narrative, novels can comment on what is necessary for consciousness. Specifically, many novels present narrators that are trapped within their own minds. These characters provide a narration that does not extend beyond the limits of their own thoughts, and those limits become apparent as the story unfolds. Such narratives become disturbing as readers begin to question the reliability of the narrator and whether or not the narrator’s claims are true. Without input from outside characters or sufficient physical interaction with the world, it can become very difficult to believe a narrator, rendering the narrator unreliable. Mind-centric narratives emphasize the dangers of mind overlooking the importance of body, using character unreliability to suggest that such a construction of consciousness is somehow faulty. One example of this technique is Ian McEwan’s award-winning Enduring Love. Published in 1997, McEwan’s influential work is internationally renowned, and this novel articulates the common postmodern concern with the relationship between science, reality, and love. Enduring Love is narrated by Joe Rose, a middle- aged, science-minded writer. Joe and his partner Clarissa witness a ballooning accident, and at this time, Joe meets Jed Parry. Through Joe’s narration, it appears that Parry becomes dangerously obsessed with Joe, stalking and harassing him. Joe begins to deteriorate as the novel progresses and Parry’s behavior worsens. Along- side Joe’s first person account, McEwan uses Joe’s narrative references to Clarissa to inform readers that she and others do not believe Joe’s story, suggesting that Joe may be crazy and imagining the entire episode. The narration is unsettling because readers cannot determine whether or not they should believe Joe. This example demonstrates the technique of using an unreliable narrator to point to flaws in his consciousness — specifically, Joe’s tendency to divorce his thoughts and interpretations from the outside world. By telling the entire story from Joe’s very limited point of view, McEwan ensures that no narrative check can provide credence to Joe’s theories and explanations. Readers do not have access to outside information in Enduring Love. Cla- rissa’s perspective and all interactions with Parry are narrated solely through Joe’s thoughts, and he warns readers before the balloon incident, “This was the last time

17 Journal of Undergraduate Research

I understood anything clearly at all” (McEwan 3). If Joe himself admits that he cannot understand his own world, how can readers trust him to narrate it accurately? Joe also emphasizes his limitations in describing the world outside of his mind, telling his audience, “It would make more sense of Clarissa’s return to tell it from her point of view. Or at least from that point as I later constructed it” (McEwan 85). Joe explicitly manipulates the narratives of others to fit into the world of his own mind. After readers are already suspicious of Joe’s trustworthiness, he encourages disbelief in his own narrative, saying, “No one could agree on anything. We lived in a mist of half-shared, unreliable perception, and our sense data became warped by a prism of desire and belief, which tilted our memories too” (McEwan 196). This suggests that the mind is not capable of creating its own truth and instead requires manifestations external to the narrator for objectivity. Undermining narrative technique as a whole, Joe muses, “What a sorry picture memory offers, barely a shadow…You can’t examine it for fresh information. It folds under scru- tiny” (McEwan 197). The strangeness of this narrative and the unreliability of the narrator draw attention to the danger of trusting the mind and discounting the body. In this way, literature is able to imagine how consciousness without the body would manifest itself. Joe’s narration is also very self-conscious, which highlights the interfer- ence of his own mind with his synthesis of experience. Joe is aware of his ability to manipulate facts, as well as the inability of the mind to represent experience. At the novel’s opening, Joe warns, “I’m holding back, delaying the information” (McEwan 2). Joe weights events according to his perception of importance within his personal narrative, and he attempts to manipulate the outside world to fit into his story. At one point, Joe observes, “The best description of a reality does not need to mimic its velocity” (McEwan 19). Joe is presented as a narrator who is aware of his capabilities as a conscious mind to present events and people in a certain way. This makes any description he provides suspect, because it has gone through an intense interpretation within Joe’s mind before it is presented again to readers. One difficulty of the narrative form of the novel is that the text finally supports Joe’s relationship with the world by rewarding him in the end. Joe is correct; Parry is suffering a mental disorder and really is stalking Joe, and Joe makes amends with Clarissa. Although the majority of the text works to destabilize Joe’s narrative, he is proven to be sane and correct. This does not, however, suggest that his relationship to the world is correct or favorable; rather, it is what causes the complications of

18 Mind vs. Body: The Composition of Consciousness in Contemporary Narrative the novel to transpire. My interpretation of Enduring Love does not necessarily oppose the reading of the text as a neuronovel, a view offered in Marco Roth’s aforementioned arti- cle. Roth claims that McEwan’s novel “effectively inaugurates the genre of the neuronovel,” emphasizing Joe’s status as a scientist and a “man of the enlightenment.” It is true that Joe is inclined to view the world as wholly scientific. For example, Joe analyzes the smiles of babies as hardwired in humans at birth, divorcing the action from emotion. Joe is horrified by the unscientific world of Parry; when he describes Parry, Joe muses, “His world was emotion, invention, and yearning. He was the stuff of bad dreams, to such an extent that it was difficult to imagine him carrying through mundane tasks like shaving or paying a bill. It was almost as if he didn’t exist” (158). Yet even Roth agrees that in this novel, McEwan does “challenge somewhat the correctness of Joe’s neurological reductionism.” There is a clear tension in the novel between Joe’s steadfast neurological approach to behaviors and relationships and a more humanist position, which Roth claims is represented by Clarissa. At one point, Clarissa warns Joe, “You’re so rational sometimes you’re like a child …” (McEwan 36). Clarissa also observes, “There was nothing wrong in analyzing the bits, but it was easy to lose sight of the whole” (McEwan 75). This pitfall is precisely what happens when the text is viewed simply as a neuronovel. Science and neurology can help to explain human life and this particular novel, but they are not the singular explanation. Joe’s devotion to science leads to his mental decline and divorces him from others, suggesting that such a worldview is incomplete. Released in 2008, Rivka Galchen’s first book,Atmospheric Disturbances, also demonstrates the limits of the mind. Galchen, a graduate of medical school, infuses the novel’s narrative with a skewed scientific perspective, practicing the postmodern technique of destabilizing narrative. Similar to McEwan’s text, Atmo- spheric Disturbances features a character whose increasing unreliability reaches the point of possible insanity. Dr. Leo Liebenstein, the narrator, is a psychologist whose own perception of reality is skewed — unbeknownst to Leo himself. One after- noon when Leo’s wife Rema comes home, Leo meets her with disbelief and confusion; he is convinced that this new Rema is not his wife but rather a simulacrum. As the novel progresses, it becomes clear that Rema is not a simulacrum but simply an older and less ideal version of Leo’s wife. Leo has difficulty perceiving reality, very overtly displayed by his difficulty with appearances. At one point, Leo sees himself reflected in a glass window. He narrates, “For a moment I didn’t recognize

19 Journal of Undergraduate Research him — me: hairy handed and slope shouldered and not as tall as I like to think I am” (Galchen 32). This draws attention to Leo’s tendency to redefine people and images as he wishes. This quality becomes more problematic as Leo narrates his relationship with Rema. In regard to the simulacrum, Leo explains, “This look-alike Rema, I began to realize, was not such a perfect look-alike; it would seem Rema was being played by someone older, or who at least looked older. Someone pretty, but not as pretty” (Galchen 36). This suggests that Leo is simply unable to comprehend Rema’s aging, refusing to connect her true, physical existence with the ideal in his head. This problem appears to have plagued Leo since the commencement of their relationship, as evidenced by his discussion of their first date. Leo remembers, “Rema and I sat along the counter where there is a mirror, and I stole glimpses of us, of our reflection, where we looked like a happy blushing pair, and I had a little moment of imagining being over there on that side of the mirror, the side where we were happy and new and now forever” (Galchen 69). Leo’s narration emphasizes that the couple “looked” like two people in love, and that Leo imagined an eternal newness and untarnished version of their relationship before it even began. This inability to perceive appearances correctly and connect the interior to the exterior suggests that Leo’s consciousness is restricted within his mind, unable to properly interact with the outside, sensory world. Another source of readers’ suspicions that Leo may be inventing false- hoods is his own assertions that he is aware of how insane he sounds. Repetition is frequently used to foreshadow significant events or character flaws, and Leo is painstaking in his attempts to demonstrate that he is not insane while behaving in an insane manner. To maintain impartiality, Leo decides “to analyze my situation as if it were not my situation but, instead, a patient’s” (Galchen 51). To do so, Leo needs an outside observer. His solution is to split his mind: “There’d be two of us. An I and a me” (Galchen 51). While Leo might treat a patient with split personality disorder, he does not recognize the insanity of intentionally splitting his own mind. Leo then begins research by choosing cards at random to direct his first steps. On each card, he writes not only subjects relevant to his wife’s disappearance but also “red herrings,” or cards with random phrases on them. His choice of card will guide him in his search for his wife. Leo claims, “It is precisely because I am intensely logical that I recognized that in order to determine how best to proceed I needed a new kind of logic” (Galchen 54-55). Leo talks himself into believing that all of his

20 Mind vs. Body: The Composition of Consciousness in Contemporary Narrative own thoughts, however nonsensical, are inherently logical. Leo’s tendency to see signs within the ordinary world is another hint that Leo is not to be trusted. He attributes so much reasoning power to his own mind that he is able to overlook randomness or coincidence, convinced he can imbue events with meaning. Leo sees himself as the focus of the universe, stating, “I think I might be the central butterfly” (Galchen 187). He muses, “I had been comporting myself as if this mystery was proximate to me, but maybe the mystery actually was me…The simulacrum had pursued me. As had Magda. Even Harvey had tracked me down” (Galchen 187). Rather than recognizing events as happening around him, Leo believes people act because of and always in relation to him. Despite their other motivations, Leo warps the lives and actions of other characters, making them significant only within his own life. An explicit example of a link between this tendency and Leo’s choice to ignore the body is his issue with sound, which is an external function that most hold to be an objectively observable occurrence. He explains, “That I sometimes can’t hear so well — I just have trouble disarticulating sounds — is almost a plus, since people give out so many clues about what’s ailing them that are so much more important than the actual words they say” (Galchen 65-66). Leo believes he can analyze others’ true intentions based upon his own interpretations, suggesting that his interpretation will always be more correct than their own words. Another narrative tool that Galchen uses to cast suspicion upon Leo is the presence of Leo’s apparent foil, Harvey. Harvey is a patient of Leo with the diagno- sis of schizotypal personality disorder. Leo initially works with Harvey, attempting to provide an accurate picture of reality. Upon Rema’s prompting, however, Leo agrees to enter into Harvey’s insane world of the Royal Academy of Meteorol- ogy, for which Harvey believes he is working. Explaining the purpose of the “Fa- thers” of the Academy, Harvey claims, “The Fathers can move between the possible worlds…Variables are altered. Like maybe in one of those other worlds you were hit by a produce truck when you were a kid and maybe we aren’t talking here now” (Galchen 12). This and other absurd statements teach readers that Harvey is truly insane, and his worldview cannot be trusted. Before long, however, Leo follows Harvey into insanity, blurring the line between fiction and reality. Although Leo initially participates in Harvey’s insane vision with the in- tention of lessening Harvey’s madness, he eventually believes in the world of the Academy himself. Because Harvey has disappeared around the time of Rema’s sud-

21 Journal of Undergraduate Research den absence, Leo decides the two events are linked and finds meaning within atmospheric science. Leo contacts Tzvi Gal-Chen, a true fellow of the Academy whom Leo initially pretended was his supervisor in the plot to hoodwink Harvey. By the novel’s close, Leo believes that Tzvi is emailing him with directions and guidance as to the solution to Rema’s disappearance. It is even suggested that Leo himself is writing Tzvi’s emails when Harvey notes, “I noticed something. [Tzvi’s] extremely fond of saying ‘rather’ and ‘suppose’ and ‘anyway’ and ‘regardless.’ Which perhaps you’ve noticed are words you’re very fond of too” (Galchen 222). It is clear that Leo is presented as a character that chooses his own narratives to apply to the external world. He does not let reality impinge on his mental projections because his mind cannot properly connect to the physical world. Especially because he is a psychologist, Leo has been trained to believe his mind is the standard of judgment for events, actions, and feelings. Unlike Joe in Endur- ing Love, Leo is finally betrayed by the novel; he is not redeemed in the end with validation of his theories. Galchen makes it clear that although the approach of inventing one’s own narratives may be satisfactory for Leo himself, it prevents him from relating to other characters in the novel. Leo’s choice to depend solely upon his mind allows his insanity to flourish and his place in the world to become less and less secure. Both McEwan and Galchen’s novels use their narrators’ tendencies to project their minds on the outside world to create uncertainty. Both texts are contemporary and reflect the postmodern use of fragmentation to highlight the need to reunite the mind and the body. In this case, the novels demonstrate the construction of narrators whose viewpoints are skewed by dedication to their own minds. Each character’s reliability is harmed by his inability to integrate with the body: Joe Rose appears himself insane, as does Dr. Leo. These examples demonstrate the power of literature in constructing a picture of consciousness; the texts suggest that the unmediated mind breeds unreliability, rendering interiority unable to stand alone without a body.

III.II: TOO MUCH BODY Just as literature can comment on the dangers of mind disassociated from body, writers also depict the plague of the body ruling without the check of the mind. Characters that are too focused on bodily experience often seem to lack depth. Such characters are difficult for readers to relate to and are often minor

22 Mind vs. Body: The Composition of Consciousness in Contemporary Narrative roles that do not hold much narrative attention with their shallow thoughts and motivations. One extreme result of characters lacking consciousness is the effect of character flatness. Flatness occurs when a character is denied consciousness and in some cases even reduced to the level of a prop or an object. At this point, consciousness seems to disappear altogether. One example of this phenomenon is Remain- der by Tom McCarthy. Published in 2001, the novel was hailed as an important, boundary-pushing work and appeared on American best-seller lists. McCarthy is also the co-founder of the International Necronautical Society, which writer and critic Zadie Smith describes as follows: “McCarthy and his Necronauts are interested in tracing the history of the disappeared remainder through art and literature, marking the fundamental division between those who want to extinguish matter and elevate it to form” (Smith). McCarthy’s novel follows a nameless narrator as he tries to make sense of his life after a traumatic accident. In compensation for the damages he sustained, the narrator is given a very large sum of money, which he decides to spend on creating an empty duplicate of his past life, populated by actors rather than loved ones. The narrator is an extreme example of a character motivated by bodily feelings and desires. Readers see very little mental evaluation of his actions or interpersonal responses to people. For example, the narrator decides how he will spend his money in an instant, sans reflection. While at a friend’s party, the narrator finds a crack in the wall of the bathroom. This crack evokes a sense of déjà vu, prompting memories of sensory experiences from his life before the accident. The narrator realizes, “I wanted to reconstruct that space and enter it so that I could feel real again” (McCarthy 67). In this moment, a present sense experience prompts memories of past sense experiences for the narrator. This is the deepest level of feeling and consciousness he demonstrates. From the first page, the narrator puts readers on guard, saying, “Who’s to say that these are genuine memories? Who’s to say my traumatized mind didn’t just make them up…Minds are versatile and wily things” (McCarthy 3). Even remembering is a physical process for the narrator, as he explains, “Remembering it sent a tingling from the top of my legs to my shoulders and right up into my neck” (Mc- Carthy 9). This is not the only mental process that the narrator reduces to bodily sensation. Describing a phone conversation, the narrator muses, “I remember feeling dizzy. Things I don’t understand make me feel dizzy” (McCarthy 6). Many humans do experience memory or confusion in relation to the body. For example,

23 Journal of Undergraduate Research a particular smell might evoke a past memory thus allowing bodily experience to prompt an emotional response. The narrator, however, does not move past his bodily experiences to a mental evaluation or an integration of outside experience into his consciousness. Also notable is the narrator’s preoccupation with authenticity. Indecisive while walking down a sidewalk, the narrator is embarrassed by his appearance as he repeatedly pivots back and forth. His solution is to playact with fabricated gestures to justify his decision to turn back. He says, “I even brought my finger into it, the index finger of my right hand. It was a performance for the two men watching me, to make my movements come across as more authentic” (McCarthy 14). Later, the narrator asks for spare change from strangers despite his new status as a mil- lionaire, observing, “I just wanted to be in the particular space, right then, doing that particular action. It made me feel so serene and intense that I felt almost real” (McCarthy 44). The narrator equates authenticity with external appearance — specifically, the alignment of bodily action to convention. Yet it is exactly because of the narrator’s forced bodily “authenticity” with a lack of mental support that he appears inauthentic. Already, these scenes discount the mind as a valuable source of truth for the narrator. This suspicion strengthens when the narrator begins to attempt his reconstruction of a remembered life. He is not concerned with reconnecting with any humans or repeating any memorable events. Instead, he wants to recreate solely physical experiences — the smell of cooking liver, the configuration of his room, and many nuances within a certain apartment building. To do this, the narrator hires actors to play the roles of people he remembered in the building. The narrator views neither these people nor their original counterparts as possessing consciousness. Instead, they are a means for the narrator to recreate his personal memories. He explains, “I didn’t need to make them share my vision, and I didn’t want them to. Why should they? It was my vision, and I was the one with the money. They just had to know what to do” (McCarthy 113). The narrator maintains an unnatural relationship with the outside world, and the dangers of his preoccupation with the physical become apparent at the novel’s close. The narrator decides to rob a bank and hires people to help in this endeavor. He labels the men with numbers rather than names, and when one man steps out of place, the narrator shoots him. He explains, “I did it because I wanted to. Seeing him standing there in Four’s position as I stood in his…It was half in-

24 Mind vs. Body: The Composition of Consciousness in Contemporary Narrative stinctive, a reflex…Essentially, it was the movements, the positions and the tingling that made me do it — nothing more” (McCarthy 299). The narrator is broken to the point of sadism and capacity for murder by his disconnect from the mind and worship of the body. Zadie Smith, herself a writer of novels, essays, and short stories, evaluated Remainder in her essay “Two Paths for the Novel.” In this essay, Smith praises Mc- Carthy for writing a text that uses a distorted narration to shake up conventional narrative, clearing the path for literary innovation. Smith acknowledges several of the possible allegories within the text: “On literary modes (How artificial is Re- alism?), on existence (Are we capable of genuine being?), on political discourse (What’s left of the politics of identity?), and on the law (Where do we draw our borders? What, and whom, do we exclude, and why?)” (Smith). As Remainder relates to the body, Smith observes, “Everything must leave a mark. Everything has a material reality. Everything happens in space. As you read it, Remainder makes you preternaturally aware of space” (Smith). Smith argues that the narrator is preoccu- pied with space and authenticity and what could be missing in open space. Smith claims, “Remainder recognizes…that we know, in the end, ‘less than little/And finally as little as nothing,’ and so tries always to acknowledge the void that is not ours, the messy remainder we can’t understand or control — the ultimate marker of which is Death itself” (Smith). This concern with what we cannot understand or control, I argue, is the point at which the absence of the mind in the narrator’s conception of consciousness can be felt. Smith describes the narrator’s desire as being “to dominate matter, the better to disembody it” (Smith). In my analysis, the narrator’s shortcoming is this attempt to dominate matter and to look for solutions to the unknown in control over the physical world. Remainder demonstrates a narrative whose character’s one-sided construction of consciousness is dangerous and destructive. By focusing on the mind and disallowing mental evaluation of outside events, the narrator divorces himself from the external world — he even becomes a murderer. This narrative highlights the importance of integrating the mind with the body as a check to the scientific and primal wirings of the body. The narrative may be constructed primarily of bodily promptings, but true consciousness cannot relate to the world in this way. The narrator himself is unfit to live in this world, instead finding himself aboard a plane traversing the sky in an infinite loop. Michel Houellebecq also creates characters with body-centric conscious-

