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The patterning of history in Old English literature
Monteverde, Margaret Pyne, Ph.D.
The Ohio State University, 1988
Copyright ©1988 by Monteverde, Margaret Pyne. All rights reserved.
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UMI THE PATTERNING OF HISTORY
IN
OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE
DISSERTATION
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate
School of the Ohio State University
By
Margaret Pyne Monteverde
The Ohio State University
1988
Dissertation Committee: Approved by
L. J. Kiser
S. J. Kahrl Advisor J. B. Gabel Department of English Copyright by Margaret Pyne Monteverde 1988 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First;, I would like eo thank all those people who learned not to
ask, "When will it be done?" Next I would like to thank the people who were instrumental in getting me to the point where I could finally say,
"It is done": Lisa Kiser, who somehow convinced me, where all others had failed, both that I could do it and to do it; Stanley Kahrl, who
through advice and encouragement has helped me prepare myself for the day when this would be done; and John Gabel, who by agreeing to be a reader out of kindness to a desperate graduate student ensured that it would get done. I would also like to thank my parents, who often had more faith than I that someday I would be done.
Finally, I would like to thank my friends, who have put up with me through all my bouts of disser-tension, disser-pression, and even occasionally disser-phoria. Although it's not a method I would recommend to anyone, writing my dissertation has turned out to be a wonderful way to discover who my friends are. Of all my friends, I owe my greatest debt to Martha, for listening to far more about Old English literature than I'm sure she ever wanted to know; for preventing me from sending my computer to a well-deserved death; but most of all, for keeping me sane by being willing to 'play' with me when I needed to. VITA
September 26, 1956 Boro - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1978 ...... B. A., Chatham College, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
1 9 8 0 ...... M. A., English Language and Medieval Literature, Leeds University, Leeds, England
1982-1984...... Graduate Teaching Associate, Center for Medieval and Ren- naissance Studies, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
1984-1985...... Research Assistant, Stanley J. Kahrl, Department of English, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
FIELDS OF STUDY
Major Field: Old English Literature and Language
Secondary Field: Middle English Literature TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... ii
VITA ...... iii
PREFACE...... V
SECTION I: PATTERNS OF CRITICISM ...... 1
Introduction: The Problem of Historical Perspective ...... 3 Chapter One: The Problem of Old English Historical Criticism 8 Chapter Tvo: The Problem of Maldon ...... 24 Conclusion: A Critical Solution ...... 40
SECTION II: PATTERNS OF REMEMBRANCE ...... 55
Introduction: Rivers of History...... 57 Chapter One: The Oral Tradition...... 69 Chapter Tvo: The Germanic Tradition ...... 95 Chapter Three: The Christian Tradition...... 127 Chapter Four: The Literate Tradition ...... 161 Conclusion: A Look A h e a d ...... 186
SECTION III: PATTERNS OF CREATION ...... 188
Introduction: Bede ...... 190 Chapter One: Beovulf...... 205 Chapter Tvo: Andreas...... 261 Conclusion: A Pattern for the Future ...... 315
LIST OF REFERENCES...... 322
iv PREFACE
The subject of this dissertation is the relationship between Old
English literature and the concept of history held by the audience for
which that literature was written. The purpose of this study is two fold: 1) to define the characteristics of the Old English concept of history while demonstrating the ways in which that concept differs significantly from our own; and 2) to prove that the concept of history held by the Anglo-Saxons had a real and verifiable effect on the content, form, and themes of Old English literature. By making a definition of the Old English concept of history the starting point of ay study, I will be evaluating the historical aspects of this literature in the cultural contexts within which it was written, rather than within the modern cultural context of most current literary criticism. Although literary critics generally accept that Old English poetic traditions derived from the oral histories of the pre-Christian
Germanic peoples, no comprehensive study of this type has been previously undertaken. Current critical interest in both the cultural contexts in which literature is written and the relationship between fiction and history in literature makes this study relevant not just to the Old English period but also to an understanding of the development of these broader issues in English literature in general as Contained within the pages that follow are numerous passages for which the original language is Latin or Old English. For those in
Latin, I have cited a translation in my text and noted the source in the footnote, together with the Latin original and its source edition.
For quotations in Old English, I have reversed the policy in order to maintain the poetic format, placing the original material in my text and citing its source edition in the footnote; all translations of Old
English into modern English are my own, unless otherwise noted.
Because of the number of discursive footnotes I have had to use in the pages that follow, I have had to adopt my own citation style. As is customary in MLA style, first citations of sources are noted in a footnote, as are translations and comments. Future citations of the same work are noted parenthetically. Footnote numbers run consecutively through the chapters in each section, beginning with 1 at the start of each new section. In keeping with this numbering system, a complete footnote reference is provided the first time a work occurs in each section, appearing more than once if the work is used in more than one section. To assist readers in relating the List of References to the citations in the text, I have concluded each bibliographic entry with a roman numeral (I, II, or III), indicating the section or sections in which that word is cited.
vi SECTION I
PATTERNS OF CRITICISM
Lee learned Greece in any of his manifold Sciences, be able to shew me one booke before Musaeus, Homer, & Hesiod, all three nothing else but Poets. Nay let any Historie bee brought, that can say any writers were there before them, if they were not men of the same skill, as Orpheus, Linus, and some other are named, who having bene the first of that country that made pennes deliverers of their knowledge to the posteritie, may justly challenge to bee called their Fathers in learning.... Historiographers, although their lippes sound of things done, and veritie be written in their foreheads, have bene glad to borrow both fashion and perchance weight of the Poets. So Herodotus entituled his Historie, by the name of the nine Muses, and both he and all the rest that followed him, either stale (sic), or usurped of Poetrie, their passionate describing of passions, the many particularities of battels which no man could affirme', or if that be denied me, long orations put in the mouthes of Kings and Captains, which it is certaine they never pronounced. So that truly neither Philosopher, nor Historiographer, could at the first have entered into the gates of populer judgements, if they had not taken a great pasport of Poetrie. ‘
1 Sir Philip Sidney, "The Defence of Poesie," The Defence of Poesie. Political Discourses, Correspondence. Translations, ed. Albert Feuillerat (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1923) 4, 5. Now the epic, as we know it in Homer, in The Song of Roland. and in The Cid, is among other things a kind of primitive history. It does not carry as much historical detail and explanation as do our later histories, for its readers— or listeners— did not require this and the poets had no access to such materials even if they had wanted them, but it carries a great deal of detail notwithstanding, and much of this material is only imperfectly fitted to verse. Furthermore, much of it is only imperfectly fitted to interest the civilized mind, except as the civilized mind may choose to engage in an act of historical— or perhaps we should say anthropological— imagination. There is no harm in such an act provided we know what we are doing, but if we cultivate our imagination too much and understand it too little, we may come to believe that The Song of Roland is as great a work as the History of England, if we are thinking about histories and epics, or, since it is a poem, an epic, and the national epic of France, that it is a greater work than such and such a short poem, let us say Le Cimeti&re Marin: and it is certainly far inferior to either of these....It would seem the part of wisdom to value such works as historical data and for such great poetry as we may find scattered through them, but not to over-rate them.3
3 Yvor Winters, The Function of Criticism: Problems and Exercises (Denver: Alan Swallow, 1957) 41, 42. Introduction
The Problem of Historical Perspective
I have chosen the rather unorthodox course of beginning this dissertation with two lengthy quotations because, although the works they were taken from were written almost three hundred years apart,
Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesie during the 1580's and Yvor Winters'
Function of Criticism in 1957, they illustrate perfectly two of the primary critical problems still facing scholars of early literature.
As Sidney points out with reference to the ancient Greeks and Winters with reference to the medieval French and Spanish, in the earliest written works of any society, literary and historical impulses are apt to be inseparable. This crucial point has long been recognized by literary critics and historians alike. However, as these two passages also reveal, this fusion of history and literature in early written works, particularly as manifested in an apparent unwillingness to keep fact clearly separated from fiction, causes an intense discomfort in the minds of critics, historians, and to a lesser extent, I would argue, readers living in what Winters would call a more civilized time.
Consequently, despite a long-standing critical recognition of the fundamental and characteristic nature of this blending of fiction and history in such works, critics for the most part have taken the course advocated by Winters, attempting to evaluate these works as either
3 history or literature and, when that has proved Impossible, to separate passages of historical significance from ones of artistic merit but factual dubiousness.
At a very basic level, the causes of both this early fusion of what we have come to see as clearly distinguishable entitles and the discomfort aroused by that fusion In later, more sophisticated readers are relatively easy to understand. In their simplest forms, history is the quantitative recording of events deemed worthy of remembrance, literature the qualitative presentation, for preservation, explanation, or evaluation, of the principles according to which significance is conferred. Yet just as significance cannot be determined in an eventless vacuum, so events cannot be preserved without principles governing what is to be retained and what discarded.
Given this relationship, it should not be surprising to discover that at their earliest stages of development, the historical and literary impulses of a particular society are inextricably intertwined.
In ancient Greece, for example, the Homeric poems were composed not just to serve as records of what were felt to be important events in that society's past but also to point out and preserve the cultural significance of those events; succeeding generations of Greeks preserved these works, at first orally and later in writing, because they saw in them an accurate reflection of the moral and social values on which their culture had been built. For this later audience and perhaps even for Homer himself, the meaning of these events was more important than the events themselves and the accuracy of the sentiments 5 more important than the accuracy of the details, which could not, after all, be verified anyway.1
John Chadwick, a renowned archaeologist and historian of ancient
Greece, while admitting the accuracy of many of the details of The
Iliad, calls Homer a "pseudo-historian" and cautions:
The important thing to remember about Homer is that he was a poet not an historian. Poetic truth and historical truth are two quite different commodities. Poetry is concerned with unchanging, eternal values; history with facts and events.4
Nevertheless, despite Chadwick's empirically well-grounded point of view, it seems evident both from Homer's poems themselves and from our continued reluctance to regard them purely as literature that those unchanging and eternal values which Chadwick terms poetic were an essential part of the sense of history possessed by Homer and his audience, and perhaps even by many of his more recent readers.
Such an unconscious fusion of event with significance is only possible in culturally homogeneous and relatively isolated societies; once different interpretations can be given to the same event by members of the same culture, records of events come to have an importance which is independent from the evaluation of their meaning.
Accuracy of factual detail becomes the primary concern of historical
* The events of which Homer spoke in The Iliad and The Odvssev are generally thought to have taken place over 400 years before the poet lived. Although the Greeks of the earlier, Mycenean era had had at their disposal a highly developed and well-used system of writing, linear B, by Homer's time the ability to write or even to read this language, or indeed any other, had been lost and was just beginning to be re-developed, at best.
4 John Chadwick, The Mycenaean World (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1976) 186. writing, with specific authorial interpretation of event being most highly valued where it is most clearly dependent on verifiable evidence. On the other hand, in literary writing the discussion of
significance becomes increasingly hypothetical, developing along the parallel courses of philosophy, which concerns itself with meaning beyond the confines of the details of reality, and fiction, which finds meaning through the creation of new realities.5
This process, whereby history gradually becomes separated from literature, is hastened of course by the advent of literacy, which brings with it both the capability for accurate, long-term preservation of details and the influx of written material from alien cultures. As a society becomes more self conscious and sophisticated and the number of means for interpreting past reality multiplies, this separation of event from significance gains in importance: a total division between these two entities is deemed necessary, possible, and highly desirable.
As a result of this culturally-based but little recognized assumption, literature which relies too heavily on fact comes to be regarded as somehow inferior to that which is regarded as pure invention, an
5 Joseph Harris, in his discussion of the development of the elegy as a genre in the literature of various medieval Germanic cultures, argues that it is not necessary for literature to develop along both courses, philosophy and fiction, simultaneously or even at all. "In English, the development was from heroic story to psychology and general life patterns and on to allegory and homily, in other words from experienced events to experience itself and thence to ideas little connected with experience; while in Old Norse the old core of traditional experienced events becomes surrounded with a second growth of pure story and finally overgrown with new events, not now filtered through an experiencer" (Joseph Harris, "Elegy in Old English and Old Norse: A Problem in Literary History," The Old English Elegies: New Essays in Context and Research, ed. Martin Green (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1983) 50. attitude reflected not just in the opening quotation from Winters but also in the frequent critical dismissal of a novel as being largely autobiographical. Furthermore, as the quotation from Sidney indicates, history and philosophy, the apparent representatives of pure reality and pure meaning, come to be regarded as superior to fiction, which contains neither in pure form; indeed, Winters, later in the same work, maintains that the literary achievement of historiographers far outweighs that of novelists. And because attitudes such as these have existed for so long in Western civilization that they now lie at the center of our intellectual assumptions, they have given rise to the intense discomfort with which historians and literary critics approach the writings produced in cultures in which such a separation of event from significance has not taken place. Chapter One
The Problem of Old English Historical Criticism
No body of written material is better suited than Old English literature to the study of the effects both of the fusion of event and significance on a society's attitudes towards its own history as expressed in its literature and of the critical discomfort and uncertainty with which such literature is viewed by modem critics.
Even the most casual reader cannot help but be aware of the historical claims much of the poetry in particular makes for itself: despite vast differences in subject matter, almost all .Anglo-Saxon poems purport to be accounts of real events by virtue either of an eye-witness narrative stance or of a historical framework within which the material is presented as a coherent part. Today we are so used to these devices that we dismiss them as little more than parts of a standard pose adopted in fiction to foster an illusion of reality. However, critical studies of the development of fiction make clear that such a pose was originally adopted in deliberate imitation of historical narrative, that is, to pass fiction off as history. Furthermore, in recently literate cultures, such as that of Anglo-Saxon England, the distinction between history and pseudo-history is especially fine.
Note, for example, the similarity between the opening lines of
8 9
three brief Old English poems, Widsith. The Wife's Lament, and The
Seafarer;
Widsid madolade, wordhord onleac, se pe monna mast magpa ofer eorpan, folca geondferde j... Ongon pa worn sprecan: "Fela ic monna gefragn magpum wealdan!... Para was Hwala hwile selast, ond Alexandreas ealra ricost monna cyrrnes, ond he mast gepah para pe ic ofer foldan gefragen habbe." WidsiS (1. l-3a, 9b-10, 14-17) Mag ic be me sylfum so&gied wrecan, sipas secgan, hu ic geswincdagum earfodhwile oft prowade, bitre breostceare gebiden habbe, gecunnad in ceole cearselda fela, Seafarer (1. 1-5)
Ic pis giedd wrece be me ful geomorre minre sylfre si3. Ic pat secgan mag, hwat ic yrmpa gebad, sippan ic up weox, niwes oppe ealdes, no ma ponne nu. A ic wite wonn minra wracsipa. The Wife's Lament (1. 1-5)*
Each poem claims to be telling a true tale or song about real
experiences. There seems to be little distinction drawn between the
opening of the three poems except that the first presents its tale from
a third person perspective, perhaps considered more appropriate to its
* The Exeter Book, ed. George Philip Krapp and Elliot Van Kirk Dobbie, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3 (New York: Columbia UP, 1936). [WidsiS] Widsid spoke, unlocked his word-hoard, he who had traveled through most of the peoples on earth...he then began to speak a great amount: "I have heard about many men who wield power over tribes....Hwala for a while was the greatest and Alexander the most powerful of all the kings of men and he prospered the most of those I have heard of over the earth." [The Seafarer] I can utter about myself a true tale, relate journeys, how in days of toil I suffered a time of hardship, experienced bitter sorrows of the heart, have known in a ship many regions of sorrow. [The Wife's Lament! I, most sorrowful, utter this tale about myself, my own journey. I can speak of the miseries, new and old, that I have endured since I grew up— never worse than now. I continually suffer torment from my wretched experiences. 10
broad social and historical content, while the other two are told in
first person, well-suited to the telling of an individual history.
Even more obvious, and frequently commented upon, is the
similarity between the opening sections of three lengthy narrative
poems, Beowulf, Andreas and Exodus.
Hwxt we Gar-Dena in geardagum peodcyninga prym gefrunon, hu da xdelingas ellen fremedon! Beowulf (1. 1-3)
Hwxt, we gefrunan on fyrndagum twelfe under tunglum tireadige hxled, peodnes pegnas. No hira prym alxg cam
rxdenne, ponne cumbol hneotan, syddan his gegxldon swa him dryhten sylf, heofona heahcyning,
Hwxt! We feor and neah gefrigen habad ofer middangeard Moyses domas, wrxclico wordriht, wera cneorissum,— in uprodor eadigra gehwam xfter bealuside bote lifes, lifgendra gehwam langsumne rxd,— hxledum secgan. Gehyre se de wille. Exodus <1. i-7)7
Indeed, the similarity between the first two passages, in both
sentiment and phraseology, is so great that it can be, and often is,
attributed either to the oral formulaic character of Old English poetry
7 Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburh. ed. Frederick Klaeber, 3rd ed. with 1st and 2nd supplements (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1950). We have heard of the glory in former days of the kings of the people, the Spear Danes, how those noble ones performed [deeds of] valor. Andreas and The Fates of the Apostles, ed. Kenneth Brooks. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961). We have heard in days of old of twelve men under the heavens, glorious heroes, followers of the lord. Their valor did not fail in warfare, when banners clashed together, after they dispersed just as the lord himself, the noble king of heaven, showed fate to them. The Junius Manuscript, ed. George Philip Krapp, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 1 (New York: Columbia UP, 1931). Far and near over the earth we have heard the judgements (laws! of Noses, the promises to the exiled, to the generations of man, to each in heaven after relief from the adversity of life, to each living one eternal benefit, spoken to heroes. Let he who desires to, listen. 11 or even Co deliberate imitation. However, the parallels between the first two and Exodus are more remarkable because less exact. While both Andreas and Exodus expand the 3-line opening of Beowulf considerably, the Exodus poet adapts his reference to tales heard,
"domas gefrigen," more fully, and in a manner more suitable, to his scriptural content, thereby bending a secular historical mode to a
Christian purpose.
Clearly, whatever strictures Alcuin wished to place on the association of Christian material and Germanic legend, both the devisers of Old English poetry and their audience regarded Christian history and traditional secular history as treatable in the same manner. Indeed, Bede's tale of the miracle of Caedmon reflects just such an attitude; upon hearing of the gift which Caedmon had received, and deciding it came from God, the abbess Hilda commanded that Cadmon be instructed in the events of sacred history (iussitque ilium seriem sacrae historiae doceri), and Bede's own list of Caedmon's accomplishments consists in large measure of important stories from the
Old and New Testaments:
He sang of the creation of the world, the origin of the human race, and the whole story of Gensis. He sang of Israel's exodus from Egypt, the entry into the Promised Land, and many other events of scriptural history. He sang of the Lord's Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension in heaven, the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the teachings of the Apostles (HE IV, 24).*
* Bede, A History of the English Church and People, ed. and trans. Leo Sherley-Price, rev. ed. R. E. Latham (1955; New York: Penguin Books, 1968). Canebat autem de creatione raundi, et origine human! generis, et tota Genesis historia, de egressu Israel ex Aegypto et ingressu in terram repromissionis, de aliis pluimis sacrae Scripturae historiis, de incamatione Dominica, passione, resurrectione, et ascensione in 12
The Implication would seem to be that the old poetic tradition was
considered to be best suited to the telling of historical/legendary narratives: Hilda recognized the power of Caedmon's gift to make the new history of Christianity more readily available to a public already accustomed to listening to tales of personal and cultural history.
Doubtless, although he makes no specific mention of it, Winters would certainly have classed Old English poetry as literature which is little more than primitive history.
It is not just this tendency towards the poetic expression of
'historical' subject matter which makes Old English literature so well suited to a study of the effects of the fusion of historical and literary impulses in early literatures. Although the corpus of Old
English poetry is often regarded as being rather small, in fact its surviving 30,000-line corpus is remarkably large and varied considering how recently the Anglo-Saxons had become literate. Because the Anglo-
Saxons were, in effect, given the skills of reading and writing by the
Roman and Irish missionaries who came to convert them to Christianity in the early seventh century, the transition from an oral to a written culture was neither as slow nor as gradual as it was in most primitive cultures, such as that of the ancient Greeks, for example.
Consequently, Old English poetry, though surviving in a written form, contains much evidence of the influence of the earlier oral poetic caelum, de Spiritus Sancti adventu, et apostolorum doctrina (HE IV, 24). Bade, Opera Historica, Vol. 2, ed. J. E. King, Loeb Classical Library (New York: Putnam, 1930). All future quotations from Bede's Ecclesiastical History will be taken from the Sherley-Price edition if in English and the King edition if in Latin. 13
tradition and its characteristic primitive concept of history.
Furthermore, while adapting the vernacular forms to the new
literate/Christian tradition, Anglo-Saxon historians, though products
of their own native traditions, began to adopt new literate models of prose history.
This influx of literacy, which brought with it the culture and
literature of both the new religion and classical Rome, also
dramatically compressed the process whereby literature and history come
to be regarded as separate, if still closely related, art forms.*
Because of the relative swiftness of this process, Old English literature provides evidence of all stages of this transition. Indeed,
for the Anglo-Saxons, this transition was not so much a gradual,
socially-motivated development, as it had been in Greece, as a somewhat haphazard, individually-achieved reconciliation of an old literary- historical tradition with a new one. Consequently, Bede, writing at
the start of the conversion to literacy, prefaced his Ecclesiastical
History with a statement of intent and method clearly drawn from the new, classical concept of history. Following a fairly lengthy discussion of the sources of his material, Bede states, referring to his stories of Cuthbert in particular, that in keeping with the true
* I am not proposing in any way that this transition was complete by the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, merely that by that time writers by and large made some conscious distinctions between the genres of history and literature, even if these distinctions were neither clearly understood nor thoroughly followed. As I will discuss more fully later, it was not until the establishment of the scientific method as the primary mode of critical inquiry in the nineteenth century, and even more so today, that this separation came to be regarded as essential, with history relegated to the field of science and literature to that of art. 14
law of history he has followed common report, studied monastic records,
and solicited the testimony of credible men.1* On the other hand, the
Battle of Maldon poet, writing almost three hundred years later, chose
to pattern his account of a recent historical event on ideals apparently more in keeping with his understanding of the old poetic
tradition than with historical accuracy or contemporary military social reality.11 And of course, throughout the keeping of the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle. the new annalistic historical form often gave way to the older poetic form.
This fusion of historical and poetic impulses and of factual and legendary material in Old English literature, especially in the poetry, coupled with the effects of the introduction of literacy and classical/Christian learning on the Anglo-Saxon concept of history, has caused in critics of this material the same kind of discomfort evident in the passages by Sydney and Winters quoted at the start of this
t( For a fuller discussion of the Preface to Bede's Ecclesiastical History, see Section III, "Introduction." The specific reference to his sources for the Cuthbert material reads as follows: "...it should be noted that whatever I have written concerning our most holy father and Bishop Cuthbert, whether in this book or in my separate account of his life and doings, I have in part taken and accurately copied from a Life already compiled by the brethren of the Church of Ldridisfarae; and I have carefully added to this whatever I could learn 'Trom the reliable accounts of those who knew him" (HE Preface). [Inter quae notandum, quod ea quae de sanctissimo patre et antistite Cudbercto vel in hoc volumine vel in libello Gestorum ipsius conscripsi, partim ex eis quae de illo prius a fratibus ecclesiae Lindisfarnensis scripta reperi, adsumpsi simpliciter fidem historiae quam legebam accommodans, partim vero ea quae certissima fidelium virorum adtestatione per me ipse cognoscere potui sollerter adiicere curavi (Preface).]
11 See Chapter Two of this section for a fuller discussion of scholarship regarding the degree of historical accuracy in The Battle of Maldon. 15 chapter. Aware of the close association of fact and fiction in many of the poems and aware also of the presentation of both types of material as history, critics from the start have been uncertain of how to handle
Old English poetry.
A few, taking Winters' approach, have condemned it as being not worthy of study or appreciation, since they regard it as having too much of both genres to be a good representative of either. Most critics, however, have accepted that the poetry has value but have been divided on whether that value derives primarily from its historical or its literary merits. Indeed, even today, when the artistic merit of much of this poetry is widely recognized, debate still rages over whether or not this literature should be evaluated on exclusively aesthetic grounds. In short, as a result of our unrecognized critical discomfort with a less self-conscious and perhaps less sophisticated way of evaluating, preserving, and recording the past, we have attempted to analyze this material as either history or literature, apparently unaware of the essential inapplicability of such a division to the poetry of this period.
From shortly after the Norman Conquest until the beginning of the nineteenth century, literature written in Old English remained closed off from critical evaluation, largely because of the barrier posed by the unfamiliar language; indeed, such ignorance may also, at least in some part, be attributed to the fact that up until that time, the study of English literature of any sort was regarded as a popular rather than a scholarly concern. History, natural and social, was considered to be the proper occupation of the scientific mind. Early vernacular 16
literatures were studied not for their artistic merits but rather for what they could contribute to the understanding of the development of language, a suitably empirical pursuit.
As a result, the earliest critics to study Old English literature, educated in this philological school of thought, did so for two basic reasons: 1) to find evidence of the history of the Germanic and
English languages; and 2) to find material pertaining to the history of the Germanic peoples in the late classical and early medieval periods.
In essence, early scholars regarded these writings as little more than archaeological artifacts and accepted them as giving an accurate account of the life, culture, and history of the Anglo-Saxons, as well as of the continental Germanic peoples, in the early Middle Ages. In their eyes, not only prose works such as The Chronicle and Bede's
Ecclesiastical History but also much of the poetry, for example Midsid,
Waldere, The Battle of Maldon, and parts of Beowulf, were history.
Largely as a result of this approach, little attention was paid to the literary merit of these works. In particular, Old English poetry was deemed worthy of study primarily with reference to its historical plausibility and usefulness. Not surprisingly, critical attention was focused almost exclusively on those works which seemed to provide the greatest and most direct historical insight.
This early schoool of thought is perhaps best represented by
Grlmur Thorkelin, the first editor of Beowulf, in 1815.,a Like other eminent Danish scholars, Thorkelin spoke of the poem as "a
ia Grlmur Jonsson Thorkelin, De Danorum rebus gestis secul. Ill et IV. Poema Danicum dialecto Anqlo-Saxonica (Copenhagen, 1815). 17 document...evidently connected with the early history of their country
[Denmark!." In the words of a contemporary British scholar John
Conybeare in 1826, "In the opinion of Thorkelin, it [Beowulf] was originally written in the language of Denmark by an author contemporary and personally acquainted with his heroes, the chief of whom, Beowulf, he supposes to be the same with Boe or Bous son of Odin, said by Saxo
Grammaticus to have fallen in battle with Hother in the year 340.111 *
Conybeare dismissed Thorkelin's arguments— "There appears, however, to be no similarity in the fortunes or family of the two chieftains"— but still believed the poem "to have been translated or modernized in the
Dano-Saxon period of our history from an original of much higher antiquity" (34). Thorkelin's and Conybeare's attempts both to tie the characters in Beowulf to particular historical individuals and to establish the degree of distance between the poet and the events and people he described are indicative of one dominant trend in such early criticism of Old English poetry, the historical/legendary approach.
The primary spokesman of this concern was Karl Miillenhoff. He applied to Old English poetry, Beowulf in particular, Karl Lachmann's theory that Homeric epic derived from numerous brief lays recording folk history that over time accreted into one longer work. W. P. Ker, writing in 1897, followed in this tradition, albeit a bit distantly, when in distinguishing epic from romance, he made one characteristic of epic that it purports to be history while romance does not, although the two genres often make use of similar material. And in 1928, while
11 John Josias Conybeare, Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry (London: Harding and Lepard, 1826) 31-32. 18 discussing the subject matter of Beowulf, W. W. Lawrence stated, "Some two centuries had passed since an age of warlike achievement...had crystallized into legend, into tales which had become, with the passage of time, the common heritage of singers and audience alike."14
Coincidental with the folk history theory was the nature/ mythological approach which proposed that Old English heroic poetry had as its source ancient nature myths and that only through these myths could the tales in these poems be explained. Klaeber, in the introduction to the 3rd revision (1950) of his 1922 edition of Beowulf, amalgamated these two approaches when he divided the content of the epic between "Fabulous or Supernatural Elements" (Section II) and
"Historical Elements" (Section III). Even Klaeber's edition, however, makes clear that this second approach was never as widely accepted by critics as the folk history theory: Klaeber conludes, while admitting mythological origins, that "to inquire into the primitive mythological significance of the preternatural adventures is an utterly hopeless undertaking" (xxvii). Nevertheless, the nature/mythological approach can be traced to a similar critical impulse as the folk/historical one, a belief that the Old English material could not be evaluated as literature but rather that it could only be discussed or understood in terms of its ’origins.'
The method of evaluation employed by these early scholars became discredited when intense research into the details of the Old English poems such as Beowulf and WidsiS revealed that much of the historical
14 William Witherle Lawrence, "Beowulf" and Epic Tradition (1928; rev. ed. London: Hafner Publishing Co., 1963) 6. 19 material used in these works was at best unreliable and at worst
inaccurate. For example, when in his 1953 edition of Beowulf C. L.
Wrenn provided a rapid evaluative summary of the historical background material to the poem, he began by calling the setting "partly historical, partly of heroic legend, and partly folk-lore" and concluded by referring to that same setting as "teeming with quasi- historical allusions, some of which are demonstrably genuine."19 Such skepticism, even if motivated more by caution than by a firm conviction of historical inaccuracy, is still a far cry from Klaeber's apparently unshakable belief in the reliability of the geneologies in the poem, which he considers to be "the oldest literary source of Scandinavian history," even to the extent of proposing that Beowulf takes precedence in accuracy over native Swedish accounts in at least one aspect, the name of Healfdene's son (xxx, xxxiii). Confronted with archaeological evidence such as that unearthed at Sutton Hoo,1 * and meticulous
19 Beowulf, ed. C. L. Wrenn (1953; rev. ed. London: George G. Harrap and Co. Ltd., 1973) 34, 46.
19 Research at Sutton Hoo revealed that despite marked parallels between the sentiment and situation of the poem and that of the East Anglian site, the poet had confused the details of ship burial as practiced in early England with funerary ship burning as practiced in Viking Scandinavia. By 1982, James Campbell emphasizes the shift in attitude towards these parallels when he states: "the history of the dynasty, part...of whose treasure was buried at Sutton Hoo, also has echoes of the Beowulf world (James Campbell, "The First Christian Kings," The Anglo-Saxons, ed. Campbell (Oxford: Phaidon, 1982) 56). By contrast, early scholars stressed the affinities between Beowulf and Sutton Hoo; see for example: C. L. Wrenn, "Sutton Hoo and Beowulf," An Anthology of "Beowulf" Criticism, ed. Lewis E. Nicholson (Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 1963) 311-330. 20
historical research by such respected scholars as Dorothy Whitelock,17
critics were forced to admit that Old English literature was not
history, at least not history as we understand it.