25 Journal of Undergraduate Research nesses in his novel The Elementary Particles. The French writer released his novel in 1998, garnering attention from French literary circles and eventually winning the Prix Novembre. In this novel, Houellebecq captures the pop culture obsession with materiality and sex, portraying the world of atomization seen in many postmodern texts. Although less extreme than the flatness of McCarthy’s narrator, Houellebecq’s novel features two main characters that both fall into the “too much body” catego- ry. Bruno and Michel are half-brothers that devalue the mind aspect of consciousness, Bruno through his devotion to bodily pleasure and Michel through his focus on science. At the novel’s close, Michel’s scientific work has succeeded in replac- ing conventional human reproduction with loveless cloning. Although the novel’s world finally reduces humans to mere particles, there is a clear tension within the text over allowing this materialism to become fact. Bruno and Michel both suffer the pain of loneliness and lead lives that seem unfulfilled. The novel suggests that it is society’s tendency — a tendency shared by these characters — to focus on the body and materialism that breaks humanity down into particles. A partially omniscient narrator who can look into the minds of Bruno and Michel voices this novel in the third person. Although there is not a first-person voice to reveal each character’s stream-of-consciousness thoughts, this narration is sufficient to provide evidence of the body-centric consciousness of the main characters. The novel opens with the news that Michel has decided to take time off from his research work. The narrator explains: For Djerzinski to take a sabbatical with no plan, no goal nor the merest hint of an excuse, was incomprehensible. At forty, he was already head of the department, with fifteen researchers working under him…His team was widely considered to be one of the best in Europe, and their results were excellent. What was wrong with him? (Houellebecq 14)

It is clear that Michel has achieved success both in his job position as well as in his scientific findings. He is brilliant and well-respected, and yet something does not seem right in his life. When asked about how he will occupy his time, Michel “felt intensely embarrassed. What personal life?” (Houellebecq 14). Michel has not formed personal connections with any of his coworkers or possible outside friends; he does not even have any sexual inclinations, as the narrator reveals, “He used his cock to piss, nothing more” (Houellebecq 16). As a child watching nature televi-

26 Mind vs. Body: The Composition of Consciousness in Contemporary Narrative sion, Michel concludes “Nature, taken as a whole was a repulsive cesspit. All in all, nature deserved to be wiped out in a holocaust — and man’s mission on earth was probably to do just that” (Houellebecq 29). This cold observation of nature suggests a dissociation of Michel’s scientific brain from any feeling or empathy even from a young age. In his youth, Michel recognizes a love interest in a girl named Annabelle, to whom he never expresses his feelings. Although Annabelle believes he is her first true love, “If his life had depended on it…Michel could not have kissed Annabelle” (Houellebecq 51). From his youth, Michel is emotionally stunted. When Anna- belle finally gives up on the non-responsive Michel, he recognizes, “Others would experience happiness and despair, but such things would be unknown to him, they would not touch him…He felt separated from the world by a vacuum molded to his body like a shell, a protective armor” (Houellebecq 72). The text explicitly describes Michel as separated from the outside world, unable to feel emotion. Michel’s half-brother Bruno, the second main character, grew up sur- rounded by death and abused by classmates at his boarding school. His childhood causes him to distill feelings of affection into physical contact. Recovering from his initial encounters with bullies, Bruno meets a girl named Caroline, thinking that “Caroline Yessayan had it in her power to undo all the humiliation and the sadness of his childhood” (Houellebecq 45). His feelings toward Caroline “[predate] sex or sensual fulfillment. It was the simple desire to reach out and touch a loving body, to be held in loving arms. Tenderness is a deeper instinct than seduc- tion” (Houellebecq 45). Physical contact is what Bruno desires as a means to emotional fulfillment. Bruno’s needs for human connection, however, are frustrated and he becomes obsessed with sex. He observes, “Caroline Yessayan’s miniskirt was to blame for everything” (Houellebecq 46). Through Bruno’s eyes, “The universe was cold and sluggish. There was, however, one source of warmth — between a woman’s thighs; but there seemed no way for him to reach it” (Houellebecq 53). The method of Bruno’s relation to the world has been disrupted. He is unable to form mental or emotional connections because of his focus on the physical. Bruno himself recognizes, “His only goal in life had been sexual, and he realized it was too late to change that now” (Houellebecq 54). Both brothers suffer from an inability to integrate their bodies with emotion and the outside world. Bruno gives in to the sexually charged world whereas Michel withdraws. Both approaches yield loneliness and emotional disconnection.

27 Journal of Undergraduate Research

Each brother is afforded the opportunity to feel love in his later years. Michel re-encounters Annabelle, and Bruno meets a woman named Christianne. Both women eventually commit suicide, cementing the status of each brother as hope- lessly disconnected from the world. Even while attempting to conceive a child with Annabelle, Michel realizes, “He simply could no longer love” (Houellebecq 197). Houellebecq’s narrative presents characters who do understand the body — be it through sexual relations or biological cloning — and cannot connect their bodies to the mental and emotional aspects of life. They both remain lonely and longing for something more. I argue that this phenomenon of the body operating in the absence of mind correlates to the danger of reading contemporary literature as solely neuronovels. When critics interpret consciousness as simply neural processes, they leave out the element of human evaluation of those firings in the brain. Chemicals and electricity may explain many bodily states, but our understanding of these experiences is felt through consciousness. As Antonio Damasio explains in Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, humans only experience emotion after the brain tells the body it must react to external stimuli and the body obeys, sending signals back to the brain to alert it to changes in the body’s homeostasis. Only then can a human feel emotion. That emotion is then interpreted and put into context within a person’s life. Responses to stimuli and emotion are specific to individuals, and there is an element of consciousness experienced by each person independent of an understanding of neurology. For example, watching the brain of a person falling in love can only tell so much of the story. Similarly, reading neurology out of or into a narrative can only explain so much of the text.

CONCLUSION Often, science and philosophy are seen as two distinct practices. In fact, they are interrelated disciplines that look at many of the same issues from different perspectives. Science gradually grew out of the philosophical tendency to want to examine and explain the world, and its findings can provide many insights that philosophy cannot. Philosophy, meanwhile, picks up where science must leave off. Consciousness is one complex facet of human existence that cannot adequately be explained by either science or philosophy. Together, the two can provide a fuller picture of our conception of consciousness. Contemporary literature oftentimes invokes both science and philosophy to create narratives that comment on the

28 Mind vs. Body: The Composition of Consciousness in Contemporary Narrative structure of consciousness. Although past literary genres such as realism attempted to create narratives that portray reality as it unfolds, contemporary literature uses manipulated presentations of narration to create an unsettling narrative voice. Contemporary literature demonstrates that the common perception of consciousness fuses mind and body together, requiring the two to work together in a fine balance. Writers put forth this perception by highlighting characters that use either primarily their minds or their bodies to guide their consciousness, and both forms of imbalance create narrations that seem troubling. In these skewed portraits of consciousness, the narrator is either unreliable or flat. This is just one example of the ways in which literature is able to portray or comment on the pop culture mindset of its time. Literature, philosophy, and science all grow and change as the perspectives of a culture evolve, suggesting it is a mistake to view any one discipline as distinct from the others. When the three are read together as different ways of approaching the same questions, only then can philosophers, scientists, authors, and readers come closer to understanding consciousness.

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Collett, Keith E. Subjectivity and the Body in Novels by Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Will Self, and Jeanette Winterson. Ann Arbor: ProQuest, 2008. Print. Connolly Francis. “Literary Consciousness and the Literary Conscience.” Thought 25.4 (1950): 663-680. Web. 1 Sept. 2012. Damasio, Antonio. Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. New York: Vintage Books, 2010. Print. Descartes, René. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. Fourth edition. Trans. by Donald A. Cress. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Com- pany, Inc., 1998. Print. Edwards, George Clifton. “Tolstoy.” The Sewanee Review 9.4 (1901): 457-472. Web. 1 Apr. 2013. Evers, Stuart. “Tom McCarthy.” New Statesman 139.5013 (1996). Web. 1 Sept. 2012. Galchen, Rivka. Atmospheric Disturbance. New York: Picador, 2008. Print. Groes, Sebastian. Ian McEwan: Contemporary Critical Perspectives. New York: Con- tinuum International Publishing Group, 2009. Print. Haney, William S. Cyberculture, Cyborgs and Science Fiction: Consciousness and the Posthuman. New York: Rodopi, 2006. Print. Hansen, Per Krogh. “Reconsidering the Unreliable Narrator.” Semiotica 2007.165 (2007): 227–246. Web. 1 Sept. 2012. Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto : Science, Technology, and Socialist-femi- nism in the Late Twentieth Century.” Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Rein- vention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. 149–181. Print. Hollander, Robert. “Literary Consciousness and the Consciousness of Literature.” The Sewanee Review 83.1 (1975): 115–127. Web. 1 Sept. 2012. Houellebecq, Michel. The Elementary Particles. Trans. by Frank Wynne. New York: Vintage Books, 2000. Print. James, William. The Principles of Psychology. eBooks@Adelaide. Web. 2 Feb. 2013. Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Dur- ham: Duke University Press, 1990. Print. Josselson, R. “Tolstoy, Narcissism, and the Psychology of the Self: A Self-Psychol- ogy Approach to Prince Andrei in War and Peace.” Psychoanal Rev. (1986): 77–95. Web. 1 Sept. 2012. Lynch, Deidre Shauna. The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture, and the Business of Inner Meaning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Print. Malcolm, David. Understanding Ian McEwan. Columbia: University of South Car- olina Press, 2002. Print.

30 Mind vs. Body: The Composition of Consciousness in Contemporary Narrative

McCarthy, Tom. Remainder. Ney York: Random House Digital, Inc., 2007. Print. McEwan, Ian. Enduring Love: A Novel. New York: Random House Digital, Inc., 1998. Print. Mittelstrass, Jürgen. “Mind, Brain, and Consciousness.” Essays in Neuroeducation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 59–314. Print. Nünning, Ansgar F. “Reconceptualizing Unreliable Narration: Synthesizing Cog- nitive and Rhetorical Approaches.” A Companion to Narrative Theory. Ed. by James Phelan & Peter J. Rabinowitz. Hoboken: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2007. 89–107. Print. Olson, Greta. “Reconsidering Unreliability: Fallible and Untrustworthy Narra- tors.” Narrative 11.1 (2003): 93–109. Web. 1 Sept. 2012. Plato. Phaedrus. Ed. by Benjamin Jowett. Forgotten Books (2008). Web. 1 Sept. 2012. Plato. The Republic of Plato: Second Edition. Trans. by Allan Bloom. US: Basic Books, 1968. Print. Roth, Marco. “The Rise of the Neuronovel.” N+1 8: Recessional (Fall 2009): Print. Schaeffer, Susan Fromberg. “The Unreality of Realism.”Critical Inquiry 6.4 (1980): 727–737. Print. Scheiber, Andrew J. “Sign, Seme, and the Psychological Character: Some Thoughts on Roland Barthes’ ‘S/Z’ and the Realistic Novel.” The Journal of Narrative Technique 21.3 (1991): 262–273. Print. Shore, Miles F. “A Psychoanalytic Perspective.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary His- tory 12.1 (1981): 89–113. Web. 1 Sept. 2012. Smith, Zadie. “Two Paths for the Novel.” The New York Review of Books (2008). Web. 1 April 2013. Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace. Second edition. New York: Norton & Company, 1996. Print. Wallace, David Foster. Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. London: Little, Brown Book Group, 2012. Print. ---. Infinite Jest. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996. Print. Williams, Raymond. “Realism and the Contemporary Novel.” Universities & Left Review 4 (1958): 22–25. Web. 1 Sept. 2012. Woloch, Alex. The One Vs. the Many: Minor Character and the Space of the Protago- nist in the Novel. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. Print. Vidal, Fernando. “Brainhood, anthropological figure of modernity.”History of the Human Sciences 22.1 (2009): 5-36. Web. January 2013. Zunshine, Lisa. Introduction to Cognitive Cultural Studies. Baltimore: JHU Press, 2010. Print.

---. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State31 University Press, 2006. Print. Journal of Undergraduate Research

MICHAEL FRONK is a 2013 graduate of the University of Notre Dame with a double major in English and mathematics. While his academic pursuits have varied across a wide spectrum, Michael developed an interest in Proto-Indo-Eu- ropean studies and, in particular, Old English language and literature, ultimately earning the award of Outstanding Student in Pre-1700 Literature his senior year in college. This academic background, along with a fascination in the study of law, led Michael to select as a senior thesis topic the history of Anglo-Saxon and continental Germanic legal traditions as related to the epic poem Beowulf. Upon graduation, Michael accepted a position with a consulting firm in New York City, where he currently works and resides.

32 Beowulf v. Grendel: The Legal Customs of Hroðgar’s Kingdom

Beowulf v. Grendel: The Legal Customs of Hroðgar’s Kingdom

MICHAEL FRONK

ABSTRACT Though uncommonly viewed in such a fashion,Beowulf is largely representative of the legal customs unique to Anglo-Saxon and continental Germanic culture. These customs, once considered, shed substantial light on various portions of the poem that have long proven problematic to literary critics. Starting with an understanding of the Germanic legal concept of mund — which literally refers to the physiological hand but in a more metaphorical context represents the ideas of protection, guardianship, and legal possession — the poem’s repetitive references to the hand take on further significance in a legal manner. When combined with the etymological backgrounds of terms such as “have” and “hold,” the episode of Beowulf’s encounter with Hroðgar prior to his fight with Grendel comes to depict what in Anglo-Saxon culture would constitute a legal exchange of real property. Furthermore, an analysis of early Anglo-Saxon law codes demonstrates the importance with which the right of mund was regarded — especially that of the king — and Grendel’s legal culpability becomes highlighted by his commission of mundbryce, or “mund-breaking.” In turn, despite his status at the beginning of the poem as a foreigner with no legal standing in Hroðgar’s kingdom, Beowulf, through the course of his interaction with Danish officials and later Hroðgar himself, is granted the legal authority to protect Heorot. He is therefore legally justified in killing and dismembering Grendel when the monster commits the acts of mundbryce against him. Other themes considered in reaching this conclusion include the etymological analysis of other critical words in the poem, such as maþelode, geweald, and [ge] grette, a discussion of the manner in which law and order were enforced in Ger-

33 Journal of Undergraduate Research manic culture, and the significance of the ultimate display of Grendel’s arm above Heorot following his defeat.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are several individuals without whom this project would have never been completed or perhaps even undertaken, and for their efforts and influence I would like to extend a sincere offering of gratitude. Firstly, I would like to thank Professor Chris Abram for agreeing to direct my project prior to even arriving at Notre Dame and for graciously aiding in my project’s completion throughout his busy transition and acclimation to the university as well as the country. I would also like to thank Professor Chris Vanden Bossche for guiding me in the period of transition in the English department during which we were without an Anglo- Saxonist and for thereby permitting and facilitating in the commencement and realization of this project. Likewise, deserving in acknowledgement are Professor Tom Hall, who is responsible for the development of my interest and the instruc- tion of my knowledge in the study of Old English, and Professor Romana Huk, who was largely influential in my decision to pursue English as my major field of undergraduate study. Additionally, I would like to recognize Mr. Daniel Perett for his assistance in Latin translation and the staff at the Hesburgh Library for the tremendous assistance provided in seeking out and obtaining materials from libraries across the world. Furthermore, I would like to acknowledge the roles of Mr. Fred Hoover, who is responsible for my first exposure to the field of Anglo-Saxon study and to Beowulf itself, and of Ms. Alyssa Casill, for the countless hours of accompaniment provided in the Hesburgh Library throughout the course of this project. Most importantly, I would like to thank my family, without whom my education at Notre Dame would never have been a possibility, let alone a reality.

34 Beowulf v. Grendel: The Legal Customs of Hroðgar’s Kingdom

INTRODUCTION The present legal system of the United States of America is largely derived from traditional English common law, a system that, despite the absence of any formal system of courts or federal governing bodies, can trace its roots back two millennia to the pre-invasion continental Germanic tribes.1 Albeit far from any formalized judicial system, these nomadic tribes operated under a well-established framework of cultural priorities and beliefs that governed the relationships between and among fellow tribesmen and their social leader, a structure known as the comitatus.2 This structure, the formal nature and intimate relational aspects of which would give rise to the principles of the medieval feudal system, remained and grew with the invading Germanic tribes as they migrated to the British Isles, where it became a fundamental component of Anglo-Saxon culture.3 This system and the principles that governed it ultimately grew to the first attested written delineation of Anglo-Saxon legal statutes in King Æðelberht’s code of laws.4 An examination of these principles and priorities yields a tremendous understanding of the culture and society of the Anglo-Saxons, which can in turn be used to render a more complete and compelling analysis of Beowulf — from a legal perspective. Through societal and etymological analyses of these principles and the underlying terminology, I will demonstrate not only that Beowulf can be better understood in the context of Germanic society but furthermore that such an analysis depicts Beowulf’s ventures in Hroðgar’s kingdom as the execution of a series of legal processes that ultimately grants him legal authority to fight and kill Grendel as punishment for the legal transgressions that he can be shown to have committed. One important factor to consider in such an exercise is the role of attested Anglo-Saxon codes of law and the manners in which they can be utilized to achieve an accurate understanding of the culture that produced Beowulf. The uncertainty regarding the date of the poem’s composition becomes problematic when considering what bodies of legal work would have been known by the author and audiences and would therefore be relevant to an analysis of the poem itself. For example, if the manuscript were in fact the original copy of the poem, as some have argued,

1 Digby, An Introduction to the History of the Law of Real Property, 1-33; Huebner, A History of Germanic Private Law, 5. 2 Ibid. 22-3. 3 Barrell, An Outline of Anglo-Saxon Law, 29. 4 Jurasinski, “The continental origins of AEthelberht’s code.”

35 Journal of Undergraduate Research that would place its composition around the turn of the 11th century, in which case nearly every legal document composed in Old English could be deemed germane to the study of the poem’s legal content. However, if it is in fact the product of centuries of oral tradition, it could predate any known formally delineated set of statutes, in which case the applicability of any written law code would be dubious. Due to such ambiguity, the process I have adopted throughout this essay in order to maintain the highest degree of accuracy utilizes various surviving Anglo-Saxon legal documents, not so much as a delineation of specific codes that would in turn be applied to the events in Beowulf, but as a manifestation of the legal and cultural norms indicative of Anglo-Saxon and Germanic cultures for centuries prior to the actual composition of the legal texts under consideration. While the act of committing the governing legal principles of a society to writing was only introduced to and adopted by the Anglo-Saxons with Augustine in the late sixth century, presumably to mimic Roman customs, the practice of maintaining universally recognized legal norms by oral tradition, perhaps even in delineated form, was extant for centuries prior.5 Accordingly, the principles and priorities expressed in the early and prominent written codes of law, in particular, those of Æðelberht, would certainly be operative at the time of the poem’s creation. Therefore, by analyzing the various acts proscribed and the monetary compensation due upon commission, it is possible to discern those transgressions deemed egregious to early Anglo-Saxon cultures and to delineate some form of a hierarchy by comparing respective fines. Such an analysis will be employed throughout and provides the legal framework by which I will proceed. Prior to delving into the analysis of Beowulf, it is first necessary to discuss a handful of prominent terms and ideas in the poem that likewise perform a substantial role in Anglo-Saxon legal culture and will therefore constitute the cruces of my argument. Of these, the first and most important is the Old English word mund. On the most superficial level, the nounmund translates directly as a physiological hand. However, the term is also used to refer to an important Germanic legal concept denoting guardianship or ownership. Encompassing a wide realm of legal categories, mund can refer to the guardianship of a patriarch over dependents and family members, the guardianship of an individual over his or her possessions or real property, or the right of a landowner or monarch to maintain peace, order,

5 Oliver, The Beginnings of English Law, 14; Jurasinski, “The continental origins of AEthelberht’s code.”

36 Beowulf v. Grendel: The Legal Customs of Hroðgar’s Kingdom and well-being over a similarly defined jurisdiction. While the connection between the abstract concepts of possession and guardianship and the physical representation of the possessing and wielding human hand are immediate, I would like to demonstrate that the relationship between the two is even more concrete and inter- dependent than is commonly held. While it is typically maintained that mund in a legal sense resulted as an abstraction of the human hand,6 closer analysis into the origins of the Old English word suggests that any use of the word maintains some degree of legal significance, even if referring solely to the body part. Unlike other Old English terms for the hand such as folm and hand, mund derives from the Indo-European root *mei-, which is defined by Watkins as “to change, to move; with derivatives referring to the exchange of goods and services within a society as regulated by custom or law,”7 (emphasis added). That is, mund refers not simply to the human hand but to the hand as a mechanism for conducting the transmission of property, thus establishing the field of property law and ultimately referring to the status of property that enables transmission to occur — namely, ownership. Similarly, a natural accompaniment of the right of ownership is the right and responsibility to maintain and protect that which one owns, thus accounting for the legal concept of mund. Cognates include similar present-day English derivatives such as common — “held or possessed with other (co-) individuals;” community — from Latin communitat-, “joint possession or use, participation, sharing, social relationship, fellowship, or- ganized society, shared nature or quality, kinship, obligingness;” municipal — from Latin munus, denoting an office or legal duty; andmound , which originally referred to “a hedge, a fence, esp. as forming a boundary to a field or garden” — thus denoting the expanse of one’s mund.8 Note that mund even bears a striking resemblance to Latin mundus, which refers to the Earth — that is, the territory over which the human race claims ownership and guardianship. The existence of these Latin cognates with equally compelling legal connotations further strengthens the claim that the origin of mund unequivocally bears legal importance and is thus inseparable from any later consideration of the word. This connection between physical and legal possession is further exempli- fied in the consideration of two more Old English terms important throughout

6 Cf. Day, “Hands Across the Hall: The Legalities of Beowulf’s Fight with Grendel.” 7 Watkins sv. mei-. 8 OED sv. community, numeral, mound.

37 Journal of Undergraduate Research

Beowulf as well as Anglo-Saxon law — the verbs habban, “to have,” and healdan, “to hold.” These words as a pair remain potent in the 21st century both in property law, in a section aptly named the habendum clause due to its inclusion of the phrase “to have and to hold,” and in marriage, where the same phrase surfaces in the wed- ding vows taken from the Book of Common Prayer.9 The alliterative phrase, which superficially appears cryptic and redundant in its contemporary use, can be ex- pounded upon through similar etymological analysis. Habban, the reflex of “have,” is defined primarily by Bosworth-Toller in the same manner as the word is regarded today: “to have” or “to possess.” Likewise, the OED listing under “have” maintains the same definition from its earliest listing in the late 800s up to the present day: “to hold in hand, in keeping, or possession; to hold or possess as property, or as something at one’s disposal.” Of much more interest, however, are the origins of the verb “hold.” Bosworth-Toller lists several definitions under Old English healdan, but a few noteworthy listings that differ from common present-day use include “to rule, govern;” and “to guard, defend, keep, preserve, protect, maintain.” Implicit in these are strong senses of not only ownership, but guardianship and responsibility. Perhaps even more intriguing are a few of the cognate Old English nouns, such as healdend — “one who holds, keeps, sustains, rules; a guardian, keeper, ruler” — and heald — “hold, guardianship, protection, rule” (note the similarities to a few of Bosworth-Toller’s definitions formund , such as “protection,” for which the example is given “to be in a person’s hands,” and “in a technical sense, guardianship”). The history of the verb’s use over the course of the language is markedly different than that of “have.” The first OED listing for “hold” reads “To keep watch over, keep in charge, herd, ‘keep’ (sheep, etc.); to rule (men). This is only in Old English and early Middle English.”10 It is likewise noteworthy that healdan derives from the Indo-European root *kel-, “to cover, conceal, save,” which also yields the Old English term “heall,” or hall. This term is used throughoutBeowulf in reference to Heorot — thus referring to its property of providing protection from the outside world, a property compromised by the terrors of Grendel. In essence, the terms habban and healdan can seemingly be regarded as the verbal equivalents of mund, with habban reflecting the possession and ownership conveyed by the term and healdan expressing the responsibilities of protection and guardianship. Another important facet to consider is the means by which Anglo-Saxon

9 Black’s Law Dictionary sv.habendum clause; The Book of Common Prayer 426. 10 OED sv. hold.

38 Beowulf v. Grendel: The Legal Customs of Hroðgar’s Kingdom and Germanic legal customs were enforced. These communities lacked any formal judicial system to arraign, try, and convict criminals, and the kingship did not constitute any form of an authoritarian police state that unerringly maintained the king’s will. Rather, aside from the system of honor within the comitatus, the primary means of enforcing law and maintaining justice was the feudal system, dictated largely, as John Hill argues, by the tradition of “war as law,” embodied by the Germanic god Tiu.11 As this concept dictates, legal disputes were settled via martial conflict, with the outcome influenced either by an anthropomorphic deity or merely by fate — i.e., wyrd. This overlap between physical confrontation and legal dispute resolution is strikingly apparent in the close Old English cognates sæc and sacu, both of which occur repeatedly in Beowulf and are attested to both Be- owulf and Grendel. The two terms, used regularly to describe martial conflicts and physical fighting, are likewise the Old English words for “lawsuit” and “jurisdiction in litigious suits.”12 As such, the role fulfilled by Beowulf will be demonstrated to be the embodiment of this Germanic custom that distinguishes lawless war and fighting, as demonstrated by Grendel,13 and his just martial action that serves to enforce the legal principles of the community. With these considerations in mind, I turn to an analysis of Beowulf through this legal lens in order to demonstrate the various legal nuances in action throughout the first section of the poem. To fulfill my goal of establishing this legal conflict between the prosecutor Beowulf and the defendant Grendel, I must first demonstrate the means by which Beowulf, a Geatish foreigner, inherits the legal authority to represent the Danish people. Subsequently, I must establish Grendel as not only a monster and devilish fiend, but a demonstrable offender of Germanic legal customs. I begin with the former.

BEOWULF ENTERS Hroðgar’s KINGDOM The process by which Beowulf inherits legal authority to “prosecute” Grendel for his grievous deeds begins the instant he nears the Danish shore. As he and his fleet approach, they are addressed by the coast guard of the Scyldings, and

11 Hill, “The Jural World inBeowul f,” 64. 12 B-T sv. sacu, saec. These terms, along with similar Old English cognatesocn , began appearing in legal charters in the 11th century and result in the surviving alliterative legal archaism “sake and soke.” 13 Cf. Beowulf lines 154-5, “sibbe ne wolde / wið manna hwone mægenes Deniga” (He [Grendel] desired no peace toward any man of the Danish army).

39 Journal of Undergraduate Research the legal proceedings commence. The man who addresses the Geats is termed in line 229 as “weard Scildinga,” which literally translates as the “Scylindings’ guardian.” The subsequent clause provides his job description: se þe holmclifu healdan scolde, or “who was to hold the sea-cliffs.” The important theme of possession has already twice occurred. As discussed, the metaphorical references to physical possession carry heavy legal significances, thus setting the stage for the pending formal procedure. The Danish man is thus charged with the responsibility of guarding the mund of Hroðgar’s kingdom from naval invasions. When he speaks to the Geats, his diction is introduced in an overtly legal fashion, unequivocally initiating a formal procedure that is apparently prescribed for the admission of foreigners into the kingdom. Lines 234-6, which immediately precede and introduce his dialogue, read, “Gewat him þa to waroðe wicge ridan / þegn Hroðgares, þrymmum cwehte mægenwudu mundum, meþelwordum frægn”14 (emphasis added), translating as “Hroðgar’s thane then rode his horse down to the shore, and powerfully shook the spear in his hands, and he inquired with these formal words.” Of explicit note is the word meþelwordum, which Bosworth-Toller translates directly as “a word used in a formal address.”15 This compound word results directly from the combination of word with mæðel, defined as “an assembly, a deliberative or judicial meeting, council.”16 In effect, this statement is essentially declaring that the inquiry posed by the coast guard is quite literally a formal procedure prescribed by law, which apparently requires the foreigner to reveal his identity, origin, and intent in entering the kingdom. Also of note in this line is the presence of the instrumental dative of mund, which likewise serves metaphorically to denote the guardianship being enforced by the coast guard. The presence of the word is clearly not necessary for comprehension of the physical action — any reader would readily infer that, if a guard were violently brandishing a spear, he would most certainly be doing so with his hands. It follows that the inclusion of the term lends itself more readily to a metaphorical reading, in adding to further setting the legal tone of the series of exchanges that commence with the utterance of this first inquiry. The remainder of the exchange between Beowulf and the coast guard contains pockets of terminology indicative of legal proceedings both directly and meta-

14 Unless otherwise noted, all Old English text of the poem is taken from Fulk, R. D. Klaeber’s Beowulf. 4th ed. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2008. Print. 15 B-T sv. maedel-word. It is worth noting that, so far as I could find, this is the only attested appearance of this word in the Old English corpus. 16 B-T sv. maedel.

40 Beowulf v. Grendel: The Legal Customs of Hroðgar’s Kingdom phorically, such as repeated proximal occurrences of the terms “have” and “hold,”17 the introduction of the dogmatic epithet “husa selest,”18 which is later spoken by Hroðgar in his bestowal of mund over Heorot to Beowulf, and Beowulf’s stated in- tention of “ræd gelæren,”19 or “providing counsel,” terminology that is often used in a legal sense. Most importantly, however, is the terminology with which the coast guard’s response to Beowulf is introduced in the text. After Beowulf satisfies the coast guard’s request and proves himself worthy of further advancement, the coast guard grants admission to the troops beginning in line 286, which reads: “Weard maþelode ðær on wicge, / ombeht unforht” (“The guarddeclared , sitting there on his horse, the fearless officer;” emphasis added). Of particular significance is the word maþelode, defined by Bosworth-Toller as “to speak, harangue, make a speech, declaim.”20 I find this definition highly unsatisfactory, as it fails to capture what I believe to be the true essence of the verb as evidenced by its context throughout the Old English corpus. Of the 44 attested occurrences of the term, 26 of them occur in Beowulf, the occurrence thereof referring to the coast guard being the first.21 As opposed to the generally more common cweðan,22 which occurs roughly a dozen times in the poem, maþelode seems to precede more profound, dogmatic statements that are often addressed to a group or spoken in front of a group. For example, the term appears twice in The Battle of Maldon: first, when the general Byrhtnoð declares war on the invading Vikings, and again when his retainer, By- rhtwold, addresses the decimated troops upon the death of Byrhtnoð and declares his desire to fight to the death in vengeance of their fallen leader.23 Both statements represent a form of oath or dogmatic decree. The four occurrences in Genesis A and B introduce statements by Satan, Adam, and Abraham. Among these include Satan pledging to wreak havoc on mankind after being cast from Heaven to rule over Hell; Adam refusing to accept the deceit of Satan, calling him evil and asserting his allegiance to God; and Abraham, upon being commanded by God to kill Isaac, asserting his faith in the word and direction of God, thus declaring his obedience. All of these statements convey a strong degree of gravity, intent, and profundity, 17 Lines 230, 237, 241, 245, 267, 270, 290, 296, 305, 317. 18 “Best of houses,” referring to Heorot. Line 285. 19 Line 278. 20 B-T sv. madelian. 21 McConchie, “The Use of the Verbmapelian in Beowulf,” 59. 22 PDE equivalent “(s)he said.” A simple Old English corpus search of cwæð returned 8754 results, in addition to 1269 returned by cwæþ. 23 Lines 42 and 309.

41 Journal of Undergraduate Research as do they directly reflect an underlying dogma that motivates the actions of the respective speakers. Such is also the case in Beowulf. Before considering the various uses in Beowulf, however, it is worth examining the etymology of the word. Maðelian, cognate with the aforementioned noun mæðel (formal judicial or legislative assembly), clearly has — or previously had — some component of publicity to the definition, perhaps referring to a formal speech delivered to such an assembly.24 Much discussion has revolved around whether a speech introduced by maþelode must be addressed to or made in the presence of and heard by multiple individuals or a group,25 though I would like to refocus the argument less on the number of addressees or the presence of a council, but more specifically on the nature of what such speech at a council might entail. The judicial assembly was the predominant legal entity in Germanic culture, and the workings of these assemblies had profound impacts on the daily life of their constituent communities.26 Furthermore, Germanic civil procedure was strongly characterized by vigorous formalism, precision, and verbal testimony.27 One should further consider the word’s etymological relationship with words such as Old Ice- landic mal, often referring to a lawsuit or agreement; Old Icelandic mæla, “to speak (particularly in a legal, official, or eloquent sense);” Old Saxonvitnesmall , or “testimony;” Old High Germanic mahal, meaning “court” or “tribunal;” Franconian mallus, meaning “law court” or “legal hearing,” Latinized (ad)mallare, “to summon to court;” and even various words relating to solemn vows, such as Old Saxon giptarmall, or “marriage.”28 It can thus be readily inferred that maðelian, the root and origin of which referred to an immensely important assembly characterized by formal speech, likely developed to describe such formal, precise legal diction. It would then follow, especially in light of the form, context, and precision of the speech it introduces, that similar connotations are implicit here in Beowulf. It is likewise worth noting that, both in Beowulf and the other quoted se- lections, diction introduced by maþelode is neither necessarily addressed to a group nor in the presence of a group. For example, in Genesis A and B, Adams’s diction

24 OED sv. mathel; Robinson, Beowulf and the Appositive Style, 66-7. 25 Cf. Robinson, McChonie, Rissanen. 26 Barrell, An Outline of Anglo-Saxon Law, 8, 11. 27 Cf. Rabin, “Ritual Magic or Legal Performance,” English Law Before Magna Carta; Barrell, An Outline of Anglo-Saxon Law, 74-5; Jurasinski, “The continental origins of AEthelbert’s code.” 28 Markey, “Studies in Runic Origins,” 154-5.

42 Beowulf v. Grendel: The Legal Customs of Hroðgar’s Kingdom is directed solely to Satan and is not in the presence of Eve — the only other individual on the planet, and Abraham’s statement is a praise neither addressed to nor heard by any other individuals. Thus, maþelode, as popularly used, must refer to diction of prescribed importance or content rather than audience. Such content would then reflect a theme or ideal either indicative of or particularly resonant with a certain group; in the case of Beowulf and the coastguard (and subsequently, Wulfgar, Hroðgar, Wealhþeo, and Wiglaf), this group would be Hroðgar’s court, and the underlying ideal would then necessarily be the procedure governing his court — that is, the legal process of admittance to the kingdom. The term is likewise used to introduce dialogue throughout each passage in which Beowulf must gain some form of approval or permission prior to advancing — up to and including his meeting with Hroðgar prior to his fight with Grendel. Occurrences continue even further throughout the duration of the poem, several instances of which will be considered in more detail below. It is likewise worth noting that, as Robinson highlights, the first speech by the coast guard upon Beowulf’s approach, while very formal in nature and content, is not introduced by maþelode, but by the phrase meþelwordum frægn, as discussed above.29 By preceding his first of two dozen uses ofmaþelode with a more deliberate and extended synonym and cognate, the poet removes ambiguity and directs the audience to consider the etymological background of maðelian throughout the course of the poem — that is, the original, legal sense of the term. Beowulf’s encounter and speeches exchanged with the coast guard constitute a handful of over ten such formal speeches that occur from his initial arrival to his first actual dialogue with Hroðgar. The series spans nearly 200 lines, the meticu- lous nature of which, as Andy Orchard asserts, “establishes the Danish court as a sophisticated and mannered milieu, where particular customs prevail,” thus reflecting the complex, particular, and, most importantly, present nature of Germanic legal customs.30 The second individual whom Beowulf encounters is Wulfgar, the dialogue with whom, as Orchard notes, is strikingly comparable and repetitive to that with the coastguard, asserting a similar legal and customary role that must be fulfilled prior to his further admittance into the kingdom. As he delineates, in each series of formulaic dialogue, “the Dane in question asks who the newcomers are … states his own role … and expresses admiration for the travellers … in each case,

29 Robinson, Beowulf and the Appositive Style, 66-67. 30 Orchard, “Words and Deeds,” 208.

43 Journal of Undergraduate Research

Beowulf answers on behalf of the Geats in substantially the same terms, identifying them as Hygelac’s retainers … specifying his own role … and outlining the nature of their errand to Hro[ð]gar.”31 Likewise, his following encounter with Unferð apparently maintains yet another similar purpose,32 as their heated dialogue consists of additional formal speeches, this time in the presence of the entire community and Hroðgar himself. The conclusion thereof is immediately succeeded by a formal act of greeting by Wealhþeo, who we are told does so cynna geyndig, or “mindful of customs,” and the commencement of Hroðgar’s formal bestowal of Heorot to Beowulf.33 By line 650, Hroðgar has determined Beowulf worthy and capable of defending Heorot, and he elects to entrust Beowulf with temporary mund over the mead hall. Before we even consider the actual content and diction of Hroðgar’s speech to Beowulf,34 let us first take note of the sentence with which the poet introduces the dialogue, thus providing context for the pending discourse. There are a few key elements of this brief statement worthy of closer attention: winærnes geweald, a term that denotes Hroðgar’s transfer of the mead hall to Beowulf, and the word [ge]grette, which describes the action taken by Hroðgar and Beowulf as they approach one another. The phrasewinærnes geweald, at first glance, seems to have the most im-

31 Ibid. 32 Orchard asserts that “The notion that Unfer[ð]’s verbal attack on Beowulf serves a formal purpose seems underlined by the delighted response of the Danes, who seem neither perturbed at the apparently harsh treatment meted out to their guest, nor offended at his unfavourable comparison of his own might and that of the Danes. Hro[ð]gar in particular is depicted as delighted by Beowulf’s unanswerable put-down of Unfer[ð]’s attack (lines 607-12a)” (“Words and Deeds” 214). 33 Line 613b. 34 Lines 652-61, per Fulk: [Ge]grette þa guma oþerne, / Hroðgar Beowulf, ond him hæl abead, / winærnes geweald, ond þæt word acwæð: / ‘Næfre ic ænegum men ær alyfde, / Siþðan ic hond ond rond hebban mihte, / Đryþærn Dena buton þe nuða. / Hafa nu ond geheald husa selest, / Gemyne mærþo, mægenellen cyð, / Waca wið wraþum! Ne bið þe wilna gad / Gif þu þæt ellenweorc alder gedigest.’