While critics were gradually turning away from the extreme
historical approach of Miillenhoff, a new attitude to the study of the
poetry of the Anglo-Saxons hastened the demise of the origin-oriented
methods. In 1936, J. R. R. Tolkien gave his seminal lecture, "Beowulf:
the Monsters and the Critics," in which he made an eloquent plea for
evaluating that work both in terms of its literary merit rather than of
its plausibility in modern eyes, and as a unified work rather than a
patchwork of ancient fragments. More surprising, and more indicative
of a change in critical attitudes, is the number of works written in
recent years on the stylistic merit of Widsid, a poem formerly
considered mainly the province of historians; for example, compare R.
W. Chambers' 1912 edition of the poem with Kemp Malone's revised 1962
edition: at best 46 pages, three out of nine sections, of Chamber's edition are devoted to a discussion of matters in any way related to
the style of the poem, with the majority of the attention being focused on such issues as the geography of the poem and "tales known to the poem"; by contrast, only one of Malone's seventeen sections is entitled
"Geography, History, and Story," with the rest of his discussion being devoted to such stylistic concerns as "Versification" and "Measurements
17 Whitelock, for example, in her book The Beginnings of English Society, rather than using Beowulf as direct historical evidence refers to the poem primarily as supporting evidence of Anglo-Saxon customs and attitudes, noting how the poet uses "stories of the past" to supply "a realistic background" to his tale (Vol. 2, Pelican History of England (1952; Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1974) 211). 21
and Proportions."l• This shift in critical attitude towards the poem
is particularly evident in a 1982 article by Hildegard Tristram, entitled "Othere, Wulfstan, und der Aethicus Ister," in which the author ironically remarks that even historians, who, she implies, normally accept as historical anything that is supported by other historically credible sources, now recognize Widsid, in general narrative situation as well as specific details, to be fiction.1* Such a statement is as diametrically opposed to the opinions of early critics, such as Conybeare and Thorkelin, as it is possible for a brief remark to be.
Undeniably, the dominant trend in the post-Tolkien school of literary criticism has been a positive one, in that critics have been forced to evaluate not only Beowulf but also Old English literature in general by its own standards of artistic merit. No longer are such judgments of the material and the people by whom and for whom it was composed as that made by Ritchie Girvan of Beowulf in 1935 considered valid criticisms:
We might be able to answer with complete satisfaction some of the questions which rise in men's minds over the poet's presentation of his hero if we could also answer with certainty the question of why he chose just this subject, when to our modern judgement there were at hand so many greater, charged with the splendour and tragedy of humanity,
1# "Widsith"; A Study in Old English Heroic Legend, ed. R. W. Chambers (New York: Russell & Russell, 1912); Widsith. ed. Kemp Malone (1936; rev. ed. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1962).
lf "Historiker sehen die Riesen des Widsith als Fiktion an, weim auch viele seiner Namen in glaubwiirdigen historischen Quellen belegt werden konnen" (Hildegard Tristram, "Othere, Wulfstan, und der Aethicus Ister," Zeitschrift fur deutches Alterturn III (1982-83): 154). 22
and in all respects worthier of a genius as astonishing as it was rare in Anglo-Saxon England.3*
By laying aside such prejudices as these regarding what constitutes
art, recent critics have been gaining ever increasing appreciation of
the artistic excellence of many works of Old English literature.
However, it remains true— and despite changing attitudes expressed
by some critics, is still undeniable— that since much of the content of
this literature is in one way or another historical in nature, a full
appreciation of these works cannot be gained until the role that
history plays in Old English literature is fully explored. The early
scholars, whatever the inaccuracies of their conclusions, were correct
in recognizing the importance of the historical question in
understanding the purpose and nature of the literature of the Anglo-
Saxons. It is unfortunate that one side effect of the discrediting of
their approach to this material has been that scholars have turned away
from consideration of the general function of history in Old English
literature, particularly as regards the poetry.
When the issue of history is approached at all, it is studied
almost exclusively with reference to certain individual works, prose
and poetry, deemed by all to be at least moderately historical in
content, that is, typically, Bede's Ecclesiastical History, the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle, and Beowulf, together with the other poems and prose works pertaining to the heroic past or to specific events in Anglo-
Saxon history. However, even in discussing one of these works, most critics tend to limit themselves to evaluating the work in question as
*• Ritchie Girvan, "Beowulf" and the Seventh Century (1935; rev. ed. London: Methuen and Co., 1971) 83. 23 either history, and thus focusing on factual accuracy, or as literature, and thus rejecting or entirely ignoring the historical framework. Given the dismissal by these more recent critics of the opinions held by earlier scholars of Old English literature, it is surprising to note that the modern critical approach to the question of the function of history in this material is grounded in a belief akin to that underlying the critical approach of early scholars— a belief that history and literature are separate disciplines and must be treated as such. Chapter Two
The Problem of Maldon
Critical studies of The Battle of Maldon provide the best briefly citable example of the dlchotomous hlstory-or-llterature approach to
Old English literature. Because undeniably the subject matter of this poem Is a verifiable historical event which took place only shortly before the poem was composed--a circumstance true of only one other Old
English poem, The Battle of Brunanburh— practically all of the critical attention paid to this poem has been, and still is, focused on the question of whether or not The Battle of Maldon provides a historically accurate account of the actual event. Critics consciously and openly range themselves along a continuum between two opposing camps with respect to this question.
The dominant school of thought accepts Maldon as a relatively accurate account of the original event and bases criticism of the poem upon this belief. The most extreme expression of this viewpoint may have been made in 1949 by G. K. Anderson: "The melancholy story is told here with the fidelity and power of observation of a keen eye witness; and the poem must have been written soon after the actual combat."31 While few critics today would concur with Anderson's
31 George K. Anderson, The Literature of the Anglo-Saxons (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1949) 92.
24 25
assertion that the poet must have been an eyewitness to the event,
citing as proof elements— such as the references to the beasts of
battle at the start of the poem and the formal speeches at the end—
which owe much in their expression to the Anglo-Saxon poetic style, many still base their critical evaluations of the poem upon a belief
that the poet intended to render a faithful depiction of the battle as
far as the facts were known.
For critics of this school, this question of factual and sentimental accuracy is of primary concern and hence they treat the poem as a historian might a piece of historical data, that is, as something to be evaluated in terms of other available historical and archaeological evidence. In many cases, this empirically oriented method has become an end in itself. E. D. Laborde's 1925 article "The
Site of the Battle of Maldon" is an excellent early representative of this approach,32 and it is not surprising, given the amount of background material Laborde was able to unearth, to discover that his methodology was adopted in later years by historians and literary critics alike. For example, in 1949, historian Dorothy Whitelock expressed an interest in "the value and limitations of Old English verse literature as historical material" in her article "Anglo-Saxon
Poetry and the Historian," and although she dealt only briefly with
Maldon, she did so in an entirely factual context, contending that the formal heroic boasts expressed in the poem are authentic because records of boasts of this type span the entire Anglo-Saxon period,
32 E. D. Laborde, "The Site of the Battle of Maldon," EHR 40 (1925): 161-73. 26
occurring, for example, in a letter to Bishop Wilfred's followers in
666 and entries in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for both 755 and 901.a*
Thirty years later, in 1979, Nicholas Hooper picked up where Whitelock had left off when, after examining archaeological evidence of Anglo-
Saxon battle tactics, he argued that Byrhtnod's actions and Byrhthelm's
speech, as reported in the poem, may have been more typical than we
think and representative of the apparent emphasis during the Anglo-
Saxon period on numbers and morale rather than tactics due to the semi voluntary nature of the military instrument at that time.34
In recent years, the critic who has been most strongly associated with the purely data-oriented approach is the Anglo-Saxonist scholar
Helmut Gneuss. Most notably, in two related articles, Gneuss has focused his attention almost exclusively on the issue of the veracity of the Maldon poet, particularly in his use of the word ofermod. One of Gneuss' primary arguments in these essays has been that the word ofermod. which he interprets as being strongly negative and critical, could not have been used about Byrhtnod in the poem had the poet not believed himself to be giving an accurate account of the event.39 In both articles, Gneuss relies heavily on external evidence for proof,
33 Dorothy Whitelock, "Anglo-Saxon Poetry and the Historian," TRHS ser. 4, 3i (1949): 75.
34 Nicholas Hooper, "Anglo-Saxon Warfare on the Eve of the Conquest," Proceedings of the Battle Conference I. ed. R. Allen Brown. (Totowa, NJ: Rowan and Littlefield, 1979) 211-27.
39 Helmut Gneuss, "Die Battle of Maldon als historisches und literarisches Zeugnis," Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Sitzungsberichte. philosophische-historische Klasse, Jahrgang 1976, Heft 4 (Munich, 1976): 13; and Gneuss. "The Battle of Maldon 69: ByrhtnoA's ofermod Once Again," SP 73 (1976): 117-37. 27 examining ocher occurances of ofermod and various Latin and Germanic corollaries, as well as Che local tradition regarding both Byrhtnod's general character and his specific actions on this occasion.
Although works such as these focus scant attention on The Battle of Maldon itself, they pave the way for other historically-minded critics who wish to examine the larger social implications of the poem, especially as revealed by the degree and manner in which the poet may have strayed from or altered the truth. The best articles in this group are those in which the conclusions, which tend to be more far reaching than those of the Laborde type, are based on examination of both internal and external evidence. 0. D. Macrae-Gibson's "How Historical
Is The Battle of Maldon" and George Clark's "The Hero of Maldon: Vir
Pius et Strenuus" are two of the most productive examples of this more moderate approach.2*
Macrae-Gibson, like Laborde, begins with a detailed examination of empirical evidence about both the battlefield and Old English battle tactics, from which he concludes that the details of the poem are for the most part plausible, and "the 'historical' view of the poem is supported" (104). However, in the final paragraph, Macrae-Gibson goes beyond Laborde's purely data-oriented approach when, using a deduction based on historical likelihood to arrive at a literary judgment, he argues that the poet's description of Byrhtnod's rash headlong rush into battle and his resulting death was probably "written from art and not from record" in order to heighten the warrior's heroic magnitude by
2* 0. D. Macrae-Gibson, "How Historical Is The Battle of Maldon?" M AE 39 (1971): 89-105? George Clark, "The Hero of Maldon: Vir Pius et Strenuus," Speculum 54 (1979): 257-82. 28
sparing him the less glorious death from an anonymous Viking arrow
which more probably actually killed him (105).
Similarly, following in the footsteps of Gneuss, and basing his
arguments on the evaluation of both other accounts of the story and
other uses of certain key words, Clark concludes chat the poem is
essentially accurate; unlike Gneuss, however, Clark argues that far
from being critical of ByrhtnoS, the poet wished to hold him up as an
example, an ideal of the type of heroic behavior which he felt was
unfortunately no longer being practiced enough. In the larger social
context, Clark argues that the poem, which he thinks was probably
composed after 1020, was written to provide not so much an accurate
account of a minor and by then long past battle as an artistic
affirmation of "the ethos of the aristocratic tradition" and a
criticism of the poet's own tribute-paying era which had too much gafol
and too little ofermod (282).37
Clark's critical methodology, including the wealth of empirical
data that fills his article, clearly marks his work as belonging to the historically-oriented approach to "The Battle of Maldon." However, because other scholars often base their conclusions regarding the meaning and social implications of the poem on the assumption that the poet's primary purpose was to depict a real but relatively minor event in such a way as to make clear its larger significance, criticism of
the poem derived from the historical school is not always so easy to
27 J. R. R. Tolkien, in his article "The Homecoming of Beorhtnod, Beorhthelm's Son," argues in favor of precisely the opposite point of view, that the poem was being critical, in the person of its hero, of outmoded and useless aristocratic ideals (ESS n.s. 6 (1953): 1-8). 29
spot. Indeed, I would argue that a sizable percencage of all Maldon
criticism rests on this for-the-most-part unwritten understanding.
Cecily Clark's brief article, "Byrhtnod and Roland: A Contrast,"
is a case in point: Clark argues that the poet's primary concern, "to depict Germanic heroism with the more purity" as seen in a war between
two Germanic peoples over gold, land, "or, at most, martial honour," was so purely non-religious that he even avoided showing Byrhtnod as
the deeply religious man he was known to have been.3* However, an essential but unexamined assumption underlying Clark's conclusion, is
that in all matters except that of Byrhtnod's piety the poem's depiction of the battle is historically accurate. Even articles longer
than Clark's five page essay often assume rather than explore the
fundamental truthfulness of the poetic account, as in the case of W. G.
Busse and R. Holtei's "The Battle of Maldon: A Historical, Heroic, and
Political Poem."3* Here, the authors, who conclude that the poet's ultimate purpose was to provide for the thegns who served the king and his lords a political cry for communal action and heroism, declare at the outset that modern problems with the poem arise not from historical inaccuracies on the poet's part (an issue the authors choose to pursue no further) but rather from misconceptions on our part of the contemporary, Anglo-Saxon understanding of heroism: since heroism involves a choice between actions which are on the one hand "privately agreeable...but socially disgraceful" and on the other "privately
3* Cecily Clark, "Byrhtnod and Roland: A Contrast," Neophil 51 (1967): 292.
3* W. G. Busse and R. Holtei, "The Battle of Maldon: A Historical, Heroic, and Political Poem," Neophil 65 (1981): 614-21. 30
disagreeable but will socially be appreciated and rewarded," the focus
of the poem Is not on Byrhtno* but on the contrast between his cowardly
and his courageous followers (615).**
Despite the differences In methodology and conclusions, and
regardless of how directly they address the question of factual
accuracy, all analyses of The Battle of Maldon which take the
historically oriented approach to the poem share two characteristic preconceptions. First, because this poem deals with a historical
event. It must be examined primarily In light of the facts as we know
or can establish them. Second, where the poet strayed from the truth
for other than minor artistic or poetic reasons, he did so either accidentally because of the flawed received tradition of the event or consciously for socially motivated and ascertainable reasons. Finally, underlying both assumptions Is the belief that factual accuracy was as
Important to the Anglo-Saxon poet and his audience as It Is to us
today, Indeed that It took total precedence over all other considerations, and that It was only to be 'sacrificed' for a vital and well-recognlzed purpose.
In recent years, a few literary critics have begun to question both these conclusions and the historical approach to the poem which produced them. J. B. Besslnger's 1962 article, "Maldon and Olafsdrlpa;
An Historical Caveat," Is the clearest and most Influential
*• An earlier article by George Clark, "The Battle of Maldon; A Heroic Poem," makes a similar point but supports it with more concrete lexical and historical evidence (Speculum 43 (1968): 52-71). representative of this opposing viewpoint.*1 Bessinger evaluates
Maldon primarily on its literary rather than its historical elements,
pointing out that, "As is clearer in the Norse piece than in the
English one, they are historical poems from a markedly artificial
tradition, poems which brilliantly demonstrate the virtues of their
genre, the heroic panegyric, within the subtypes of narrative and court
lyric" (24). It is Bessinger's contention that "historical poems such
as these are only secondarily about events"— indeed, he argues, the
thematic emphasis on the heroic Germanic ethos in both poems is more
"profoundly historical" than the presentation of the important events
in either poem, all of which he finds actually have parallels in other clearly fictional Old English and Norse literature (35, 30). The influence of Bessinger's opinion is seen in A Critical History of Old
English Literature, published in 1965, in which the author, Stanley
Greenfield, is "inclined to heed his caveat."**
The influence of Bessinger's literary approach to Maldon. and other historically-based poems like it, was even more far-reaching. In the past twenty years, increasing attention has been focused on such aspects of The Battle of Maldon as the poetic style, formal structure, and generic background. For example, Ralph Elliott, in an article which appeared in the same issue of Comparative Literature as Bessinger's
** J. B. Bessinger, Jr, "Maldon and Olafsdrdpa: An Historical Caveat," CL 14 (1962): 23-35.
** Stanley B. Greenfield, A Critical History of Old English Literature (New York: New York UP, 1965) 99. Clearly, not all critics accept Bessinger's point of view; Gneuss' articles, cited earlier, were written at least partly in response to Bessinger, in that Gneuss regards the use of ofermod as indicative that Maldon is not a panegyric. article, examines how the authors of The Battle of Maldon and
Hildebrandslied subjugated purely conventional language and sentiment to the artistic expression of the Germanic heroic ideal: details of setting, armor, and ornament are pared down to a minimum, and in
Maldon, even references to legendary history are omitted, thereby giving the heroic ideal a life of its own, a life perpetuated by literature.** Similarly, David Hale, concurring with Bessinger that the purpose of the poem is "to praise the fallen and to extoll the traditional heroic spirit which united Byrhtnoth and his men," sees what he describes as the three-part structure of the poem as proof of this positive reading.*4 On the other hand, believing like Bessinger that the poem "has little to do with 'history,' 'reality,' and 'what actually goes on in battle,'" Heather Stuart, in her article "The
Meaning of Maldon." uses evidence similar to that employed by Hale to arrive at precisely the opposite conclusion, that Maldon "has an underlying ironic structure and that its meaning, like that of some other heroic pieces, is ultimately anti-heroic."**
Another trend in the artistically-oriented school of Maldon criticism which can trace much of its impetus back to Bessinger's essay is the attempt to define or redefine the generic analogues of the poem.
N. F. Blake, for example, contends in two related articles published
** Ralph M. V. Elliott, "Byrhtnoth and Hildebrand: A Study in Heroic Technique," CL 14 (1962): 53-70; rpt. Studies in Old English Literature in Honor of Arthur G. Brodeur. ed. Stanley B. Greenfield (Eugene, OR: Oregon UP, 1963).
14 David G. Hale, "Structure and Theme in The Battle of Maldon." N&Q 213 (1968): 242.
**Heather Stuart, "The Meaning of Maldon," Neophil 66 (1962): 126. 33 over ten years apart that the poem is entirely literary in nature and
should be studied as such. In his 1965 "The Battle of Maldon." he argues that the poem was patterned after Saints' Lives, citing
Aelfric's Vita of St. Edmund as one example.** In his later article,
"The Genesis of The Battle of Maldon." Blake contends that because the revised date of composition for the poem to 1030 makes it the most recent of the three surviving accounts of the battle, the poem was probably written by a monk who, knowing nothing of this battle or indeed of warfare at all, drew heavily on the Vita Oswaldi for his material, adding but a few details to enhance the greatness of his hero, such as the followers' speeches praising their lord and
Byrhtnod's defiant words to the Vikings over the causeway.*7 On the other hand, Nicholas Jacobs, in his article "The Old English Heroic
Tradition in the Light of Welsh Evidence," is more concerned with the heroic literary heritage of the poem; using Maldon as only one of his examples, he states that like most Old English poetry the poem does not meet the generic criteria of primary heroic poetry as defined by the works of Aneirin and Taliesin and thus, by implication, is more of a literary/artistic rather than heroic/traditional product.**
**N. F. Blake, "The Battle of Maldon." Neophil 49 (1965): 332-45.
*7 N. F. Blake, "The Genesis of The Battle of Maldon." ASE 7 (1977): 119-29. Blake points out that in no other account are the Vikings shown as being trapped on an island and contends that the poet created this device because in heroic literature it is customary for challenges to be issued across barriers; unfortunately, Blake gives no analogous examples.
** Nicholas Jacobs, "The Old English Heroic Tradition in the Light of Welsh Evidence," Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 2 (1981): 9-20. Despite the apparently vast differences in focus and conclusion
between the articles by Blake and Jacobs, they are bound together by
their methodology of analyzing The Battle of Maldon almost exclusively
in terms of other literary works, rather than historical and
archaeological data. Similarly, articles by critics of the other
artistically-minded group are bound by a tendency to evaluate the poem
on literary grounds internal to the poem. Indeed, Heather Stuart in
the article mentioned earlier gives the clearest expression to the
evident if usually unstated attitude of the critics of this school:
"whether it [The Battle of Maldon] presents a realistic description of
the battle is not only difficult to prove but also irrelevant for a
literary interpretation" (126). It is an attitude echoed in a larger
context in Michael Swanton's "Heroes, Heroism, and Heroic Literature"
in which the author, while discussing the relationship of heroic
material to historic fact, advances his thesis that the larger
historical picture was irrelevant to the poet and his audience because
"the verse of the Heroic Age is clearly interpretative, the literary
persona diverging from the historic one at a relatively early stage in
its existence.**
The problem raised by these two divergent schools of thought can
be seen in C. L. Wrenn's discussion of the Maldon in his general
survey, A Study of Old English Literature. Wrenn seems to lean towards
** Michael Swanton, "Heroes, Heroism, and Heroic Literature," ESS n.s. 30 (1977): 8. It is not surprising, given this point of view, to discover that Swanton's response to Bessinger's article, "The Battle of Maldon: A Literary Caveat" (JEGP 67 (1968): 441-50), is even more firmly of the artistically-oriented school of thought than the original. 35
accepting the poem as an accurate representation of a real event: "The
battle of Maldon, in which Byrhtnoth, leader of the Essex men, was
slain with most of his followers, whom he had led to face impossible
odds in the old heroic spirit, was certainly an event in history." A
few sentences later, however, he reluctantly admits that despite "this
remarkably vivid air of historicity and verisimilitude," the
reliability of the poet has been questioned. Wrenn concludes his
discussion of the controversy in such a way that the issues of history
and literature become divorced from each other: "But such skill in
simulating history and producing so vivid an impression of
verisimilitude, however unsatisfying to the historian, only adds to the
literary excellence of the poem."4' Wrenn's statement, which takes as
its premise the narrowest possible definitions of history and
literature, the one an accumulation of empirical data and the other an
abstract artistic creation, implies that the questions "Is this good
history?" and "Is this good literature?" can and indeed must be
considered independently.
This attitude, though common in the criticism of Old English
poetry in general, is so especially fundamental to the approach to
Maldon that it is the rare critic, and at that only recently, who has
attempted to answer both questions. Three articles written in the past
fifteen years have combined the literary and historical approaches to
the poem particularly effectively by suggesting that the Maldon poet used various artistic devices to enhance his essentially accurate
4# C. L. Wrenn, A Study of Old English Literature (London: George G. Harrap, 1967) 186. 36
presentation of a real event in such a way that his audience would be
led to a particular interpretation of that event. Regardless of the
accuracy of their individual conclusions regarding this poem,
collectively these critics have demonstrated that there need be no
impasse between these two critical approaches; indeed, their work
demonstrates that in evaluating Old English literature the two schools
work better hand in hand than in opposition.
Two of these articles clearly owe much of their methodology to the
two schools of criticism already discussed. In the earliest and
briefest of the three, "History and Heroic Ethic in Maldon." Thomas D.
Hill contends that Maldon is a poem about an event in which "realism"
and "Germanic martial rhetoric" came face to face with tragic
consequences. By examining such devices as variations in literary
style'and authorial attitude throughout the poem, Hill demonstrates
that there are three attitudes operative in Maldon toward heroic
rhetoric and the historic event and concludes that the poem shows "both
the grandeur of the ancient heroic tradition and the needless waste of
life which could result from the attempt to live the heroic ethic in history."41 Unlike Hill, whose critical techniques are primarily
literary in focus, Rosemary Woolf, in perhaps the best-known article of
the three, "The Ideal of Men Dying with Their Lord in the Germania and
The Battle of Maldon." bases her interpretation of the poem on her conclusions regarding its historical accuracy. More specifically, after detailed consideration of other references, mainly Roman and
41 Thomas D. Hill, "History and Heroic Ethic in Maldon." Neophil 54 (1970); 295. Byzantine, to the practice of Germanic warriors dying with their lord,
Woolf concludes that as it is presented in Maldon this ideal of heroic
behavior may be more literary than historical and that the poet’s
purpose was in effect to reinterpret a minor moment in history in such
a way as to grant it supreme significance: "The poet has taken an
apparently local defeat...and transposed it from the historical world
into one of heroic story in which paradoxically it is better to lose
than to win."43 Of course, neither Woolf's nor Hill's conclusions are
entirely original to their work— critics in both schools have suggested
similar interpretations. The value of their work lies largely in the
fact that their broader, more comprehensive critical approach causes
them to discuss more diverse aspects of the poem and thereby makes
their conclusions more all-encompassing.
The third article, "Legend, History, and Artifice in 'The Battle
of Maldon'" by A. N. Doane, takes a decidedly original approach to the
poem. Instead of focusing on concrete historical or literary details,
Doane begins by discussing the causes and problems of these two
opposing critical camps, much as I, though in more detail, have just
done. The article then proceeds to call for and briefly engage in a
re-evaluation of the poem in terms of "the historical presuppositions"
under which Maldon was written: "What are the artistic effects of such
presuppositions? What is the purpose of such historical writing?"43
43 Rosemary Woolf, "The Ideal of Men Dying with Their Lord in Germania and The Battl? of Maldon," ASE 5 (1976): 81.
41 A. N. Doane, "Legend, History, and Artifice in 'The Battle of Maldon,'" Viator 9 (1978): 41. 38
Doane contends that any historical or even pseudo-historical work presents a three-sided reality:
(1) the poem's relation to some actual outside event, (2) the poet's technical and aesthetic procedures in presenting his understanding of the event, (3) the assumptions which underlie those procedures, both conscious and unconscious....1 think we must grant that the poet thinks he is conveying what actually happened out there or wants us to think so...; but in order to do this he is ordering, inventing, calling attention to repetitions, echoes, dysfunctions. He is doing this for some purpose, to bring out some coherent statement more abstract and universal than the mere reportage of a singleengagement (40, 41).
Doane's examination of the historical and literary presuppositions which he believes underlie the poem leads him to assert that the poem is governed by the norms of what he terms legendary history, a genre in which "historical and fictive narrative are not markedly distinct" and in which "it was the common task of the poet and historian to show how events in the secular world manifested the eternal events of which they were the shadowiest part" (42).
While I am not entirely convinced by all of the specifics of
Doane's interpretation of The Battle of Maldon. in particular the strong religious overtones he sees in the poem, his recognition of the limitations of the current critical approaches to the poem and his proposed solution to that problem are extremely important, not just to the study of this poem but also to the examination of other Old English literary works which are oriented towards the past in subject matter or sentiment. Indeed, given that the greater portion of the entire corpus of Old English poetry purports to present accounts of real events significant to either the Anglo-Saxon cultural heritage or the Judeo-
Christian religious tradition, such a re-evaluation of historical and 39
creative assumptions, if researched and applied on a larger scale, would be of immense value in arriving at a more complete understanding of the purposes and achievements of Old English poets in particular. Conclusion
A Critical Solution
In some ways, it is rather surprising that a re-evaluation of the concept of history as it functions in Anglo-Saxon literature was not undertaken long ago. The apparent discrepancy between the historical claims of the opening of Beowulf and the fantastic content of the rest of the poem should have alerted readers to the fact that the poet had a radically different understanding of historical truth than we have today. Instead, the Beowulf poet was simply written off as a poor historian. Such a judgment is shown to be all the more ill-considered in light of the similarity between the opening lines of Beowulf and the beginning not just of the Andreas, a poetic Saint's Life based heavily on a Latin source, and Exodus, but also of the Parker version of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a prose historical annal, which is prefaced by a genealogical account of the deeds of local kings before proceeding to an account of Roman/Christian history.44 Equally significant is the similarity between the opening of the Laud version of the Chronicle and that of Bede's Ecclesiastical History (after his Preface), both of which begin with a geographical description of the island of Britain.
44 In some manuscripts, this preface appears separately from the rest of the Parker text. See: Bruce Dickens, The Genealogical Preface to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (four texts edited to supplement Earle- Plummer). Occasional Papers: No. II (printed for the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Cambridge UP, 1952).
40 41
These similarities have been noted by many critics and even discussed
at length: the ties between Beowulf and Andreas have been taken as definite examples of oral formulaic poetic style and possible examples of artistic borrowing; genealogies and references to tribal histories have been taken as evidence of the Germanic heritage of Old English literature and have been analyzed as examples of standard epic openings; the opening of the Parker version of the Chronicle is held to have been borrowed directly from Bede.
All of these points are important and most probably true.
However, they fail to take into account the larger issue: despite the vast differences between these diverse works in the content, form, and source material, the authors of each of them in some way regarded themselves as performing the same function. They wanted to be seen as writers of history. As literary critics, it is our duty, on some level at least, to take these authors at their word. We must accept that each of them was indeed producing a work which he wanted to be considered an accurate picture of history, a point of view apparently concurred with by an audience which chose to preserve these works. As
Doane points out in his article on Maldon, if we are to understand these works as literature, we must first understand the historical impulses which drove their authors to write them.
The stumbling block of the current critical approach to the historical element in Old English literature does not lie in the questions being asked of the works by critics. Both "Is this history?" and "How historical is this?" are perfectly valid questions. Problems arise, though, when critics attempt to answer those questions without 42
first defining the term 'history.' It seems apparent, though rather
surprising, that despite the many important changes in critical attitude towards Old English poetry which have taken place in the last two centuries, current literary critics are using the word 'history' in much the same sense in which it was used by Thorkelin: a chronological record of past events which attempts to be factually accurate. That such a definition forms the basis of even much recent Maldon criticism is evident, though rarely stated. As I have already demonstrated, numerous articles have been addressed to the question of the poet's reliability, many critics trying to prove or disprove by examination of external evidence the accuracy of the Maldon poet's depiction of the battle, while those critics who have avoided this issue have done so largely by dismissing it as irrelevant. However, if the criteria being used currently to evaluate the historical element in Maldon and other
Old English historical literature are completely appropriate, then critics should be coming to a more or less unified answer at least to the question "Is this history?" The fact that they have not would seem, even on the face of it, to indicate that the issue of factual reliability may not be the best criterion by which to judge these works.
This is a conclusion to which historians came some time ago, particularly with reference to Bede's Ecclesiastical History. As
Patrick Wormald pointed out in 1983, "Perhaps the major trend in the historical study of Bede since...1935...has been the growing awareness that Bede was not a historian like ourselves and that he differed in more chan just his faith in miracles.1145 More specifically, Wormald
says, even students are now aware that Bede's History belongs to the
historiographical tradition of the Christian Middle Ages. That there
is a conflict between this tradition and our own is evident in the fact
that "what Bede will have considered appropriate ad instruetionem
posteritatis is not necessarily what we should wish to know if we are
to understand the events that he is describing" (33). In other words,
the criteria by which Bede deemed material significant are not always
the criteria modern historians would use, nor should they be, as
Wormald's phrase "not necessarily" implies. However, in relating
Bede's vision of history to ours, Wormald makes two rather
revolutionary propositions regarding Bede's relationship to the works
of his approximate contemporaries, other early medieval historians and
writers.