[Per Liuzza: One warrior greeted another there, / Hrothgar to Beowulf, and wished him luck, / gave him control of the wine-hall in these words: / “I have never entrusted to any man, / Ever since I could hold and hoist a shield, / The great hall of the Danes — except to you now. / Have it and hold it, protect this best of houses,/ Be mindful of glory, show your mighty valor, / Watch for you enemies! You will have all you desire / If you emerge from this brave undertaking alive.]

44 Beowulf v. Grendel: The Legal Customs of Hroðgar’s Kingdom mediate and alarming implications of the two. The translation of the phrase is unremarkably explicit, and there is little doubt or controversy as to the linguistic function of the phrase — Hroðgar entrusted Beowulf with control over Heorot. Fulk glosses geweald as taking the form of an accusative singular noun (the word is very similar, if not identical, to verbal cognates), presumably acting as the object of the preceding verb abead, which it would borrow from the phrase hæl abead, meaning “to wish one luck,” and taking winærnes, or “wine-hall,” as an objective genitive. However, in delving more deeply into the operative word geweald, which is glossed as “power” or “control” (and translated by Liuzza as the latter), one can easily take note of powerful implications in the choice of vocabulary. The verb conveys a sense of leadership and authority, and the most direct present-day English derivative is the word wield, which bears obvious connotations of physically handling an object, such as a tool or weapon.35 Consequently, the term resonates heavily with manual control, once again emphasizing the ubiquitous focus of the human hand as a means for power, control, and authority.36 Likewise, a close Old English cognate is the term wealdend, which Fulk glosses as “ruler;” such a link could have immediate implications on the extent of authority bestowed upon Beowulf — namely, that he would inherit not only a limited degree37 of maintenance over the hall, but also temporarily the complete authority of Hroðgar himself. Presumably this would include the protection of his mund over the hall.38 It is likewise worth noting the close relation of geweald to Old English weard or weardian, the reflexes of present- day “ward,” “guard,” and “guardian,” all of which resonate heavily with the extent to which Beowulf inherits the mund of Heorot. Much less subtle, though equally, if not more, imperative in the decryp- tion of this passage is the first word of the selection: ge[ ]grette.39 With its resemblance to present-day “greet” — which is how Liuzza translates it and Fulk glosses it40 — the term does not immediately seem to suggest any dire implications to the exchange of property. Drawing particular emphasis to the word may thus superficially seem unjustified, but upon closer analysis, the translations discussed — even

35 Cf. line 656. 36 Cf. mund, geheald. 37 E.g., per locbore in Æðelberht 84 38 Fulk also glosses wealdend as “God,” further emphasizing the totality of the power and authority entrusted to Beowulf. 39 The reason for emendation to include the prefix ge- is not of dire importance to this

45 Journal of Undergraduate Research in context — fail to properly emphasize the significance of the exchange. The most appropriate term for the idea conveyed by these translations is the phrase hæl abead, which, as discussed above, appears in the next line, though not in opposition to [ge]grette — the conjunction ond seems to imply the introduction of a new action, namely, the act of exchanging amiable words. Gretan41 conveys the more active idea of approaching, whether in a hostile or salutatory manner.42 However, a more appropriate translation can easily be supplied; the Oxford English Dictionary lists an obsolete definition of the verb greet as follows: “trans. In various senses which did not survive beyond Old English: To approach, come up to; to begin upon, begin to treat or handle, take in hand” (emphasis added).43 Once again, the peculiar reference to the human hand resurfaces. Germanic legal tradition maintained two primary requirements for the exchange of property or the completion of any similar transaction — the need for the exchange or agreement to occur publicly in front of witnesses, and the need for some sort of physical symbolic exchange.44 Often this involved the physical transfer of an emblematic token — i.e., the handing of a stick from one party to the other. Alternatively, such a transaction could likewise be consummated with a similar physical exchange that remains extant today as a form of contractual agreement — a handshake.45 Considering the palpable legal context throughout the immediate vicinity — in particular, the heavy resonance of terminology pertaining to the human hand, viz. geweald, hond, rond, hafa, geheald — I propose that the image intended by the poet is the two men concluding their transaction of legal authority and guardianship over Heorot with a handshake, accompanied by Hroðgar’s well wishes ensuing discourse. Moving on to the actual diction of Hroðgar, there are once again a few phrases of particular importance that hold strong legal implications regarding the transfer of property, even more so in the context of the introductory segment discussed above. Rather than a single operative word, as was the case in the two particularly resonant exhibits above, Hroðgar’s speech features two entire lines of suspect importance: line 655, which reads “siþðan ic hond ond rond hebban mihte,” and line 658, reading, “Hafa nu ond geheald husa selest.” We will discuss these two

41 This term, as glossed by Fulk, does not include the prefix ge- 42 Cf. Wrenn, Beowulf, 188-9. 43 OED sv. Greet, v.1. 44 Huebner 13, 242-3; Day 319. 45 Ibid.

46 Beowulf v. Grendel: The Legal Customs of Hroðgar’s Kingdom phrases, each of which maintains direct human hand references, in the order of their appearance. The first phrase is translated by Liuzza as “ever since I could hold and hoist a shield,” in which Hroðgar emphasizes the extent of time he has held Heo- rot without bestowing control thereof to another man. As established earlier, the term hebban — especially considering its remarkable proximity to the word hond — maintains potent legal significances with respect to ownership and guardianship. In referring to when he could first “hold and hoist a shield,” he is directly referring to his initial inheritance of power and authority over his kingdom. This symbolism is maintained in the present-day British monarchy, as, in the corona- tion of a monarch, the incoming monarch receives the Sovereign’s Orb and Royal Sceptre from the Archbishop of Canterbury in his or her right hand, with the manual transmission and wielding indicating the inheritance of power, authority, and guardianship.46 Furthermore, Hroðgar’s reference to his inheritance of authority and guardianship cleanly prefaces and parallels his upcoming statement that is to legally convey authority and guardianship of Heorot to Beowulf. The line in question, 658, is arguably the most important from a legal standpoint in the entire poem. Repeating the epithet for Heorot previously introduced by Beowulf,47 he commands Beowulf to “have now and hold the greatest of houses,” which, considering the aforementioned etymological and legal discussion of the terms habban and healdan, as well as the immediately preceding reference by Hroðgar, directly constitutes a legal transfer of mund from Hroðgar to Beowulf. This is even further strengthened by Hroðgar’s description of his action as alyfde, which is translated by Liuzza as “entrusted,” but may be better worded along the lines of “bequeathed” or “formally granted” due to its own legal significance else- where in Old English, as well as throughout the poem.48 Having established Beowulf as the legal guardian and protector of Heo- rot, it follows that he maintains responsibility for ensuring the well being of all inhabitants and executing his legal rights under Germanic custom, including the “prosecution” of mundbryce. It is now left to demonstrate that Grendel is indeed a criminal by Germanic legal standards, leaving Beowulf as the legal entity to enforce his punishment by means of battle.

46 British Monarchy. 47 Line 285. See above. 48 Cf. Hill; Bremmer, 122.

47 Journal of Undergraduate Research

AN ANALYSIS OF GRENDEL’S Guðcræft In order to uphold the legal significances of the conflict between Grendel and Hroðgar, it is necessary to establish demonstrable legal fault on the part of Grendel — that is, the argument holds only if Grendel can be shown to have committed not only moral, but serious social and legal misconducts, as well. In doing so, it is beneficial to consider three aspects of the text as evidence — narrative accounts, textual descriptions of Grendel, and key terminology. Starting with a compelling overlap between the three categories, the most instrumental crime Grendel can be said to have committed is that of mundbryce, or the encroachment upon an individual’s mund — namely, Hroðgar’s and Beowulf’s mund over Heorot. To understand the emphasis placed on mund in Anglo-Saxon societies, consider the handful of Æðelberht’s laws regarding mund — in particular, that of the king — the king’s peace, and, in general, property rights. Æðelberht’s laws, all of which prescribe monetary penalization — be it to the king, the offended party, or both — can be classified into two groups regarding description of fines: those that state an explicit monetary value of compensation, and those that call for multifold restitution of varying degree. Of the former, the most highly penalized crimes are various types of murder, with decreasing compensation according to rank. Following these — and even preceding the fine for murder of a freedman of the third rank49 — are six crimes punishable by 50 shilling compensation, five of which can be described as encroachment upon the king’s ability to rule and maintain his peace. Of these, four proscribe actions that would directly compromise the king’s authority, while the fifth — Æðelberht 14 — explicitly pertains to such a violation. Reading “Cyninges mundbyrd, L scillinga,”50 the statute translates as “For violation of the king’s mund, fifty shillings.” With the relatively high value of compensation thus assigned, the right of the king to effectively rule was evidently one of the most fundamental societal values worthy of defending, and one of the most instrumental aspects thereof was the protection of a king’s mund. Consider, for example, the effects on Hroðgar’s kingdom throughout the 12 years during which his mund over Heorot was perpetually broken. Lines 175-83 describe the decay of his society; his constituents lose faith in their leader. The act ofmundbryce substantially inhibits his ability to effectively rule and maintain control over his

49 Æðelberht 27.2 50 Old English text of Æðelberht’s laws taken from Lisi Oliver, The Beginnings of English Law.

48 Beowulf v. Grendel: The Legal Customs of Hroðgar’s Kingdom kingdom, and it suffers accordingly. To further emphasize the importance of mund from an Anglo-Saxon legal perspective, let us consider an additional handful of statutes from Æðelberht’s codes that discuss property rights and mund in circumstances not directly pertinent to the king. The most instrumental example is the last of the aforementioned 50 shilling penalties, Æðelberht 74. It reads, “Mund þare betstan widuwan eorlcun- dre, L scillinga gebete,” which Oliver translates, “[For violation of] protection of the foremost widow of noble rank, let him pay 50 shillings.”51 Ergo, the necessity to protect the property rights of a high-ranking widow, who might presumably be more of an attractive victim to a potential criminal, was deemed equivalent to the restrictions against killing an individual in the king’s house52 — yet another violation of mund of which Grendel is likewise culpable. Moving on to additional statutes of interest, Æðelberht 20 dictates a fine of six shillings for ceorles mundbyrd, or the violation of a freeman’s mund, thus af- firming the sanctity of themund of any individual regardless of class, speaking to the universality and understood value of mund as a natural right. Statutes 22, 28, and 29 offer further insight into the gravity of the act of mundbryce and highlight its distinction as a unique transgression independent of comparable crimes such as robbery, assault, or any others likely to be performed thereafter. Æðelberht 22 delineates an interesting hierarchy of guilt involved in the act of mundbryce; the primary statute reads, “Gif man in mannes tún ærest geirneþ, VI scillingum gebete,” or, “If a man breaks first into someone’s tún, let him pay with 6 shillings” (emphasis added).53 First, consider the Old English term tún, which Oliver translates simply as “dwelling.” Albeit an adequate translation, an important element is lost in the present-day English — the idea of enclosure. Bosworth-Toller lists this use of tún under the following definition: “as a technical English term, the enclosed land surrounding a single dwelling.”54 Other listed definitions preserve the legal aspect of the term, including “an enclosed piece of ground, a yard, court,” and, even more so, “an estate with a village community in villenage upon it under a

51 Oliver, 77; The statute then goes on to list the compensation due for such violation of the mund of widows of the second, third, and fourth ranks — 20, 12, and 6 shillings respectively. 52 Æðelberht 11 53 Ibid., 67; Oliver’s text is here solely in modern English; original Old English tún re- tained for emphasis. 54 B-T sv. tún.

49 Journal of Undergraduate Research lord’s jurisdiction,” thus emphasizing the tendency of the term to convey the legal senses of guardianship or jurisdiction over an explicitly defined property line.55 As such, Æðelberht 22 explicitly prohibits the act of breaking the enclosure of an individual’s real property — i.e., mundbryce, where the mund in consideration is that over the owner’s land and house. The other instance worthy of attention is the idea of the order in which the said enclosure was broken. While the primary statute punishes the first one to do so (ærest) with six shillings, 22.1 and 22.2 respectively call for three shillings of compensation for the second individual to do so and one shilling for each in- truder thereafter. This additional weight placed upon the first instance of intrusion further emphasizes the societal and legal value of mund; it is the first individual, who actually breaches said enclosure and therefore breaks the mund of the victim, whereas any further transgressors merely enter the already-breached enclosure and, in turn, are not responsible for the same crime. In effect, this is a distinction between “breaking” and “entering,” in present legalese — a distinction that is further advanced in statues 28 and 29. Æðelberht 28, which reads, “Gif friman edorbrecþe gedeþ, VI scillingum gebete” (If a freeman breaks into an enclosure, let him pay with six shillings), specifically proscribes the physical act of edorbrecþe — literally, hedge-breaking, as in the hedges enclosing a property, which, as discussed above, constitute the boundary over which mund is maintained.56 The accompanying sub-statute calls for three- fold compensation for any property subsequently stolen, important in that it explicitly distinguishes the act of edorbrecþe — tantamount to mundbryce — from the (presumable) intent of doing so in theft, in turn further conveying the gravity of the act of violating an individual’s mund. Furthermore, Æðelberht 29 goes on to state, “Gif friman edor gegangeð, IIII scillingum gebete” (If a freeman enters an enclosure, let him pay with 4 shillings).57 Note that the punishment for entering an enclosure is less than that of breaking described in statute 28, once again placing greater emphasis on the act of breaking a property owner’s mund. Now that we have sufficiently established the dire gravity ofmund and the crime of mundbryce in Anglo-Saxon society, let us consider the manner in which these ideals implicate Grendel as a legal transgressor. With the understanding of

55 Ibid. 56 Oliver, 68-9; Cf. OED sv. mound, n.2. 57 Ibid.

50 Beowulf v. Grendel: The Legal Customs of Hroðgar’s Kingdom mundbryce as described above, the actions of the monster can quite readily be cat- egorized as clear violation of the mund over Heorot. As he approaches Heorot for the final time, exquisite detail is provided regarding his physical actions: his repeated acts of breaking and entering are particularly highlighted as committed against the king (“ne wæs þæt forma sið / þæt he Hroþgares ham gesohte”),58 the acute detail given to his physical actions emphasizes his seizure of mund (“Duru sona onarn / fyrbendum fæst, syþðan he hire folmum [aet]hran”),59and he is not defeated until he relinquishes this mund60in the form of his right hand (“Þæt wæs tacen sweotol / syþðan hildedeor hond alegde”).61As he breaks into Heorot at nighttime and captures and kills Hroðgar’s thanes by the dozen, the principles underlying Æðelberht’s laws are violated ad nauseam. Hroðgar’s ability to maintain peace in his kingdom and effectively rule the Danes is enormously compromised as his enclosure is broken and entered upon, individuals are killed inside the king’s dwelling, and his legal authority in Germanic custom is blatantly rejected by Grendel’s sheer disregard for the gifstol. As stated in lines 154-862, he neglected to follow the feudal custom of wergild, which would have mandated direct financial compensation for each slain retainer of Hroðgar. Note the terminology in line 158, which states that the Danes need not to expect any bote — the same term employed in Æðelberht’s laws to describe the compensatory payment due to atone for any wrongdoing, including the acts of mundbryce and murder of which Grendel is so blatantly guilty. Consequently, Grendel is directly not only violating the law by committing these egregious crimes, but also by refusing to accept due penalization. Another compelling connection that can be made between the poem’s

58 Lines 716b-7, emphasis added. Per Liuzza, “It was not the first time / he had sought out the home of Hrothgar.” 59 Lines 721b-2, emphasis added. Ibid., “The door burst open, / fast in its forged bands, when his fingers touched it.” 60 I follow the lead of Rolf H. Bremmer Jr. in asserting that hildedeor refers to Grendel, not Beowulf (i.e., in analogy to line 851 “feorh alegde,” “he lay down his life”), thus asserting that Grendel actively relinquishes his hand and therefore mund (122-3) 61 Lines 833b-4, emphasis added. “It was a clear sign, / when the battle-bold one laid down his hand.” 62 …sibbe ne wolde / wið manna hwone mægenes Deniga, / feorhbealo feorran, fea þin- gian, ne nænig witena wenan þorfte / beorhtre bote to banan folmum… “he wanted no peace with any man of the Danish army, nor ceased his deadly hatred, nor settled with money, nor did any of the counselors need to expect bright compensation from the killer’s hands…” Liuzza p. 58.