Wormald's major point is that for Bede's History to be fully
appreciated for the unique achievement it is, it is necessary for
historians to understand not only that Bede differs from us in his
vision of history but also that, despite being part of the medieval historiographical tradition, he was an anomaly in his own time: "We must recognize that he is distinguished from his fellow-writers in the
early Middle Ages by more than just accuracy, and from us by more than pious superstition" (68). Furthermore, Wormald argues that even in
terms of factual accuracy, Bede is not always the best historical
source: "If a modern historian wishes to understand the conversion of
49 Patrick Wormald, "Bede, Beowulf, and the Conversion of the Anglo-Saxon Aristocracy," Bede and Anglo-Saxon England. British Archaeological Reports 46 (1978): 32. 44
the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy, he has less to learn from Bede than from
other sources, some of which are not history at all" (32). The other
source which Wormald surprisingly focuses attention on is Beowulf. The
basic argument of his article is that if the historian wishes to
understand the Anglo-Saxon period, in this instance the conversion of
the aristocracy— that is, if he wishes to answer all the pertinent
questions of who, what, where, when, why, and how— he will have to
modify his expectations, suiting them to the literary evidence at hand.
Neither Bede's History nor Beowulf alone can provide the answers to
these questions; the two works must be evaluated side by side to
establish a complete picture. Wormald argues convincingly that while
Bede's History is remarkably accurate on the whos, wheres, and whens of
the conversion, Beowulf can provide a better understanding of the hows
and whys, by presenting a fuller and more accurate picture of the
cultural climate of early Anglo-Saxon England.
Wormald, of course, approaches both Bede and Beowulf from a historian's point of view, studying these works to gain a fuller knowledge not primarily of the works themselves but of the era in which
they were written. However, for several reasons, his work has
significance for literary critics as well.4* First, although as a
44 Wormald himself is well aware of both the dangers and benefits for literary critics of his approach to Beowulf and Bede; "historicism can debilitate the study of literature when it seeks to dictate to critics in the name of historical reality, and I am not here concerned to limit the range of subjective reaction which is the critic's legitimate, indeed necessary, business. Nevertheless, nearly all literary criticism depends in part upon historical assumptions, and it cannot be wrong for historians to test the strength of these foundations. The historical examination of early medieval Christian culture is a better method, in my view, of deciding between alternative interpretations of Beowulf than analogy with the plays of Shakespeare" 45 historian he is reluctant actually to call Beowulf history, by evaluating elements of the poem as history (that is, by accepting aspects of the poem as evidence of both social situations and cultural attitudes), Wormald implies that there is also a vision of history present in that poem, although it is a vision markedly different from
Bede's or our own. More important, Wormald's study makes clear not only that the vision of history in Bede is different from our own, but also that if even a historian is to use the work effectively, he must first come to terms with that vision and how it differs both from ours and from that of Bede's contemporaries. In essence, then, Wormald affirms both the existence of the historical element in Beowulf and the importance of understanding the nature of that element.
Wormald's article demonstrates to literary critics that it is possible to answer the type of historical questions which they currently ask of poems like Maldon but only if the questions are framed more adequately. However, lest Wormald's insight in this matter be taken too literally by those whose task should be to evaluate the literary merit of individual works, we should understand that such questions in themselves can provide answers only of historical rather than artistic significance; that is, if the who, what, where, when, and why questions that are of relevance to m o d e m historians are asked of these Old English works, the answers will contribute more to our knowledge of the era than to our understanding of the works themselves.
On the other hand, while bearing in mind this limitation on the value of the answers, we, as literary critics, should recognize that by
(64). 46
formulating appropriate historically-oriented questions to ask of particular works, that is, by adapting our critical methodology to suit the actual literary texts themselves, we will be able to gain insight into the purposes of these individual works.
If Wormald is correct in asserting that it is necessary even for historians, who regard Bede's History and other pieces of Old English literature primarily as tools for understanding the Anglo-Saxon period, to approach these literary works on each work's own terms, how much more vital it must be for literary critics to do so, since they seek to evaluate these works not as historical artifacts but as artistic creations. Indeed, for this very reason it should have been far easier for literary critics than for historians to come to terms with the alien nature of the depiction of history in Old English literature.
Yet, the case has been otherwise, as is clear from the contrast which can be drawn between Wormald's approach to the nature of history in
Bede and Beowulf and the approach of most literary critics to Maldon, whichever camp they belong to. Excepting only that of such unusual and relatively recent critics as Doane, Wormald's outlook, in fact, is the more open-minded and carefully considered one, since it is based on a two-part process of first determining the standards according to which historical significance is conferred in each work and then evaluating that work in accordance with those standards.
Above all, Wormald's article makes it apparent that it is both necessary and possible for literary critics to apply to the question of the true nature and importance of the historic element which pervades much of the surviving poetry of the Old English period that same open- 47
mindedness concerning artistic merit which has been the hallmark of
post-Tolkien criticism. However, the achievement of such open-
mindedness towards the Anglo-Saxon vision of history must begin not
with a re-evaluation of the assumptions underlying historically-
oriented Old English literature but rather with a recognition of our
own preconceptions about the nature of history, literature, and the
relationship between them. Once that has been achieved, it will be possible to formulate and accept a new definition of the word 'history' which will encompass divergent attitudes towards and methods of preserving the past. As even the quotations from Sidney and Winters with which this section began make clear, this is not a new avenue of critical concern. However, in recent years, the controversies over what history is and what the relationships, within it between fact and fiction and artifact and art are has given rise to some particularly fruitful discussion.
In 1946, the new president of the English Association, Arthur
Bryant, chose as the topic for his inaugural lecture "The Art of
Writing History."47 As the first few pages of his address make clear, many members of the advisory committee of this organization questioned the value and relevance of Bryant's theme for an audience largely composed of scholars of literature. The skepticism with which Bryant's proposed subject was greeted was no surprise to the eminent biographer, nor should it have been, given the strenuous efforts of historians and literary critics alike to separate the study of history and of
47 Arthur Bryant, "The Art of Writing History," Presidential Address, The English Association, July 1946. literature into two distinct fields, the former a social science and the latter a liberal art. What is surprising is Bryant's determination to stand by his chosen topic despite strong opposition and the suggestion that perhaps he should confine himself to a discussion of biography, the one form of written history long recognized for its literary merits. It can only be regarded as fortunate that Bryant decided not to take the recommended path, because his opening defense of his title and subject paves the way not just for studies of the literary merits of written histories, Bryant's primary concern, but also for studies such as mine which examine a body of literature in order to determine a particular society's vision of history and the effects of that vision on the presentation of narrative.
The cornerstone of Bryant's argument is his contention that the fields of history and literature share two areas of concern: a common subject matter, the events of the past; and a common goal, success in conveying to the reader the author's understanding of the significance of that subject matter. Like history, literature concerns itself with human experience and hence draws much of its material, though by no means all, from the treasury of mankind's past existence. Many great works of literature, therefore, among them works as disparate in nature as The Iliad. Macbeth, and Ode on a Grecian Urn, are history, "if not very accurate history," by virtue of their focus on "the thought and experience of the past" (1). Similarly, like literature, a written history succeeds or fails according to the writer's ability to capture and sustain the reader's interest, as Bryant's description of the historian's task makes clear. 49
...Che historian's main difficulty [arises] when it comes to transmitting his knowledge in a form that will arrest and interest his readers....He may sift out and select the vital facts; he may transcribe them accurately from one piece of paper to another, condense and arrange them chronologically or logically; but in the literary task of conveying meaning he may, and often does, fail dismally....and he fails as a result in the ultimate task of literature: the transmission of his vision to the reader (2).
This coincidence of subject matter and purpose to which Bryant points explains why historians and literary critics alike so often have difficulty separating historical from literary elements in a particular work and good historical fiction from bad or inaccurate history. It also gives some indication of why scholars in both areas of study must concern themselves with evaluating more than just the factual or just the aesthetic element of historical literature.
Bryant's discussion of history as literature put him in 1946 in the vanguard of what was to become a major controversy among modem scholars: what is the nature of history, that is, is a written history more than just a presentation of facts, and where does one draw the line between history and fiction? Bryant's description of the literary task facing the writer of history is echoed forty years later in a review article by historian Nancy Partner entitled "Making Up For
Lost Time: Writing on the Writing of History." Indeed, Partner's definition of the historian's task accepts almost as a given what
Bryant was proposing, the common subject matter and purpose shared by serious history and historical literature, especially fiction.
If there is a genre distinction to be made between fiction and history (and there still is), it is going to rest heavily on the highly specialized, rigorously evolved methods for discerning, selecting, and interpreting the materials from which a narrative claiming nonfictional status may be 50
constructed, and on the narrative point of view— the implied relation between the teller and the told....The truth for history must be something close to integrity of method.4*
Taken together, Bryant's and Partner’s articles force historians and
literary critics to reconsider and redefine their understanding of the meaning of the word history, especially as it is applied to a written
document which presents itself as a history. Both authors point to a
dual nature in such works, a nature on one hand objective, consisting of the formless mass of factual data or artifact, and on the other hand
subjective, comprising the writer's evaluation, organization, and expression of the evidence.
Partner's article attempts to define this subjective component; indeed she proposes that it is this component which forms the heart of written history. For Partner, written history is man's attempt to impose the fiction of order on the chaos of human existence. Like the creation of plot or story in fiction, history is the way in which humanity assigns meaning, through seeing pattern, to "the endless pointlessness of successive time," imposes "a beginning and an end on the formless flow of time" (Partner 91). By Partner's definition, history has no existence outside of these perceived and therefore subjective patterns: "An adroit selection and display of facts and quoted evidence woven together with nicely modulated comment by the author can make a firm pattern or generalization seem to emerge from the materials" (102). At the most basic level, history is totally synonymous with the writing of it--literally as a scholarly pursuit or
4* Nancy F. Partner, "Making Up For Lost Time: Writing on the Writing of History," Speculum 61.1 (1986): 112. 51
figuratively as an individual's attempt to understand, interpret, and remember past events.
There is of course a danger in defining history in this
subjective manner: if history is nothing more than an individually perceived pattern, then how can other individuals study and hope to come to any agreement regarding the reliability of a particular historical account? Throughout her article, Partner is careful to avoid this trap by implying a distinction between the personal and scholarly perspective on history when she speaks, in the passage quoted above, of "the truth for history" arising from "highly specialized, rigorously evolved methods for discerning, selecting, and interpreting materials." Such a statement places the historian firmly within a community of similarly trained individuals by whom his pattern and method of arriving at it will be judged.
This quality of accountability which forces a degree of
'objectivity' upon the historian who wishes to be accepted as such is even more apparent in Partner's contention that "the historian is the professional custodian of pattern" (93). Not only is the historian part of a professional community, by Partner's definition the historian becomes not a creator of patterns but rather a preserver of the patterns created by some unnamed third party to whom all historians, as professionals, are subservient. Speaking of an age before the professionalization of history, in this case of the Middle Ages,
Partner points out that the writer of history was answerable to his cultural community as a whole; the acceptability of his work depended in large part upon his acceptability as a person— histories were 52
accepted as histories primarily because of "the author's assurance that
it was a history....the author was accepted for general moral
reliability, and that assurance gave credit to his work" (112).
But how was such moral reliability determined? Much like
historians of today, first and most obviously by the demonstration of
an integrity of method: "the moral witness was the man supplied by
experience with direct observation of the historical event, and willing
(in an exacting sense) to tell it truthfully" (Partner 111); by
implication, the moral historian was the man who relied on moral witnesses. [See the section from Bede's Preface to his Ecclesiastical
History cited earlier.] The medieval historian demonstrated his
reliability by means of his acceptance of and adherence to "some
ideological program" subscribed to by the audience for which he was writing. Indeed, in this again, he differed little from historians of
today whose works are usually colored if not by specific ideological predispositions then by a culturally-motivated admiration for
scientific precision.
In essence, modem discomfort with medieval historical literature, objectively speaking, arises primarily from what Eleanor Searle, in her essay "Possible History," would term a conflict of "world views":
If we think seriously of the question of world views, it suggests that we refine continually our ways of mapping out the world views of past societies and of the individual texts we rely on, and that we attempt to look at past world views as independently of our own as possible.4*
By both Searle's and Partner's definitions, history as pattern or world view is largely a subjective and culturally, as we&l as individually,
4V Eleanor Searle, "Possible History," Speculum 61.4 (1986): 781. 53 biased matter. The key both to fruitful communication between scholars and to the study of cultures of other places and periods is acceptance of the difference and analysis of the nature of the distance between divergent points of view.
It would be hard to deny that Partner's concept of history as pattern of which historians are the custodians is particularly applicable to the historical writings of the Middle Ages. Her general discussion of history is but the groundwork for her in-depth review of books concerning medieval historiography. On a wider scale, numerous other critics have commented on the prevalence of pattern in medieval historic literature. A. N. Doane, in the article discussed earlier, speaks of The Battle of Maldon as being "set in a larger cosmic framework, showing a pattern for all historical events" (43). Eleanor
Searle, in an another article, entitled "Fact and Pattern in Heroic
History: Dudo of Saint-Quentin," states of the Norman historian that
"Me do not learn 'facts' from Dudo. But instead, listened to without irritation, he tells us great truths about how the Norse in Upper
Normandy saw the pattern of their present polity and of their destiny."9* And speaking of yet another early medieval historian, John
Benton wrote: "The tendency to stretch the evidence to fit the framework of one's preconceptions is common to all historians. Rather than trying to guard against them, however, Guibert was like his contemporaries (even such early ones as Bedel in thinking that was part
9* Eleanor Searle, "Fact and Pattern in Heroic History: Dudo of Saint-Quentin," Viator 15 (1984): 137. 54 of his job."*1 Indeed, regarding Bede, I would contend, and hope to demonstrate in a following chapter, that Bede was a historian almost driven by his peculiar sense of pattern, and that his famous phrase vera lex historia referred to anything, whether factual, legendary, or even fictitious in origin, which could be used by him to perceive, communicate, and thereby preserve the essential pattern which he believed lay at the heart of and gave meaning to human existence.
Entire books could and probably will be written on the acceptability of this new, less culturally-biased general vision of history and its applicability to the medieval period in particular. I, however, begin this study of the historical element in Old English poetry with the belief that Partner's definition of history as pattern is both generally accurate and specifically applicable. My task in the chapters that follow will be to identify and define the specifics of the Anglo-Saxon patterns of historical thought by examining their uses of and attitudes towards the past in their prose and poetic literature; then, through close analysis of specific literary works representative of both the heroic and Christian traditions, I will examine the effects the Anglo-Saxon vision of history had on the content, structure, and themes of Old English literature.
51 John Benton, "Introduction," Self and Society in Medieval France: The Memoirs of Abbot Guibert of Noqent (New York: Harper and Row, 1970) 31. SECTION II
PATTERNS OF REMEMBRANCE
The scream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness, both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration; as the playwright says, it "brings to light that which was unseen and shrouds from us that which was manifest." Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against this stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion.1
1 The opening paragraph of the "Preface" to the Alexiad of Anna Comnena, a Byzantine historian who wrote in the first half of the twelfth century (Anna Comnena, The Alexiad of Anna Comnena, ed. and trans. E. R. A. Sewter (New York: Penguin Books, 1969) 17).
55 56
The historian, investigating any event in the past, makes a distinction between what may be called the outside and the inside of an event. By the outside of the event I mean everything belonging to it which can be described in terms of bodies and their movements: the passage of Caesar, accompanied by certain men, across a river called the Rubicon at one date, or the spilling of his blood on the floor of the senate-house at another. By the inside of the event I mean that in it which can only be described in terms of thought: Caesar's defiance: of Republican law, or the clash of constitutional policy between himself and his assassins. The historian is never concerned with either of these to the exclusion of the other. He is investigating not mere events (where by a mere event I mean one which has only an outside and no inside) but actions, and an action is the unity of the outside and inside of an event. He is interested in the crossing of the Rubicon only in its relation to Republican law, and in the spilling of Caesar's blood only in its relation to a constitutional conflict. His work may begin by discovering the outside of an event, but it can never end there; he must always remember that the event was an action, and that his main task is to think himself into this action, to discern the thought of its agent.3
3 R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (1946; New York: Oxford UP, 1956) 213. Introduction
Rivers of History
If history is to be regarded as pattern, then it must be recognized to be pattern which is both fixed and fluid, fluid in that its individual components change from moment to moment and contain no inherent shape, fixed in that perception of the essential, continuous formlessness of event is shaped by the cultural norms of the society in which and for which a particular history is created and preserved. In recent years, writers of time travel fiction have tended to base their stories on the premise that time is like a river down which each of us floats, not so much as a boat but as a drop of water. As such, we are swept forward through constantly changing circumstances; were we able to separate ourselves from our surroundings, to distance ourselves from our place in the river, we would be able to perceive the river of time as a vast but nevertheless distinctly shaped and essentially unchanging region within which some marker points are farther apart than others.
Such an analogy, with reference to time, is purely hypothetical, even though scientific credibility is lent to it by Einstein's theory of relativity; as yet we have no way of knowing if past and future have any real^existence beyond the instant of present being.
The same analogy becomes far more valid when applied to history rather than time. A man-made construct, history like any other human
57 58
creation can definitely be shown to have existence outside the present moment: Bede's Ecclesiastical History is not a product of the present
instant, and while we can not know if the times about which Bede wrote have any concrete co-existence with the present moment, we can be certain that his Ecclesiastical History is not a product of the present instant. History is not something which is but rather something which is made. What we study when we study history are, therefore, not patterns of being but patterns of making, not constants but variables.
Before proceeding further, let me reiterate for the sake of clarity what exactly I mean when I use the word 'history.' It is unfortunate that in their own way, modem definitions of the word
'history' are as vague, general, and confusing as medieval usage of the word historia. We use the term 'history' to refer both to the events of the past, as in taking a class in ancient history, and to the meaning we make of those events, as in learning the lessons of history or writing a history of the industrial revolution. For the purposes of this dissertation, I am concerned with the latter two definitions of
'history,' that is, with the sense or meaning the Anglo-Saxons made of their past and with the way in which their literature reflects their attempts to understand, shape, and preserve that meaning. I am concerned with the first definition of the term 'history,' that is, with what actually happened to the Anglo-Saxons, only insofar as those events provide insight into why the Anglo-Saxons thought of history as they did and into how their understanding of what happened, as expressed in their literature, may differ from our knowledge of what actually did occur. 59
Though far from new, as the opening quotation from the twelfth-
century historian Anna Comena Illustrates, the analogy of history .being
like a river Is a valuable one. A river derives Its existence not so
much from the volume of water contained within It as from the shape of
the bed which holds that water In place. Without the bed, the water
would spread out In a form so nebulous and chaotic that the human eye
could not perceive It, a form so lacking In permanence that the human
mind could not fix It In memory. Similarly, the sheer volume of
moment-to-moment Incident, the 'outside' of Colllngwood's description,
Is so vast and amorphous that without the form placed upon It by
general, culturally-significant Ideas, Colllngwood's ’Inside,' we could
neither establish any points of reference by which to fix our own
positions nor see any markers on which to focus recollection of past
events. Our past quite literally would slip through our fingers like
water.
The river analogy Is helpful not just In providing a general
definition of the nature of pattern In history. It also offers a
parallel as to why there Is not one universal pattern for history.
Each river has Its own unique shape, a bed which has been formed by the
characteristics both of the land through which It flows and the water
which It contains. Furthermore, the longer the distance a river
travels from Its point of origin to the point at which empties Into
another body of water, the more likely It Is that the general character of the river will gradually but markedly change as It runs Its course.
Similarly, a river of history draws Its Individual shape from the cultural geography through which It cuts; each ethical and social norm 60 plays a role In Che fashioning of that culture's historical streambed.
And as the featureless water of daily incident drains across the social
topography, the stream of history which ultimately develops takes in its shape and contents a personality and composition indigenous to that landscape. The patterns of history recognized by each culture, then, are unique in both their conceptual forms and incidental components, and, like a long-running river, subject to change within individual cultures.
Hence, it is no small wonder that modem readers, who are products of a world which has little in common, ethically or politically, with the world of early medieval society, have difficulty perceiving, let alone understanding, the pattern according to which the Anglo-Saxons preserved their history. As Richard Sulliyan points out in his article
"The Middle Ages in Western Tradition," in which he discusses the dangers of studying medieval history in the light of a monolithic nineteenth century understanding of medieval value systems, "historical inquiry into any segment of the past is directly and decisively related to conceptions shared by investigators at any particular moment about how that period fits into a larger historical continuum."* Being products of a scientific society, we hold most valid and valuable those works of history which purport to be 1) objective, in that they
"demand that all ages of the past be given equally neutral treatment, unmarred by preconceptions, assumptions, and prejudices," and 2) genetically oriented, in that they emphasize the linear quality of
* Richard E. Sullivan, "The Middle Ages in Western Tradition: A Reconsideration," Essays on Medieval Civilization, ed. B. K. Lackner and K. R. Philp (Austin: U of Texas P, 1978) 4. 61 history by "insisting that the reality of things was defined by how
they became what they are" (Sullivan 8).4 This is our pattern of history, and accustomed as we are to criticizing or even condemning the works of modern historians according to these standards, it is difficult for us to view with anything other than at least some degree of condescension the works of writers whose historical paradigms were neither linear nor objective. Such modern skepticism about the value of medieval historical works is perhaps most starkly expressed by Peter
Burke, who begins a chapter entitled "Medieval Historical Thought" in his book The Renaissance Sense of the Past with the assertion that "the
'sense of history.was lacking in the Middle Ages....There was no
'sense of history' even among the educated."9
Another problem for the m o d e m reader of medieval history is the open and unapologetic reliance medieval historians placed on general patterns of history. Such patterns were considered to be widely known and accepted, and the medieval historian's role was not to uncover or
4 This approach to history had as its first great proponent the nineteenth century German historian Leopold Von Ranke, who demanded that historians had a duty to write history "wie es eigentlich gewesen"— as it really was— that is, to base their conclusions on scientific inquiry and factual data rather than on romantic ideals and popular traditions.
9 Peter Burke, The Renaissance Sense of the Past (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1969) 1. Burke, of course, is concerned with one particular 'sense of history,' and prior to making the statement quoted above, he defines that sense quite explicitly as possessing three factors: "the sense of anachronism;...the awareness of evidence;...the interest in causation." However, his deliberate use of the definite article, as in the sense of history, implies that his is the only proper definition of history. Such a claim is not only "large," as Burke himself admits, but extremely narrow and ethnocentric given the large number of literary works titled and accepted, both in their day and beyond, as histories written between 400 and 1400, the very period Burke dismisses. 62 explain the relationship between events, as modern historians largely seek to do, but rather to fit events to these pre-existing patterns.
Undoubtedly, the pattern most generally imitated by medieval historians and most frequently studied today is that of the Six Ages of Man, discussed by Augustine in Book XV of The City of God. This Christian vision of history, which divided the worldly life of all mankind into stages akin to those of individual human development, though not completely original to Augustine gained such importance because of his work that it influenced the historical writings of most Christian historians who followed him in the late classical and medieval periods.
Bede, for example, begins his Chronica Maiorica with a lengthy passage describing the six ages of the world, adapted, according to
Jones, from Isidore's discussion in Book V, 38-39, which in turn had been derived from Augustine.* Indeed, this Augustinian concept of history was so important to Bede that in both the Chronica Maiorica and
Chronica Minora it was his "primary concern"; the number of years in individual reigns were given only to make possible computation of the duration of the historical ages (Jones 22). Jones also points out that
Bede, like other historians of the period, saw the patterned nature of worldly history as evidence of the greater reality of existence, the contrast between "the artificiality of the whole time structure" and the enduring nature of "God's eternal present" (22, 23).
4 Charles W. Jones, Saints' Lives and Chronicles in Early England, Together with first English translations of "The Oldest Life of Pope St. Gregory the Great" bv a monk of Whitby and "The Life of St. Guthlac of Crowland" by Felix (1947; n.p.: Archon Books, 1968) 25 and Chap. II note 29. Similarly, writing about what he terms "medieval narratives of
change" in his article entitled "The Sense of Time in Western
Historical Narratives from Eusebius to Machiavelli," Donald Wilcox
examines ways in which medieval historians "related particular events
to general, self-subsistent categories rather than to one another" and
thereby diminished "the inherent [temporal and causal! connections between the actual events."7 For example, regarding Eusebius'
Ecclesiastical History. Wilcox states that "Eusebius' preoccupation with chronology did not lead him to assess the significance of the order of events; the order existed for its own sake and led to no inquiry into its meaning"; a few pages later, referring to Gregory of
Tours' History of the Goths. Wilcox points out that "Lacking a sense that the chronological order of events had significance of its own, he
[Gregory] gave his events meaning through the theme of the retributive justice of God" (174, 179). Wilcox's analysis is interesting because it highlights both the medieval tendency to fit event to pattern and the m o d e m tendency to see such a practice as a failure on the part of the medieval historian; indeed, negative words such as "failure,"
"undermine," and "lack" recur throughout Wilcox's essay. These terms, while relevant to Wilcox's thesis of the gradual development of
7 Donald J. Wilcox, "The Sense of Time in Western Historical Narratives from Eusebius to Machiavelli," Classical Rhetoric and Medieval Historiography, ed. Ernst Breisach (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985,) 172. Wilcox is concerned only with historians, such as Augustine and Bede, of the learned, classical tradition of medieval historical writing; he makes no mention of historical narratives of a more popular sort, such as historical epics and romances. The points he makes with regard to the learned historical tradition are perhaps even more applicable to popular tradition. 64
temporal-causal perspective in Renaissance historical narrative, do not allow for the fact that, for medieval historians, chronology was little more than a concrete manifestation of the working out of the abstract patterns which gave meaning to human history. All events, whatever their relative position with respect to one another In time, were subservient to these patterns and, In the medieval eye, rightly so.
This disjuncture between modern and medieval perspectives Is exacerbated by the fact that early medieval historians themselves seem to have had no clear understanding of history as a generic term, Indeed seem to have drawn no clear distinction between fact and fiction, a practice which Is anathema to the modern historian. As Roger Ray In his article "Medieval Historiography through the Twelfth Century" points out, "The study of historical genres is bound to be hard in reference to an age that drew faint lines between history, liturgy, hagiography, exegesis, preaching, and poetry"; within the period, attempts made by such men as Gervase of Canterbury and Isidore of
Seville to define distinct types of historical works create further confusion, in part because "we know that far more than these (types of narratives named by such authors! were in fact taken for history."*
Indeed, as Ray goes on to show, use of the term historia throughout the period makes clear how wide-ranging the medieval understanding of that word was:
It was indiscriminately applied to saints' lives, parts of the Bible, sometimes all of it, the literal sense of scriptural texts, a section of Divine Office, versified offices, epic poems, even schoolbooks like Peter Comestor's
* Roger D. Ray, "Medieval Historiography through the Twelfth Century: Problems and Progress of Research," Viator 5 (1974): 35. 65
Historia Scholastica. in addition to biographies, one epistulary autobiography, as well as to other narratives we today would designate as history (36).
The difficulty caused for the m o d e m scholar by this lack of concrete
terminology is made even greater in the field of Anglo-Saxon studies by
the fact that the literature of that period was the product of two disparate historical paradigms— that of Roman Christianity and that of
Northern Paganism— which over the course of six hundred years were slowly being reconciled. And within the native language, Old English, terminology referring to historical narrative, such as qiedd and talu. was just as vague and far-reaching in meaning and application as historia was in Latin.
Given the absence of a simple definition of the Anglo-Saxon concept of history, indeed the absence of even a widely-used name by which to call such a concept if there were one, the best place to begin inquiry into the patterns through which the Anglo-Saxons perceived and preserved their past is at the foundations, the cultural bedrock, if you will, which helped to form the streambed through which they channeled their history. At the close of the sixth century, an event took place which was to have a major influence on the development of
English culture, an event which also made it possible for the Anglo-
Saxons to create and record one of the earliest bodies of vernacular literature in post-classical Europe: Christianity arrived in England.
Among literary critics, much attention has been focused on the effects this event had on the themes, concerns, and style of Old English poetry, but little has been paid to the major and important manner in which it affected the ways in which the Anglo-Saxons perceived and 66 preserved their history. In terms of our river analogy, this event had much the same effect as the confluence of the two rivers of equal size resulting in the formation of a new, larger third river which owes something of its shape and content to its parent rivers.
In terms of the datalogical sense of history, what actually did occur to the Anglo-Saxons at the turn of the sixth and seventh centuries seems quite straightforward: the transition from a pagan to a Christian society and from an oral to a literate culture began.
However, before analyzing the nature of the component forces in this change, I must propose several important general caveats regarding the nature of the change itself. First of all, this change was neither instantaneous nor constant over time or space. A brief return to our river analogy might help to make the nature of this transition clearer.
When two rivers of markedly different character come into confluence, the two bodies of water, although now contained within the same riverbank, will not mix together thoroughly for quite some distance.
For example, in Pittsburgh where the muddy waters of the Allegheny mix with the greenish waters of the Monongahela to form the Ohio, it is possible to see, from the cliffs surrounding the new river, how slowly the mingling of these waters takes place and how long it is before the water of the Ohio from bank to bank is of uniform color. In similar fashion, even if we were to mark the banks of our historical river with regular chronological markers, we still would find that historical works composed, if not actually written down, at essentially the same moment in actual time might in fact represent markedly different 67 currents, each progressing at its own rate, in the gradual fusion of
these two historical traditions.
This lack of linear progression is heightened by the fact that cultural change is always experienced idiosyncratically, that is, at different rates by different segments of the community. Just as the speed at which water travels down a river varies according to whether it is measured in a main current or in an eddy, so a writer's position within a continuum of change can vary greatly according to his cultural background, be it mainstream or backwater. Because of the uneven nature of cultural development, it is quite possible for a piece of historical writing to be ahead of its time, more specifically to be ahead of the norm of its time. Therefore, chronological markers will be of only the broadest significance in the model I will be proposing and examining for the gradual fusion of these two historical traditions. The fact that a particular work displays a high degree of reconciliation between these two diverse concepts of history, for example, should in no way be taken as evidence that a particular work was composed late in the Old English period.
Furthermore, as Wormald points out, the gradual nature of this blending of two traditions is such that it is often difficult in Anglo-
Saxon literature to separate anachronistic vestiges of the pagan tradition from reworked holdovers. To use Wormald's example, bloodfeud remained a theme in Anglo-Saxon literature long after the coming of
Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England, not because paganism died hard but 68
because feuding was a vital part of Germanic social culture.* Clearly,
if we are to understand the Anglo-Saxon sense of history and its
effects on Old English literature, we must begin by examining the basic
social and historical patterns which lay at the heart of both the
pagan-Germanic and Roman-Christian cultures, while recognizing that the
fusion of these two traditions was an on-going process which stretched
across the entire Anglo-Saxon period.
* Wormald, "Bede, Beowulf, and the Conversion of the Anglo-Saxon Aristocracy," Bede and Analo-Saxon England, British Archaeological Report 46 (1978): 66— "There is an underlying assumption that the set of values abandoned for the Faith were as comprehensive and coherent as is Christianity itself, and these values are given the generic label of 'paganism.' As a result, we describe as survivals of 'paganism' what may not have very much to do with heathen cult at all, and what are often only indications that society had failed to remake itself completely." Dorothy Whitelock also points out that historical reality, that is, the continuation of bloodfeud in England long after the conversion, made the theme of vengeance a relevant one even to a Christian audience (The Audience of "Beowulf" (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964) 13-15). Chapter One
The Oral Tradition
In the early seventh century, when Roman and Celtic missionaries first began to spread the word of Christ through the lands today known as England, they found a people divided by numerous political/tribal allegiances who were nevertheless essentially culturally and therefore religiously homogeneous. Consequently, as Bede's History makes clear, the task of conversion, though somewhat hampered by political in fighting, once achieved for one group would be achieved, by essentially the same means, for all. But what was this world view that the
Christians had to come to terms with in order to spread their new faith? It was a world view colored by a cultural tradition which differed from the new one they offered on three basic levels: religiously, the Anglo-Saxon world view was the product of a culture built on the beliefs and rites of Northern paganism; ethically, it was the product of a culture guided by the so-called heroic values necessary to a warrior community; literarily, it was the product of a culture which preserved its values, beliefs, and past in oral poetry.
Each of these components had a profound effect not only on the pre-Christian, Old English concept of history, but also on the concept of literate historical narrative which the Anglo-Saxons were to develop in the post-Christian period. While the religious-ethical component,
69 70
because of its close ties to the Anglo-Saxon cultural identity,
strongly affected the content, themes, and focus of a variety of types
of historical narratives, from poetic saints' lives to prose chronicles, the oral component exerted a remarkable influence on the
developing form and structure of these same narratives. The fact that
the oral historical tradition played such a surprisingly important role in defining the characteristics of written poetic, and to a lesser extent prose, narratives in early England, even long after the arrival of literacy, must be attributed to several factors: the vitality, importance, and apparent maturity of the native Old English oral- historical tradition, which by the seventh century not only had developed a highly formalized form and diction but also was serving as a cultural and historical bond within and between diverse English kingdoms; the gradual and artificially-induced, rather than naturally- occurring, nature of the transition to literacy in Anglo-Saxon England; and the resistance, indeed antipathy, to literacy among the Germanic peoples. While none of these conditions, each of which will be discussed more fully later, is unique to the English situation, the complex relationship between them is. For all of these reasons, it is vital, if we are to appreciate Old English narrative literature, that we understand not just the formulaic methodology of oral poetic creation but also the equally important structural patterns and temporal concepts upon which such poetry is built.
In order to understand the uniqueness of the pre-Christian English oral tradition, we must begin by recognizing that prior to the coming of Christianity, the Anglo-Saxons were not entirely illiterate. As 71
Gale Owen points out in her book Rites and Religions of the Anglo-
Saxons . a runic alphabet had been developed and was widely known among
the Germanic peoples long before the Angles migrated from the continent
to the British Isles; and by the time of the conversion, a twenty-eight
symbol, English runic alphabet, two complete copies of which have
survived, was in use among the Anglo-Saxons.1* However, these symbols,
designed for carving, were used primarily for religious and
superstitious purposes, as in charms, and in Old English the word run
denoted not only these characters themselves but also mystery and
secrecy in general. As Owen points out, "if runes were originally
associated with the supernatural through relation to paganism and use
in divination, the esoteric nature of runic writing added to the
superstition" (69). Clearly, such a form of writing, with its strong
connotations of hidden and mysterious meaning, even for pre-Christian
Anglo-Saxons would not have been considered appropriate for the task of
recording, sharing, and preserving the events and values of a shared
culture, and consequently, it is hardly surprising that the runic
alphabet was never adapted for use in the production of literary texts.
Prior to the coming of Christianity, then, for the Anglo-Saxons, the
idea that writing might be used to reveal rather than cloak meaning was
a completely alien idea, and the making of history was, for them, a
purely oral occupation.
The making of history is handled in a markedly different manner in
an oral culture than in a so-called written one, and numerous studies
** Gale R. Owen, Rites and Religions of the Anglo-Saxons, (Dorset, Eng.: Dorset Press, 1985) 52-60 passim. 72
conducted in the past fifty years have shown that, on a most basic
level, the pattern of history preserved by a particular oral culture
may have even more in common with historical patterns found in other
oral cultures, even completely geographically, chronologically,
ethnically, or ethically unrelated ones, than with the pattern of
written history subsequently developed by that same culture. Milman
Parry, for example, contended that "literature falls into two great
parts not so much because there are two kinds of culture, but because
there are two kinds of form: the one part of literature is oral, the
other written."11 Jack Goody, in his book The Domestication of the
Savage Mind, makes a similar point, though arguing in favor of a
cultural rather than generic dichotomy, when he contends regarding
cultures in general that "in many cases it.is 'oral' and 'literate'
that need to be opposed rather than 'traditional' and 'modern.'"13 As practiced by oral societies, the activity of the making of history conforms to several broad patterns, each of which has a major influence on the form and content of the literature produced by such a culture.13
11 Milman Parry, "Whole Formulaic Verses in Greek and South Slavic Heroic Song," Transactions and Procceedinas of the American Philological Association. 64 (1933): 180.
13 Jack Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1977) 43.
13 I am aware of the problem with referring to the verbal performances of oral cultures as ’literature,' the word in a literal sense meaning written works, but I can see no graceful solution to the difficulty: I find such terms as those used by oral theorists— oral noetics, non-chirographic productions, oral/aural performances, among others— to be awkward in extensive usage and to some extent distractingly vague, that is, technically accurate but connotatively empty. Consequently, I will use the word 'literature' to refer to such oral productions. Moreover, such performances ultimately evolved into Indeed, in such societies all literature is history, because every
literary production is taken from and becomes part of the treasury of
culturally significant, and therefore memorable, incidents and people.
Oral cultures, from ancient Greece to modern Africa, faced with
the problem of preserving the matter and meaning of their past but
lacking the tools for making permanent records which can be passed from
one generation to the next, turn as a rule to the most basic means
available: storytelling. Hayden White, in his article "The Value of
Narrativity in the Representation of Reality," states that "narrative might well be considered a solution to a problem of general human concern, namely, the problem of fashioning human experience into a form assimilable to structures of meaning that are generally human rather
than culture-specific." Indeed, he goes on to say, "far from being one code among many that a culture may utilize for endowing experience with meaning, narrative is a metacode, a human universal on the basis of which transcultural messages about the nature of a shared reality can be transmitted."14 While White is concerned with the value of narrative in assisting cross-cultural communication, it seems likely that narrative initially serves to overcome the barriers of individual subjectivity; as such, narrative is, in a fusion of Partner's and
White's terms, the meta-pattem of history. Narrative intended to written literature, in Greece through natural progression, in Europe through the spread of Latin-based literacy, and except in the case of the few remaining mo d e m oral cultures, our knowledge of the nature of such oral performances derives almost exclusively from written records produced in newly literate cultures and based largely, initially, on the oral tradition.
14 Hayden White, "The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality," Critical Inquiry 7 (Autumn 1980): 5, 6. 74
serve such a cultural rather than individual function must acknowledge
a widely-shared experiential background if it is to convey the same
message across personal and generational barriers. Not surprisingly,
oral narrative, as we know it in modem oral cultures and the
literature of newly literate ones, is marked by several significant
characteristic features.
The first important characteristic of oral narrative, and
therefore of oral history, is that it is episodic rather than
progressive. Literate narratives, historical or fictional, dramatic or
non-dramatic, develop around a central rising line of action, or plot,
to which all elements in the story directly are related; all events
along this plot line are causally related not just to this central
movement but also to each other. Even in long and complex narratives,
such as Tolstoy's War and Peace and Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire, secondary plot lines are related and subordinated to the
central plot in both theme and action. Oral narratives, on the other
hand, do not, indeed cannot, follow such a unified and single-minded
progression. This is due in part to the fact that the length of
historical narrative in preliterate cultures is limited by its
oral/aural nature to the amount that can be composed and spoken by the
teller and heard and understood by the audience in a given period of
time. For obvious reasons, oral narratives cannot be set down to be
resumed without break at a later time. Consequently, oral cultures preserve their history not in long, continuous narratives but rather in
virtually self-contained episodes, or lays, which can be plotted 75
because of a length appropriate to frequent repetition and easy
recollection.
Indeed, In recent years, the work of such scholars of oral
narrative as Lord, Parry, Havelock, and Magoun has Indicated that even
poems the length of The Iliad. The Odvssev. and Beowulf would probably
never have been performed In their entirety, even If these works could
be shown conclusively to be written records of oral performances, a
point which. In the case of Beowulf at least, I am by no means willing
to assert.13 In the form we now have them, works such as these are
almost certainly written amalgamations of what were once separate oral episodes; their episodic nature reveals not their orallty but rather
their debt to the oral foundations of their historical tradition, a point made by Walter Ong in his book Interfaces of the Word; Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture.1* Research in modern oral cultures reveals a similar tradition of episodic historical narrative: when Daniel Biebuyck and Kahombo Mateene, editors of what is now published as the Mwindo Epic, asked tribal tale-tellers to put together all the stories of their people, only one narrator, Candi
Rureke, was willing to try, and even he said that such a task had never
13 See for example: Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales. Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature 24 (Cambridge, Mass.: 1960), 124-138 in particular; Eric A. Havelock, Preface to Plato (1963; Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press, 1982) 125, 133, 185-86; Francis P. Magoun, "Oral-Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Poetry," Speculum 28 (1953): 446-67.
13 Walter J. Ong, S. J., Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture (Ithaca NY: Cornell UP, 1977) 253. Ong contends that newly literate cultures, putting into writing long narratives based on the stories from their oral tradition of their past, would by habit or nature, though no longer by necessity, preserve the episodic, non-linear structure of oral performance. 76
been attempted before.17 Clearly, ancient and mo d e m evidence alike
indicates that for the oral historian, history does not exist as a
continuous narrative but rather as a group of relatively brief tales,
relationships between which are established more in the minds of the
audience than in explicit parallels drawn by the speaker.
In Old English, the strongest evidence of the episodic and
referential nature of oral history may be found in Widsid. This early
poem, probably dating in its present version from the later seventh
century, consists primarily of three mnemonic catalogues bound together
as parts of the journeys and experiences of a fictional scop/narrator
Widsid. The "metrical name-lists" or "thulas," as Kemp Malone calls
them in his revised edition of the poem, are generally accepted as
having been drawn "from the stock of oral verse current in his day,"
rather than composed by the poet,1* and as such reveal much about both
the metrical and narrative/historical conventions of the pre-literate
period. Note, for example, how the lists are organized not according
to relative chronology or even geography but rather along broad social
criteria, that is, one catalogue of kings, one of tribes, and one of
heroes. Note also how rarely, in either the lists or the poem as a
whole, the speaker offers any explanation of the significance of or
connections between the names mentioned, indicating a high level of
expection for audience awareness. Many of our problems with the poem
17 Daniel Biebuyck and Kahombo C. Mateene, eds., The Mwindo Epic; From the Banvanqa (Berkeley: U of California P, 1969) 14.
l* Widsith, ed. Kemp Malone, 2nd ed. (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1962) 26, 27. 77
today undoubtedly stem from our inability either to meet or even fully
to comprehend these expectations.1*
What, then, is it that enables hearers of oral history to draw the same, culturally-correct parallels from seemingly unconnected episodes?
What enables the speaker to bind such episodes even momentarily together into a meaningful performance? Clearly not adherence to strict or absolute chronological progression. In fact, one way in which the episodic nature of oral narrative can be most clearly seen is in its handling of temporal relationships. In the book mentioned above, Ong points out, following in the footsteps of Lord and Havelock, that it is virtually impossible for the oral poet or narrator to maintain complete control over temporal sequences when stringing together long series of related episodes (Interfaces 253). Not only are events usually related out of chronological order; often the temporal relationships between events are hazily, or even contradictorily, given. Indeed, both the knowledge of and the ability to reconstruct complex temporal interrelationships can only be a product of literacy. Speaking of Homer in a more recent book, Oralitv and Literacy, Ong states:
It hardly does justice to oral composition to describe it as varying from an organization it does not know, and cannot conceive of....Having heard perhaps scores of singers singing hundreds of songs of variable lengths about the Trojan War, Homer had a huge repetoire of episodes to string together but, without writing, absolutely no way to organize them in strict chronological order. There was no list of the
14 For example, Malone discusses the critical problems that have arisen from a tendency on the part of earlier critics, such as Chambers, to interpret the poem "in terms of German stories current hundreds of years later" (34). 78
episodes nor, in the absence of writing, was there any possibility even of conceiving of such a list.2*
Ong points out that the good oral narrator was not the one who avoided flashbacks; he was the one who could make them work well, that is, use them effectively to illuminate the society, person, or event under discussion.21
Ong here is clearly referring to the inclusion in the telling of one episode of earlier incidents from the same chain of events, a characteristic perhaps most evident in Old English in such poems as The
Wife's Lament and Wulf and Eadwacer in which temporal relationships between incidents are so blurred as to make chronological reconstruction virtually impossible. However, this tendency in oral literature to interject temporally disconnected events into the main story-line assumes a parallel manifestation in Old English in the form of so-called narrative digressions, in which the teller momentarily steps completely out of the primary story-line to relate in brief another tale which seems unconnected by character, action, setting, and occasionally even by theme. By Ong's definition, the skillfull Anglo-
Saxon scop was not the one who avoided what we term digressions but rather the one who could manipulate them effectively, that is, by my definition, the one who could use them to call to mind for his audience
20 Walter J. Ong, Oralitv and Literacy; The Technoloqizinq of the Word (London: Methuen, 1982) 143.
21 Oralitv 144 and Chapter 6: "Oral Memory, the Story Line, and Characterization,11 142-5 in general. In a less developed manner, Ong also makes a similar point in his earlier work Interfaces 252-3. 79 a shared, culturally-significant connection between main incident, digression, and a collective social memory.
Even the characteristic in media res plot structure of epic, a form whose origins are intimately tied to oral narrative, is not a choice but a necessity, Ong explains (Oralitv 142). For example,
Homer's desire to get immediately "to where the action is" demanded that he report a situation first and only much later explain, often in detail, how it came to be. Narrative digressions serve much the same function, providing explanation of specific events by means of general social analogues. Hence, Hayden White's assertion that narrative arises mainly from the impulse to provide false closure to the forward march of real time <27)aa is true in a very special way of oral history: this is narrative which is open-fronted— its beginning lying uncertain in the possibilities of the past, existing only, and even then only momentarily in the parallels between a past event and the present incident which occasions the telling of a particular tale. In oral history, then, patterns of temporal relationship are not only
aa In the final paragraph of this article, "The Value of Narrativity," in which White primarily contends that we should view chronicles and annals not as lesser forms of history but rather as different paradigms, he states, "I have sought to suggest that this value attached to narrativity in the representation of real events arises out of a desire to have real events display the coherence, integrity, fullness, and closure of an image of life that is and can only be imaginary." Nancy Partner, in the article discussed at length in Section I, makes a similar point when she states, "The concepts of beginning and end, including forgotten beginnings and unreached ends, of measureable time, of our simultaneous awareness of impenetrable reality and intelligible story, all are essential to all forms of writing in prose" (Nancy Partner, "Making Up For Lost Time: Writing on the Writing of History," Speculum 61.1 (1986): 92). Indeed, Partner goes beyond White by implying that fixed beginnings and endings are the province of written, not oral, history. 80 fluid but wholly subservient to the patterns of meaning existing between present existence and past event.
This lack of Internally consistent temporal relationships In oral historical narratives Is paralleled by the lack of an externally reliable means to mark the passage of time. Indeed, this problem was not exclusive to prellterate cultures. Throughout the classical, medieval, and even much of the Renaissance periods In Western history, not only were hours and minutes reckoned to be of varying lengths, there was no constant, agreed-upon method for determining the exact calendar year, nor even an agreed-upon point from which to begin such reckoning. Regnal years and other equally ephemeral and culturally defined temporal markers, though used consistently within Individual societies, were usually unable to cross chronological and cultural barriers.2* Not until the late sixteenth century did people begin to conceive of time (as opposed to life) as something which could literally be lost or wasted, and few people knew or even cared to know
2* Interestingly enough, Bede seems to have been one of the first Western historians to attempt to reconcile fully various Germanic, Roman, and Judeo-Chrlstlan chronologies and "to use the Christian era as an Infinitely cumulative method of reckoning the passage of time past and to come" (Peter Hunter Blair, "The Historical Writings of Bede," La Storloaraphla altomedlevale. Settimane dl Studl del Centro Itallano dl Studl sull-alto Medloevo 17 (Spoleto, 1970) 206). Furthermore, both Jones in Saints* Lives and Chronicles (Chap. 2) and Mommsen in his edition of Bede's Chronica Minora presents extensive evidence of the large number of patristic and local sources Bede used in his Chronica and his Ecclesiastical History (Theodor Mommsen, Chronica Minora, saec. iv, v, vi, vii, 3 vols, MGH, Auctores Antiquissimi 9, 11, 13 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1892-98). Although Jones first states that each of these works "lacks unity and the single point of view that characterizes the Imperial historians" (19), he later says chat Bede's goal was to reconcile the evidence of varied chronological accounts in order to subordinate all temporal references to larger historical patterns, such as the Six Ages and God's eternal present. 81
Che exact year in which they were bora. Indeed, monks, the very preservers, if not creators, of much of the literature of early medieval Europe, cultivated in themselves a timeless point of view, as
Peter Burke implies when he states that "a medieval expression for entering a monastery was 'leaving time behind' (relinauere seculum)11
(19). This lack of chronological perspective is even more powerful in oral cultures because minute and relatively irrelevant details such as dates do not lend themselves easily to long term remembrance and therefore quickly fade into oblivion, if indeed they are ever known at all.
If not the temporal relationships which provide the marker points for historical narrative and discourse in literate societies, what allows for the preservation and recollection of historical data in oral cultures? As both Ong and Havelock, in his book The Muse Learns to
Write, point out, knowledge exists only insofar as it can be recalled.34 In literate cultures, writing allows for the creation of an external, impersonal— in Havelock's terms "artificial"— memory bank.
On the other hand, in oral cultures, that which is either not memorable, that is, not worthy of remembrance, or not rememberable, that is, not capable of being remembered, disappears from both the individual and the social consciousness.
The importance of the distinction between things memorable and things inmemorable in the residually oral culture of recently-literate seventh and eighth century England is strongly implied in the brief
34 Ong, Interfaces 284-285; Eric A. Havelock, The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Oralitv and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present (New Haven: Yale UP, 1986) 78-71. 82
entries on native and local events which characterize much of the early
parts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. While the bareness of such entries
as those for 538 and 540, both referring to solar eclipses, may be due
to their origins in Easter tables,*5 surrounding entries for 534 and
547 seem to draw on native historical traditions in which individual years were less important and worthy of note than encapsulated genealogies and family histories. Note, for example, the textual history of the entry for 547 in the Parker version of the Chronicle.
As Garmonsway points out, the annal for this year was changed: the original entry consisted essentially of a mnemonic genealogical catalogue; however, a later scribe, inspired it seems clear not by the year in question but rather by the mention of Ida's succession to the
Northumbrian throne, erased much of the first entry and replaced it with matter, in Garmonsway's words, "more interesting to himself" (16).
In both cases, however, the chroniclers seem less concerned with precise chronology than with the personal or perhaps local resonances called to mind by a particular name. In short, the entry for 547, though written, reflects an oral attitude toward historical significance.
In oral cultures, speech acts are the only means of conveying knowledge, both in an immediate and in a long term sense. However, as
Havelock points out, the kind of language employed in commemorative speech takes on an importance not invested in casual talk because it is through such speech that ethical and historical traditions are passed
99 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. and trans. G. N. Garmonsway, 2nd ed. (1953; New York: Dutton, 1975) xx. on (Muse 70). Foley, in his introduction to a book of essays, Oral
Tradition in Literature, summarizes Havelock's conclusions regarding the social function of oral poetry in a particularly significant way:
"Homeric epics served the society that perpetuated them as a set of oral encyclopedias, a digest of attitudes, beliefs, behavior patterns, and customs encoded (emphasis mine! in the exemplary actions of their heroes."a* The term "encoded" is especially interesting because it implies that in oral traditional societies, heroic narratives serve not just to record the deeds of great men but also, in a dynamic and therefore memorable fashion, to preserve and give meaning to cultural norms. Oral literature, therefore, is communal rather than individual in content, its focus being on the deeds of those persons the events of whose lives in a society's past give meaning to its present: in
Havelock's words, "The memories are personal...yet their content, the language preserved, is communal, something shared by the community as expressing its tradition and its historical identity" (Muse 70). In
Old English, this role of the poet as both spokesperson and medium for his culture is again well represented in Widsid, in which the speaker/poet is represented as able, instantaneously, to cross barriers of time and space; by his journey, a physical manifestation of his tale-telling activity, he both unites his people's past into a single moment and binds his people, represented by his audience, to that past.
Given this communal function of oral literature, both the language and form of this specialized speech must be as devoid of individual
** John Miles Foley, "Introduction," Oral Tradition in Literature: Interpretation in Context, ed. John Miles Foley (Columbia, Missouri: U of Missouri P, 1986) 5. 84 idiosyncracy as possible, enabling Che performer Co become liccle more chan Che mouchpiece of Che sociecy, just as his hero becomes Che embodimenc of ics norms. However, Che cenCral paradox of CradiCional literature may be Che face that its greatest goal, uniformity, is the quality it is least capable of achieving because of Che nature of the oral/aural experience itself. As Albert Lord points out in a recent essay:
All sounds are comparatively variable; within a measurable range they are 'the same.'...Whatever degrees of specialized ordering and distinctiveness may occur in different types of speech, the fundamental characteristic of variability will not be destroyed, because at each step— in the oral world, in the world of artful speech before codification— the ordering has a range, and the distinctiveness is within a range of possibilities as well.37
Consequently, finding simple repetition both inadequate to the magnitude of the task at hand and in a performing sense impossible to achieve, oral cultures develop what Havelock terms "ritualized utterance." In this type of speaking, variations in both form and content are kept within strictly prescribed parameters by means of three basic types of mnemonic patterns— patterns of speaking, patterns of acting, and patterns of meaning. All of these patterns are used repeatedly both within individual narratives and across the entire range of such episodes.
The most basic of these three types of ritualized utterance, patterns of speaking, are relevant to the shaping of history in oral societies not because of their specific content but rather because of
37 Albert B. Lord, "The Merging of Two Worlds: Oral and Written Poetry as Carriers of Ancient Values," Oral Tradition in Literature: Interpretation in Context, ed. John Miles Foley (Columbia, Missouri: U of Missouri P, 1986) 19,20. 85
Che principles governing both cheir formation and use. Such patterns
are the means by which oral historians transcend their role as entertainers to become the keepers and purveyors of the legends, laws, and norms of their societies. As Milton Gatch points out in his discussion of the Germanic background of Anglo-Saxon literature, the oral scop's "functions at least impinged upon the priestly and the judicial," as well as the historical,2* and consequently, accuracy and ease of retention in speaking were extremely important. In order to meet these cultural needs, Germanic oral historians, like many of their counterparts in other cultures, formalized their patterns of speaking in poetry, developing a variety of fixed elements, from rhythm to specialized vocabulary and formulas, which could be adapted to suit the needs of a variety of subject matter. The social importance and highly specialized nature of the form of oral poetry developed by the Anglo-
Saxons is strongly implied by Bede's story of Ccdmon: in Bede's account of what he considers to be a momentous, indeed miraculous, event, Cmdmon's subject matter is new, but both the form of its presentation and the occasion of its utterance are part of a social ritual of tale telling.
While Bede tells us simply that Caedmon transformed biblical stories into swinsunae leopsonaes (the harmony of poetic song), a phrase which encompasses both the language and sound of traditional secular poetry, from the standpoint of the patterning of history in oral cultures it is the presentation of action in standard formulaic
2* Milton McC. Gatch, Loyalties and Traditions; Man and His World in Old English Literature (New York: Pegasus, 1971) 31. 86
combinations of poetic words which has the greatest impact on narrative
form. Through such formulas, individual deeds and persons are both
generalized and given wider communal associations. After Lord and
Parry did their ground-breaking work on the subject of poetic formulas
with reference to Greek cultures, numerous studies in recent years,
beginning with Magoun's seminal 1953 article "Oral-Formulaic Character
of Anglo-Saxon Poetry," have shown the relevance of their findings to
Anglo-Saxon poetry. Old English scholars have also discovered the
existence of what are being called formulaic type scenes, in other
words, entire groups of formulas traditionally combined for use in
specific types of dramatic scenes, such as 'the hero on the beach.'2*
The existence of type scenes in Old English poetry is extremely
significant, in that this stylistic device.provides a bridge between
patterns of poetic speech and patterns of formalized action. As Foley
points out in his article "Beowulf and the Psychohistory of Anglo-Saxon
Culture," such scenes brought with them not just linguistic resonances
but also, more significantly from a historiographical point of view, "a
verbal montage of the group's models and...the data which these models
a* The pioneering work in examining the relationship between theme and type-scene in Old English poetry was done by the following: Stanley Greenfield, "The Formulaic Expression of the Theme of Exile in Anglo-Saxon Poetry," Speculum 30 (1955): 200-6; Adrien Bonjour, "Beowulf and the Beasts of Battle," PMLA 71 (1957): 563-73; and David K. Crowne, "The Hero on the Beach: An Example of Composition by Theme in Anglo-Saxon Poetry," NM 61 (1960): 362-72. Other later works of far-reaching consequence on the subject include: Donald K. Frye, "Old English Formulaic Themes and Type Scenes," Neophil 52 (1968): 48-54; and Alain Renoir, "Oral-Formulaic Rhetoric and the Interpretation of Written Texts," Oral Tradition in Literature: Interpretation in Context, ed. John Miles Foley (Columbia, MO: U of Missouri P, 1986) 103-135. 87 encode.111* In ocher words, Old English type-scenes, through verbal echoes, called into Che minds of Che audience situational analogues unmentioned by the poet but relevant to the tale being told.
The fact that oral poetry presents its content in terms of pre-set patterns of action should in no way surprise critics already acquainted with the formulaic quality of such ritualized speech. The primary subject matter of oral poetry is warfare, or, more accurately, conflict. Anyone who has read Homer or any quantity of Old English poetry can not help but be aware of this fact; even the biblical retellings focus largely on this subject. In the Old English poetic paraphrases, such as Genesis and Exodus. most of the major expansions and interpolations occur at points in the original story which would have special significance to a society whose values were those of tribe and clan. In both versions of Genesis, the poets elaborate greatly on the social disorder caused by Satan's rebellion and Eve's disobedience against their common lord. Later in Genesis A . the poet turns his attention from comitatus to familial conflict, expanding both the account and the consequences of the Cain and Abel story. In Exodus, the destruction by Jahweh of the faithless Egyptians is expansively described in images which call to mind a great and bloody battle.
In part this focus may be attributed to the fact that war, or more specifically inter-tribal feuding, was a central activity in primitive, oral cultures. While, of course, warfare is far from unique to such
ia John Miles Foley, "Beowulf and the Psychohistory of Anglo-Saxon Culture," American Imago 34 (1977); 134; cf. Foley, "Formula and Theme in Old English Poetry," Oral Literature, ed. Stolz and Shannon (Ann Arbor: Center for Ancient and Mo d e m Studies, 1976) 207-32, 231 esp. 88 cultures. It does assume a role and importance in these societies quite different from that it occupies in more politically and economically complex and technologically advanced ones. In clan and tribe cultures, such as those of pre-feudal Europe and Homeric Greece, the welfare of the individual was totally dependent on ties to the tribe; his survival depended on the success of his warrior band, which provivded him with protection, wealth, and reputation. The hlafordleas man, cut off from ties to the larger group was certain to lead a life that was "nasty, brutish, and short." In such a society, conflict and competition were not a way of life: they were life. Indeed, Ong points out that public festivals and private play alike often derived their meaning and value from their specific or abstract relationship to war: harvest rituals were also a time for the cessation of hostilities; and games, usually modeled after martial conflict, were designed for the controlled release of aggression.*1 In Old English poetry, the highly developed rhetorical device of flyting contests reflects the same impulse.
However, pointing to the continuing emphasis from classical times to the Renaissance on spiritual as well as physical conflict, Ong contends that the true, or perhaps deeper, reason for the focus on struggle in oral poetry is "the tendency in oral or residually oral cultures to cast up accounts of actuality in terms of contests between individuals" in order to ensure that "virtue and vice polarities enter deeply into knowledge-storing systems" (Presence 201). In keeping with
11 Walter J. Ong, The Presence of the Word (New Haven: Yale UP, 1967) 195-96. this assertion, Robert Kellogg In an essay entitled "Varieties of
Tradition In Medieval Narrative" points out that the Icelandic family
sagas, although on the surface largely concerned with feud and warfare,
"do not take out of pure narrative solution the high degree of
Intelligence with which they think about deeply social, political,
legal, and ethical Issues."'3 In Beowulf, digressions provide evidence
of a similar attitude towards the relationship between narrative and
abstract social Issues. Both the Flnnsburh episode and Fragment
explain more vividly than any analytical discussion ever could the
social necessity for strong family and tribal ties, as well as the
tragic potential Inherent In such social relationships.