51 Journal of Undergraduate Research accounts of Grendel and the Anglo-Saxon legal culture stems from lines 925-7, in which Hroðgar, returning to Heorot the morning after Beowulf’s victorious encounter with Grendel, notices Grendel’s arm hung above the roof of the mead-hall: “Hroðgar maþelode — he to healle geong, / stod on stapole, geseah steapne hrof / golde fahne, on Grendles hond,” (“Hroðgar spoke—he went to the hall, / stood on the steps, beheld the steep roof / plated with gold, and Grendel’s hand”).63 While the act of publicly displaying the corporal remains of a defeated enemy maintains apparent significance with intentions of intimidation and exaltation, this particular act maintains a more refined twofold significance in the context of Anglo-Saxon legal culture. First, the specific body part that is seized and torn from Grendel and subsequently displayed above Heorot is the most important body part relevant to our discussion thus far — the hand. Beowulf’s manual fight with Grendel, in which neither utilized any weapon apart from their hands, quite deliberately depicts the legal dispute in place — the battle for mund over Heorot. As noted by James L. Rosier, throughout the poem, “[T]here are sixty-six specific references to the hand, including not only the simplices hond, folmu, mund, and their compounds, but also the metonymic words, clamm, grap, and gripe,” in addition to 10 unique compounds containing one of the above that occur only in Beowulf .64 Moreover, “Nearly half (twenty-nine) of the number of ‘hand’-terms appear in four clusters, and each of these is contained in a context having to do directly or obliquely with Grendel or his mother,” including 10 in the aforementioned fight scene.65 Such repetition clearly directs the audience to focus on the idea of possession — be it physical, legal, or a combination thereof. Some of the final descriptions of the battle as Beowulf approaches victory clearly emphasize this theme: Beowulf “held him fast” (“heold hine fæste,” l. 788, emphasis added), and as Grendel underwent excruciating pain that his body could no longer bear, “the courageous kinsman of Hygelac had him by the hand (“hine se modega mæg Hygelaces / hæfde be honda” (Emphasis added).66 As David Day emphasizes, “Who holds what and on what legal basis, who exercises mund over a particular physical space and with what justification, seems a great concern to the poet in the Grendel section.”67

63 Fulk, 925-7; Liuzza, 925-7. 64 Rosier, 10. 65 Ibid. 66 Lines 813-4. 67 “Hands Across the Hall,” 321.

52 Beowulf v. Grendel: The Legal Customs of Hroðgar’s Kingdom

It is only fitting, then, that Beowulf seals his victory by physically remov- ing the physiological manifestation of mund from his opponent and proceeds to display his token of victory — a tacen sweotol68 — above the very establishment over which he successfully defended the mund which he was granted. That is, his public presentation of Grendel’s hand (i.e., Grendel’s mund) directly and unequivocally boasts his maintenance and protection of his own mund over Heorot. Moreover, this action bears further legal significance when considered in the context of other Anglo-Saxon legal codes. The law codes of Æðelræd and Æðelstan both contain segments that call for the transgressor’s hand to be removed and publicly displayed; section V of Æðelræd IV, in reference to counterfeiters, maintains that, “et constituerunt, monetarii cur manum perdant, et ponatur super ipsius monetæ fabricam,”69 while Æðelstan 14 holds, “þæt an mynet sy ofer eall þæs cynges onweald, ond nan man ne mynetege butan on porte. And gif se mynetere ful wurþeslea man of þa hand þe he þæt ful mid worhte ond sette uppon þa mynet smiððan.”70 While both statutes specifically punish counterfeiters, they do so to the extent that the act of minting false money compromises the king’s authority to maintain bona fide economic stability across his jurisdiction, and the transgressor’s body part associated with the crime — that is, his hand — is accordingly struck off and displayed above the building that was most directly wronged by his actions. Whether or not there is any direct relation between Heorot and the king’s mint, this serves at the very least as evidence in Anglo-Saxon culture of the legal practice of punishing offenders of the king and state in the same method that Beowulf punishes Grendel for his transgressions.71

68 Cf. l. 833, in which Grendel’s arm is declared a “tacen sweotel” (clear sign) of Beowulf’s victorious maintenance of his mund over Heorot. 69 “And they established the grounds on which [felonious] minters should lose a hand and it should be placed above the mint of that minter.” 70 Thorpe, 302, 206; “that there be one money over all the king’s dominion, and that no man mint except within port. And if the moneyer be guilty, let the hand be struck off with which he wrought that offence, and be set up on the money-smithy” (Thorpe 207). 71 It is worth nothing that Hroðgar is repeatedly referred to as a “gift-giver” or “treasure- giver,” and that Heorot is referred to as a “gold-hall,” yielding an intriguing possible correlation between Heorot and the specified mint.

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CONCLUSION As established, Grendel’s transgressions, shown not only to be sinful and fiendish, but also legally punishable under Germanic law, have long warranted legal action, though Hroðgar has apparently proved incapable of enacting any such punishment. In response, Beowulf, a Geatish foreigner, comes to the aid of the troubled king, but in order to do so, must first establish himself as worthy and capable of conducting sacu, or “legal battle,” to settle the dispute and avenge Grendel’s terrors. In doing so, he completes the legal processes employed by the coast guard, Wulfgar, and Unferth before pleading his case to Hroðgar. Hroðgar views his offer favorable and unprecedentedly grants him full guardianship and jurisdiction — i.e, mund — over Heorot. When Grendel once again commits the grave act of mundbryce, he has this time legally wronged Beowulf, which he further exacerbates by committing murder in the presence of the temporary “owner” of the hall. Beowulf’s subsequent deadly battle with Grendel, in turn, acts as the execution of the legal customs of Hroðgar’s kingdom, thus fulfilling the Germanic tradition of “war as settlement” for the maintenance of law and order in the kingdom. The various legal themes recurrent throughout the poem would require unjustifiable coincidence to lack legal significance. Various cruces that have long troubled critics — including the recurring theme of the hand, Beowulf’s refusal to bring weapons to his battle with Grendel, the cryptic exchanges between Beowulf and the coast guard and Wulfgar, the appearance of Grendel’s arm above Heo- rot, and the repeated occurrences of words found predominantly or exclusively in Beowulf — are all clarified when the poem is viewed in a legal frame. Germanic concepts that surface throughout — such as the proclamation in line 734 that wyrd dictated Grendel’s pending doom — grow in significance in the context of Ger- manic legal culture such as reliance on the supernatural to dictate martial outcomes in accordance with the “war as settlement” ideology embodied by the supernatural being Tiu. In addition to the remarkable literal and metaphorical themes uncovered when approaching Beowulf through this legal lens, significant light is likewise shed on the culture and society from which the poem originated. The applications of the have/hold terminology suggest the possibility of the prevalent, longstanding use of a pithy phrase that remains today both in marriage vows and property deeds. These two seemingly unrelated topics were likewise linked in the etymological analysis of maðelian. Thus, the histories of these two contemporary activities have been shown

54 Beowulf v. Grendel: The Legal Customs of Hroðgar’s Kingdom to originate from a singular origin of oath and honor without any substantial research into the individual histories of each. While the scope of this paper only extended to the first of Beowulf’s three battles, analysis under a similar framework continues to yield intriguing insights to the remainder of the poem, from Hroðgar’s “adoption” of Beowulf to the dragon’s claim of vengeance over his stolen property. The strong dependence on the legal context of the poem’s Germanic origins is evident throughout, illustrating the ben- efit and necessities of such an approach to Old English literature.

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WORKS CITED

Barrell, Harry F. An Outline of Anglo-Saxon Law. Diss. Columbia College, 1885. Holmes Beach, Fla.: Gaunt, 1999. Print. The Book of Common Prayer. New York: Seasbury P, 1979. Web. Bosworth, Joseph. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online. Ed. Thomas Northcote Toller et al. Comp. Sean Christ and Ondřej Tichý. Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, 21 Mar 2010. Web. Bremmer, Rolf H., Jr. “Grendel’s Arm and the Law.” Studies in English Language and Literature: “Doubt Wisely.” Ed. M. J. Toswell and E. M. Tyler. London: Routledge, 1996. Print. Cameron, Angus, Ashley Crandell Amos, Antonette diPaolo Healey et al., ed. Dic- tionary of Old English: A to Gonline. Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Proj- ect, 2007. Web. Day, David D. Hafa nu ond geheald husa selest: Jurisdiction and justice in “Beowulf.” Diss. Rice U, 1992. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1992. Web. ---. “Hands across the Hall: The Legalities of Beowulf’s Fight with Grendel.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 98.3 (1999): 313-324. Print. Digby, Kenelm Edward. An Introduction to the History of the Law of Real Property. 5th ed. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1875. Print. Fulk, R. D., Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles, Eds. Klaeber’s Beowulf. 4th ed. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2008. Print. Garner, Bryan A., ed. Black’s Law Dictionary. 9th ed. New York: Thomson Reuters, 2013. Web. Hill, John M. “The Jural World in Beowulf.” The Cultural World in Beowulf. To- ronto: U of Toronto P, 1995. 63-84. Print. Huebner, Rudolf. A History of Germanic Private Law. Trans. Francis S. Philbrick. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1919. Web. Jurasinski, Stefan A. “The continental origins of Æthelberht’s code.”Philological Quarterly 80.1 (January 1, 2001): 1-15. Web. Liuzza, R. M., ed. and trans. Beowulf. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2000. Print. Markey, Tom. “Studies in Runic Origins 1: Germanic *maþl-/*mahl- and Etruscan maθlum.” American Journal of Germanic Linguistics & Literatures 10.2 (1998): 153-200. Print. McConchie, R. W. “The Use of the Verbmaþelian in Beowulf.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen: Bulletin de la Société Néophilologique 101.1 (2000): 59-68. Print. Oliver, Lisi. The Beginnings of English Law. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2002. Print.

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The official website of The British Monarchy. The Royal Household, 2009. Web. 6 May 2013. Orchard, Andy. “Words and Deeds.” A Critical Companion to Beowulf. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003. 203-237. Print. Rabin, Andrew. “Ritual Magic or Legal Performance? Reconsidering an Old Eng- lish Charm Against Theft.”English Law Before Magna Carta. Ed. Stefan Jura- sinski, Lisi Oliver, and Andrew Rabin. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2010. 177-95. Print. Robinson, Fred C. Beowulf and the Appositive Style. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1985. Print. ---. “Why is Grendel’s Not Greeting the Gifstol a Wræc Micel?” The Editing of Old English. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994. 84. Print. Rosier, James. L. “The Uses of Association: Hands and Feasts in Beowulf.” PMLA 78.1 (Mar., 1963: 8-14. Web. Rissanen, Matti. “Maþelian in Old English Poetry.” Words and Works: Studies in Medieval English Language and Literature in Honour of Fred C. Robinson. Ed. Peter S. Baker and Nicholas Howe. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1998. 159-72. PDF. Thorpe, Benjamin. Ancient Laws and Institutes of England. vol. 1. London: George E. Eyre and Andrew Spottiswood, 1840. Microform. Watkins Calvert, Ed. The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000. Print. Wrenn, C. L., Ed. Beowulf. London: George G. Harrap & Co., 1953.

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MICHAEL MERCURIO graduated magna cum laude from Notre Dame in 2013. He majored in Classics and minored in Asian Studies and was the recipient of the Hritzu-Erickson Award for excellence in Classics, as well as the Morrissey Manor Citation of Merit, Asian Pacific Alumni Award for Outstanding Excel- lence, and the Rev. A Leonard Collins, C.S.C. Award. He currently works as the Intern for Evangelization in Notre Dame’s Office of Campus Ministry, where he advises fellowship groups, helps with pilgrimages (he is writing this autobi- ography in Rome right now as he prepares for Campus Ministry’s Holy Week Pilgrimage!), and composes Catholic pick-up lines. He hopes to attend law school next year.

“Tertullian and Christian Military Service” is the first of his two senior theses. His other thesis, for his Asian Studies minor, was titled “Fighting and Dying for Christ: European Views of Christian Samurai.”

58 Tertullian and Christian Military Service

Tertullian and Christian Military Service

MICHAEL MERCURIO

In his de Praescriptione Hereticorum (“On the Prescription of Heretics”), Tertullian posed the following question to his Christian readers interested in responding to heretics: “Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis?” (“What, therefore, do Athens and Jerusalem have in common?” VII.9) Tertullian meant the question fig- uratively, and he would have answered it with an emphatic “nothing”: for him, the reason of the Greek philosophers (Athenis) had nothing in common with, and was subordinate to, the faith of the Christians in their Scriptures (Hierosolymis). The question, however, would have been much more intriguing had Tertullian replaced Athenis with Romae, because his answers would have changed at different points in his life. Indeed, he shifted from a hope that Christians could, in fact, participate in the Roman Empire, to a belief that Christians should withdraw from the spiritually dangerous aspects of Roman society. His attitude towards Rome influenced his position on a number of issues, none of which were as problematic and consequential as his position on Christian military service. Tertullian (c.160 – c. 220 C.E.) is often recognized as the father of Latin Christianity because he is the first Christian author to write so prolifically in Latin on theology and Christian concerns.1 Raised by pagan parents in Carthage, converting to Christianity in mid-life, and becoming a lay-leader of the North African Christian community at the turn of the second century C.E., Tertullian 1 For the following biographical sketch, I have relied on James Morgan. 1928. The Importance of Tertullian in the Development of Christian Dogma. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner. 1-19.; Robert E. Roberts. 1924. The Theology of Tertullian. London: U of London. 24-43.

59 Journal of Undergraduate Research wrote profusely on topics important to Christians, from theological doctrine on the Trinity to encouragement of prisoners in times of persecution. He addressed most of his treatises to his Christian followers but addressed some of them, such as the Apologeticum, to pagan Roman officials. At some point in the middle of his career, Tertullian was influenced by Montanism, a charismatic Christian movement originating in Phrygia and based upon the “New Prophecy,” which advocated for Christians to distinguish themselves by following a strict ethical code. In spite of adopting extreme Montanist views, Tertullian influenced later Christians immensely as a renowned rhetorical defender and exponent of theological opinion. Of all the issues that Tertullian considered, Christian military service has been perhaps the most misunderstood and misinterpreted. Tertullian’s attitude towards Christian military service depended upon his attitude toward the Roman state — and in particular, on whether he believed a Christian should separate himself or herself from Roman society or not. Tertullian switched his position radically in the 14 years between writing the Apologeticum (197 C.E.) – an apology directed to Roman magistrates to defend Christians from persecution – and de Idololatria and de Corona Militis (both 211 C.E.) – treatises directed to Christians about the dangers of idolatry and the idolatrous military crown. His Apologeticum, which, notably, approved of the Roman state, expressed, by turns, ambivalence towards and pride in Christians serving in the army. His de Idololatria and de Corona Militis, however, revealed a new suspicion of Roman society for being rife with the “pagan faith” (pagana fides), for its potential to compromise a Christian’s commitment to God, and for its power to cause Christianity to be “diluted into nonexistence in a pluralistic Roman world.”2 In Section I, I examine Christian military service before Tertullian. In Section II, I consider Tertullian’s positive attitude toward Christian soldiers and the Roman Empire in his Apologeticum (197 C.E.). In Section III, I propose three reasons that may have prompted Tertullian to switch his position on Christian military service: increasing Christian enlistments in the Roman army, more Christian persecutions, and Tertullian’s introduction to Montanism. In Section IV, I discuss Tertullian’s objections to idolatry in the Roman army in his de Idololatria (211 C.E.). Finally, in Section V, I examine Tertullian’s exhortations to Christians that they reject military idolatry and distinguish themselves as Christians in his de Corona Militis (211 C.E.). Ultimately, I hope to show that Tertullian’s evolution as a thinker on

2 Helgeland 1985, 25.

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Christian military service is rooted in his suspicion of the idolatry of Roman society and, as a consequence, his belief that Christians should remove themselves from the spiritually dangerous elements of society.

I. CHRISTIAN MILITARY SERVICE BEFORE TERTULLIAN

A. ON THE LACK OF EVIDENCE FOR CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS BEFORE 170 C.E. Evidence for Christian soldiers is particularly scant before 170 C.E. The lack of material and literary evidence for Christian military service before Tertullian has led some scholars to argue that refusal to serve in the army was taken for granted by Christians, while others have said that the lack of evidence proves only a lack of evidence.3 We have one Christian military inscription dating to the second century, and nowhere do we find literary records of Christians serving in the army before 170 C.E. except in the New Testament, which has just a couple of instances of soldiers converting (e.g. Acts 10:1); we also do not know whether these soldiers remained in the army after their conversions.4 The conspicuous lack of evidence for Christian soldiers can perhaps be attributed to the fact that there simply was no need or reason for Christians to enlist. In the first century, many converts were probably non-citizens who were forbidden from enlisting in the legions; moreover, while these non-citizens could serve in the auxilia (as opposed to the legions), the meager pay and austere lifestyle of military service were probably not attractive enough for it to be a career to which Christians would aspire.5 Furthermore, Romans constantly confused Christians with Jews, or at least considered them a minor Jewish sect. Indeed, the earliest “Christians” themselves were Jews.6 Since 49 B.C.E., Jews had been granted exemption from 3 For the argument that the lack of evidence proves nothing but a lack of evidence, see: J. Helgeland. 1974. “Christians and the Roman Army C.E. 173-337.” Church History 43.2: 149-163, 200.; R. Bainton. 1946. “The Early Church and War.”The Harvard Theological Review 39.3: 189-212. 4 H. LeClerq. 1953. “Militarisme.” Dictionnaire D’archéologie Chrétienne et de Liturgie. 5 L. Swift. 1983. The Early Fathers on War and Military Service. Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, Inc. 26-27.; J. Helgeland. 1974. “Christians and the Roman Army C.E. 173-337.” Church History 43.2: 156.; G. Watson. 1969. The Roman Soldier. Ithaca, NY: Cornell U P. 39. 6 I. Lesbaupin. 1987. Blessed are the Persecuted: Christian Life in the Roman Empire A.D. 64-313. Trans. Robert R Barr. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. 1.; A. Rayner. 1942.

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Roman military service. In 49 B.C.E., the consul Lentulus Crus issued an edict that exempted from military service Jews who were Roman citizens in Asia; the consul Cornelius Dolabella confirmed the edict in 43 B.C.E. By the time of Augustus, exemption from military service (whether in the legions or the auxilia) had been expanded to cover all other Jewish communities within the Roman Empire. These concessions were granted because of Jewish objections to serving on the Sabbath and to participating in the cult of the Roman military standards.7 The Christians, being Jews, may have benefited from this exemption as well. Furthermore, the Roman army could, in theory, conscript soldiers for the legions and auxilia but in practice had relied on voluntary enlistment since Marius:8 Christians who may have had scruples about the military profession could have avoided service easily if they so chose.9 Still, though we might lack evidence of Christian soldiers before 170 C.E., we must remember that the lack of evidence might merely prove a lack of evidence, not a lack of Christian army service.10 For example, though we have only Christian funerary inscription dating to the second century C.E., Christians may not have felt compelled to indicate their religious beliefs on their tombstones, just as Romans did not often mention Jupiter or Mithras on theirs. Additionally, the earliest Christians may have felt no need to identify themselves as Christians because they still saw themselves as Romans and not a group distinct from them. Finally, the lack of references — either from Christian or non-Christian sources — to Christians in the army before 170 C.E. may suggest that authors felt no need to write about them in their texts.

“Christian Society in the Roman Empire.” Greece and Rome 11:33: 114.; A. Wypustek. 1997. “Magic, Montanism, Perpetua, and the Severan Persecution.” Vigiliae Christianae 51:3. 286. Only after 100AD do we see popular use of the term Christiani by Roman authors such as Pliny the Younger and Tacitus. Moreover, the Jews themselves perceived the Christians as a branch of Judaism, albeit a heretical one: Saul of Tarsus, before becoming the Christian Paul, was a Pharisee responsible for “persecuting the followers of Christ” to bring them in line with Jewish orthodoxy. See Galatians 1:13–14; Philippians 3:6; Acts 8:1–3. 7 E. Smallwood. 1976. The Jews Under Roman Rule. Leiden: Brill. 127-137. 8 Smallwood, 127. 9 Smallwood, 207; Swift, 27; Gero, 289. 10 Bainton, 195; Helgeland 1974, 150. That both Bainton and Helgeland make this point is noteworthy because they represent opposite sides of the debate: Bainton believes that Christians were most probably pacifist, while Helgeland holds that the early Christians could never be defined as pacifists.