It Is out of a need to fulfill this ethically significant purpose
that oral poets devise a second means for patterning action— the development of culturally-loaded, or "heavy," characters. Because It
Is Impossible to remember all persons and events Individually, In oral cultures history Is preserved on the one hand by clustering events
"Into stories told about a relatively small number of heroic figures"
(Ong, Presence 204), as seen, for example, In the large number of
Germanic stories tied directly or obliquely to Attlla the Hun, and on
the other by associating groups of characters with particular types of events, as seen, for example. In the almost mandatory mention of
Siegfried In any dragon story. These characters assume In oral poetry almost mythic proportions. Although at one time they may have been
" Robert Kellogg, "Varieties of Tradition In Medieval Narrative," Medieval Narrative: A Symposium, eds. Hans Bekker-Nlelsen, Peter Foote, Andreas Haarder, and Freber Meulengracht Sorensen (Odense: Odense UP, 1979) 126. 90 remembered for real deeds, in the world of oral history they become, in
Ong's words, "conspicuous personages, foci of common attention, individuals embodying open public concerns" (Presence 204). Having become a part of a culture's history, these heavy figures are gradually dissociated from the chronological and geographic specifics of their real lives, except as they become names divorced from deeds in mnemonic catalogues, until each character comes to stand for the tradition as a whole, with each tale deriving its meaning, in the words of Foley,
"from metonymy, pars pro toto,...land! synecdoche," and conveying not so much how a specific hero acted but, to quote Havelock, "what the society always did under such circumstances" (Foley, "Introduction" 17;
Havelock 58).
An example of this transformation from historical figure into archetypal character in oral tradition can be seen in the Old English poem Widsid. especially in the more narratively expansive section such as those which deal with Eormanrigh, Offa, and Wudga and Hama:
...He mid Ealhilde, falre freopuwebban, forman sipe Hredcyninges ham gesohte eastan, of Ongle, Eormanrices, wrapes warlogan... (1. 5b-9a)
Radhere sohte ic & Rondhere, Rumstan & Gislhere, Wipergeld & Freoperic, Wudgan & Haman... Ful oft of pam heape hwinende fleag, giellende, gar, on grome peode; wraccan par weoldan wundnan golde, werum & wifum, Wudga & Hama. (1. 123-4, 127-30)
Offa weold Ongle, Alewih Denum. Se was para manna modgast ealra No hwapre he ofer Offan earlscype fremede, ac Offa geslog arest monna, cniht wesende, cynerica mast. Nanig efeneald himeorlscipe maran onorette. Ane sweorde 91
raerce gemmrde wi3 Myrgingum bi Fifeldore. Heoldon ford sippan, Engle & Swmfe, swa hit Offa geslog. (1. 35-44)**
In each of these cases, although the poet provides more information
than is given in the catalogue references to other historical figures,
the actions of each hero are already being described in situational
formulas. Eormanric, described later at 1. 110-1 in the transition
into the third thula, or catalogue, as the leader of the company of the
best comrades (the Goths), in this opening section of the poem is
depicted as part of the ideal ruling marriage, the union of a peace-
weaving wife and a husband who is a foe to treaty-breakers. Hama and
Wudga are distinguished not just for the fact that they often engaged
in battle but also for the fact that they established and ruled over
both a kingdom of subjects and a treasure of wound gold. Even Offa,
for whom we are given the most specific information regarding his
** 5b-9a: He journeyed first with Ealhild, trusted peace-weaver, sought by the eastern way, through Angeln, the home of the glory-king Eormanric, one hostile to treaty-breakers. [For the source of this controversial translation of these lines, see Malone's commentary, in his 1962 edition of the poem, on the phrase wrmnes warloaan (Malone 29- 53). I find Malone's arguments convincing not just because of the grammatical and historical reasons given by him but also because I believe this positive reading of Eormanric's character, as opposed to the traditional rendering 'fierce faithbreaker,' is more in keeping with the process of generalization and archetyping which is occurring in these expanded portions of the poem.1 123-4, 127-30! I sought Rmdhere and Rondhere, Rumstan and Gislhere, Wipergeld and Freoperic, Wudga and Hama....Very often the spear flew whining, yelling, out of that company into a hostile nation; the adventurers Wudga and Hama ruled over wound gold, men, and women. 35-44: Offa ruled Angeln, Alewih the Danes. He (Alewih! was the most noble of all these men, although he did not surpass Offa in eorl- like [brave/warrior-like 1 deeds, but Offa first as a man, being still a boy, won the greatest of kingdoms. No one as old as he accomplished more leader-like deeds. By his sword alone he dictated (Malone! the boundary against the Myrgings at Fifeldor. Afterwards the Angles and Swabians held the kingdom as Offa had won it. 92 conquests, perhaps because Offa's history was closest in time and tradition to the poet and his audience, is already being described in terms of the ideal actions of the archetypal heroic leader— as a youth he established through daring and courage a kingdom which his descendants still hold. Clearly, for both the Widsin poet and his audience, these names represented not so much real as exemplary figures.
The inspiration for these characters lies at the deepest level of patterning in oral history— patterns of meaning. Just as words are subservient to patterns of speaking in oral performance, so facts are subservient to meaning, or more specifically to the cultural ethos which gives significance to events and people. Even genealogical tables, which seem to m o d e m eyes to be examples of meaningless data, embody the central concern of oral history— the establishment of cultural continuity. As I pointed out earlier, Anglo-Saxon works as diverse as Beowulf, Andreas, and the Parker version of the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle all begin with abbreviated genealogies, and throughout Old
English literature not only are individuals and royal houses provided with genealogies, weapons are also made part of a larger cultural continuity by means of elaborate provenances. Genealogical tables, of course, are but one way in which oral poetry seeks to fulfill its primary purpose of preserving the cultural heritage. The best way to achieve this goal is by establishing a continuity of custom and belief, a continuity which can only exist if people and events are presented with an essential sameness, tinged with enough individual detail to make the story interesting and therefore memorable, but not so much as co allow Che character's "uniqueness [col becloJme a violation of Che shared echos" (Havelock, Muse 58). In Che Wldslu passages discussed above, for example, Che characCers Co greaCer or lesser excencs are assoclaced wich specific acclons, Eormanric wlch a parclcular wife,
Offa wlch an Imporcanc baccle, buc chey all conform Co a larger paccem of che Ideal leader, who boch Is fearless In baccle and esCabllshes and malncalns a successful kingdom. The subject maccer of che Chree chulas. kings, Crlbes, and heroes, seems co supporc chls same focus on
Che escabllshmenc of social condnulCy Chrough pollClcal achlevemencs.
The overall effeccs of such paccerns of speech, acclon, and meaning on che concepc of hlscory In oral and resldually oral culCures are excremely slgnlflcanc. Flrsc of all, on all levels of composlClon, emphasis Is placed on paccem and form over specific concenc. Those evencs and people which have no place In Che paCCern have no place In hlscory. In a very real sense, as boch Deor and Wldsln remind us, che oral poec Indeed has Che power noc just co preserve a soclecy's knowledge of Icself but also co create In chat society knowledge of an
Individual. Second, because Chelr purpose Is co establish cultural continuity, these patterns on all Chree levels are slow to change; over time, however, as a society's understanding of Itself changes, these narrative patterns are gradually reshaped so thac outdated Ideas are replaced by newer ones. Third, because oral hlscory Is little concerned wlch such factual details as che chronological relationship between events and people, and because che cask of Che poet Is to recite che past In order to give meaning co che past and co che present, hlscory In oral cultures Is dynamic. The past Is not an 94 arcifacc but a living, changing, meaningful entity from which stems a sense of present granted meaning and value by continuity with that which has been. Oral history is not so much about what happened as about what happens. By binding a culture to its past, oral history strives to show we are who we were.
Perhaps the most significant effect of the reliance on pattern in oral literature is the often-overlooked tension created in both form and content between variability and uniformity, between those things which are constants and those which change. Kellogg, in trying to explain the difference between traditional, high, and popular art, states that "traditional art is r.nmmunai and conservative... .high art is personal and innovative...popular art...is communal and innovative"
(120). While the truth of this statement seems undeniable, it is vital, when speaking of oral literature, not to perceive the term
"conservative" as meaning unchanging or unaccepting of change. In fact, such poetry through the use of patterns of speech and action habitually uses variability to demonstrate the ideal of ethical stability by showing that while names and ways of speaking may and do change, patterns of behavior and story-telling do not. The communal function of oral traditional literature is indeed conservative— its purpose is to conserve society by reconciling the fact of continuous change with the need for cultural continuity. Chapter Two
The Germanic Tradition
The Christian missionaries came to Anglo-Saxon England to convert
the people away from their pagan beliefs, not to teach them to write;
the transition from an oral to a written culture was, to some extent,
an unintended by-product. But, who were the sixth-century Anglo-
Saxons? In many ways, that is a difficult question to answer. Unlike
the pre-literate Greeks, they left behind them relatively little
archaeological evidence: an amalgamation of several recently nomadic
peoples, the English had only begun to settle in the British Isles less
than two centuries before the arrival of Roman and Irish missionaries.
Because what little building they did was in wood, not stone, we have
few artifacts to provide us with the kinds of cultural information we might otherwise glean from written records in literate societies.
However, the few pieces of jewelry and metalwork which have survived
from the period indicate a culture which, in preferring abstract but
functional art to the representational and monumental art of the Greeks and Romans, was ideologically attuned to placing more value in broad general patterns than in specific individual details.
Culturally, the Anglo-Saxons were descendants of the Germanic tribes which had spread across Northern Europe in the waning days of the Roman Empire. By the time of Augustine's mission to the Anglo-
95 96
Saxons, the various pagan Germanic peoples who had settled in the
British Isles, branches primarily of the continental tribes of the
Angles, Saxons, Frisians, and Jutes,*4 had become culturally homogenized, occupying much of the territory now known as England and surrounded on the fringes by groups of displaced, Christian Celts.
Although politically at odds among themselves and divided into numerous petty kingdoms, the Anglo-Saxons shared a common, Germanically-based religious*9 and ethical heritage, which had a profound effect on the
*4 Among historians and literary critics, there has long been concern about how the continental tales which form the core of surviving Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry arrived in England. Were they brought and preserved by all the new settlers, or was one tribe primarily responsible? Frederick Norman contends that the Angles were responsible for the creation, the Saxons for the preservation: "It is widely held that early Old English literature was predominantly produced...after about 700, in Anglian territory, and that its preservation was due to the careful manner in which it was collected in Saxon England" ("The Germanic Background of Old English Verse," Medieval Literature and Civilization: Studies in Memory of G. N. Garmonswav. eds. D. A. Pearsall and R. A. Waldron (London: U of London P, 1969) 22). Cf. also Norman, "The Continental Background of Early Anglian Literature," Proceedings of the University of Durham Philosophical Society, 1 (1959), 38 ff. In terms of the question of the Anglo-Saxon cultural heritage of attitudes towards the past, however, the question is largely irrelevant. What is important is the fact that early English literature was pan-geographic in content: like the literature of other oral cultures, it concerned itself not just with the deeds of local or tribal heroes but also, perhaps even primarily, with the deeds of heroes of the larger, shared-culture group and in doing so granted the Anglo-Saxons a longer and richer history than politically they had had.
** H. R. Ellis Davidson in her book cautions us to remember "that there was considerable variety among the religions of the different Germanic tribes, who had no universal church....We must avoid the common error of supposing that the myths which we possess grew out of a fixed and permanent heathen faith possessed by the whole Germanic world" (Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (New York: Penguin Books, 1964) 14). While this is undoubtedly true, there do seem to be certain basic beliefs or myths common to all the Germanic peoples, evidence of which can be found in such elements as language, place-names, archaeologic remains, and, to a lesser extent, literature. It is with 97
Anglo-Saxon vision of history. In the same way their oral culture affected how the Anglo-Saxons preserved their history, these two closely related belief systems, religion and ethics, largely governed what they chose to preserve.
The cultural values of a society arise not just from its historical situation (i.e. nomadic/warlike versus stable/agrarian) but also from its perception of the world around it and its own place in that world— viewpoints which are often expressed figuratively in its mythology. Studies published by cultural anthropologists beginning in the early twentieth century have shown time and again the pervasive, underlying influence of a culture's mythology on all aspects of life in that culture, an influence which continues long after belief in that mythology is no longer widely held. Summarizing the work of such early theorists as Malinowski, Ernst Cassirer, and Claude Levi-Strauss, Paul
Bauschatz states, "Not only daily life as it is being lived but all aspects of human endeavor provide contexts in which to see the operation of underlying mythic structures.1"* Therefore, although we can not say with any certainty how strongly or deeply the Anglo-Saxons believed at the end of the sixth century in the gods of northern paganism, we can assume that certain primary myths, especially those pertaining to creation, doomsday, and human destiny, had a major influence on the manner in which they reckoned the passage of time and
several of these core myths that my examination of pre-Christian Anglo- Saxon historical beliefs will be concerned.
** Paul Bauschatz, The Well and The Tree: World and Tim* in Earlv Germanic Culture (Amherst, Mass.: U of Massachusetts P, 1982) xiv. 98 judged and recorded human achievement, that is, on their concept of history.
The validity of postulating such a focus for pre-Christian English history is borne out by the research of Eleanor Searle on early Norman history, another Germanic cultural off-shoot. In analyzing the tenth- century history of the early Dukes of Normandy written by Dudo of Saint
Quentin, Searle points out that Dudo was writing in a mythically- inspired tradition which emphasized pattern over fact:
What Dudo's Norse patrons required of him, I would argue, was to produce a lineage-history that would be like the finest of the Norse sagas and heroic histories, a lineage-story that would be overlaid with a significant history. For pattern is the real truth in the saga and the heroic tale. The pattern reveals the significance of the flowing, otherwise trivial, dance to the music of time, causing the gods, the men of the past, and themselves to move in a kind of simultaneity of rhythm and destiny.*7
Searle goes on to show 1) that "just vengeance," in the person of Odin, is the dominant pattern of heroic saga; 2) that Dudo was aware of this pattern; and 3) that Dudo carefully attempted to reshape the pattern of
Norman history along newer, classically-oriented lines, choosing Aeneas as his new model of the ideal conqueror/ruler. While I do not see vengeance as the pattern of pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon history, Searle's argument shows a connection between mythology and history in the
Germanic world view, a connection which may also account for Dudo's choice of the mythical hero Aeneas for his new model. Furthermore, by arguing for a change in historical focus in Dudo's work, Searle both supports the idea that cultural differences between various Germanic
17 Eleanor Searle, "Fact and Pattern in Heroic History: Dudo of Saint-Quentin," Viator 15 (1984) 122. 99
cultures could result in subtle variations in the historical patterns
formulated in those societies and provides us with insight into how the change to the Christian vision of history was achieved by shifting emphasis from a mythically inspired to a religiously inspired center.
The central myth of Germanic paganism was one which not only explained, in a static manner, the shape of the northern cosmos and man's place within it but also governed dynamically the lives of individuals, human and supernatural. The Uorld-Ash, Yggdrasil, and the
Well of Urth which, aided by the three Noras, nourished the tree's roots served as dual symbols of stability and growth. The centrality of this myth to the Germanic concept of the universe has long been recognized; its importance to the Germanic concepts of time and, by extension, of history remained largely unrecognized prior to the publication of Paul Bauschatz's book The Well and the Tree; World and
Time in Early Germanic Culture. Bauschatz begins his book with the statement "Germanic culture was dominated by its conception of its own past," and proceeds to examine not "the obvious fact of domination" but
"how and in what form the Germanic conception of the past shaped events," focusing primarily on the relationship between the Norns, the
Well, and human activity (i).
References to both the World Tree and the Noras can be found not just in Scandinavian and Icelandic literature but throughout northeastern Europe and northern and central Asia as well (Davidson
191). The fullest versions of this story can be found in Volusp_j 19-
20, probably the earliest mention, and Gvlfaainninq (Bauschatz 3). H. 100
R. Ellis Davidson, in her book Gods and Myths of Northern Europe,
summarizes che Cale in che following manner:
The world had for ics centre a greac tree, a mighcy ash called Yggdrasill. So huge was chis tree chac ics branches screeched out over heaven and earch alike....Below che eree in Che kingdom of che Aesir was che sacred spring of face, che Well of Urd. Here every day che gods assembled for cheir courC of law, co seccle dispuCes and discuss common problems.... Near che spring dwelc Chree maidens called che Norns, who ruled che descinies of men, and were called Face (Urdr), Being (Verdhandi), and Necessicy (Skuld). They wacered che cree each day wich pure wacer and whicened it with clay from Che spring, and in chis way preserved ics life, while Che wacer fell down Co earch as dew (26).
Contained within, or at lease sheltered by, che branches of Chis tree
were che worlds of men (Midgard), gods (Asgard), giants, and dwarfs;
and Che activities of Che Norns, in nurturing Yggdrasill, nurtured all
of them. Despice Chis nutritive function, Che Chree maidens did not
exercise absolute control over life and death; Che World Tree also held
within its branches Che seeds of its own destruction, and wich ics fall
would come Che inevitable destruction of boch Asgard and Midgard.
Critics have long cried to identify che Norns wich Che classical
criad of che Fates: Grimm, in 1900, identified che names Urdr,
Verdhandi, and Skuld wich preterite plural, present participle, and che pasc participle from which che future cense is formed for che verb
verda. to become; Turville-Peter, in 1964, even more strongly and
specifically identified che chree Norns wich Pasc, Present, and Future;
and in che same year, Davidson's definition of Verdhandi as Being
carried through Chis same idea (Bauschatz 8, 9, 13). However, such definitions are derived from inaccurate etymologies. The association of Skuld wich Future is especially misleading. According to BauschaCz,
che first two Norns are indeed parts of Che same verb, verda (IE root 101 uert, OE weor&an, G werden). meaning to turn or become: "When
Verdhandi and Urth are semantically related, Verdhandi becomes that which is in process of 'turning' or 'becoming', and Urth would be that which has ’turned' or 'become'" (14). Skuld, however, stands a bit outside of this process, since it is derived from the past participle of the verb skula, skulu. skal (OE sculan), a verb which "although it often implies what we would call 'future time'.carries a far greater force of obligation or necessity; ’what shall be' in Old Norse [and in
Old English, I would note! is ’what is, of necessity'" (Bauschatz 12).
Indeed, as Bauschatz further points out, if skulu or sculan was originally associated with any time sense at all in Germanic languages, it was with the continuous present and then only as an extension of its primary purpose, expressing "constraint, obligation, (and) continual action" (13).*•
That this sense of necessity was still primary to the meaning of sculan in the Anglo-Saxon period is evident in the distinctions drawn between sceal and bin in Old English poetic maxims. Based on his study of gnomic statements in a wide variety of Old English materials, P. L.
Henry concluded, "gnomic sceal typically expresses the notions of customary action or state, inherent quality and characteristic property, passing over on the one hand to ideal or hortatory action,
(state), expressing on the other that sense of certainty which current dialectical varieties of the future (with will) bring out."** This
*• See also in Bauschatz's book note 10 to Chapter Two and Chapter Five passim.
*• Platrickl L. Henry, The Early English and Celtic Lvric (London: Allen and Unwin, 1966) 103. separation is especially clear in the poem known as the "Cotton
Maxims," or "Maxims II." In his brief but insightful study, J. K.
Bollard first points out that the poem divides into three sections:
"With the exception of the opening half line, lines 1-13 are composed
of bva maxims, lines 14-57a of sceal maxims, and lines 57b-66 are not
in maxim form at all."4* The significance of these divisions is
evident in the correspondence between content and verb form in each
section: the bv<5 maxims depict those aspects of the natural and social
world which "can be apprehended as facts" (Bollard 179); the sceal
maxims depict "aspects of the world and of society which must be and
must remain as they are in order that the realms of man and nature may
survive together" (Bollard 180);4i in the final section, faced with the
task of describing the future, heavenly, eternal nature of the soul's
relationship to God, the poet abandons as inadequate both the maxim
form and the verbs associated with it. The carefully used verbs in
this poem reflect on a small scale the three basic gradations in Old
English temporal apprehension, shifting as they do from a sense of time pertinent to those things which are by nature continuous, to a sense of
time pertinent to those things which man must strive to make
continuous, to a sense of time for which the poet has no suitable verb
4* J. K. Bollard, "The Cotton Maxims," Neophil 57 (1973): 179.
41 In keeping with Henry's definition of sceal as used in gnomic contexts, Greenfield and Evert render the sceal passages in "Maxims II" by preceding the present tense form of each verb in question with the word 'typically,' as in "’the wolf is typically in a grove'" for line 17b "Wulf sceal on bearowe": Stanley B. Greenfield and Richard Evert, "Maxims II: Gnome and Poem," Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Essays in Appreciation for John McGalliard. eds., Lewis E. Nicholson and Dolores Warwick Frese (Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 1975) 347. 103 vocabulary, a sense of eternity pertinent to a new world view and alien to the old.
The difficulty of tying Skuld specifically to a future tense or generally to a future sense is especially apparent in the lack of a discrete, that is separate, future tense in Germanic languages. It is important to note that in Old English, and consequently in modern
English, beon and wesan were so inadequate to the task of expressing the future tense that two verbs entirely separate in meaning and derivation from the verb ’to be*— willan. a verb of intention, and sculan. a verb of necessity— had to be pressed into use as auxiliary or helping verbs, while also continuing to serve their original functions.
As Bauschatz points out, "the binary opposition inherent in the
Germanic tense system between past and present or, better, between past and nonpast events" sets languages based on this system apart from other inflected Indo-European languages (xvii). This binary tense system, though it seems to us wholly inadequate to the task of conveying all the subtle variations of time we, following in the
Christian-classical tradition, deem so essential, in fact is entirely consistent with the concept of time represented by the Norns. All activity rises from and falls into Urth's Well, within whose waters chronological boundaries between past events are dissolved. Binary temporal opposition is evident in many post-conversion Anglo-Saxon texts, in which it is often difficult to distinguish between the immediate and distant past or the future of necessity and the future of time, and even modem English and German are still based on an 104
essentially binary tense system, with other tenses being possible only
through the use of auxiliary verbs.
Given the meaning of its root form, Skuld can not be associated
with the Greek idea of Fate as the absolute controller of future
destiny. She is the third part of a process which begins and ends in
Urth:
Urth reflects actions made manifest, brought to a full, clear, observable, fruition; they have ’become'; they are accomplished. Verthandi clearly reflects the actually occurring process of all that Urth eventually expresses. The two Norns are closely linked, with the influence of Verthandi flowing directly to Urth. As actions pass from Verthandi to Urth, they move from ’becoming' to ’become'.... ISkuld] seems to make reference to actions felt as somehow obliged or known to occur; that is, the necessity of their ’becoming' is so strongly felt or clearly known that they present themselves as available to be incorporated into the realms of Verthandi and Urth (Bauschatz 14).
The three create a closed cycle of continuous movement, from Verthandi
to Urth, from Urth to Skuld, Skuld to Verthandi (when the thing which
’must be' occurs), returning finally to Urth, with all action deriving from and finding stability in Urth, a pattern of motion reflected in
Urth's activity of feeding Yggdrasill from her well and receiving back into the well the dew. It is this finding of fulfillment in ’that which has become,' that is, in the past, which sets the Norns apart from the classical Fates: Moira (the Greek name for the activity of the Fates] "stands before the events of this world and governs...the working in of the future into the present....Wyrd (and the Norns) governs...the working in of the present into the past" (Bauschatz 11).
It is this fulfilling and nutritive role of Urth which accounts for the domination of the past in Germanic culture, a domination seen not just 105 in the general subject matter of all Germanic literature but in the predominant importance given to Urth in all mentions of the Norns.4a
Clearly, the importance of what Bauschatz calls "the prevalence of
Urth" to the concept of history held by Anglo-Saxons prior to the coming of Christianity must have been immense, regardless of whether or not they subcribed whole-heartedly to belief in the World-Ash and its nurturing Well. Like that of all Germanic peoples, the culture and language of the Anglo-Saxons was grounded in the past, which, as symbolized by Urth's Well, was seen as the source not just of ethical stability but also of all life and inspiration. As a result, the entire Anglo-Saxon sense of the time continuum differed markedly not just from our modern one but, as I will discuss more fully shortly, from that of the Christian tradition, which was oriented towards future salvation and judgment, as seen, for example, in the Augustinian notion of the progression of the ages of man towards fulfillment in the apocalypse. Not only did the pagan, sixth-century English lack entirely a sense of a future of open-possibility, they also perceived the present as becoming fully realized only as it was subsumed into the pattern of the past, a point of view which was reinforced in their oral literature by the need to reduce random variation to fixed pattern.
One way, however, in which the Norns can be equated with the classical Fates is in the degree of influence they were believed to hold over the lives of both individuals, human and divine, and the
4* Bauschatz points out that Skuld is mentioned only three times in Norse mythology, Verdhandi only twice. Urth, on the other hand, is mentioned repeatedly, and it is her name which in various forms (OE wvrd. OS wurd, OHG wurt, for example) is applied in general to all the activities of the Norns (15). 106
universe as a whole. The earliest and most detailed account of the
activities of the Norns occurs In Voluspd 20:
Pa&an koma meylar, margs vltandl, prldr, 6r pelm sa, er und polll stendr; Urd hdto elna, adra Verdandl — sclro & scl&l— , Sculd Ina prl&lo; per log log&o, par Ilf kuro alda bornom, arlog seggla.4J
A recently reissued English translation of the Voluspd, perhaps better known as the Poetic or Elder Edda. presents this verse In the following manner:
Thence wise maidens three betake them— under spreading boughs their bower stands— (Urth one Is hlght, the other, Verthandi, Skuld the third: they scores did cut,] they laws did make, they lives did choose: for the children of men they marked their fates.44
As Bauschatz points out, however, there are several problems with this
translation, most notably the use of the word 'fates' for grlog.
Bauschatz' own longer, carefully explained translation of the last
two lines of the Norse passage provides fuller Insight Into the
function of the Norns:
The Norse expression Ilf kidsa Is as vague as the phrase 'to choose life' Is In English. It Is too restricting to see this as only the act of choosing death, the final limit of men's lives, as we are tempted to do. The Initial limit, birth, Is not excluded, nor are any of the events that occur during the dally course of life Itself. The phrase log leggia Is the usual term In Old Norse for the act of making laws, but the literal meaning of the phrase suggests something else. Leaaia Is 'to lay', 'to place’, or 'to do'. Log (the plural of lag) Is literally 'strata' or 'that which
4* Edda: Die Lleder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmalem, ed. Gustav Neckle, 4th ed. (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1962). (Cited from Bauschatz, 4.1
44 The Poetic Edda. trans. Lee M. Hollander, 2nd ed. (Austin: U of Texas P, 1962) 4. 107
has been deposited or laid down'. Log leacna Is, then, to lay down that which is laid down or to lay down or implant strata....Of course, log occurs again in arlog segia; 'to say or speak the gr-strata. the er-things-laid-down, the er- law'....The prefix gr- signifies something that is beyond or above the ordinary. It suggests something of first or primary significance, but it does not indicate the scale upon which the significance is to be measured; hence, the rather vague 'above' or ’beyond' quality it imparts. The orlop is, then, a 'primal law' (in importance), a 'highest law' (in elevation), an 'earliest law' (in time), a 'first law' (in any numerical sequence), and so forth. To take the more literal reading of log, orlog is 'the most significant things laid down', 'the earliest things accomplished' (6).
I have quoted this lengthy explication almost in full because the
significance of Bauschatz' interpretation of these lines for arriving at an understanding the the Germanic attitude toward the past, or history, can not be over-estimated. With reference to the Anglo-Saxons in particular, it must be noted that in Old English, the words logian. a verb meaning 'to place, lay down, order, arrange, collect, or deposit,' or-, a prefix denoting origin or antiquity, and orlacg, a noun defined as destiny or fate, express much the same ideas as their Norse counterparts. Such a close association in cognates indicates that for
Scandinavian, Continental, and Anglo-Saxon cultures alike, the three activities of the Norns were interlocked, bound together in their association with things laid down in antiquity.
Even the given order of these actions in the original Norse text is significant, moving from accumulating and preserving patterns of universal action (laying down that which has been deposited— the past), to governing the lives of individual men in accordance with these patterns (choosing life), to telling the story of things done (speaking the earliest things accomplished). They are the shapers, preservers, and disseminators of the patterns of universal existence, patterns 108 based solely on what has gone before, and through these patterns they exercise supreme control over the lives of men, and indeed, according to northern mythology, of gods. In these activities, however, the power of the Norns is not self-generated or even entirely in their control. They are the channelers of the fundamental patterns of existences, the living embodiments of the laws laid down (hence OE laau, 'law,') in the beginning.
It is in her close and ongoing association with the log that the prime importance of Urth becomes most clear. Her well is the pool into which all past actions fall. The clay with which she and her sisters sustain the World-Tree is drawn from her well, and it is in the layering of this clay that the patterns of daily human existence are formed. Finally, as deeds are completed and lives ended, they fall back into Urth's well in the form of dew to become part of this ongoing cycle of sustenence, preservation, and regeneration. In her well, in
Bauschatz' words, "Urth unfolds the pattern and sequence of all events as they build up and out into present world; she illustrates the fundamental importance of the arloq, the ’primal' events laid down in earliest times, whose pattern dominates and structures events now occurring in the world of men" (16).
In this function, Urth seems to have less in common with the Fates than with the classical Muses, who, as discussed by Havelock, are the offspring of Zeus and Mnemosyne— usually translated as ’Memory', and whose original function, as given in Hesiod, is to commemorate
"careful" and "carefully-kept" "custom-laws and folk-ways" (79, 57).
And it is perhaps not surprising to realize that in this reflective function, Urth also seems to have much in common with the role often assigned by critics to the germanic scop. Furthermore, Urth's Well conveys, in some sense, the idea of inspiration associated with both the Muses and the scop. It was regarded as a source of life, a fact indicated by the Norse word usually assigned to it— Ur&ar-brunnr.
Brunnr. a word found in some form in most Germanic languages, in
Icelandic still "refers most often to a spring or well, especially to a centrally located source....a water source, felt co be somehow
'natural', which has as a feature of its form a hollow shaftlike structure." As Bauschatz goes on to point out, such springs, which often are found in marshy areas and enclosed to separate the pure water from the mud, "must once have seemed... supernatural" (16, 17). The word brunnr. then, conveys, as with all things associated with Urth, the ideas of pattern (the enclosure), change (constantly refilling with water), and ancient, supernatural life (the spring).