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B. CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS POST 170 C.E. Later, as Christian numbers grew, their apparent non-participation in society would become a controversial issue for non-Christian Romans: Celsus, writing his Logos Alēthēs around 170 C.E., excoriated the Christians for not sharing in the burdens of the Roman Empire, with particular mention of their refusal to serve in the army (Cels. VIII 68-69). Yet as Bainton and Louis Swift remind us, Celsus was mistaken.11 The decade in which Celsus wrote his treatise was also the decade that witnessed the rise to prominence of the Christian “Thundering Legion” from Asia Minor, which famously aided Marcus Aurelius in his Marcomannic Wars, according to the Christians Tertullian and Eusebius and the non-Christian Cassius Dio. During a drought, Marcus Aurelius’ army was on the verge of surrender to the Germans and Sarmatians when his Christian soldiers’ prayers brought down rain that relieved the Roman army of thirst and also drove away the enemy forces. For this “rain miracle,” Marcus Aurelius nicknamed these Christian soldiers the Legio XII Fulminata and forbade further persecution against the Christians. Tertullian is the first extant author to attest to the existence of the Thundering Legion in his Apologeticum (V.6) in 197 C.E. and later in his Ad Scapulam (IV), which was addressed to the North African proconsul Scapula in 212 C.E. He cites as his source a letter of Marcus Aurelius to the senate, in which the emperor describes the battle and forbids further persecution against the Christians. The letter was almost surely forged, perhaps by Christians who came before Tertullian. Yet Tertullian clearly wants to believe the letter, and indeed there are other occasions on which he cites dubious sources, such as the Acta Pilati (Apol. XXI), though we cannot say whether he knew his sources were faulty.12 Tertullian’s account is recognized by other Christian and non-Christian authors. The Greek Christian historian Eusebius (263–339 C.E.) discusses the Thundering Legion in his Historia Ecclesiastica (V.4.3-5.7) and cites as his sources Tertullian, Apollinaris (late 2nd century C.E.), bishop of Hierapolis whose writings are now lost, and the Roman consul and historian Cassius Dio (150–235 C.E.). Dio credits the rain miracle to an Egyptian magician (LXXXII.8.1-10.5), but he also describes at length

11 Bainton, 191-92; Swift, 37. 12 For more detail on the forged letter of Marcus Aurelius, see Kovács, 25-26; 114-121. TheActa Pilati was supposedly official correspondence between Pilate and Tiberius, in which Pilate describes the sentencing of Jesus Christ. It was probably forged by Christians to combat pagan rhetoric in the mid-fourth century C.E. For more on the Acta Pilati, see G. Reid. 1913. “Acta Pilati.” Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 1. New York: Encyclopedia P.

63 Journal of Undergraduate Research the Christian version of the event. Given that the letter to which Tertullian refers is historically unreliable, however, the Thundering Legion is most likely a Christian fabrication. Nevertheless, the story’s recognition by Christian and non-Christian authors alike demonstrates that these authors were not surprised that Christians served in the army; for them, it was a fact to be taken for granted.

C. ON THE SILENCE OF CHRISTIAN AUTHORS ON THE ISSUE OF MILITARY SERVICE Early Christian authorities before Tertullian were largely silent on the issue of Christian military service. Perhaps Christians did not serve (or at least did not conspicuously serve) in the army, and therefore Christian leaders never felt any need to address a non-issue. Stephen Gero, in explaining why no substantial Christian articulation on Christian military service appears before Tertullian, notes that early Christians resisted dealing with issues that were not relevant to them at the time.13 Granted, bishops and other Christian leaders often wrote on themes of vengeance and violence, and they even used military metaphors to describe Christianity at times.14 In 177 C.E. Athenagoras, a Christian apologist in Athens, highlighted that Christians do not retaliate when they are wronged (Embassy for the Christians 1.4). Justin Martyr wrote in 150 C.E. that Christians do not wage war, but he meant that statement in the sense that Christians do not rebel against their persecutors (First Apology 39.2-3). Pope Clement I of Rome, meanwhile, writing at the end of the first century C.E., often used military metaphors to describe the Christian church (First Epistle 37.1-4). None of these statements express either approval or condemnation of service in the army: teachings on vengeance and violence do not necessarily address the nuances of the military profession, while military language — far from actually advocating for military activity — is simply employed metaphorically.15 Another reason that the early Christian authorities were silent on the issue of military service is that they may have been uncertain as to what the Christian position should be. Indeed, the Christian Scriptures are unclear on whether Christians could serve in the army or not. On one hand, the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:9, 38-48) specifically praises the peacemakers. Craig Keener in his commentary 13 Stephen Gero. 1970. “‘Miles Gloriosus’: The Christian and Military Service According to Tertullian.” Church History 39:3. 289. 14 Swift, 32-38. 15 Swift, 33.; Gero, 288.

64 Tertullian and Christian Military Service on the Gospel of Matthew has argued that this beatitude specifically referred to and disapproved of Jews who thought that “revolutionary violence was the only adequate response to the violence of [Roman] oppression they experienced.”16 On the other hand, both the Old Testament and the New Testament at times seem to approve of soldiers. Both Moses and Joshua lead armies (Exodus 4:2, 17:5; Joshua 5:13-6:27), while John the Baptist condoned the careers of soldiers and Christ praised the faith of a centurion without condemning his military service (Luke 3:14; Matthew 8:5-10).17 The New Testament is also rife with military metaphors, but again, we must remember that military metaphors do not necessarily signal approval for military service. We see, then, that Tertullian rose to prominence in an environment where the number of Christian soldiers was growing and where no Christian articulation on the issue existed. After a century and half of an apparent absence of Christians in the army, Christian soldiers conspicuously started to grow in numbers towards the end of the second century, as shown by numerous attestations to the existence of the Thundering Legion. Moreover, though Christian soldiers were becoming more numerous and more recognizable in Roman society, no Christian leader had yet fully articulated a position on military service. Tertullian, at the turn of the second century C.E., was the first to do so. He wrote his Apologeticum in 197 C.E., which recognized rather than addressed the growing problem of Christian military service, and his de Idololatria and de Corona in 211 C.E, in which Tertullian combated what he had come to see as the spiritual dangers of military service.18 We turn now to Tertullian’s Apologeticum, the first work in which Tertullian explicitly recognizes the growing number of Christian soldiers in the army.

II. THE APOLOGETICUM Tertullian addressed The Apologeticum to Roman magistrates (Romani im- perii antistites, I.1), though Helgeland and Paul Keresztes have suggested that the 16 Craig Keener. 1997. Matthew. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity P. 105. 17 As we shall see later, Tertullian’s opponents, in arguing for the righteousness of Christians serving in the army, used these same passages. 18 Scholarship overwhelmingly agrees on these dates, and the Apologeticum’s dates are rarely contested. Helgeland, Gero, and Monceaux believe that de Idololatria and de Corona are more or less contemporaneous at 211 C.E., with Helgeland adding that de Corona must have come a little after de Idololatria. For my part, I agree most with Helgeland’s scheme, mainly because it demonstrates the most logical progression of Tertullian’s attitude towards military service.

65 Journal of Undergraduate Research real person Tertullian means to address is the emperor Septimius Severus (ruled 193-211 C.E.), as Tertullian’s treatise deals mostly with the empire at large.19 The Apologeticum, as the name suggests, is a rhetorical defense of Christians against Roman persecution. At the time of its publication, regional persecutions in North Africa were common: Fronto, a polemicist from Cirta, accused the Christians of being “distorters of religious tradition” in Against the Christians (c. 162 C.E.). The proconsuls Bruttius Praesens, Claudianus, and Viegellius Saturninus executed Christians in 180 C.E., according to the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, the earliest extant Christian literature from North Africa.20 Tertullian himself deals specifically with such persecutions in his Ad Martyras and Ad Nationes, which were written in 197 C.E.21 Any argument and evidence that Tertullian brings to bear in the Apologeticum is meant to defend Christians and portray them to the Romans in a positive light. Tertullian portrays Christian soldiers favorably (or at least refrains from condemning them) because he wants to show that Christians are willing, pro- ductive participants in the Roman Empire. Tertullian is also willing to demonstrate that Christians are such because, at the time he wrote the Apologeticum, he viewed the Empire as a political entity that could protect civilization from being overrun by barbarians.

A. ON CHRISTIANS SERVING IN THE ARMY Tertullian, dealing specifically with Christian soldiers, preaches neither the righteousness nor the error of military service, but observes without moral judgment that Christians do serve in the army (Apol. XXXVII.4, emphases mine):22 Vestra omnia implevimus, urbes, insulas, castella, municipia, conciliabula, castra ipsa, tribus, decurias, palatium, senatum, forum; sola vobis reliquimus templa.

We have filled everything that belongs to you – your cities, apartments, fortresses, towns, markets, the camps themselves, the tribes, the councils, the palace, the senate, the forum; we have left you only your temples.

19 Helgeland, 1985: 21; Kerestzes 567. 20 Moss, 123-125. 21 Kerestzes, 566-567. 22 This and all following translations are my own.

66 Tertullian and Christian Military Service

And, in Apol. XLII.3, “Navigamus et nos vobiscum et militamus et rusticamur et mercamur (We sail, serve in the army, farm the land, and conduct business with you). Tertullian describes numerous ways in which Christians serve and participate in the Roman Empire; indeed, according to Swift, these passages highlight the fact that Christians were seemingly omnipresent throughout the empire.23 Gero, however, warns us that we would do well not to over-emphasize the fact that Tertullian mentions Christian soldiers in the armies. Military references occur inconspicuously in the middle of long catalogues. Moreover, the extensive list in Apol. XXXVII.4 rhetorically emphasizes the fact that Christians can be found in any place where idolatry is not a primary issue. This is highlighted by the fact that Tertullian ends the catalogue by stating specifically that the temples are the only places not filled by Christians.24 Tertullian, however, does highlight Christian service in the army by modifying castra (army camps) with the intensifying adjective ipsa. This emphasis suggests at least that Tertullian found Christian service in the army particularly interesting. Tertullian, however, also argues that Christians were so significant in the army as to earn the respect of the emperors: he points to the Thundering Legion of Marcus Aurelius as an example (Apol. V.6). It is true that Tertullian’s reference to the Thundering Legion is not, in itself, a commendation of Christian military service; the Apologeticum is, after all, a defense of the Christians, and Tertullian uses any argument and example available to defend the Christians against Roman disapproval and persecution. In the case of the Thundering Legion, Tertullian tells the story of the “rain miracle” to argue that Romans should not persecute Christians because one of their greatest emperors, Marcus Aurelius (gravissimi imperatoris, Apol. V.6), forbade it. Yet at the same time, Helgeland notes that we have to acknowledge that Tertullian, by recounting the story of a famous Christian legion, takes pride in the Christian soldiers (1985:32-33).

B. ON TERTULLIAN’S APPROVAL FOR THE EMPEROR AND ROME If Tertullian approves of Christians who serve in the army, he also ap-

23 Swift, 39. 24 Gero, 292. Gero believes that at the time of the Apologeticum, there were probably not many soldiers in the army. For Gero, Tertullian’s mention of Christians in the camps and in the armies was less a fact in itself and more of a rhetorical move to emphasize Christians’ presence throughout the empire.

67 Journal of Undergraduate Research proves of the Roman emperor who leads them. In the Apologeticum, Tertullian often calls the emperor an agent of God (XXX.1-3, XXXII.1) and even goes so far as to praise and pray for the success of his armies (Apol. XXX.4, emphasis mine.): Precantes sumus semper pro omnibus imperatoribus. Vitam il- lis prolixam, imperium securum, domum tutam, exercitus fortes, senatum fidelem, populum probum, orbem quietum, quae- cunque hominis et Caesaris vota sunt.

We are always praying for all the emperors – for them, we pray for long lives, a secure rule, a safe home, strong armies, a faith- ful senate, an honest people, a quiet world – whatever are the wishes of man and Caesar.

Tertullian realizes that the army is just one factor of many that ensures the success and safety of the empire: the “exercitus fortes” has an inconspicuous position in the middle of the catalogue, which Tertullian concludes rhetorically with a wish that the emperor receive whatever he may need to run the empire effectively. Yet for Tertullian, the army is still important as the protector against a “powerful, threatening force” that would bring about the “end of the world” with all its “horrible suffering”: vim maximam universo orbi imminentem ipsamque clausulam saeculi acerbitates horrendas (Apol. XXXII.1). Here, Tertullian emphasizes his hor- ror at the prospect of the collapse of the Empire with a tri-partite description. Indeed, Tertullian believes that Rome’s dominance over the world is part of God’s divine plan. In explaining how Rome came to power, he notes that God manages kingdoms, appoints changes in regimes, and raises and lowers various states (Apol. XXVI.1). We can also see Tertullian’s support for the emperor in the way he describes Septimius Severus as the clear leader (constantissimus principum, Apol. IV.8). Tertullian, furthermore, demonstrates approval for the Roman Empire by highlighting the similarities between the Romans and the Christians. For example, he argues that Roman and Greek philosophers like Cicero, Seneca, Diogenes, Pyrrho, and Callinicus often preach the same message as Christians — the courageous en- durance of pain and death (Apol. L.14). At the time he wrote the Apologeticum, Tertullian saw the Roman Empire and the Roman army as protectors of the civilized world against horrible suffering (acerbitates horrendas). In the Apologeticum, Tertullian condones Christian partici-

68 Tertullian and Christian Military Service pation in the army and in Roman society in general and hopes Rome will end her persecutions against Christians. Christians enjoy the benefits of safety and prosperity brought about by empire, and they can help in maintaining the empire by, for example, serving in the armies. Indeed, if Tertullian had any qualms against Christian military service, to place them in his treatise would undermine the goal of the Apologeticum.

C. PASSAGES THAT APPEAR TO CONDEMN MILITARY SERVICE Still, there are other passages that seem at least to hint that Tertullian disapproves of Christian military service, though the majority of these passages deal with retaliation against persecution rather than military service itself. Bainton, for example, argues that while Tertullian disproves the myth of Christian “aloofness” in Roman society (including in the Roman armies), he also believes that Christians should not take up arms because they should want to be slain rather than to slay (202). At Apol. 37.5, Tertullian says: Cui bello non idonei, non prompti fuissemus, etiam inpares co- piis, qui tam libenter trucidamur, si non apud istam disciplinam magis occidi liceret quam occidere?

To what war would we have been unfit and uneager, even with unequal forces, we who so willingly are slaughtered, if on account of our religion it is better to be killed than to kill?

The rhetorical question contains irony that emphasizes that Christians would indeed make superb fighters. The repetition ofnon in the first two clauses shows that Christians are indeed fit and eager; he believes the Christians would fight even when outnumbered. He highlights Christians’ ability and willingness in battle to emphasize the fact that none of that matters: Christians will not allow themselves to kill — only to be killed. Yet Helgeland reminds us to pay attention to the context of this passage. A keen concern of a Roman emperor was that a political group in the empire could revolt, and Christians were probably one of the groups that the emperor monitored through his governors and other magistrates (1974:150-51). Lesbaupin, in examining the evolution of persecution in the Roman Empire, notes that the Christians “alarmed the Roman authority, which saw in it a threat to imperial order

69 Journal of Undergraduate Research through the undermining of traditional religion” (9). Pliny’s famous correspondence with Trajan, in which he expresses his concern about a potentially politically subversive Christian group, demonstrates that governors and emperors monitored Christians (Epistulae 10.96-97). Indeed, Tertullian contends that the Christians are perfectly capable of destroying the empire if they wanted to do so, especially given the fact that they can be found everywhere throughout the Roman Empire: “una nox pauculis faculis largiter ultionis posset operari” (“A single night with a few little torches could serve extremely well as revenge,” Apol. XXXVII.3).25 Tertullian’s statement that Christians would rather be killed than kill, then, is not necessarily moral dogma, but rather a rhetorical device to calm the Roman emperor’s fears that Christians may rebel. This is further highlighted when Tertullian states, Ergo“ vicimus, cum occidimur” (“When we are killed, we have conquered,” Apol. L.3). Christians are confident in their validation by God when they are martyred; it makes no sense for them to rebel against persecution. Other passages suggest that Tertullian disapproves of military service, but as we shall see, they do not foreshadow Tertullian’s later shift. Henry Cadbury argues that Tertullian is a pacifist because he believes in the brotherhood of all men: 26 “unam omnium rempublicam agnoscimus mundum” (“We know one state for everyone — the world,” Apol. XXXVIII.3). Tertullian’s later stance against Christian military service, however, is due not to his belief that men are of one brotherhood, but to his belief that Christians should be separate from the rest of humanity; moreover, the passage and the context of the passage have nothing to do with military service. Helgeland also points out that Tertullian decries the physical destruction that war leaves behind.27 At Apol. XXV.14, Tertullian writes: Ni fallor enim, omne regnum vel imperium bellis quaeritur et victoriis propagator. Porro bella et victoriae captis et versis plu- rimum urbibus constant. Id negotium sine deorum iniuria non est. Eadem strages moenium et templorum, pares caedes civium et sacerdotum, nec dissimiles rapinae sacrarum divitiarum et profanarum.

25 The ultionis, in this case, would be revenge for Roman persecution against the Christians. 26 Cadbury, 82-83. 27 Helgeland 1985, 21.

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Unless I am mistaken, all kingdom or empire is sought in war and increased by victories. Again, wars and victories depend on captured and, most often, overturned cities. This business is not without injury to the gods. There is the same havoc for walls and temples, there are equal slaughters for civilians and priests, and the plunder of sacred wealth or secular wealth are not dissimilar.

Yet we need as ever to pay attention to the context. It is telling that in this passage, Tertullian does not refer to Christian soldiers; rather, he specifically refers to Roman soldiers who seek validation for themselves through their piety. Tertullian argues that the Romans cannot claim that they are religious because their wars destroy religious elements of cities; indeed, directly preceding this passage is the rhetorical question: “atquin quomodo ob religionem magni, quibus magnitudo de inreligiositate provenit?” (“And how are they great on account of their religion, when for them greatness comes forth from their irreligion?” Apol. XXV.14.). This passage, then, condemns Roman claims of religious piety to justify their actions, not Christian military service. In any case, later in de Idololatria and de Corona, Tertullian does not mention the destruction of cities as one of his objections towards Christian military service. Perhaps the most relevant objection to the army that Tertullian mentions in the Apologeticum is his concern about the military standards of the camps: “Religio Romanorum tota castrensis signa veneratur, signa iurat, signa omnibus deis praeponit” (“The Roman religion, all of it connected with the military camps, ven- erates the standards, swears on the standards, and places the standards before all the gods,” Apol. XVI.8). In this passage, Tertullian responds to Roman arguments that since Christians worship the cross, and since the military standards are made by two pieces of wood that form the shape of the cross, Christians should have no problem venerating the standards. Tertullian, however, knows that the standards are part of the non-Christian religion of the Romans and therefore argues that Christians cannot venerate them. This objection foreshadows the crux of Tertullian’s later arguments against Christian service in the army: the Roman army is not only rife with idolatry but is also based upon it.28 In the Apologeticum, Tertullian reveals a few hints of what would become a full-fledged opposition toward Christian service in the army. However, at this

28 Helgeland 1985, 22.

71 Journal of Undergraduate Research time, Tertullian was more concerned with demonstrating the loyalty of Christians to the emperor in order to convince the emperor to stop persecuting Christians. Furthermore, Tertullian advocated for Christian cooperation with the empire because he believed that the empire could be benevolent, so long as it ended its persecution of Christians. But between the writing of the Apologeticum and his next treatise, de Idololatria, the historical situation had changed: the Severan emperors’ army reforms were making the military profession enticing for Christians, regional persecutions began to give way to imperial persecutions, and Tertullian became more and more influenced by the separatist rigors of Montanism.