Urth's Well and all that it stood for in Germanic culture influenced the Anglo-Saxon world view in many significant ways. Unlike the gods of Greece and Rome, whose actions were regarded as belonging for the most part outside the realm of the classical Fates, the gods of northern paganism were as bound as human beings by the patterns woven, though not generated, by the Norns. In other words, though divine, the gods' activities and ultimate ends were determined by, and therefore contained within, the realm of natural law, and in the waters of Urth's
Well, as in the branches of Yggdrasil, mingled indistinguishably actions from the worlds of men, gods, giants, and dwarfs. Bauschatz, in the Foreword to his book, hints at the significance of this fact lie when he points out that although the latter three of these four groups of beings, together with dragons and various types of monsters, are all
"cultural manifestations we now call 'supernatural', with all of its
frightening and 'unreal' connotations....(that is] something outside the ordinary operation of cause and effect,"' such beings may not have been regarded in that way in other cultures. Clearly this was true for
Germanic cultures— to them, the natural world encompassed many things we might be tempted to term supernatural, and the so-called monstrous aspects of the Germanic cosmos all embodied "something of the explanatory force that natural or 'scientific' law expresses for us":49 in the clay of Urth's Well the deeds of men, monsters, and gods held equal measure; the destruction of the earth was, of necessity, to result from the gnawing of a dragon at the base of the World Tree; and like men, the gods finally had no power to escape death, the most ancient and natural of primal laws.49
Removed from the realm of mythology, the Well of Urth and the mortality of the gods were manifest in the two related dominant themes of the pre-Christian Germanic world view— the transitory nature of life and the power of wvrd in the lives of men. The first concept, to which
49 Bauschatz xvi, referring to the work of E. E. Evan-Pritchard, The Nuer; a description of the modes of livelihood and political institutions of a Nilotic people. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940) 109- 10.
44 The association of death with the gods is derived primarily from three basic northern myths: 1) the destruction of Yggdrasil and with it of the worlds of men and gods; 2) the killing of Balder, Odin's son ((according to Snorri, although Saxo states that Balder was one of Odin's human warrior-heroes (Davidson 182-189)] by Loki; 3) Ragnarok, the final contest between the gods and the giants in which the monsters would be released, the earth destroyed, and the great gods killed. Ill can be attributed the modem attitude of the 'gloominess' of Germanic philosophy and literature, at its simplest resulted in the presentation of life as a closed circle of change: all glories fade; all beings die; all change leads eventually to oblivion and nothingness. It is in this essentially nihilistic conclusion that the Germanic attitudes both toward change in general and the ultimate change of death in particular differs most markedly from the Christian view point.
From a Christian, that is, a non-Germanic, point of view, death is a kind of opening out to salvation or damnation, a point in all time through which man necessarily goes to life or nonlife beyond. The experience of death transcends the vicissitudes of the world of sense impression. The reality beyond is eternal. In the Germanic figuration, there is something like this in the representation of the feasting of warriors in Valholl and in some of the descriptions of torment in Niflheim. There is an essential distinction, however. In the Germanic myths, all of these 'other' worlds do not transcend the tyranny of the insubstantial (Bauschatz xi).
This difference in attitude towards the afterlife accounts not just for the fatalistic quality of the Germanic world view. It also places the realms of the dead within the confines of the laws of the natural
world. v
The natural, as opposed to other-worldly, quality of the Germanic afterlife is most clearly represented in the myth of Valhalla, the hall in Asgard to which the warrior goddesses, the Valkyries, brought all who had been slain in battle to share in Odin's hospitality. As described by Davidson, existence in the mistakenly termed 'paradise' of northern souls was much like that of the warrior in life: “Each night they feasted on pork that never gave out, and on mead....Odin's guests spent the day in fighting, and all who fell in the combat were raised again in the evening to feast with the rest" (28). Clearly, unlike the 112
Christian heaven, which represented a transcendence of earthly life,
Valhalla offered only a temporary extension, and that only to the chosen few, of earthly existence, a brief stay of death rather than a true life after death.
The fatalism of Germanic philosophy arose not just from a belief in the transitory nature of life but also from a firm conviction of the inescapable power of wvrd, the worldly manifestation of the activities of the Norns, to effect change in the lives of men. In essence, wvrd represented the struggle between two opposing forces in the northern cosmos— the power of change, which worked constantly and irreversibly on all elements of the universe and the by-products of which collected in the Nell of Urth, and the power of order, as seen in the patterning actions of the Norns which gave meaning, if primarily in retrospect, to such change. In both these forms, wvrd exercised control over the destiny of individuals and peoples alike whose fortunes were at the mercy of both random change and the working out, in the present and future, both of past actions and of universal patterns which in turn had governed them. In Old English, wvrd in the sense of arbitrary change is best represented in the elegiac poems such as The Seafarer and The Ruin, and, of course, the hallmark refrain of Deor— "Pas ofereode pisses swa mag" (that passed away/went beyond, this may do likewise); in the sense of present actions being governed by cosmic patterns set in motion by past actions, wvrd can be seen most clearly in the heroic poems, such as the Finnsburh Fragment in which the beasts of battle, the light of the moon, and the hostility and evil 113 deeds of Che attacking force are presented as motivated by the same cosmic forces.
Firm beliefs in the concepts of wvrd and the transitory nature of life, both of which we know the Anglo-Saxons to have subcribed to well into the post-conversion period, presented pre-Christian English historians with the dilemma of providing through their tales a sense of
Cultural stability despite fatalistic religious beliefs. Once again, it is in Germanic mythology that we find models for the solution to a historiographical problem. Imitating the nutritive and sustaining activities of the Norns by carrying Urth's patterning function into the sphere of human behavior, Germanic poets prescribed and preserved in their literature a code of ideals for human behavior which was designed to outlast the brief limits of individual, tribal, or worldly existence. That this code of behavior was based, at one point at least, on che deeds of cultural heroes who were real historical or, in some cases, mythical or semi-mythical figures is a fact well-documented by studies of a wide variety of literary works in the Germanic tradition, Widsid, Beowulf, the Nibelunaenlied, and the Icelandic sagas, to name but a few examples. However, that this body of heroic examplars had assumed a timeless quality by the beginning of the
English settlement is a fact whose significance is often overlooked.
Frederick Norman, in an essay entitled "The Early Germanic Background of Old English Verse," points out that the earliest of the documentable figures in the corpus, Offa the Anglian and Eormanic the Ostro-Goth, lived around 350; the latest, Alboin the Langobard, died in 572, while 114
che Danes, Geats, and Swedes of Beowulf fame dated from 470-550.47
Yet, as I discussed more fully earlier, by the time the tales which
refer to these heroes were written down, they had become almost
entirely dissociated from specific chronological and, to a lesser extent, tribal allegiances: their significance was now derived from
their association with the code created from their deeds, rather than
from the deeds themselves. In all but name, the individual figures had been subsumed into the code, just as details of individual existence were subsumed into the Nomic patterns.
Valhalla, the hall of Odin which was seen as the home not just of victors but of all who died as good warriors, serves as a mythological analogue for the means by which Germanic poets ensured the survival of this code in the face of shifting tribal allegiances and ascendancies and the fragility of life in a harsh environment. To a Germanic audience, Valhalla, and the criteria for entrance thereto, represented the values of an entire culture, and even tribes of relatively minor importance or recent political stature could, through their warriors, draw on a rich heritage of heroic deeds. Odin's daughters, the
Valkyrie, carried off to this martial paradise not just those who had fallen fighting on the side of the victor but all who in fighting and dying had affirmed the value of the warrior code. The parallels between the values underlying this myth and those which inform Germanic heroic literature should be clear. First, as with the patterns of UrS,
47 Frederick Norman, "The Early Germanic Background of Old English Verse," Medieval Literature and Civilization: Studies in Memory of G. N. Garmonsway, eds. D. A. Pearsall and R. A. Waldron (London: U of London Athalone P, 1969) 9. 115 in the criteria for entrance into either Valhalla or Germanic history, tribal allegiances were relatively irrelevant; consequently, although at their inception specific tales were created for those tribes to which the heroes had belonged, the significance of the tales existed outside such limited associations, as evidenced by the ease with which they could be transposed from court to court, an action well if fictionally depicted in Widsit> (Norman, "Germanic Background" 19).
Second, this myth, which valued heroic behavior more than a victory, gave Anglo-Saxon historians a lesson in the value of tying historical remembrance, a secular form of afterlife, not to the outcome of actions but to the choices governing those actions: in the ethical code which
Valhalla validated, victor and vanquished alike could take comfort, purpose and inspiration.
By adopting such a focus on individual choices of universal rather than tribal significance, Anglo-Saxon historians created for their audience a sense of stability derived from patterns of action common to the lives of all men, living or dead, victorious or defeated, glorified or forgotten. That the meaning of early English history was invested not in any specific geo-political implications of the tales but rather in the generally significant nature of the moral choices depicted, choices which in some way embodied or challenged adherence to the
Germanic code of behavior, is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the
Chronicle entry for 755, which relates the tale of Cynewulf and
Cyneheard.
This entry, one of the longest in the entire Chronicle, is commonly accepted, though written in prose, as being derived from an 116
oral tradition of the encounter, largely because in style and sentiment
it has more in common with the heroic poetic lays, as represented in
Old English by the digressions in Beowulf and the fragments of Maldere
and the fight at Finnsburh, than with the brief, annalistic notations
which surround it in the Chronicle. What is most striking in the
account, in addition to its tragic ending, is the symmetry in tone,
speech, outcome, and action with which the two opposing parties are
described. Take, for example, the account of the second confrontation
between the two bands of men: trapped in the bower with their slain
lords, first one side then the other refuses life, freedom, and wealth,
electing instead to die with their lords:
Da on morgenne gehierdun pat pas cynges pegnas pe him be aftan warun pat se cyning ofslagen was, pa ridon hie pider, [and] his aldorman Osric, (and! Wiferp his pegn, (and! pa neb pe he be aftan him lafde ar, [and] pone apeling on pare byrig metton par se cyning ofslagen lag, [and] pa gatu him to belocen hafdon [and] pa par to eodon; land] pa gebead he him hiera agenne dom feos (and! londes gif hie him pas rices upon, [and] him sypdon pat hiera magas him mid waron pa pe him noldon; [and! pa cuadon hie pat him nanig mag leofra nara • orme hiera hlaford, [and] hie nafre his banan folgian noldon: (and! pa budon hie hiera magum pat hie gesunde / from eodon; (and hie cuadon pat tat ilce hiera geferum geboden ware, pe ar mid pam cyninge warun; pa cuadon hie pat hie 'hie' pas ne onmunden pon ma pe eowre geferan pe mid pam cyninge ofslagene warun. (And) hie pa ymb pa gatu feohtende waron oppat hie par inne fulgon, [and] pone apeling ofslogon, [and] pa men pe him mid warun alle butan anum, se was pas aldor monnes god sunu, (and! he his feorh generede (and] peah he was oft gewundad (Parker version of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 755).4*
44 Two of the Saxon Chronicles: Parallel with Supplementary Extracts from the Others, Vol. I: Text, Appendices and Glossary, ed. Charles Plummer on the basis of an edition by John Earle (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1892) 48. On the next day, the king's thanes who remained behind heard that the king was killed. Then they rode thither, both Osric his military commander and Wiferp his thane, and the men he had left behind him, and found the prince in the stronghold where the king lay slain and the 117
As many a first-year Old English student has discovered, the difficulty
in translating this passage lies in the writer’s almost studied refusal
to differentiate clearly between the members of the two parties in his
use of pronouns; often within a single sentence a single use of hie
(they) refers through one verb to Cynewulf's men and through another to
Cyneheard's. While this confusion of pronoun referents is usually
attributed to the writer's primitive prose style, the entry being
widely regarded as the oldest continuous piece of English prose, the
uncertainty serves an artistic and historical purpose as well,
cancelling out factional politics by binding the warriors together in a
community of shared action and sentiment. Although modern readers of
the passage may be struck by the apparently pointless wastefulness of
the incident, no such critical attitude is evident in the narrator's
language or tone. As the opening reference to the killing of Sigebryht by a swineherd who wished to avenge that prince's treacherous slaying of his own lord Cumbran, Sigebryht's last loyal thane, makes clear, vengeance is a duty incumbent on the members of all social classes:
Sigebryht is to be condemned for his wickedness, Cumbran and the gate locked against them and then attacked it. And then he offered them wealth and land (in the value] of their own assessment if they would grant the kingdom to him and told them that those who would not go from him were their kinsmen. And they said that nothing could ever be dearer to them than their lord, and they would not follow his killer. And then they told their kinsmen that they could depart in safety, and they said that the same thing was offered to their companions who were with the king before. Then they said that they themselves cared no more for this (offer! than your comrades who were slain with the king. And then they fought (were fighting] by the gate until they broke in, and killed the prince, and all the men who were with him except one, who was the godson of the aldorman, and he retained (saved! his life, although he was wounded many times. 118
swineherd admired for their loyalty. Similarly, to the narrator, the audience, and the people in the story, all who died in the incident at
Merantune were admirable, regardless of affiliation; they had proven the honor of their lives by the manner of their deaths and in doing so, as with Byrhtnop's men at Maldon, had won lasting honor for themselves and the code they represented.
The entry for 755 exemplifies another important characteristic of
Germanic history, the tendency to focus less on actual battle and more on what I call 'the significant moral moment, ’ that is, on the moment at which a person (or persons) is confronted with a choice between life and honor or between two tenets of the same ethical code, loyalty to lord or kinsman for example, rather than on the moment of victory or defeat. Note how in the lengthy passage quoted above, the battle itself is described in less than 25 words; the rest is devoted to setting out, through reported speech, the ethical ramifications of the conflict which is about to take place. A similar narrative relationship between word and deed can be seen in The Battle of Maldon as well, another work whose specific subject is a bloody confrontation which ends in a vitual slaughter. Here again, the poet devotes at least 75 per cent of the entire work to explaining first the background to the battle— its causes, its importance, and any potential moral conflicts for the parties involved— and then the issues of personal valor and loyalty which arose during the battle. In both cases, the narrator's purpose clearly is to focus attention on the ability of individuals to make proper choices, especially when confronted with conflicts arising from within the ethical code itself. Indeed, through 119 descriptions of both the events as they unfolded and speeches made by the participants, the two authors emphasize many of the same issues, loyalty to the lord in the face of certain death, the duty and consequences of revenge, the conflict between ties of blood and allegiance, the politically ambiguous position of hostages. As these two stories make clear, the skillful poet-historian in the Germanic tradition was the one who, in describing individual actions could reaffirm the value of those moral precepts which gave meaning to a martial way of life which might otherwise seem meaningless.
It is important to understand, however, that this emphasis in
Germanic history on choice more than outcome is certain to have been an evolved rather than original characteristic. In Beowulf at lines 867-
874, we are told that inspired by the young hero's deeds against
Grendel, Hropgar's court scop began to compose a song about the conflict. It is this type of subject matter and occasion for composition that we most readily associate with Germanic heroic poetry, and as Norman points out, at the foundation of the genre this was indeed the focus. Referring to the tales of the earliest heroes, Offa the Anglian and Eormanric the Ostrogoth, especially as they came down to us in Midsip, Norman states that "the factual element in both these poems [which survive in Widsip in the compressed form already discussed] is still very much to the fore; there is little evidence of the inner conflict with which we are confronted in later poems and it would appear, in both cases, that we are dealing with the beginnings of the development of the 'genre'" ("Germanic Background" 20). Norman's conclusion regarding the focus both of Midsip and the tradition at its stare on significant deeds and persons, rather than general ethical
norms, is supported by Robert Creed's rejection of a customary
emendation in the second line of the poem (from "sepe mast marpa ofer
earpan folca 3eond ferde" to 11 se pe monna mast magpa ofer earpan,
folcan geondferde") and assertion that the original text should be maintained and rendered “he who traveled through (the! most of famous deeds over the earth of peoples."4* In Creed's reading, Widsid, the
archetype of the Germanic scop, travels literally not just through many lands but more significantly "through and between m a m a ...folca, what- has-been-made-known/proclaimed/ celebrated of peoples,...through the oral traditions of the Germanic folk," through their accounts of famous happenings (380). In the opening play on words, then, the Widsid poet conveys through reference to both travel and deeds a sense that geographical, political, and situational details were once the focus of the tales of the scop, while simutaneously indicating through the thinly veiled fictional/universal character of the chosen narrator that such matters are now fading in importance.
In sharp contrast, however, with Creed's and Norman's assertions regarding the individual significance of each name listed in Widsid is
Eleanor Searle's statement regarding the enduring popularity of
Ingeld's story in Germanic cultures: "Ingeld's saga held men and women with the moving drama of its commemoration of the moral tensions that were the continuing reality of their world— the tensions and
4* Robert P. Creed, "Widsith's Journey Through Germanic Tradition," Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Essays in Appreciation for John C. McGalliard, eds. Lewis E. Nicholson and Dolores Warwick Frese (Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 1975) 377. 121 conflicting loyalties upon which the 'peace in the feud’ exists"
(124). It seems evident that the interest in Ingeld of which Searle speaks is not that of the original audience for whom tales of his deeds were first composed but rather the broader audience of the post migration period for whom the tale had already lost any specific chronological and locational significance it may once have had. By the time these oral traditions were put into written form in Anglo-Saxon
England, both the historical poet's role, and consequently the focus of his art, had expanded to include not just accounts of "what has been made known," to borrow Creed's terminology, but also the explanatory presentation of the "inner conflicts" and "moral tensions" of the society as a whole to which both Norman and Searle refer.
This twofold role of the poet as recounter of action and conferrer of meaning resulted in the development of two distinct types of voice— narrative and lyric. In the narrative mode, the Germanic historian concerned himself with specific situations, that is, with choices faced by historical figures. Needing to show in the deeds of one man patterns of universal action, the poet presented the story as a series of discrete choices which, by means of either specific analogical references or formulaic resonances were tied to similar choices faced by other men. While we are familiar with this technique in Beowulf, it is also evident in other Old English heroic poems, such as Waldere and Maldon. This referential quality in Maldon, for example, is so well recognized that the exchange between Byrhtnod and the Viking messenger and the speeches of Leofsunu and Byrhtwold after the death of their lord are regarded as commonplaces of heroic 122
sentiment. The same quality is also present in the first Waldere
fragment, both in the specific world of heroes, such as Weland and
Attila, in which the story is set and in the commendation of the
speaker to the hero to win honor for himself through his deeds. Even the prose account of Cynewulf and Cyneheard has a structure which through repetition of action both creates its own internal sphere of reference and draws on one external to the story by means of the warriors' calls for validation of their decisions. Through its emphasis on the representative rather than idiosyncratic qualities of its heroes, Anglo-Saxon secular history in its narrative mode provided for its audience affirmation of their common cultural experience and values.
As a consequence of its use of the deeds of the individual to represent the sentiments of the group, Anglo-Saxon secular history became distinctly aristocratic in focus. Of course, in terms of content, this is likely to have been true from the start, since at its point of origin Germanic heroic poetry was "'court' poetry...only found in places where there was a ’court'[;]...where there was no chief there was little incentive to produce this type of poetry for poets did not produce unless there was an audience to listen" (Norman, "Germanic
Background" 18). More significant, however, for the evolving focus of
Germanic secular history is the fact that the subjects of such tales, whether positive or negative exempla, were raised by means of their inclusion in a heroic lay beyond the level of common men, elevated in a poetic sense to the realms of Valhalla or Niflheim, and consequently, in telling their tales, the poet concerned himself only with those 123 actions which had led to the conferring of such status, that Is, with
the hero's performance In both physical and ethical confrontationsand with the details of court life and heredity which provided InsightInto
the hero's choices. The effect of this narrowed focus Is made clear In a comment by Glrvan about life as It Is depicted In Beowulf.
The society, as In all heroic poetry, Is aristocratic; there Is no attempt to envisage a whole people. Even within Its limits the picture Is fragmentary; and we have but a partial account of matters connected with warfare, the business and occupation of king and retinue. There Is no description of their habitual acts and employment. Except Incidentally there Is no reference to hunting, riding In contest, amusements, and the like; the ordinary facts of life are taken for granted, likewise the familiar surroundings.9•
It Is Important to remember, however, that by the end of the migration period, the aristocratic focus of traditional Germanic narrative poetry
In all probability no longer derived from the fact that Its heroes and audience were aristocrats by birth, although, as Wormald points out, by the time Beowulf was written down this In all likelihood was the case
("Bede, Beowulf" passim). Rather aristocratic status was conferred on
Its heroes by the act of the poem Itself because by choosing a real man as a subject for such a tale the poet would have been elevating him from a position within a specific tribe to a place In the cultural
Ideology. And so, the narrator of Wldslp In his travels not so much describes all the members of the continental aristocracy as creates an aristocracy of remembrance.
In marked contrast to the specific, aristocratic, and active focus of the narrative mode, Anglo-Saxon oral historians developed a second
99 Ritchie Glrvan, ’Beowulf'and the Seventh Century: Language and Content (London: Methuen, 1935; re-lssued 1971) 40. 124 voice for the presentation of the emotive and reflective aspects of their tales. Evolving eventually Into the distinct genres of elegy and maxim found In later Anglo-Saxon poetry, this mode originated as a necessary and Integral part of the tales themselves, reflecting the poet's role as conferrer of meaning, not just recounter of action. In the lyric mode, the historian emphasized the timeless significance of a tale not by means of historical analogues but rather In expressions of
Impersonal, universal wisdom or sorrow. In Beowulf, for example, In the midst of the opening speech extolling the deeds of Scyld and Beow, the poet, assuming the lyric mode, measures the achievements of these two Individuals In terms of general statements of Ideal human behavior.
weox under wocnum weor&nyndum pah, oS pet him aghwyle ymbslttendra ofer hronrade hyran scolde, gomban gyldan; pat was god cyning! ' (1. 8-11>
Beowulf was breme — blad wide sprang— Scyldes eafera Scedelanum In. Swa sceal (geong g)uma gode gewyrcean, fromum feohglftum on fader (bea)rme, pat hlne on ylde eft gewunlgen wllgeslpas, ponrve wig cume, leode gelaasten; lofdadum sceal In magpa gehware man gepeon. (1. 18-25)51
Two passages from Mldslt> provide further Insight Into the development and separation of these two modes: In the first (1. 69-75), the generosity of a specific man Is praised; In the second (1. 135-144),
S1 (8-11) (He! prospered under the heavens, throve In honor, until every one of his neighbors obeyed him and payed him tribute: that was a good king. (18-25) Beowulf Scyld's son was famous--his fame spread wide— In Danish lands. So a young man while In his father's protection must, by goodness and costly gifts, bring It about that companions may stand by him In (hlsl old age and serve their prince when war comes. A man of reknown must prosper among any people. 125
Che final section of the poem and almost certainly of later provenance, the poet in the voice of the fictional scop praises all kings who by their generosity to poets, such as the speaker, ensure their own lasting fame.
In secular historical poetry, this gradual separation of ethical sentiment from specific deed reaches its culmination in passages such as that cited above from Beowulf and the familiar speeches in Maldon. although ultimately the maxims take on a life of their own in non narrative wisdom poetry. Also in Widsin can be found an early representative of another characteristic lyric sentiment, the elegy:
Swa ic geondferde fela fremdra londa geond ginne grund. Godes ond yfles par ic cunnade cnosle bidaled, freomagum feor folgade wide. (1. 50-56)’2
This form, like the maxim, while remaining an integral part of Anglo-
Saxon historical narrative, also developed into a vital and independent non-narrative genre. Within the narrative poetry, however, the lyric voice enabled early English historians to impose on the random variation of past and present incident a pattern of meaning, the elegy by elevating change to the status of a constant of universal existence and the maxim by organizing all human actions into universal precepts for behavior.
Ultimately, it is in the balance of these two voices that the
Anglo-Saxon historian came closest to imitating Urth's action of saying the erloq, giving verbal form to the myth of Urth's Well by affirming
5a Thus I traveled in many foreign lands across this wide earth. Deprived of kinsmen, I experienced there (much of] good and evil; far from generous kinsmen, I served widely. 126 in maxims the stability of ethical truths while conceding in elegies the impermanence of worldly existence. Furthermore, through the alternation between the lyric and the narrative modes, the early
English secular historian ensured that the hero made aristocratic by virtue of his deeds remained one with his culture by virtue of sentiment; in the world of the tale, the poet recreated the spirit of both Valhalla and the dominant pre-Christian, Germanic social unit, the warrior band or comitatus, in which the leader, as the so-called 'first among equals, ’ held a status to which all might aspire and which all might achieve. Through the fusion of these voices, Anglo-Saxon oral poets met the needs of their religiously-based cultural belief that in the skein of past events lay the threads of present significance while satisfying and even exploiting the unavoidable tension in oral cultures between pattern and variation. Finally, in developing and seeking to balance these two modes of speech, Anglo-Saxon oral historical poets achieved, albeit in a rather primitive manner, a true sense of history, a sense possessing and expressing what Collingwood, in the passage cited at the start of this section, terms both an 'outside,' the event itself as described in the narrative voice, and an 'inside,' the cultural significance of that event as presented in the lyric voice. Chapter Three
The Christian Tradition
The conversion of the English to Christianity has long been depicted as rapid and virtually bloodless, a position perhaps expressed most enthusiastically by Charles Jones in his book Saints' Lives and
Chronicles in Early England;
...despite the fumbling of Augustine and other Roman missionaries still tainted with urbanity, the English were as eager to renounce their continental culture as they had been to leave their continental soil. They were fresh in the new world as no Merovingian could be, and they embraced the godly life with scarcely a backward glance. Nowhere in our literature is there another invective so bitter as that of Bede, the kindly man, against the British. We have seized your lands and your goods, we have starved you and killed you, his History admits page by page; but all that is as nothing to your sin, that you never troubled to preach the word of faith, verbum fidei, to the Saxons and English beside you on this island (4). t More recent studies of the rate of conversion among the English, however, indicate a quite different pattern, as Henry Mayr-Harting points out in his book The Coming of Christianity to England; the conversion of the Anglo-Saxon kings and aristocracy took the better part of a century to achieve, and that of the common people was more a matter of several centuries.8* Nevertheless, there is a good basis for the belief in the ease of the English conversion. As Bede's own
88 Henry Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity to England (New York: Schocken Books, 1972) 29.
127 128
account of the events in the Ecclesiastical History makes clear,
although the process was not entirely peaceful, in no way could it be
equated with the convert-or-die bloodbath perpetrated by Charlemagne
against the Saxons in the ninth century.94 The obvious question posed
by a contrast of the conversion experience of the Anglo-Saxons and that
of their continental cousins is 'Why the difference?' Did the English
not feel their paganism as deeply as the Saxons evidently did? Had
these Germanic tribes in crossing the Channel left behind their beliefs
in the gods of their ancestors? Archaeological evidence from this
period, scant as it may be, indicates that this was not the case, and whatever else it may show, Bede's story of Coifi, Edwin's high priest, makes clear the immense political and religious power the leaders of
the old religion still held in the early seventh century.
In many ways, it is easier to understand Saxon resistance than
English acceptance of the message of the Christian missionaries. The
teachings of Christ, especially as practiced in Rome, seem entirely
antithetical to the religious beliefs and cultural practices of the
94 Bede demonstrates quite clearly that conversion was handled by various kings and greeted by their subjects in markedly differing fashions. For example, in Book I Chapter 26 he states that Ethelbert, once converted, was pleased with those of his subjects who chose to follow his example but, following what he felt to be a Christian example, saw no need to compel the rest to give up the faith of their ancestors. In Book II Chapter 15, he tells of the uneasy road to conversion trod by the East Angles, the killing of whose Christian king Earpwald by a pagan resulted in a three-year relapse into heathenism. Bede's presentation of the conversion as both gradual and a matter of personal choice is also supported by the various versions of the Chronicle: although dates and details differ for the stories above, the facts of Edwin's conversion (given under the year 601) and the Kentish king's abandonment of Christianity (the Chronicle attributes this act not to Eadbald (sic] but to his father Radwald and gives the entry under 616) are given in the same matter-of-fact tone. 129
Germanic peoples. While the Gospels preached brotherhood and peace,
the Germans practiced and profited from warfare; while Christ praised
the virtues of forgiveness, tolerance, and love, the Germanic ethic
venerated vengeance not just as a virtue but as a duty. Indeed, such beliefs and practices were central not just to Germanic culture but
also to Germanic paganism, as the myth of Valhalla makes clear.
Furthermore, as I pointed out In the preceding chapter, Germanic mythology and the Importance It placed on the past. In the Image of
Urth's Well, were Inextricably entwined with the Germanic concept of history* In light of this final point in particular, the words and deeds of Coifi in turning to the new religion seem far less comprehensible than those of the Frisian king Radbod who "stepped back
from the edge of St Wulframn's font on overhearing a remark to the effect that he would not now join his ancestors in damnation, and declared that 'he could not lose the company of his predecessors, and sit with a small number in heaven.5 For the members of the northern pagan tribes, conversion to Christianity entailed not just a rejection of the gods of their fathers but also an abandonment of both the paradise of their ancestors and the national history in which the deeds of those who had attained such heroic enshrinement were preserved.
Numerous attempts have already been made to determine the causes of the relative ease with which the Anglo-Saxons were converted, and it is not my intention at the moment to propose a solution to this
** "Annales Xantenses, s.a. 718," Annales Chronica et Historiae aevi Saxoni, ed. G. H. Pertz, MGH, Scriptores in fol., II (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1829) 221; cited from Wormald, "Bede and Beowulf" 45. 130 problem.*4 However, in the tale of Edwin's conversion, as told by
Bede, may lie some suggestions of an answer. Following Coifi's
statement that their present gods seem relatively ineffectual, judging by the lack of honor conferred on him despite his devout service to them, another of Edwin's counsellors points out a second advantage to the new religion:
Another of the king's chief men signified his agreement with this prudent argument, and went on to say: ’Your Majesty, when we compare the present life of man on earth with that time of which we have no knowledge, it seems to me like the swift flight of a single sparrow through the banqueting-hall where you are sitting at dinner on a winter's day with your thanes and counsellors. In the midst there is comforting fire to warm the hall; outside, the storms of winter rain or snow are raging. This sparrow flies swiftly in through one door of the hall, and out through another. While he is inside, he is safe from the winter storms; but after a few moments of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintry world from which he came. Even so, man appears on earth for a little while; but of what'went before this life or of what follows, we know nothing. Therefore, if this new teaching has brought any more certain knowledge, it seems only right that we should follow it' ( HE II, 13).*y
*4 See, for example: H. Mayr-Harting The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England; W. A. Chaney, "Paganism to Christianity in Anglo- Saxon England," Harvard Theological Review 53 (I960): 197-217; and Wormald, "Bede, Beowulf.11 In the course of his article, Wormald discusses briefly and in passing several theories on this subject: "flexible missionary methods advocated for the Anglo-Saxons by Pope Gregory" (46); the existence of an early medieval idea of a "liberal Christianity" especially among the Irish and Irish converts (49-50); the existence of "collective religious amnesia" regarding the pagan past among the Anglo-Saxon nobility (66).
*T Bede, A History of the English Church and People, trans. and ed. Leo Sherley-Price, rev. ed. R. E. Latham (1955; New York: Penguin Books, 1968) 127. Cuius suasioni verbisque prudentibus alius optimatum regis tribuens assensum, continuo subdidit: "Talis," inquiens, "mihi videtur, rex, vita hominum praesens in terris, ad comparationem eius quod nobis incertum est temporis, quale cum te residente ad coenam cum ducibus ac ministris tuis tempore brumali, accenso quidem foco in medio et calido effecto coenaculo, furentibus autem foris per omnia turbinibus hiemalium pluviarum vel nivium, adveniensque unus passerum 131
Although this passage is very well-known, I have cited it in full because the wording of the fable provides insight not just into the attitude of pagan Anglo-Saxons to the message of the missionaries but also, perhaps more accurately, into Bede's understanding of that attitude.
Note how carefully, in Bede's telling of the tale, the speaker sets up and separates two worlds: the inside and outside of the hall, kept firmly apart by walls; the life of man on this earth and the time beyond human knowledge, kept firmly apart by walls of human ignorance.
Only the final sentence makes no mention of this dichotomy. Indeed, even Bede's framing of the story prepares us for a discussion of the conversion issue to be divided into two spheres of knowledge: Coifi, the high priest, paradoxically offers advice regarding divine power over worldly affairs, while a political counsellor puts forward the more spiritual, or other-worldly, argument. Note also 1) that the hall through which the sparrow flies is clearly representative of the world of the Germanic warrior, a world of warfare, Valhalla, and the Germanic past; 2) that the knowledge the new religion is to provide is expected to pertain only to the world outside the hall, beyond the life of man domum citissime pervolaverit qui cum per unum ostium ingrediens, mox per aliud exierit. Ipso quidem tempore quo intus est, hiemis tempestate non tangitur, sed tamen parvissimo spatio serenitatis ad momentum excurso, mox de hieme in hiemem regrediens, tuis oculis elabitur. Ita haec vita hominum ad modicum apparet; quid autem sequatur, quidve praecesserit, prorsus ignoramus. Unde si haec nova doctrina certius aliquid attulit, merito esse sequenda videtur" (Baedae, Opera Historica Vol. I, ed. with trans. J. E. King (London: William Heinemann; New York: Putnam, 1930). All future quotations from Bede's Ecclesiastical History will be taken from the King edition if in Latin and from the Sherley-Price translation if in English. 132 on earCh. The Importance of this passage for understanding the means by which the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity was achieved lies not just in the words of the counsellors but also in the lack of objection on the part of either Paulinus the missionary or Bede the Christian tale-teller to the dualistic vision of reality espoused by the sparrow fable. And indeed, the poem attributed to Bede as his so-called Death Song reflects a similar attitude when it speaks more of pondering in this life the uncertainty of joy or darkness in the next than of striving here for a paradise hereafter.
Such an ability to separate actions in this world from a Christian belief in the next is also borne out by the converted Ethelbert's tolerance of his non-converted subjects, a practice Bede attributes to the teachers of that king, "for he had learned from his instructors and guides to salvation that the service of Christ must be accepted freely and not under compulsion" ( HE I, 26).*• Bede goes on to say that in this manner Ethelbert eventually brought his entire nation to the true faith. Clearly, in Bede's eyes, an acceptable stage on the road to conversion involved the separation of the values of the secular world from those of the spiritual one, depicted in the first story in the division between the world within and the world without the hall, and seen in the second in the unspoken acceptance of the peaceful co existence of good pagan subjects with good Christian ones.
An important point made by both these stories should not be overlooked: the early missionaries at the very least accepted and in
*• Didicerat enim a doctoribus auctoribusque suae salutis, servitium Christi voluntarium, non coactitium esse debere. some cases apparently encouraged a gradual change from the beliefs and customs of Germanic paganism to those of Christianity. The primary cause of this attitude of compromise, according to Mayr-Harting, was a change of policy regarding the conversion of the English as dictated by
Gregory the Great to his missionaries. Mellltus, head of the second mission, for example In 601 took with him from Rome a papal order to destroy all pagan temples and Idols; within a month, however, Gregory sent a letter to the monk stating that after much thought he had changed his mind: the temples should not be destroyed but rather reconsecrated for Christian worship; "moreover, on the great feasts of the Church they should be allowed to slaughter cattle and have feasts as they had formerly done; people with such obdurate minds had to be allowed to reach the highest peaks by gradual steps rather than by sudden leaps" (Mayr-Harting 64, citing Bede, HE I, 30 and 32). A letter written by Fulco, archbishop of Rhelms, to Alfred In response to the latter's request for teachers not only provides further evidence of the widely-recognized fact of Augustine's understanding attitude toward native tradition but also shows that such a practice was regarded, despite Its possible drawbacks, as sensible:
For St. Augustine, the first bishop of your people, sent to you by St. Gregory your apostle, was unable to demonstrate in a short space of time all the decrees of the apostolic ordinances, nor did he wish suddenly to burden an uncultivated and barbarous people with new and unfamiliar laws: he knew how to look to their weakness and with the apostle to say as it were to children in Christ, 'I have given you milk to drink, not food' (I Corinthians H i , 2 1.4*
** Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge, ed. and trans., Alfred the Great: Asser's 'Life of Kina Alfred* and Other Contemporary Sources (New York: Penguin Books, 1983) 183. 134
Fulco goes on Co compare Augustine’s tolerance to the actions of Peter,
James, Paul, and Barnabas, who In the early days of the Church
protested the Imposition of too many Jewish traditions on the many new
Christians from other nations.
That a separation between the secular and religious worlds for a
while at least was regarded as the norm In Anglo-Saxon England seems
evident also In Alculn's letter of 793 to the king of Northumbria In
which he begins by defending his right as a cleric to offer ethical
advice to his king, before proceeding to attribute the success of the
Vikings to the moral laxity of the English.** The fact that Alculn
felt compelled both to open his letter with a defense of his actions
and to base his right to speak not on his knowledge as a Christian but
rather on his fidelity and duty towards his fatherland would seem to
Indicate that even fifty years after Bede a division still existed In
the political arena between actions In this world and God's judgment In
the next.
The tale of Edwin's conversion points out another possible reason
for the relatively painless conversion of England. By having the
secular counsellor offer the more spiritual advice, Bede not only
undermines the value of the old religion and Its proponents, he also
demonstrates that by custom a) both religious and political counsellors
to the king held equal standing, and b) that It was acceptable for an
advisor to retain his value despite religious disagreement. This
tendency to separate matters religious from matters political Is likely
** Kevin Crossley-Holland, ed. and trans., "From Alculn to Ethelred, King of Northumbria,11 The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1984) 185-188. to have arisen not so much from a lack of faith in the power of the old gods as from, on the one hand, from political expediency in a world of unstable tribal allegiances and, on the other, from the customary priviledge of an aristocratic class from which all such counsellors would have been chosen and within which all members were equal by birth or achievement. Patrick Wormald, after analyzing the political structure of post-conversion Anglo-Saxon society in the eighth century, proposes similar causes for the creation, by a cleric of Christian training and, almost certainly, occupation, of Beowulf, a poem primarily secular, if not pagan, in content. Wormald assembles ample evidence that the ranks of the clergy, monastic and regular, were filled by and large with men of aristocratic birth who brought with them both the habits and concerns of their class, most notably for our purpose the deep, characteristic concern of any nobility for its past and the persistent identification of themselves with the heroic code of behavior so vital "to a society where courage, loyalty and generosity were fundamental conditions of a nobleman's way of life” ("Bede,
Beowulf" 67). It seems likely that such a close association of
Christian and aristocratic values could only have developed as a legacy of the early conversion period, a legacy which led, as Wormald further makes clear, by the eighth century to strong and vocal objections from many of the clergy, among them Alcuin and the English bishops meeting at Clovesho in 746, to the proliferation of secular values and 136 practices within monasteries and other clerical houses ("Bede, Beowulf"
43) .*1
The keys to Anglo-Saxon acceptance of the new faith, as depicted in Bede's account of the conversion, seem to lie, first, in the promotion of interest in another life, different and disconnected from earthly concerns, yet a life in which all, not just chosen warriors, could share; and second, in the presentation of the values and tales of the new religion in a manner which highlighted potential similarities and downplayed more obvious differences. This second point has long been recognized by historians and critics as it pertains to the development of such Christian concepts as the spiritual warrior and passive aggression, expressed best in the poem Dream of the Rood. The long history of the Judeo-Christian tradition provided far more fertile ground than that, however, and in the Old Testament in particular the early missionaries would have found a perfect example of the ability of
Christian doctrine to be reconciled with a more ancient, aristocratic, martial tradition.
That the tales of the Old Testament appealed in some special way to the Germanic mind seems evident in the number of vernacular verse biblical transcriptions of them that have survived from the Anglo-Saxon period. Several of the sources of this appeal are readily apparent.*3
“ Mayr-Harting also points out the ties many of the monks in the mid-eighth century would still have felt to their own martial heritage or that associated with the founders of their orders, as at Hexham and Ripon, or the locations of their houses, as at Lindisfame, located near Bamburgh, the heart of the Bemician dynasty (223).
*a Ties between the Germanic-heroic eithic and the values of the Old Testament heroes have long been recognized. For specific treatments of this issue, see for example: D. F. Rauber, "Observations 137
For example, although Christianity brought with it a message of
brotherhood and peace, the Hebrew Bible, of which the New Testament was
seen as the fulfillment, recounted the history of the rise of a nation
of warriors who lived according to many of the same qualities valued by
the Anglo-Saxons— courage, loyalty, martial prowess.** Indeed, the
greatest proportion of the Psalms are little more than prayers to
Yahweh, the protective deity of the Jews, for victory over and
destruction of the enemies of the tribes of Isreal.
The creation tale of the new religion, involving a titanic
struggle between the forces of evil and the forces of good, would also
have appealed not just to the martial interests of the Anglo-Saxons but
also to their tendency as an oral culture to present moral struggles in
terms of physical conflicts. Indeed, the manner in which the Hebrew
creation myth is presented in the Old English poem Genesis B . based most probably on a continental Saxon original, strongly indicates that
the early missionaries to the Germanic peoples were both alert to and made the most of the appeal of heroic aspects of Old Testament stories.
As Michael Chemiss points out, "The ideals and attitudes by which the conduct of the characters is judged and which, therefore, establish the moral climate of the poem are virtually identical with those that on Biblical Epic," Genre 3 (1970): 318-29; and Jane Mushabac, "Judith and the Theme of Sapientia et Fortitudo." Massachusetts Studies in English 4.1 (1973): 3-12.
‘1 The close parallels in theme and action between many of the more martial tales from the Old Testament and the Germanic heroic sagas may account for the fact that, as Mayr-Harting points out, "even the historical books of the Old Testament were considered too exciting to be read at the evening meal although they at least were Holy Writ" (224). 138
govern che conduct of Germanic legend."*4 Indeed, close study of the
poem, by Chemiss, J. M. Evans, and Rosemary Woolf, among others, makes
clear that the author of the Saxon poem which Is regarded as the source
of Genesis B carefully crafted the Old Testament story to please an
audience familiar with secular Germanic literature.** Perhaps the most
telling Indication In Genesis B of the possibility chat early missionaries to the Anglo-Saxons deliberately adapted Old Testament
tales to suit Germanic-heroic tastes Is that fact that the tale of the battle of the angels and the casting out of Satan and his forces from heaven does not actually occur In the Old Testament, except by allusion
In Isaiah 14:12-15 In a curse literally directed to the king of Babylon and only later Interpreted figuratively as a reference to Satan In the person of Lucifer. The only explicit account of the war In heaven occurs In Revelation 12:7-9. The focus In Genesis B . on the battle between Lucifer and God and the casting Into Hell of the fallen angels,
** Michael D. Chemiss, "Heroic Ideals of the Moral Climate of Genesis B ." MLQ 30 (1969): 479-97.
43 J. M. Evans, "Genesis B and Its Background," RES n.s. 14 (1963): 1-16, 113-23; Rosemary Woolf, "The Fall of Man in Genesis B and the Mvst&re d'Adam.11 Studies in Old English in Honor of Arthur G. Brodeur, ed. Stanley B. Greenfield (Eugene, OR: Oregon UP, 1963): 187- 99; and Rosemary Woolf, "The Devil in Old English Poetry," RES n.s. 4 (1953): 1-12. Both Evans and Chemiss discuss the Importance of the Saxon provenance of Genesis B . the original coming from "a Germanic country more recently converted to Christianity than England" and possibly "modeled after poems roughly contemporary with Beowulf" (Chemiss 481). Woolf points out how in Genesis B the development of a lord/retainer relationship between God and Satan enables the poet to overcome the problem of presenting to an Anglo-Saxon audience Satan's pride as a sin, turning the focus instead to a disruption of the proper bond of lord and retainer ("Fall" 190ff). 139
makes 1C likely that by the time of the English conversion,** all of
these references had become inextricably associated with the opening of
Genesis, and the fact that in one vernacular paraphrase (Genesis B .
though not Genesis A ) these tales are told as one would seem to
indicate 1) that in the beginning Christian missionaries transmitted
the tales of the new religion orally, and 2) that through such oral
transmission they may have established a strong tie between the old and
new literary traditions. This tie would also have been strengthened if
the Anglo-Saxons perceived in the new creation myth, with its emphasis
on the struggle between the powers of Heaven and Hell, a parallel to
their old one, in which the fate of the universe hung on the outcome of
the ongoing struggle between the giants and the Aesir, the gods of
Asgard.*7
** The fact that the source for the Anglo-Saxon Genesis B is a Saxon poem written several hundred years after the conversion of the English does not necessarily mean that the story of battle of Satan and God, as told in this account, would not have been known to the Anglo- Saxons prior to the time of the so-called Saxon original. It is important to remember that many of the continental Germanic peoples were Christianized by Anglo-Saxon missionaries, who employed conversion methods for their continental brethren similar to those that had been employed on them; furthermore, although the Saxons were among the last of the continental Germans to be converted, their conversion was forced on them by Charlemagne, who often turned to the products of Anglo-Saxon monasteries for assitance in matters of religion and learning. It seems quite possible, therefore, that the missionaries who converted the Saxons brought with them oral retellings of Old Testament stories which may have been Anglo-Saxon in origin.
47 In the Prose Edda, Snorri states that the earth was formed from the body of the first giant Ymir, father of the frost giants, who was slain by his grandchildren the Aesir, led by Odin. The conflict between the gods and the giants was destined to be revived fully at the end of the world in a monumental battle (Davidson 27-28 and 37-38). Davidson also points out further parallels between the two creation myths: "The shaping of the earth out of formless chaos and the raising of the bright lights of heaven was an important part of pre-Christian teaching also" (198). In Che concept of the Hebrews as a chosen people, the Anglo-
Saxons might also have seen an affinity with their own aristocratic
narrative tradition. Just as Germanic history presented its heroes as
men favored in deed and reward above all others by virtue of their
special gifts as warriors and leaders, so Hebrew history presented the
story of a nation granted special status, power, and achievements by
virtue of its place in the heart of a mighty, warriorgod. Furthermore,
in both traditions, with this special status came the responsibility to
live in accordance with a strict code of ethics, the workings of which
were clearly outlined in both narrative and maxim form. And just as
the Germanic ethic stressed the ability of all to live by the ethic
exhibited in saga by the few, in other words, presented its heroes as
both higher in earned status and equal in inherent status with all men,
so the aristocratic bent of the Old Testament might also have been seen by the Anglo-Saxons as being balanced by the communalmessage of the
New Testament in which Christ, the Chosen One, was both lord and
servant.
Perhaps the strongest tie between the world of the Old Testament and the oral-Germanic world of the pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons is implied by Tom Driver in the opening of the chapter entitled "Judeo-
Christian Historical Consciousness: The Vocation of Israel" from his book The Sense of History in Greek and Shakespearean Drama. Speaking of the difference between the Hellenic and Judaic attitudes towards
time, Driver states that while the Greeks turned their cultural
"genius" towards the development of philosophy and abstract conceptual mechanisms for understanding the world around them, "the Hebrew genius, 141 if one may call it that, was directed towards history (and!....the concomitant...sense of the religious, ethical, and personal importance of time."** Just as Northern paganism saw reflected in the Well of
Urth the patterns of the past which gave meaning to the present, so
Judaism saw contained in their Bible a record of the personal relationship they had with their god.
Remembrance of past events was vital to Israel because she owed her national identity to certain historical occurrences. Her religious life was given its particular character through interpretation of those events. Foremost among them was the Exodus from Egypt, in which Israel saw the preeminent example of the action of God in her past life. The deliverance from bondage was the first step in her coming to be a nation in her own land. It also led to the sojourn at Sinai where the covenant between Yahweh and his people was made. The covenant thereafter characterizes the faith of Israel and becomes the focal point of her past memory (Driver 40).
Clearly, for the Hebrews, history and religion were inseparably intertwined; indeed, as Driver further points out, even their religious celebrations of agricultural cycles, such as those to mark the harvest or the coming of winter, were transformed into commemorations of historical incidents, such as Passover or the Festival of Lights. And just as the pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons distilled the incidents of their
Germanic past into patterns of action which were both socially and religiously significant, so the Hebrews presented their history in terms of a recurring pattern of making, breaking by the Israelites, and restoring by Yahweh of his Covenant with the Jews.
Despite these similarities which may have aided the Christian missionaries in their task of converting the Anglo-Saxons, there are a
*• Tom E. Driver, The Sense of History in Greek and Shakespearean Drama (New York: Columbia UP, i960) 39. 142 number of important differences between the Germanic and Hebrew conceptions of history, differences which become even more significant in the Christian tradition. Perhaps the most obvious is the fact that
Judaic history, in the form of the Old Testament, was preserved in a written tradition, albeit one which had its origin in a loosely strung-
together collection of oral tales (Havelock, Muse 47-48). Furthermore, as Driver points out, the Hebrews were "a people continually concerned with the writing and rewriting of history," not so much in accordance with a scientific desire to test the validity of sources but rather out of "the typically Western concern to understand one's self in terms of one's past and to search continually for the most adequate interpretation of that past" (44). Regarding the contrast between oral and written historical traditions, I will have more to say shortly.
However, the on-going Hebrew habit of not just writing but rewriting their history reveals a fundamental difference between Anglo-Saxon and
Judaic attitudes towards change.
As I have already pointed out, the Anglo-Saxons, by virtue of both their oral and religious heritage, tended to stress patterns of action rather than factual details and thereby hoped to create a sense of unwavering, unchanging permanency. Furthermore, to achieve this end, manipulation of background elements was acceptable, with changes in central patterns occurring only gradually and imperceptably. By contrast, the Hebrews sought to change not so much the stories themselves as their interpretations of them, as Driver states: "(the fact] that they did not possess scientific criteria with regard to evidence did not mean they felt free to change the stories at will, far 143 less to abandon them [;] [their1 objective, rather, was to see the relationship of present to past" (44). In other words, In total contrast to the pre-Christian English, who sought to validate their present by Incorporating It Into patterns of value and action established In their past, the Hebrews, by continually examining and re-evaluatlng the meaning of their past In light of the realities of their present, sought to assess the on-going course of change which was bringing them to the fulfillment of their divinely-determined destiny.
The Hebrew vision of history espoused change as an affirmation of their unique place In God's plans; the Germanic concept saw change as a threat to the continuity In human affairs which history served to establish.
As with Germanic languages, Hebrew emphasizes this distinctive cultural sense of time In Its verb tenses; unlike Greek and Latin,
Hebrew did not develop a varied and flexible system of verb tenses, and history, as presented In the Old Testament, Is told largely In a historical present, through which that which was Is always made part of the now (Driver 52-3). Strangely enough, In this way, the Judaic time sense resembles that of the Germanic peoples In that neither seems to have been concerned with gradation of time within the past. For the
Anglo-Saxons, all events were In the process of becoming part of a unified past, while for the Hebrews, the past was always In the process of becoming unified In the present.
Clearly, the Hebrew attitude towards change argues strongly for a fundamental difference between the Germanic and the Judaic understanding of the nature of time. In fact, the Hebrew concept of a 144
covenancal history, that Is, of a history centered upon a personal
covenant with god, contains at Its heart the source of this difference.
A covenant, by Its promlssorlal nature, not only Implies but Indeed
necessitates a future In which fulfillment can be achieved, thereby
granting validity to the covenantal relationship. Through the
covenant, a close bond Is established between past and future, a bond
which, In present existence, stresses both "the Importance of
memory...and the potentiality of the new" (Driver 39). And just as the
Old English oral poets served as the constant binders of present events
into history, so the Hebrew prophets served a similar cultural-temporal
function in their society.
The prophets are the very embodiment of the Hebrew sense of historical memory; for their message, from first to last, is a measurement of the present against the covenantal past. Out of that judgement arises the prophetic interest in the future, either in terms of warnings of doom..., or in terms of a new covenant..., or in terms of the fulfillment of the true vocation of Israel by a holy righteousness (Driver 41).
However, despite this similarity in role, the primary purpose of the
Hebrew prophets was to prepare or make their audience worthy of an anticipated future, not a remembered past. This forward-pulling action of the prophets is perhaps best expressed by Robert Hanning: "The prophetic intuition of Israel broke down distinctions between past and present, present and future, and caught up all history in a long, divinely-ordered arc through which God guided Israel."**
The Judaic concept of time infuses the Old Testament with a sense of history which is entirely open-ended. Although the Jews awaited a
*• Robert W. Hanning, The Vision of History in Early Britain (New York: Columbia UP, 1966) 6. 145 fulfillment of their covenant with Yahweh and knew that with this fulfillment would come an end to history, they had no knowledge of when or how this fulfillment was to be achieved. Each prophetic pronouncement about the future was a gift from God, neither expected nor predictable. Their covenant with Yahweh was a promise in both senses of that word: a contract, the terms of which they were to be responsible to if fulfillment was to occur; and a hope, rather than a certainty, regarding a future event. Clearly, the Judaic sense of the future was as different as possible from the limited sense of a necessary future conveyed by the Norn, Skuld.
The Christian sense of future at first glance appears to have more in common with the Germanic concept of a necessary future than with the
Hebrew sense of an open one. This is because Christians regarded the
Incarnation of Christ as the fulfillment of God's covenant with the tribes of Israel, interpreting such Old Testament passages as Malachi's
"angel of the covenant" as referring to Christ.7* All that was to be awaited now was the certainty of the Last Judgment, with which event human history would come to an end. Augustine exemplifies this sense of certainty by ending The City of God with a description in which he equates the Last Judgment with the seventh "day" of human history,
"whose end will not be an evening" but instead will leave worldly time to become "an eighth day, as it were, which will last forever, a day consecrated by the resurrection of Christ" (City XXII, 30). Christians were to use the intervening period, the current sixth epoch or "day" of
r* See Augustine, The City of God Book 18, Chapter 35 (Augustine, Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans, trans. Henry Bettenson Baltimore, MD: Pelican Classics, Penguin Books, 1972) 809. 146
indeterminate length, as a time to make themselves worthy of God's
great fulfillment, to prepare themselves for a final, irreversible
accounting according to the terms of the covenant. For those who saw
in the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus the fulfillment of
Judaic covenantal history, a significant change had taken place in the
human perspective on future history. Driver characterizes this change
as a shift from the Hebrew sense of time, made up of "memory,
anticipation, and responsibility,11 to the Christian "experience of time
[which! is made up of memory, sight, and expectation" (56, 61). While
both traditions invested great value in knowledge of the past because
it contained the record of God's promises to man (memory], standing at
the center of the Christian tradition was the belief that God had
revealed himself and his plan [sight]. Humanity at last was being
enabled to see the end towards which they and their God had been
working. Gone was the openness, the element of uncertainty regarding
the future which characterized Judaic history (anticipation!.
Replacing it was a sense of a specific future, eagerly and
knowledgeably awaited [expectation!.
What sets the Christian sense of future apart from the Germanic
sense, as represented by Skuld, is the essential role change plays in
the former. While the Second Coming was an event which of necessity was to be, it was also an event for which humanity in its present state was not yet prepared. Conditions would have to undergo great changes before God's ends were achieved, changes whose patterns would only be
revealed in their entirety through the experience of human history, past and to come. Indeed, it is in this sense of future which 147
Christian history differs most markedly not just from Judaic, or even
Germanic, but rather from all previous senses of history. As Benedetto
Croce points out in his book History; Its Theory and Practice.
Christianity broke the circle of ancient history, the continuous return
to the point of origin, and caused, for the first time, history to be
understood as progress.71 Suddenly, change held the potential for
good, since in it might be manifest God's plan. Gone was the reliance
in "a natural law, blind fate, or even the influence of the stars"; in
its place stood a new law, one of "rationality, intelligence,
providence" (Croce 205). By contrast with the Judaic sense of future,
in which humanity, though responsible to the terms of the covenant,
played a basically passive role, the Christian sense of a providential
future held out to humanity not just hope but purpose and a demand for
personal, individual, human action.73 In early Christian history, this
eschatological focus was so prominent that all histories in some way
were made to function by their authors as chapters in salvation
history; accounts of past and present events, through this future
overlay, participated in the eternal by assuming a quality of timeless
truth which stood in contrasting tension with the progressive history
of mankind.
71 Benedetto Croce, History: Its Theory and Practice, trans. Douglas Ainslie (New York: Russell and Russell, I960) 205.
73 Driver presents his statement that Providence is distinguished from Fate by "purpose, creativity, and personal demand" (65) as though it were simply a restating of Croce's point regarding the sense of purpose characteristic of the Christian concept of providential history (Croce 205), but in fact, the addition of personal demand seems to me to be an important insight on Driver's part. In addition to altering the Christian sense of future time, the
fact of the Incarnation profoundly complicated the entire Christian conception of history. As Driver explains, Christians regarded
Christ's ministry as both a historical and a religious event, and as
such it both existed within the confines of natural history and transcended those bounds by existing within the realm of the eternal.
This paradoxical situation is most simply represented by the central mystery of the Incarnation, that Christ is both human and divine.
Indeed, for Christian historians, the birth of Jesus itself occupies the dual position of the specific moment in time at which the progress towards the Second Coming began and the timeless centerpoint of human existence towards which Judaic history had been tending and from which
Christian history was extending. Consequently, Christian history simultaneously functions on two levels, one which maintains the value of each event as a unique, chronological step on the road toward the
Last Judgment, and the other which transcends temporal barriers to reveal the timeless pattern of divine fulfillment:
Christian history always struggles in an effort to pin down historical events in their particularity. Its Hebraic inheritance demands that it do so. At the same time, it has a tendency to elevate the particular into the realm of the eternal by viewing it as participating in an eternal reality and revealing a meaning beyond itself. The event is more than a link in the chain of events (Driver 58).
It is important to understand that according to this approach to history, known as typology, because each earthly event is also a type of actions in the divine plan, each event exists simultaneously in both the temporal and eternal spheres. Immersed as they were in this vision of history, early Christian
historians took as their task the explanation, inspired by divine
revelation, of the place of worldly events in the eternal pattern.
Furthermore, because they believed their purpose was to reveal the
teachings of history and because that teaching, derived from the eternal rather than mortal world, was held to be far more important
than the facts of history, pattern in Christian history tended to take precedence over detail. Indeed, although early Christian historians,
for reasons I will discuss more fully in a moment, were often
fascinated with the role of chronology in human history, they frequently overlooked even this simple ordering device in their pursuit of the higher goal of demonstrating the workings of God's plan for mankind. As Arnaldo Momigliano points out in his essay entitled "Pagan and Christian Historiography in the Fourth Century A.D.," even
Eusebius, who on several occasions adjusted for the sake of chronological accuracy the work of previous Christian historians at the cost "of reducing the priority of the Biblical heroes over the pagan ones," was not concerned with causal relationships in the order of events; to him, "chronology was something between an exact science and an instrument of propaganda" and, in that latter role in particular, was designed to demonstrate "the pattern of history rather than...the detail."7* Donald Wilcox also points out that, in general, "Medieval historians [following in the footsteps of Eusebius! did not use
7* Arnaldo Momigliano, "Pagan and Christian Historiography in the Fourth Century A.D.," The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century, ed. Momigliano (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1963) 84 and 85. 150
chronological order to give meaning to specific events. Instead, they
employed reciprocal models to explain events as the just punishment or
reward of a personal God" (174).
Nevertheless, as Augustine explained, human history was to be
interpreted in neither an exclusively literal nor an exclusively
typological sense. Speaking of prophecies in the Old Testament, he
wrote:
The utterances of the prophets are found to have a threefold meaning, in that some have in view the earthly Jerusalem, others the heavenly, and others refer to both....In my opinion it is certainly a complete mistake to suppose that no narrative of events in this type of literature has any significance beyond the purely historical record; but it is equally rash to maintain that every single statement in those books is a complex of allegorical meanings....In spite of that, I do not censure those who have succeeded in carving out a spiritual meaning from each and every event in the narrative, always provided that they have maintained its original basis of historical truth (City XVII, 4).
In fact, this dual, or triple by Augustine's reckoning, approach to
history was extremely important to the development of medieval
historiography, because it allowed for the possibility of events and
therefore histories of secular more than divine significance. Indeed,
Augustine's final point, regarding maintaining "the original basis of
historical truth," grants validity to the idea of a truth inherent in
secular, as well as divine, history. This perception of human history
as both earthly and eternal, with its characteristic separation of
temporal from divine concerns, held the greatest potential for the
incorporation of the Christian concept of history into alien cultures.
Consequently, this dual perspective accounts for the two main pursuits
of late classical and early medieval Christian historians— the production of accurate chronographies reconciling Hebrew, Christian, 151 and pagan historical chronologies and the development of universal history, which enabled Christian historians to Interpret events of
Christian and non-Christian nations alike.
Although, as I will discuss more fully in the final section of this chapter, the ability to keep accurate and extensive chronological records is a by-product of literacy, the development by its own historians of such records was of particular interest to the Christian church almost from the start. The causes of this interest are two fold. First of all, Christianity inherited, and indeed was built upon, the Hebraic tradition which insisted on the religious importance of worldly events. The need for precise chronographies, however, arose more from the desire to convert pagans than from problems of reconciling the new tradition with the old— the Gospel of Matthew had gone a long way towards establishing a continuity for Jewish converts between the Old and New Testaments. The difficulty facing missionaries to pagan peoples was rather more complex because it entailed convincing converts not just to reject the faith of their ancestors but also to accept an entirely new history. As Momigliano points out, this second task, though vital to the survival of Christianity, was in some ways more difficult to achieve, since it involved overcoming three problems:
First, the pagans had to be introduced to the Jewish version of history. Secondly, the Christian historians were expected to silence the objection that Christianity was new, and therefore not respectable. Thirdly, the pagan facts of life had to get into the Jewish-Christian scheme of redemption (83).