III. FROM APOLOGETICUM TO DE IDOLOLATRIA AND DE CORONA MILITIS

A. ENLISTMENTS When Septimius Severus came to power, he began reforming the army to make it more attractive for potential enlistees, and Christians were probably among those who began enlisting en masse. Indeed, both Severus and his immediate successor Caracalla not only made military life more attractive but also showed incredible favor towards the army.29 In the early empire, the Roman army relied on a mobile legionary system, which had centrally located armies that could respond quickly to emergen- cies within their respective regions.30 The legions drew primarily from the Roman citizenry, of which many Christians were not yet a part.31 By the time of Severus, however, the Roman military system was shifting to a static frontier system, which had permanent armies stationed at weak defensive points throughout the empire. These armies recruited more heavily from frontier populations than from the Italian heartland, using the promise of citizenship at the end of service to draw enlistees. This system became so effective that it was almost a shock when Marcus Aurelius had to resort to raising two new legions from Italy itself.32 The pre-Severan changes in Rome’s defense paradigm offered more opportunity for Christians on the frontiers to serve in the army.

29 Gero, 290. According to Gero, Severus and Caracalla made military service attractive to Christians, when it was not necessarily attractive before. 30 Smith, 481-83. 31 Swift, 26. 32 Smith, 483.

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Severus’ reforms made the military profession even more attractive. Before Severus, stagnant pay did not keep up with an economy suffering from inflation: military service required an intense 25-year commitment, did not permit marriage, and enforced strict discipline.33 Severus, however, increased the pay to acceptable levels. Moreover, he revoked the old imperial rule that soldiers not be permitted to marry: in the earlier empire, forbidding soldiers from having wives and families was practical because the legions had to be mobile — able to move from one point in the empire to another. But by the time of Severus, armies were static, and it therefore seemed unreasonable to continue a policy forbidding marriage. Severus also broke the power of traditionally elite military families by opening up enlistment for the Praetorian Guard to all legionnaires with impressive resumes and recommendations, not just those from rich families. Moreover, he entrusted the command of newly formed legions not to senators, but to equestrians.34 He attempted to improve the status of the military profession by allowing soldiers to wear gold rings when not on duty. He offered post-army job opportunities in his administration. He also made army life more comfortable by funding big- ger barracks (which could house whole families) and by promoting educational opportunities. When Tertullian wrote his Apologeticum early in Severus’ reign, the impact of Severus’ army reforms was not yet felt. Tertullian, however, probably recognized the impact that the reforms could have (i.e. the probable increase of Christians enlisting in the army) soon after writing the Apologeticum (Gero 293). Moreover, he found the reforms even more problematic as he grew more and more disillusioned with the Roman state.

B. PERSECUTION Before Septimius Severus, empire-wide persecutions of Christians were actually quite rare. Rome’s early policy toward the Christians can be better described as prosecution rather than persecution. Nero was the first emperor to issue a decree that made Christianity criminal, but after his great persecution of Christians in 64 C.E., Rome’s emperors refrained from actively seeking out Christians. In his

33 See Smith, 489-97. 34 Cascio 141. Cascio describes Severus’ reforms in the empire in general. He mentions his point on appointing equestrians to legionary command as an example of how Severus tried to break the power of the senate, who before had shared a monopoly on army affairs with the emperor.

73 Journal of Undergraduate Research letter to Pliny the Younger, for example, Trajan instructed the governor not to seek out Christians and to address them only if they were brought to court after being accused for being Christian (Epistulae 10.96-97). Instead, regional persecutions at the initiative of provincial governors seem to have been much more common.35 Lesbaupin suggests that local magistrates persecuted Christians to appease the multitudes, who resented Christians’ refusal to participate in traditional Roman customs and beliefs.36 Indeed, Christian martyrdom accounts such as the Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne (177 C.E. in Gaul) and the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity (203 C.E. in Carthage) depict mobs that are bloodthirsty and irrational. This is why Tertullian addressed hisApologeticum to the Roman magistrates and to the emperor Septimius Severus. In the midst of the regional persecutions in North Africa at the end of the second century, Tertullian seemed to hope that Septimius Severus would follow either the example of Marcus Aurelius, who he believed forbade the persecution of Christians or the example of Trajan, who forbade his regional governors from actively seeking out Christians (Apol. V.6).37 But Septimius Severus seemed to have failed Tertullian’s hopes because in 203 C.E., we see a renewed outbreak of persecutions not only in North Africa but also in Alexandria. We know about these persecutions from such sources as the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, Eusebius’ Historia Ecclesiastica (VI.3.1-5.6), and the Vita Severi. All these sources focus on the persecutions in North Africa and Alexandria, but according to Graeme Clarke, “that focus may well be due to the vagaries of our surviving documentation.”38 The hypothesis that Severus instigated an Empire-wide persecution is given further weight by the so-called “Spartianus note”: “Iudaeos fieri sub gravi poena vetuit. idem etiam de Christianis sanxit” (“[He] forbade them from becoming Jews under a grave punishment, and he also ratified the same law for the Christians,” Vita Severi XVII.1). The note reveals that Septimius Severus forbade any conversions to Judaism or Christianity throughout the empire. This law may, in fact, have been intended not necessarily as an excuse to persecute Jews or Christians but rather as an attempt to uphold Antoninus Pius’ law forbidding circumcision for Romans. By issuing the verdict, however, Septimius Severus, broke with the policy of Trajan

35 Keresztes, 568.; Klawiter, 253.; Lesbaupin, 7. 36 Lesbaupin, 7. 37 Keresztes, 566-567. 38 Clarke, 617.

74 Tertullian and Christian Military Service and gave precedent for regional governors to intensify their persecutions.39 The governors under Severus may have initiated more rigorous persecutions of the Christians because they associated them with black magicians, sooth- sayers, and astrologers, who were often implicated in subversive political affairs.40 This is further supported by the rise of Montanism in North Africa at the time of persecutions: Montanist Christians often sought the intercession of martyrs for protection and indeed made martyrdom their “rallying cry of the beleaguered and oppressed” (Moss 143). To the non-Christian Romans, the Christian devotion to martyrs probably amounted to little more than black magic rituals that appealed to the spirits of the dead for vengeance.41 Tertullian never explicitly mentioned the “Spartianus note,” but he continued to write about Christian persecutions in North Africa in treatises such as de Corona Militis and de Fuga in Persecutione. Tertullian did not specifically state that these persecutions caused him to view the Roman Empire in a negative light, but his transition from approbation for Rome in the Apologeticum to admonition against Roman idolatry de Idololatria and de Corona suggests a corresponding change in opinion. Montanism, which Tertullian encountered after writing the Apologeticum, only emphasized this rigorist position.

C. MONTANISM We do not know exactly what Tertullian’s introduction to Montanism was, but we can tell from the nature of his works that he probably had become a Montanist (or at least had become sympathetic to Montanist views) by the time he had written de Idololatria and de Corona in 211 C.E. The apocalyptic nature and ethical rigors of Montanism likely contributed to Tertullian’s desire to separate Christians from spiritually dangerous aspects of Roman life. Montanism was a prophetic Christian movement originating in the second century C.E. in Phyrigia.42 It was founded by Montanus, after whom the movement was named, and was further propagated by the female prophets Priscilla and Maximilla. Most of our extant sources regarding Montanism are, admittedly, anti- Montanist. Indeed, it was an anti-Montanist who coined the term “Montanist.”

39 Lesbaupin, 7.; Wypustek, 285. 40 Wypustek, 280. 41 Wypustek, 281. 42 For this sketch on Montanism, I have relied on Christine Trevett. 1996. Montanism: Gender, Authority, and the New Prophecy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

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Cyril (313–386 C.E.), bishop of Jerusalem, first called the followers of Montanus “Montanoi,” which he did to distinguish them from the followers of Christ, i.e. the true Christians in his eyes (Catechetical Lectures XVI.8). Nevertheless, some pro-Montanist sources exist, including prophetic oracles and epigraphs found in Phrygia, the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity from North Africa, and, most importantly, the writings of Tertullian himself.43 From these sources, we can gather that Montanism’s core belief was that the Holy Spirit inspired individual members of the Christian Church to reveal new truths about God and to dictate new ethical standards — the so called “New Prophecy.” Guided by this New Prophecy, Montanists believed that the end of the world was imminent, questioned the authority of bishops, recognized female priests, and advocated for strict moral standards, such as refusal to flee martyrdom during persecutions as well as stringent adherence to fasts and virginity. Montanism appears to have taken root in North Africa by the time of the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity (203 C.E.), which contains Montanist elements such as female prophets and apocalyptic language. Tertullian was probably influenced by Montanism around this time, as his later works (post 207 C.E.) demonstrate many of Montanism’s central tenets. In his de Resurrectione Carnis (“On the Resurrection of the Flesh”), for example, Tertullian argues that it is because of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that Christians can understand the resurrection of the body (LXIII). In Adversus Marcionem (“Against Marcion”), in which Tertullian confirms and defends Christianity’s Jewish heritage, he specifically names the New Prophecy (“nova prophetia”) at III.24.4 and IV.22.4, and notes that a divine Jerusalem will come down to earth from heaven in III.24. His de Paenitentia (“On Penance”), in encouraging sinners to penance, warns of a hurricane that is impending over the world (“inminentem saeculo procellam, I.3).44 The apocalyptic nature and rigorous ethical demands of Montanism are likely to have influenced Tertullian’s evolving attitude toward the Roman state and Roman army. As we shall see in de Idololatria and de Corona Militis (see Sections IV and V, below), Tertullian advocates that Christians hold stringently to their faith in the midst of persecution, even to the point of publicly confessing them-

43 Indeed, Trevett has noted that the study of Montanism is essentially equal to the study of Tertullian, since his works overwhelmingly comprise the existing corpus of Montanist literature. 44 According to Christine Trevett, this impending hurricane symbolizes the imminent return of Christ at the end of the world (103).

76 Tertullian and Christian Military Service selves as Christian; this is related to the strict ethical demands of Montanism. He also conflates the definition of “evil” with anything that is merely “not good.” While Tertullian seems willing to reconcile Christianity with the Roman state in the Apologeticum, he is absolutely unwilling to do so in de Idololatria and de Corona. Such exhortations attempt to create a sense of urgency for Christians, who Tertullian believes should separate themselves from any corrupting evil, i.e. Roman society. This desire for urgency can be attributed to the apocalyptic character of Montanism; Christians should focus on purifying themselves immediately because the end of the world is imminent. Tertullian also adopts apocalyptic language, which, according to Gero, promotes separatism.45 His stark contrasts between light and dark and between God and Satan (see de Idol XIX.2; de Cor. XI.4, below) en- courage Christians to ensure that they are in the camp of God and not outside of it. These three factors — the increasing number of Christian enlistments, the rise of persecution against Christians, and Tertullian’s attraction to Montanism — contributed to his changing attitude toward the Roman state. Before, in the Apologeticum, Tertullian seemed to believe that the Roman Empire could be benevolent so long as it ended its Christian persecutions. But in de Idololatria, he revealed a new anxiety over the idolatry that permeated Roman society and the belief that anything that was not Christian was not only idolatrous but also evil.46 This suspicion of the Roman state led Tertullian to excoriate Christian service in the army.

IV. DE IDOLOLATRIA47 Tertullian wrote de Idololatria in 211 C.E. to instruct his Christian readers about the spiritual dangers of idolatry and to highlight his belief that idolatry permeated every aspect of Roman society. While Christian military service is still a minor topic in comparison to the rest of the issues highlighted in the treatise, it is the first time that we see a serious articulation of a Christian position on military service. As Helgeland astutely notes, the fact that Tertullian considers the ethics of military service within a treatise on idolatry suggests that Tertullian most likely op-

45 Gero, 287. 46 See for example, de Idol. I and III. 47 For the text of De Idololatria, I have relied on the manuscript-work of A. Reifferscheid (CSEL XX, Vienna 1890 C.E.), who gave the first reliable notation of the Codes Agobardinus, a 9th century manuscript found in Paris, the oldest extant manuscript of Tertullian and the only one to include de Idololatria.

77 Journal of Undergraduate Research posed army service because of idolatry.48 The thrust of Tertullian’s argument is that military life, and many aspects of Roman civil life in general, are incompatible with Christianity because of the idolatry that characterized Roman civilization. While in the Apologeticum Tertullian saw both bad and good in the Roman state, in de Idololatria he abandons any approval he has for the Roman Empire and condemns it for its idolatry — a concern which had long been on the minds and consciences of Christians.49 His disapproval for the idolatry of Rome leads to his disapproval of Christian military service. For Tertullian, if a Christian is to avoid idolatry, and if several aspects of Roman society including the army are rife with idolatry, then a Christian must refuse to participate in Roman military life.

A. TERTULLIAN’S DEFINITION OF IDOLATRY Tertullian adopts a multi-faceted definition of idolatry. On one level, Tertullian accepts idolatry in its more limited sense, i.e. anything that is “formed”: “omnis forma uel formula idolum se dici exposcit” (“Any form or ‘formling’ demands it be called an ‘idol,’” de Idol. III.4). Tertullian cites for his support the Greek derivative for idolum — eidos, which means shape or form. He also claims that anything that serves these “forms” counts as idolatry: “inde idololatria omnis circa omne idolum famulatus et seruitus” (“Therefore, any idolatry is attending to and serving any of these forms,” de Idol. III.4). He mentions, for example, that nearly everyone recognizes that offering incense, sacrificing, holding sacrificial feasts, or holding a priesthood is a form of idolatry: “si quis aut incendat aut immolet aut polluceat aut sacris aliquibus aut sacerdotiis obligetur” (de Idol. II.2). Yet he also claims that any art that produces or propagates idols counts as idolatry as well: “Exinde iam caput facta est idololatriae ars omnis quae idolum quoquomodo edit,” (“Thenceforth any art, which in any way produces an idol, has become the source of idolatry,” de Idol. III.2). Later in the treatise, he argues that marble-masonry, bronze-making, and engraving can be associated with idolatry if they, for example, are used to build or maintain temples (VIII) and that school-teachers serve idols because they, per Rome’s typical education, are obliged to teach about the Roman gods (X). On another level, however, Tertullian also counts anything that is sinful or criminal as idolatry, regardless of the crime’s particular name: “omitte titulos, op- era recognosce” (“Omit the names, and recognize the works,” de Idol. I.1). He claims

48 Helgeland 1985, 23. 49 Gero, 287.; Swift, 25.; Rayner, 114.

78 Tertullian and Christian Military Service that murder (homicida), adultery and fornication (adulterium et struprum), fraud (fraudem), concupiscence (concupiscentiae), wantonness and drunkenness (lasciuiae et ebrietatis), unrighteousness (iniustitia), vanity (uanitas), and deceit (mendacium) are all idolatry (de Idol. I). Tertullian highlights his belief that idolatry is synony- mous with crime through the following chiasmus: “Ita fit, ut omnia in idololatria et in omnibus idololatria deprehendatur” (“It so happens that all [crimes] are found in idolatry, and idolatry is found in all [crimes],” de Idol. I.5). Tertullian is not alone in expanding the definition of idolatry, as he has a precedent in Scripture itself. Paul’s letter to the Romans notes that the Gentiles are driven by lust precisely because they worship idols (1:23-27), while his letter to the Colossians specifically identifies greed as idolatry (3:5).50 The Hellenistic Jewish textWisdom is even more radical: it calls idolatry “the beginning of fornication” and “the beginning, cause, and end of every evil” (14:12, 31). Tertullian also believes that anything that is idolatrous (or even associated with idolatry) is, by nature, satanic. In fact, one can say that Tertullian generally and conveniently ascribes “certain things to God and others to Satan so as to ab- solutize choices into an either/or dichotomy.”51 He argues, for example, that the devil was responsible for introducing into the world the arts and means for creating idols: “at ubi artifices statuarum et imaginum et omnis generis simulacrorum diabolus saeculo intulit” (de Idol. III.2). Moreover, he claims that anything that offends God is in the realm of devils, who own the idols: “daemoniis et immundis spiritibus… quibus idola mancipantur” (de Idol I. 5). Tertullian uses this basis to argue for why Christians should avoid military service. He conflates a military oath, which he calls a “human oath,” to an oath to Satan, and he also claims that military standards belong to the devil.52

B. THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE OATH TO GOD AND THE OATH TO MAN Throughoutde Idololatria , Tertullian expresses that he is wary of the idolatry that is infused into the everyday life of soldiers and indeed Roman life in general. For him, it is impossible for a Christian to serve in higher-ranking roles because authorities were in charge of, among other things, conducting sacrifices

50 Marcus, 154-55. 51 Groh, 9. 52 De Idol. XIX.2; de Cor. XI.4.

79 Journal of Undergraduate Research to the gods. He admits that Joseph and Daniel in the Old Testament held positions of power and esteem while remaining free from idolatry,53 but his sarcasm in the following passage highlights that he thinks the situation has changed (de Idol. XVII.3): Cedamus itaque succedere alicui posse, ut in quoquo honore in solo honoris nomine incedat neque sacrificet neque sacrificiis auctoritatem suam accommodet, non hostias locet, non curas templorum deleget, non uectigalia eorum procuret, non specta- cula edat de suo aut de publico aut edendis praesit, nihil sollem- ne pronuntiet uel edicat, ne iuret quidem.

We may believe that someone can follow this, that he can proceed both in honor and in the name of honor, if he does not sacrifice or authorize sacrifices, if he does not pay for victims, if he does not care for the temples, if he does not manage the temple tax, if he does not put on shows either from his own or from the public’s pocket, if he is not present at these presentations, and if he pronounces nothing solemn or issues no edict or indeed takes an oath.

Citing Joseph and Daniel suggests that Tertullian was aware of the arguments, based in Scripture, of his opponents in favor of Christian military service. That he subsequently discredits those Scriptural passages, however, strengthens the force of his argument. Moreover, his use of the subjunctive (cedamus) suggests that anyone who believes he can follow the example of Joseph and Daniel is on theologically shaky ground. Furthermore, Tertullian states that it is possible for Christians to serve in high-ranking roles, but he then catalogues what Christians have to avoid; the rapid succession of each item serves rhetorically to heighten Tertullian’s sarcasm. The reader is brought to the conclusion that it is simply impossible to serve as an authority in Roman society. Tertullian, in de Idololatria, does not offer concessions to lower-ranking soldiers, either. Even though these soldiers are not responsible for conducting sacrifices or maintaining temples, their very participation in the army runs counter to their duty to Christ. A Christian is committed to God, but military service forces

53 Genesis 41:37-57.; Daniel 2: 46-49.

80 Tertullian and Christian Military Service not only commitment to the Roman gods, but also to the emperor, to the com- mander, and to the army in general. Indeed, Tertullian is not coy about his belief that the military life is incompatible with the Christian faith (de Idol. XIX.2): Non conuenit sacramento diuino et humano, signo Christi et signo diaboli, castris lucis et castris tenebrarum54; non potest una anima duobus deberi, deo et Caesari.

There is no compromise between a divine oath and a human oath, between the sign of Christ and the sign of the devil, between the camp of light and the camp of darkness; the soul cannot owe a debt to two things at once, to both God and Caesar.

The Roman militarysacramentum was directly connected to idolatry: according to LeBohec in his guide to the Roman army, each soldier who was accepted into the army was sworn in by swearing the sacramentum, an oath that bound him to his general and to the emperor’s genius “in the presence of the gods.”55 The two sacramenta (the oath to Christ and the military oath) cannot exist side-by-side (non convenit); a Christian soldier must choose one or the other. Tertullian’s anxieties regarding the “double-oath” to both God and man are particularly emphasized in “sacramento divino et humano”; both divino and humano modify one sacramento, even though the two by nature cannot co-exist. We further see this in Tertullian’s binary opposition of God and man, which he seeks to emphasize by rephrasing it in various ways: sacramento divino et humano, signo Christi et signo diaboli, castris lucis et castris tenebrarum. Thetricolon crescens here ascends not in length but in gravity of imagery: in the first item, human opposes the divine; in the second item, Christ opposes the devil; and in the third item, Tertullian uses apocalyptic language of light versus dark. Furthermore, Tertullian states that it is not possible to have allegiance to both God and man.56 This statement refers to Matthew 22:21, in which Christ commands to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.” According to Waszink and Van Winder, Tertullian interprets this passage as saying that whatever bears the image of the emperor (i.e. coins) belongs to the emperor, but whatever bears the image of God (i.e. man) belongs to God. Man,

54 2 Corinthians 6:15. 55 LeBohec, 239-240. 56 cf. de Cor. 15.3.

81 Journal of Undergraduate Research therefore, cannot give himself in service to the army, since he must give himself in service to God.57 Indeed, Tertullian is so opposed to Christian service in the army that he focuses on the very symbols of the army themselves. He continues the passage above by arguing that, although scriptural figures wield weapons, Christians should still dissociate themselves from the symbols of the army because Christ disarmed Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane (de Idol. XIX.2-3): Et uirgam portauit Moyses, fibulam et Aaron, cingitur loro et Iohannes, agmen agit et Iesus Naue, bellauit et populus, si pla- cet ludere. Quomodo autem bellabit, immo quomodo etiam in pace militabit sine gladio, quem dominus abstulit? Nam etsi adierant milites ad Iohannem et formam obseruationis accepe- rant, si etiam centurio crediderat, omnem postea militem dominus in Petro exarmando discinxit. Nullus habitus licitus est apud nos illicito actui adscriptus.

Moses carried a rod, Aaron a military belt. John girds himself with leather-strapped armor. Jesus Nave led the army, and the people waged war, if it pleased them. But how will he [the Christian] fight? Indeed, how also can he even serve in peace- time without the sword, which the Lord has taken away? For even if soldiers went to John and accepted the goodness of his teachings, even if the centurion believed, the Lord – in disarm- ing Peter – disarmed all soldiers thereafter. No uniform, ap- pointed to unlawful action, is permitted to us. 58

First, by citing passages that condone bearing arms, Tertullian recognizes that there was a Christian tradition that allows for military service.59 Listing these allusions in rapid succession, however, suggests that he sets them up to strike them down; all of these passages are nullified by one passage — when Christ disarmed Peter and said “Those who live by the sword die by the sword” (Matthew 26:52). Moreover, Tertullian adds weight to this passage by introducing it with a rhetorical question, 57 Waszink and Van Winder, 240. 58 Tertullian is alluding to the following passages: Ex 4:2; 17:5; Ex 28:12; 1 Macc 14:44; Mt 3:4; Mk 1:6; Josh 5:13-6:27; Lk 3:14; Mt 8:5-10; Mt 26:52. 59 Swift, 42.

82 Tertullian and Christian Military Service jarring through its sudden interruption of Tertullian’s catalogue of violent passages. His repeated use of etiam, etsi, and si etiam underscores that the Scriptural passages are no excuse for participating in the army. He ends firmly and confidently by -re minding his audience not to engage in any unlawful acts (illicto actui). The passage demonstrates that Tertullian is opposed to the very symbolism of the army. Gero notes that the scriptural passages that Tertullian lists each include elements of the Roman soldiers’ equipment.60 Helgeland also points out that Romans and Christians alike would have readily recognized items Tertullian lists as symbols of the Roman army.61 Tertullian takes issue with the fact that the soldier must carry the sword even in times of peace. Indeed, raising the sword in violence is not necessarily the sin; the act of having a sword is a sin, at least according to Tertullian. The sword is symbolically sinful because Christ took it away from Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane. Taking up the sword, therefore, is an insult and an act of defiance towards God. Tertullian also objects to other symbols of the army: he says that wearing the military uniform (habitus) is prohibited to the Christian, not because of its actual use by the Christian, but because the uniform is assigned to sinful acts. Later, in de Corona, he complains about the use of the spear, which was used to pierce the side of Jesus on the cross (de Cor. 11.3). The fact that Tertullian opposed not only the use of military equipment but also its very symbolism highlights his belief that the essential activity of the Roman army is diametrically opposed to Christianity and God.

V. DE CORONA MILITIS62 If in de Idololatria Tertullian condemns Christian military service because of Roman idolatry, in de Corona Militis he extends the condemnation and also advocates much more rigorously that Christians separate themselves from the rest of Roman society. Tertullian wrote de Corona not long after de Idololatria, probably in the same year (211 C.E.), to a Christian audience. In de Corona he aims

60 Gero, 297. 61 Helgeland 1985, 23. 62 I have relied on the textual edition of Jacques Fontaine (1966 C.E.), who used the Agobardinus Codex (Paris, 9th century), the Codex Florentinus Magliabechianus (Florence, 15th century), the Codex Luxemburgensis (Luxembourg, 15th century), the edition of Beatus Rheanus, who used the now lost codex Hirsaugenis (Basel, 1521), and the edition of Martin Mesnart, who copied from Beatus Rheanus (Paris, 1545).

83 Journal of Undergraduate Research to explain why the Roman military crown and other aspects of military service are idolatrous and why Christians should avoid service. The occasion forde Corona was the martyrdom of a Christian soldier who refused to wear the military crown during a distribution of bounty. Throughout, Tertullian both advises Christians against service in the army because of the complete incompatibility with military idolatry and argues for Christians to outwardly mark themselves as such.

A. IDOLATRY IN THE ARMY The context ofde Corona emphasizes Tertullian’s uneasiness with idolatry. The martyrdom of a Christian soldier who refused the military crown for its connection to pagan religion occasions his writing of de Corona. Throughout the treatise, Tertullian painstakingly emphasizes that wearing the military crown is idolatrous. In Chapter V, he argues that wearing it is unnatural and therefore not in keeping with God’s plan for nature: the crown is composed of flowers, and flowers are meant to be smelled and seen, not worn on the head, according to Tertullian. Tertullian believes that this is a perverse enjoyment of flowers, one that is against nature (“contra naturam est,” de Cor. V.4) and a sacrilege against God, who is the lord and creator of nature (“meretur notam … elogium sacrilegii in Deum naturae dominum et auctorem,” de Cor. V.4). This is in keeping with Tertulian’s conflation of idolatry with anything that opposes God and his conflation of anything that opposes God with everything evil. Tertullian furthermore notes that the historical development of the crown is steeped in pagan mythology (VII) and that crowning ceremonies take place in temples and specifically calls for an oath to Jupiter (XII.3).

B. Conflict Between the Oath to God and the Oath to Man Tertullian clearly states throughout de Corona that the military life creates a conflict of interest for the Christian, who must choose whether to serve God or the army. When Tertullian recounts the martyrdom of the Christian soldier in de Corona’s opening chapter, he praises his martyr for being more a soldier of God (“magis Dei miles,” de Cor. I.1) than a soldier of the Romans, and he praises him for avoiding the folly of his fellow Christian soldiers, who thought they could serve two masters at once (“se duobus dominis seruire posse praesumpserant,” de Cor. I.1). Later, Tertullian writes, “Credimusne humanum sacramentum diuino superduci licere, et in alium dominum respondere post Christum?” (Do we believe it permis- sible to superimpose a human oath upon a divine one? And to answer to another

84 Tertullian and Christian Military Service master after Christ? de Cor. XI.1). This rhetorical question underscores Tertullian’s doubt that a Christian can in good faith proclaim a human sacramentum and answer to anyone other than God. No less than eleven more rhetorical questions follow, highlighting Tertullian’s belief that the everyday duties of military life can force a Christian to compromise his beliefs — from honoring the army above his father and mother against scripture’s commands (XI.1) to guarding temples that he was supposed to have renounced when he became a Christian (XI.3). Indeed, while Tertullian allows that we can render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s, he reminds us that we must always prioritize our oath to God, since it is superior (“potiori,” de Cor. XII.5). According to Tertullian, what makes military life diametrically opposed to Christianity is its very basis in idolatry. Throughout most of de Corona, he deals specifically with the idolatrous nature of the military crown, but in chapter XI he directly addresses military service (de Cor. XI.1): Etenim, ut ipsam causam coronae militaris aggrediar, puto prius conquirendum an in totum christianis militia conueniat. Quale est alioquin de accidentibus retractare, cum a praecedenti- bus culpa sit?

And indeed, so that I can approach the reason itself for the military crown, I think there should first be an inquiry into whether military service can fit with Christianity at all. What is the point of asking about the incidentals, when the fault [of the army] lies in its very basis?

In introducing the question of whether a Christian can serve in the army, Tertullian quickly and directly states that the very foundations of army life are damnable, meaning that a Christian should not even think about associating himself with the incidentals of army life. He explicitly states that the human sacramentum opposes the sacramentum to God (de Cor. XI.1), precisely because the human sacramentum is directed toward the emperor’s genius. LeBohec mentions other pagan rituals in which soldiers would regularly have been involved, including lustratio and suovetau- rilia, purifying rituals performed before entering enemy territory and after battle.63 When Tertullian lists the various ways in which army life is opposed to

63 LeBohec, 239-240.

85 Journal of Undergraduate Research the Christian life, most of them deal with idolatry (de Cor. XI.3-4): Iam et stationes aut aliis magis faciet quam Christo, aut et domi- nico die, quando nec Christo? Et excubabit pro templis quibus renuntiauit?... Et signum postulabit a principe, qui iam a Deo accepit? Mortuus etiam tuba inquietabitur aeneatoris, qui excitari a tuba angeli expectat?... Quanta alibi inlicita circum- spici possunt castrensium munium, transgressioni interpretan- da! Ipsum de castris lucis in castra tenebrarum nomen deferre transgressionis est.

Will he [the Christian soldier] make guard-watches for others rather than for Christ? Or will he do it on the Lord’s day, when it is not for Christ? And will he keep watch for the temples which he has renounced? Will he ask for the military sign from the emperor, when he has already received the sign of Christ? When he is dying, too, will he be disturbed by the horn of the trumpeter, when he waits to be awoken by the horn of an angel? All around, how many wrongdoings can surround military duties, things which must be interpreted as transgression! To carry the name itself [“Christian”] from the camp of light into the camp of darkness is itself a transgression.

His quick succession of highly rhetorical questions emphasizes Tertullian’s belief that a Christian cannot serve in the army. Moreover, Tertullian’s stark last statement, with its grave apocalyptic language of light and dark, demonstrates that Christians place their lot with Satan when they enter the military.

C. THE IMPORTANCE OF DISTINGUISHING ONESELF AS A CHRISTIAN In de Corona, Tertullian’s attack against the idolatry of the army is similar to his attack against it in de Idololatria. His encouragement of Christians to distinguish themselves outwardly and actively as Christians sets de Corona apart. Tertullian describes the martyrdom of the Christian soldier who alone of all the Christians refused to wear the military crown in Chapter I. Tertullian praises the soldier for being more a soldier of God and more steadfast than his fellow

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Christians (“magis Dei miles, ceteris constantior fratribus,” I.1). He also praises him for shining out (“relucebat,” I.1).64 Tertullian emphasizes the martyr’s willingness to identify himself as a Christian during his trial (de Cor. I.2): Statim tribunus: “Cur,” inquit, “tam diuersus habitus?” Negauit ille sibi cum ceteris licere. Causas expostulatus, “christianus sum” respondit. O militem gloriosum in Deo!

Immediately the tribune asked, “Why is your attire so different?” He denied that it was permitted to him [to wear the crown] with the others. Asked his reasons, he responded, “I am a Christian!” Oh soldier, boastful of God!

The quick, direct responses of the martyr highlight his steadfastness in his faith. Moreover, when the soldier confesses that he is a Christian, Tertullian interjects into the narrative his own words of praise for the martyr. Indeed, he defends the soldier for looking too eager to die by calling him alone a Christian (“solus Christianus,” I.4). Tertullian includes a scene in which the soldier takes off his military gear, but in doing so, he takes up the equipment of Christ (de Cor. I.3): Ibidem grauissimas paenulas posuit, releuari auspicatus, specu- latoriam morosissimam de pedibus absoluit, terrae sanctae insis- tere incipiens, gladium nec dominicae defensioni necessarium reddidit, laurea et de manu claruit. Et nunc, rufatus sanguinis sui spe, calciatus de euangelii paratura, succinctus acutiore uer- bo dei, totus de apostolo armatus et de martyrii candida melius coronatus, donatiuum Christi in carcere expectat.

At once he put away the very heavy cloak, and his relief from duty began. He loosened from his feet his military shoes, beginning to stand upon sacred ground. He returned the sword, not a necessity for defense of the Lord. From his hand shone the military crown. And now, speaking with hope for his own 64 The wordrelucebat in particular is intriguing. Other classical uses of the word take it in its literal sense of “shining out,” as it is used with words such as flamma or incen- dia. Perhaps the word relucebat highlights even more Tertullian’s apocalyptic dichotomy between light versus dark.

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blood, and shod with preparation for the gospel, girded with the sharper word of God, completely armed by the Apostles and crowned better with the white crown of martyrdom, in prison he awaits the bounty of Christ.

Tertullian rhetorically dismisses the importance of military life and emphasizes the glory of being a Christian. Every time the martyr disassociates himself from an aspect of the military, he becomes more associated with Christ: by taking off the military shoe, he stands on holy ground; and by thrusting away the sword, he thrusts away something not necessary for serving the Lord. Indeed, at the end of the passage, Tertullian describes the acceptance of Christ as a military equipping ceremony: the soldier puts on the armor of the apostles, receives the new crown of martyrdom, and awaits a bounty in heaven. By putting himself to earthly shame by proclaiming himself a Christian, the anonymous martyr ensures for himself heavenly glory. While the earlier Tertullian had advocated for Christians to detach themselves from the Roman army because of its idolatry, he now encourages them not only to detach themselves from the army but also to distinguish themselves conspicuously as Christians. Indeed, Tertullian emphasizes the importance of maintaining Christianity’s distinct character: ad proprietatem christianam totam iam defendendam (“for the sake of defending the whole peculiarity of Christianity,” VII.2). His apocalyptic language and his desire for Christians to mark themselves suggest he believed that the end of the world might be near. The argument ofDe Corona is in keeping with that of de Idololatria in that it recognizes the conflict between the oath to man and the oath to God posed by the idolatry in the armies and condemns it. In contrast to de Idololatria, however, Tertullian in de Corona also encourages his readers to mark themselves conspicuously as Christians and to distinguish themselves as pure and uncorrupted by the idolatry of the armies.

VI. CONCLUSION Tertullian was the first major Christian author to articulate a Christian position on military service. In his Apologeticum, he found Christian service in the army acceptable, if not commendable, because he thought that the Roman Empire could be a defender of civilization, peace, and prosperity. However, after more

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Christians enlisted in the army and after persecutions during the reign of Septimius Severus, and perhaps most importantly after his encounter with the separatist rigors of Montanism, Tertullian reversed his position to oppose Christian military service. In de Idololatria, he objects to idolatry in the armies and the conflict it creates between the oath to God and the oath to man. In de Corona Militis, he continues the argument but also advocates that Christians separate themselves from the corrupting influence of the idolatry of Roman society. Tertullian’s primary objection toward Christian service in the Roman army was the idolatry that permeated Roman society. Casting idolatry as the non-negotiable evil in military service left open the possibility and permissibility for a Christian to serve in an army that did not propagate paganism. By opposing idolatry in the armies and not military service itself, Tertullian sowed the seeds, even if uninten- tionally, for Christianity’s integration into the Roman army.

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91 Journal of Undergraduate Research

ALLISON WHITLOCK SCALLEN graduated from Notre Dame in 2013 with departmental honors in Anthropology and a supplementary major in French language and literature. During her junior year, she studied abroad at the Univer- sity of Cambridge, where she was introduced to the topic of currently occupied medieval settlements. She has spent the 2013-2014 year as an English Teaching Assistant in France. She will begin a PhD in Anthropology at New York Univer- sity in Fall 2014 to continue researching medieval settlements. She would like to thank her senior thesis advisor, Dr. Donna Glowacki for her role in this paper, the Nanovic Institute for research funding, and the Glynn Family Honors Program for conference presentation travel funding.

92 ONLINE FEATURE

Archaeology of Medieval Village

ALLISON WHITLOCK SCALLEN

ABSTRACT

Medieval archaeologists focusing on rural settlements offer two broad disciplinary contributions (Jones and Hooke 2012: 31): They provide a more accurate understanding of medieval life by focusing on the largest class of medieval society and they contribute to the general archaeological discussion of how to study rural settlement. According to Frances and Joseph Gies, over 90 percent of medieval people lived in the countryside in villages or hamlets (Gies and Gies 1990:1). As a result, village archaeology reveals the lifestyle of a predominantly rural population, but medieval rural settlement study neglected currently occupied rural settlements until the past decade. This lack of attention to currently occupied rural settlements is problematic because many of the villages inhabited during medieval times survived to the present day. Therefore, deserted villages are an atypical subset of rural medieval settlements and do not represent the reality of medieval peasant life (Lewis 2007: 135). The growing awareness of the significance of currently occupied rural settlements enables medieval archaeologists to develop settlement study methodologies applicable to English rural settlements from other archaeological eras. Investigations preceding development projects have taken place in rural set- tings for several decades, but very little of this data has been analyzed to reconstruct a comprehensive account of past life at a particular locale (Lewis 2007: 134). This account of the archaeology of medieval Willingham draws on excavation data from several projects conducted throughout the village by archaeology firms in advance of construction initiatives. The research combines information from these excava- tions in order to reconstruct the village’s development. The study also considers the archaeological and historical evidence of the settlement’s growth with respect to social change.

93 Journal of Undergraduate Research