The most basic means of achieving all these goals was the development of exact chronologies reconciling the dating of such things as pagan regnal lists, Christian episcopal records, and Jewish history. Groundbreaking in this field began In Che second and third centuries and the best known of the chronographers Is the fourth century historian Eusebius, but Interest In this type of history Is still strongly evident at the time of the Anglo-Saxon conversion. Bede himself was fascinated by the subject, and In addition to his work on the nature of time, De Temporlbus and De Temporum Ratlone, and his own chronographlcal efforts, the Chronica Malora and Minora. his
Eccleslatlcal History attempts to some extent to reconcile native and
Christian historical records. Furthermore, although Bede, perhaps out of discomfort with the rigidity Imposed by year-by-year reconciliations of various historical sources, chose to write the History, his presentation In Christian terms of the history of his own people, In a discursive rather than annalistic format, he appended to that work a brief chronological summary which later served as one of the source documents of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
The need to contend with native historical traditions combined with a firm belief In a providential future had another effect on
Christian historiography that was far more significant than the development of a scientific approach to calculating dates. For the first time, historians were forced to look beyond the bounds of their own Immediate cultural histories Into the realm of a universal history for all mankind. The Christian historian, says Croce, saw "the universal as Ideal, purified and elevated In the Christian sense"
(207). Christ had died to save not just one nation but all men, and In this act he had shown that the hand of God, In the form of providence, was operative In the affairs of all nations and even In all the 153 activities of nature. All of creation was subservient to the unfolding of the relationship between God and man, and with the fulfillment of
God's plan for humanity the natural world, no longer needed, would cease to exist.
In this universal approach to history, the goal of the historian was to perceive and reveal the pattern of God's eternal plan within the seemingly infinite and random variation of events in the secular world.
To achieve this end, the historian described events from creation to the end of the world, and in doing so, he chose no center of focus, no dominant culture, nation, or city. As R. G. Collingwood points out in his book The Idea of History, in this, as in its future orientation,
Christian history was truly innovative: "Greco-Roman oecumenical history is not universal in this sense, because...Greece or Rome is the centre round which it revolves. Christian history has undergone a
Copernican revolution, whereby the very idea of such a centre of gravity is destroyed" (49). The only center of early medieval
Christian history was God's plan, usually as embodied by the Church, and the only end the Day of Judgment, personal and universal.
Guided by a belief in God's universal plan for humanity and a typological habit of mind which necessitated seeking the divine in the earthly, medieval Christian historians consistently sought to establish a division between things secular and things divine. At its most extreme, this attitude was manifest in a dualistic vision which, in
Croce's words, saw "worldly things as external and rebellious to divine things"; this point of view also enabled more moderate Christian historians to explain the success of such pagan cultures as that of 154
Rome by stating that while the Romans received earthly reward for
goodness, they remained "reprobate" in the true sense because they
lacked Truth (208). Dualism may also account for the early abandonment
by Christian historians of native historical genres. Discussing
Christian historiography in the late classical period, Momigliano
contends that:
The traditional forms of higher historiography did not attract the Christians. They invented new ones....Yet the pagans are allowed by the Christians to remain the masters of traditional historiographical forms. To put it briefly, the Christians invented ecclesiastical history and the biography of the saints, but did not try to christianize ordinary political history; and they influenced ordinary biography less than we would expect. In the fourth century A.D. there was no serious attempt to provide a Christian version of, say, Thucydides or Tacitus....A reinterpretation of ordinary military, political, or diplomatic history in Christian terms was neither achieved nor even attempted (88).
Momigliano's assessment of Christian historiography in the late
classical period implies that while in some cases native histories may
have been abandoned because of close ties to pagan religions, the primary cause of such rejection was lack of interest, on the part of
typologically-concemed historians, in the subject matter— human political, military, and social affairs.
Throughout the Middle Ages, the study of history was so thoroughly
associated with religious matters that in schools and universities it was taught only as a sub-division of rhetoric and in its own right as
the literal meaning of biblical texts upon which anagogical, allegorical, and moral interpretations were to be based.74 From the
74 Herbert Grundmann, Geschichtsschreibuna in Mittlealter: Gattunaen— Epochen— Eiaenart (Goettingen: Vandenhoech und Ruprecht, 1965) 5. 155
point of view of many medieval Christian historiographers, Alculn's
famous question might just as well have been phrased "What has Zngeld
to do with history?" and It was Alculn's negative attitude toward the
native Germanic historical tradition which seems to have met, on the
Continent at any rate, with greater success than the more positive
attitudes reflected both by the anonymous author of Beowulf and by
Charlemagne, who according to his biographer Einhard ordered the
preservation of "barbara et antlqulsslma carmlna qulbus veterum regum
actus et bella canebantur" (Vita Caroll. cap. 29).79 Of course,
Christian historians writing In Latin often patterned their
haglographlcal and universal histories after classical genres such as
biography, encomium, and national epic, and Bede's pointed commendation
of the actions of Ccdmon in adapting native poetic tradition to
Christian history reflects a similar attitude toward the potential,
often ignored, value of native historical traditions and genres.
By the time of the Anglo-Saxon conversion, Christian histories were basically confined to three basic genres, each of which was
characterized by a distinctive focus and methodology. As I have
already pointed out, the most innovative and far-reaching of these was universal history, distinguished not just by its broad historical
content but also by its purpose of explaining God's plan for humanity.
Because of its progressive focus, history in this genre was especially
79 Grundmann points out that rather than following in his father's footsteps, Charlemagne's son Louis the Pious spurned the heathen songs while spurring the development of vernacular Christian poetry in an attempt to replace the native historical tradition altogether, and in both this attitude and action he reflected the viewpoint of most of the writing clergy (7). 156
concerned with cause and effect relationships, not between events
themselves, however, but rather between worldly events and the eternal
plan.’4 At a slightly less generalized level, this genre also
manifested itself in ecclesiatical histories, since as Roger Ray points
out in a survey of medieval historiography "through 12(90 there was no
authentic imitator of Eusebius of Caesarea, that is, no one with reason
to resist the centrifugal force of heilqeschichtliches thought in order
to focus on the church as something intellectually separable from the
larger history of its relevant world" (36).
The second historical genre, chronicle and its cousin annals,
described by Ray as "structural hodgepodges of fairly short episodes
that may follow no clear chronological thread" (41), in its most basic
form usually consisted of series of events, often conveyed in entries
of varied length and listed by date, loosely focused on a particular
geographical region or social institution, such as a monastery.
Histories of this type are distinguished not just by their
characteristic unconnectedness, that is, the refusal of their authors
to engage in analysis and edification, and their consequent secular or
’* This is an important distinction because it marks a way in which early Christian historiographers turned away from paths developing in classical historiography. Croce points out that later Greek historians "began to distinguish between facts and causes, and, in the order of causes themselves, between cause and occasion, as does Thucydides, or between beginning, cause, and occasion..., like Polybius" (193). However, when, as a result, they began to question "the motive power behind history," they were unable to see a pattern operating beyond the fall of great nations and consequently adopted a pessimistic and bitter attitude toward history. By contrast, Christian historiographers were so entirely convinced of the working of God's plan through history that they were relatively unconcerned with immediate causes and effects in secular events. Not until the Renaissance were these two vital aspects of Western history reconciled with each other. 157 worldly rather than theological focus, but also by their 'living' nature— chronicles were written not as coherent literary works but as on-going projects, often carried out by numerous separate authors over the course of many years.77 Finally, although, as Croce contends, the chronicle form may have arisen in the late classical period as a type of "dead" history (19), a by-product of dualism and asceticism which placed no value in the meaning of particular facts, Wilcox points out that throughout Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History, the author frequently simply catalogues long series of events entirely without analysis or even rudimentary commentary for the sole, stated purpose of "describing the events of his own time so that those who came afterwards would know about them" (174).
The third major genre of medieval Christian history, hagiography, had as its subject not the affairs of nations or the destiny of the human race but rather the life of a specific individual. Like universal history, the sole purpose of hagiography was to demonstrate divine intervention in the human sphere, but unlike such broader works, saints' lives tended to depict rather than explain the workings of providence in the affairs of men. In such works, the factual details of the saint's life were important only insofar as they revealed the struggles and triumphs of God's Truth in the life of the individual.
Consequently, like universal histories, hagiographies tended to emphasize patterns of action rather than the actions themselves.
Furthermore, perhaps because of their limited focus, such histories
77 The source of this definition of chronicle was a lecture deliv ered by Antonia Gransden at the Newberry Library in November of 1986. 158
tended to follow narrative patterns prescribed by literary tradition, a tradition derived not so much from classical biography but, more significantly, from New Testament narrative. Wishing to imitate the simplicity of Gospel accounts which brought realistic everyday material into a historical work, hagiographers chose details which were “simplex and apertus." placing little emphasis on formal style and complex patterns of fact (Ray 49). Like New Testament narrative, hagiographies also frequently adopted a curiously anti-temporal narrative style which, according to William Brandt, "is neither a m o d e m narrative, searching for meaning within experience, nor a value-charged aristocratic narrative" but rather "a peculiar sidewise movement, a kind of chronic indirection, which can be surrealistic in effect".7*
Also, following again in the path of the evangelists, writers of this type of history tended to present their narratives in the form of brief episodes, loosely strung together and interspersed with brief statements of simple moral precepts.7*
7* William J. Brandt, The Shape of Medieval History; Studies in Modes of Appreciation (New Haven: Yale UP, 1966) 74. Brandt states that this narrative structure, which is found in earlier parts of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, persisted throughout the Middle Ages chiefly in Saints' Lives.
7* Ray states that the form of such works as Saints' Lives and Universal Histories, referred to as qesta and world chronicles by the author, was especially open to scriptural influence when produced by clerics because historical works of various kinds were read and written as parts of numerous activities in Benedictine manasteries— "in the refectory, at lectio divina. likely in connection with the psalmi familiares. and even locally determinable parts of Divine Office." Ray is particularly concerned with the influence of Gospel stories, "which themselves set little store by chronological correctness and were of course models of fast and tangy lectiones" (41). 159
Whatever their differences in specific focus and methodology, all of these Christian historical genres were bound together by a belief that the true meaning of the events described lay outside their worldly and temporal significance, within the realm of the eternal plan, and this meaning, though perhaps uncertain in the present, in time would be revealed. As I stated earlier, it is in this orientation towards both the eternal and the eschatological that all of these genres are so clearly distinguished from the pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon historical tradition. However, as different as the Christian approach to historiography was, it did have several important resonances with the
Old English native tradition. First, although Christian historians because of their universal focus wrote narratives which were often long, complex, and wide-ranging in content, their methodology, with its reliance on 'heavy' characters such as saints and brief, value-laden episodes, had much in common with the oral historical style. Second, their insistence on a universal standard for historical relevance may have been accepted, at least in an immediate sense, as an extension of the pan-geographic focus common to oral and Germanic history. Third, their belief that nature was subservient to universal history and that even seemingly supernatural events were merely manifestations of the workings of providence in human history would have accorded well with the Germanic belief that the deeds of men, gods, beasts, and monsters were all equally subservient to the patterns woven by the Noras.
Finally, the typological approach of Christian historians to interpreting history could not have been entirely antithetical to a people who by virtue of their oral heritage were forced to rely on pattern to preserve their historical identity and by virtue of their
Germanic background were culturally and religiously bound by a profound belief in the significance of patterns of past action on present existence. The ability of typological history to transcend the temporal and enter the eternal might also have seemed familiar to a culture whose historical traditions arose from the Well of Urth in which chronological distinctions between past events dissolved in the primal patterns spoken in the er-loq. These similarities, coupled with both the willingness of the early missionaries, perhaps following in the footsteps of late classical Christian historians, to separate political from religious matters and their ability to present Old and
New Testament stories in cultural terms sympathetic to a warrior people, might in some way account for relatively peaceful and successful manner in which the English conversion to Christianity and literacy was achieved. In any case, these same factors had a vital effect on the style and focus of historical narrative in Anglo-Saxon literature. Chapter Four
The Literate Tradition
Of the four streams of tradition which flowed together to form the
historical perspective of post-conversion Anglo-Saxon England, the one
most antithetical to the rest in style, methodology, and even concept
was undoubtedly that stream introduced and defined by the transition to
literacy.** Because we live in a society which has been literate for
centuries, it is difficult for us to understand the fundamental changes
literacy precipitates in such diverse areas as knowledge-storing
** When I speak of the transition to literacy, I obviously do not mean that by the end of the Anglo-Saxon period the English were an entirely literate people. Widespread literacy, extending across all social classes, is a relatively recent phenomenon in western civilization. Just as it is possible for a culture to be classed as oral although possessing a rudimentary or highly specialized and restricted form of writing, so it is possible for a culture to be deemed literate while the great majority of its members remain unable to read or write if, as Wormald points out, "the proportion of laymen able to read at least a vernacular writ or poem was socially, if not statistically, significant" (C.P. Wormald, "The Uses of Literacy in Anglo-Saxon England and Its Neighbours," TRHS ser. 5, 27 (1977 for 1976): 95). Borrowing terminology from Parkes (M. B. Parkes, "The Literacy of the Laity," Literature and Western Civilization: the Medieval World, ed. D. Daiches and A. Thorlby (London: Aldus Books, 1973) 555), Wormald also points out that while "'cultured literacy,'" which in the early Middle Ages "could range from reading free prose in the vernacular to composing Latin in the classical tradition," might be limited to a small percentage of people, even within the clergy, "’pragmatic literacy,'" which might "extend from the capacity to recognize, if not sign, one's own name, to the ability to write a formal document in Latin," would undoubtedly have been more widespread, especially among the aristocracy ("The Uses of Literacy" 95).
161 162
capacities, sources of information, and attitudes towards change,
individual interpretation, and creativity. However, the Christian missionaries who came to England at the end of the s>ixth century must have been aware, on some level at least, that the cultural vision they brought was revolutionary in more than its religious perspective.
Nevertheless, right from the start they chose to combine oral dissemination of the Word of God with a campaign to educate the English so that the new converts might read and teach His Word for themselves.
Indeed, Bede tells us that in 601 Augustine sent Mellitus to aid
Augustine and accompanied him with "everything necessary for the worship and service of the Church, including sacred vessels, altar coverings, church ornaments, vestments for priests and clergy, relics of the holy Apostles and martyrs, and many books" (HE I, 29).“
The close association between Christianity and literacy is not hard to understand. First of all, as I pointed out earlier, the Hebrew religious tradition is one of long-standing literacy, and Christianity itself derives its validity from its interpretation of the inspired
Word of God as recorded in the Old and New Testaments. In a certain sense, the Christian religion is just another rewriting of Jewish history and as such perpetuates an essential Hebrew theological activity— analysis and revision of the written tradition. Secondly, the Christian vision of providential history, with its emphasis on a single, divine plan of order operative in the secular world, also
11 ...et per eos generaliter universa, quae ad cultum erant ac ministerium ecclesiae necessaria, vasa videlicet sacra, et vestimenta altarium, omamenta quoque ecclesiarum, et sacerdotalia vel clericalia indumenta, sanctorum etiam apostolorum ac martyrum reliquias, nec non et codices plurimos. places great value in literacy, especially in the ability of the writer
to engage in and record logical, analytical thought: as Nancy Partner,
citing Richard Southern, points out, "formal logic [was]...the triumph
of medieval 'humanism' (in the sense of the tendency to stress
'dignity, order, reason, and intelligibility ...in human experience'),
the confident extension of human reason over all the phenomena of the
world, bringing definition, understanding, and control where there had
been only chaos, confusion, and helplessness."*3 Finally, since
acceptance of Christianity necessitated the adoption by the convert of
an entirely new world view, re-education regarding both religious
beliefs and worldly history was of extreme importance, and the best
means for achieving such an end was through the creation and
dissemination of new literary works. For all of these reasons, as
Wormald points out, "Christianity is a religion of the Book; and not
just of the Bible, but also of the works of the Church Fathers, and of
Canon Law" ("The Uses of Literacy" 99).
As a 'religion of the Book,' Christianity brought with it not just
changes in the general conception of history, already discussed in the
preceding section of this chapter, but also fundamental changes in the
methods and tools of creating history. Of these changes, perhaps the
most readily apparent is the immense increase in knowledge-storing
capacities available to the literate historian. History as it is
*2 Nancy F. Partner, "The New Comificius: Medieval History and the Artifice of Words," Classical Rhetoric and Medieval Historiography, ed. Ernst Breisach, Studies in Medieval Culture XIX (Kalamazoo, MI.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985) 7. [Citing Richard Southern, "Medieval Humanism," Medieval Humanism and Other Studies (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1970) 32.J 164
practiced today, based on a vast, detailed, complex, ever growing and
changing collection of raw data, is possible only in a literate
society. The development of alphbetic literacy allows for the
recording and preservation of even the most minute, non-value-laden
details; archives of information can now be passed from generation to
generation in a semi-permanent form which does not rely on human memory
for accurate transmission.
In early England, this change in the type of material which could be preserved is most evident in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. In the opening sections, the entries contain information much like that found in different form in Widsin— the deaths, battles, and campaigns of kings, aldermen, and other important figures— combined with records of conversions and the founding of monasteries. Gradually, as the annalists became less dependent on oral-genealogical and written monastic sources, the entries sometimes concern events worthy of note only as either incidental curiosities or remnants of astrological calculations for Easter tables: 671— "Her was pat micle fugla wal"
(here was the great destruction of birds); 729— "Her cometa se steorra hiene opiewde" (here the star comet appeared); 773— "Her opiewde read
Cristes mal on hefenum after sunnan setlgonge" (here a red Christ-sign appeared in the heavens after sunset).** Dates within a year also gradually were incorporated into the entry, as in the Laud entry for
762:
Her Ianberht was to arcebliscopl on Son xl dag ofer mide winter & Fri&ewald biscop at Witerne fordferde on NOInonasl
** These three entries are from the Parker version of the Chronicle. 165
Mai. Se as gehalgod on Ceastrum on xviii Klalendasl Sept. pam vi wintra Ceolwulfes rices. & he was bliscop] xxix wintra; pa man gehalgode Pyhtwine to bliscop] at ffilfetee on xvi klalendasl Aug' to Hwiteme.*4
The fact that only one of these specific dates is found in the Parker
entry for this year [7631 indicates that much of the datalogical
material in Laud was added at a later stage in the transition to
literacy, in the 12th century when this version was copied from an 11th
century northern re-working of Alfred's Chronicle.** Indeed the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle in and of itself stands as proof of a fundamental
change in the historian's approach and attitude toward his task: both
in its individual entries and through its dissemination and copying,
the Chronicle provided Old English historians with the opportunity to
preserve not just what was important at the time of writing but also
what might come to be recognized as significant in the future. Where
historical enterprise had focused solely on preservation and
interpretation, in the newly literate society of Anglo-Saxon England,
data collection, for the first time, assumed a co-equal position with
the other two historical activities.
*4 11 indicate that the word is abbreviated in the text by a mark which I can not duplicate and for which have chosen to provide the full word. Garmonsway renders this passage, correcting the days and months, as follows: In this year Janberht was consecrated archbishop on the fortieth day after Christmas [Candlemas]; and bishop Frithuwald of Whithorn passed away on 7 May: he was consecrated at York on 15 August in the sixth year of the reign of Ceolwulf; he had been bishop twenty-nine years; then Peohtwine was consecrated bishop of Whithorn at Etvet on 17 July.
49 See section 5 of the introduction to Garmonsway's edition and translation of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, xxxiii-xlii. / 166
Literacy also has a profound effect on form. Since dates, places, names, and background information can be verified from other written sources, greater emphasis must be placed on accuracy of detail. Indeed, it is through such details that literate texts recreate the sense of realness and immediacy granted to oral history through individual performance. Jones, for example, finds two of the four portraits in
Bede's History of the Abbots to be so richly laden with convincing and accurate details that "from his statements alone they emerge as historical personages, about whom we now talk with surety" (53).
Furthermore, as language and chronology are gradually formalized in writing rather than ritual speech patterns, the form of the history becomes increasingly more varied, if not necessarily less conventional.
As the previous discussion of types of Christian history makes clear, literate history can be as governed by pattern as oral history can.
The difference lies in the source and application of such literate historical patterns. In oral history, patterns evolve from the boiling down of the details of the lives of significant personages and events to the essentials which resulted in that person's being deemed memorable; in other words, figures are made part of the larger cultural heritage because their lives reflected and reinforced real value patterns. In literate history, narrative patterns are artificial, arising not so much from life as from literary tradition: while oral lays begin in medias res out of necessity, written epics do so to satisfy tradition. Jones points out that in the early Middle Ages, hagiography, perhaps the most common genre of history, was also the genre of literature least attached to the natural world in content 167
(miraculous) and purpose (aspirational); not surprisingly, it was also the most artificial." As one example of his observation, he contrasts the surprising degree of accuracy in Bede's aforementioned History of the Abbots with the same author's Life of St. Cuthbert, from which
"Bede eliminated factual detail" in his effort to duplicate in
Cuthbert's life the inspirational pattern of the exemplum of the saint's life genre (54). Clearly, while literacy allows for greater accuracy of detail, it also allows detail to be channeled toward both romantic verisimilitude and historical realism.
The form of literate histories changes in other important ways as well. Narratives, whatever their genre, can be longer and more fact- oriented. No longer is the historian confined to narrative recited in rythmic formulas, and while literacy results in the standardization of traditional oral patterns of meter, rhyme, and action, it also results in the production of a new stylistic genre, prose. Havelock, in his analysis of the development of literacy in Greece, points out that
"prose (which! became the vehicle of a whole new universe of fact and of theory...was a release of mind as well as of language, and it showed up first...in the creation of 'history' as essentially a prosaic enterprise" (Muse 110). Such a trend towards prose history is evident, for example, in the fact that many of the original works of Bede, writing but a little over a century after the conversion, are either annals, general histories, or hagiographies. Initially, of course, most early English prose was written in Latin. However, 150 years
" See Jones 51-52 on the relationship between hagiography and romance. 168 later, by the time of Alfred, and in many ways because of Alfred, a
strong tradition of vernacular prose, especially prose history, was being established through the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Alfred’s free
translations of important Latin prose works into Anglo-Saxon; many vernacular sermons also have hagiography and scriptural history as their general subjects.
This explosion of information combined with the freeing of the literate mind for tasks other than memorization and ritualized utterance has several profound effects on the production of history.
Rather than seeking primarily to preserve the ethnocentric patterns of action and belief valued in oral cultures, the historian for the first time is able to examine static texts, both his own and others, "a process that enable(s] man to stand back from his creation and examine it in a more abstract, generalized, and 'rational' way" (Goody 37):
When an utterance is put in writing it can be inspected in much greater detail, in its parts as well as in its whole,...out of context as well as in its setting; in other words, it can be subjected to quite a different type of scrutiny and critique than is possible with purely verbal communication (Goody 44).
One result of this analytical approach to history is the tendency in on-going historical endeavors, such as monastic annals and the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle, to update and revise earlier records as more accurate or significant information becomes available. For example, the Laud entry for 762, cited earlier, is based on a much briefer entry in the original Alfredian Chronicle, of which the Parker version is representative: (7631 Her Xanbryht was gehadod to *rce bisc(op) on pone feowertegan dag ofer midne winter (Here Janberht was consecrated archbishop on the fortieth day after Mid-winter). In the twelfth 169 century bl-lingual Canterbury version, another phrase was added to the effect that Janberht held his position for 26 years, a piece of information which does not appear in the lengthy Laud entry, indicating two separate revision processes.
Another result of the analytical approach to literate history is a growing separation between fact and interpretation, a separation which effects both the historian in creating his text and the audience in reading it. This separation manifests itself in a variety of ways; as
Kellogg points out, "with the transformation of a literary culture from oral art to written art comes a breakdown of traditional narrative into a variety of new and purer components" (123). Writers for the first time become concerned with distinctions between history, myth, and tale; works of philosophy and theology, focusing on human behavior in the abstract, are produced, as are codes of secular law. One proof of such a broadening of concerns in Anglo-Saxon England is the fact that in one manuscript, Cotton Tiberius fi.i., the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is preceded by Orosius' History of the World. The Menoloaium— a list of major holidays of the year, and Maxims II— a previously discussed collection in poetic form of statements of universal knowledge; regarding this arrangement, Greenfield and Evert propose that:
Perhaps the compiler of the manuscript felt that the extremely linear historical view of the Chronicle ought to be balanced by The Menoloaium' s presentation of the year as a cycle of important holidays, i.e., a recurring recapitulation of the most significant events of history. Perhaps also the compiler saw a kind of propriety in prefacing an ambitious intellectual endeavor such as the Chronicle with Maxims II. a 170
poem on the limitations of (human! knowledge (of divine things] (Greenfield and Evert 354).*7 Whatever the compiler's specific purpose, the binding together of these
works would seem to Indicate a sense on his part that history Is not
the only subject worthy of remembrance and that historical knowledge
should also concern general philosophical and religious knowledge not
affected by day-to-day occurrences.
As a result of the historian's newly-granted ability to revise and
reflect not just on his own writings but also on those of others, a new
tradition of Intellectual skepticism also develops through which It Is possible for audience and writers alike to question In an on-golng manner not just the historical facts themselves but also society's
Interpretation of them.** Development of such a capacity for
analytical and skeptical thought, by fostering criticism and commentary, gives rise to Individual perspective In historical writing; as Robert Kellogg points out with reference to medieval narrative In general, literacy "provides the occasion for authorship and for the
*7 The authors point out that John Earle, the first editor of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, was the first to suggest that The Menoloaium and Maxims II might have been Intended to serve as a preface to the Chronicle Itself (John Earle, Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel (Oxford, 1865) xxlx-xxxvl). Later critics, such as Dobble In his Introduction to the poem (The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, Anglo Saxon Poetic Records 6 (New York: Columbia UP, 1942) lx-lxi), dismissed this claim; Garmonsway, In his edition and translation of the Chronicle. finds the Inclusion of Oroslus and the two poems to be Interesting, but gives no reason why (xxxvl).
** Goody points out that In oral versus literate societies "the essential difference Is not so much the sceptical attitude In Itself but the accumulation (or reproduction) of scepticism" In literate societies; "a continuing critical tradition can hardly exist when sceptical thoughts are not written down, not communicated across time and space, not made available for men to contemplate In privacy as well as to hear In performance" (43). 171
personal aspect of high art" (123). From a historiographical point of
view, no longer does the historian's interpretive stance have to be one
with both that of his audience and that of past historical tradition.
Unlike the oral historian, who exists as the voice of his people,
unifying past with present, the literate historian, but one of many
voices, eventually writes in growing awareness that his interpretation will be measured against that of others. That historians in post
conversion England were aware, at least to some extent, of addressing more than one audience is evident, for example, not just in the never- ending process of local revision and updating through which different copies of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle were constantly being put, often in order to bring both original (up to 891) and subsequent entries in line with local interest and knowledge. In a less obvious way, it is also evident in the dual prefaces written for Alfred's translation of
Gregory's Pastoral Care: the first, longer preface primarily concerns
Alfred's reasons for rendering Gregory's work, among others, into
English; the second, written in a poetic style akin to that of the riddles, essentially provides a brief provenance for both the original work and the English translation of it. The great differences in both the style and content of these two pieces indicate an awareness, by the compiler of the manuscripts at least, that the potential audience for
Alfred's translation would include both learned clerics as well as less educated people who might be exposed to the work through oral presentation.
In writing for multiple audiences, the literate historian changes the focus of his work in another important way as well: in effect, he 172 is no longer writing for a real audience; unlike the oral historian who creates and presents his narrative in the presence of its audience, the literate historian must project an audience for his work and create it accordingly. Indeed, the earliest effect of literacy, evident even at the stage of recording oral performance, may be the creation of the fictional audience, a development which not only results in the need for internal validation of sources but also begins the long process of granting validity to fiction as a genre of literature in which truth is no less real for being created or abstract. Bede's preface to his
Ecclesiastical History provides an excellent example of the effect of this change in author/audience relationship, in that Bede preceeds his lengthy discussion of the sources for his history with first an address to his patron, King Ceolwulf, followed by an analysis of the value of his work to his potential audience of "thoughtful hearers" (auditor sollicitus) and "devout, religious listeners or readers" (religiosus ac pius auditor sive lector), before concluding with the statement that lest any should doubt the truth of what follows he will carefully explain his sources— "But in order to avoid any doubts in the mind of yourself, or of any who may listen to or read this history, as to the accuracy of what I have written, allow me briefly to state the authorities upon whom I chiefly depend" (HE Preface).** In other words, unable to predict his audience's interests and reactions, Bede defines his own audience and validates his work by citing as sources
** Ut autem in his quae scripsi, vel tibi, vel ceteris auditoribus sive lectoribus huius Historiae occasionem dubitandi subtraham, quibus haec maxime auctoribus didicerim breviter intimare curabo. 173
those works which he assumes "thoughtful" and "religious" persons would
find most acceptable.
Even more than the familiar preface to Bede's Ecclesiastical
History, however, there is perhaps no better example of all the changes in author/audience relationship brought about by the coming of literacy than the lesser-known Prologue to Felix's Latin prose Life of St.
Guthlac. As expressed in this Prologue, Felix's sentiments on the task of writing biography are highly conventional, taken largely from
Evargius' translation of the Life of St. Anthony, Sulpicius' Life of
St. Martin, and Victorius' Prologue to his Easter tables, and found also at the start of hagiographies by Bede and Eddius (Jones 54).
Nevertheless, in both its indebtedness to learned tradition and its expressed point of view, the Prologue outlines an entirely literate approach to history. Take, for example, Felix's closing defense of his own principles of selection which I will summarize because the passage is far too lengthy to cite in full.** Felix begins by accepting and addressing the possibility of diverse audiences, one composed of those who knew Guthlac, another composed of those who didn't and for whom this work would open new vistas.*1 Next he states his stringent methodology in accumulating materials and thereby tacitly acknowledges
»• My summary is based on Jones' translation of this work, the section in question being found on 126-7.
(< The opening of Felix's Prologue also indicates that, like Bede, he was writing for a specific audience of one as well, the patron who commissioned his work, King JClfwald. While such an individual author/audience relationship is not original to literate history— scopas clearly depended on noble patronage for support— an author's open acknowledgement that his patron's needs are paramount is contradictory to the communal function of oral history. 174
that this is his own presentation of the narrative. Then, in a phrase
reminiscent of Bede's vera lex historia. he states that in writing the
life he has followed "proper literary convention" (ortonomia stilo perstrinxero).** Finally, calling on the words of the Latin historian
Evargius, Felix openly addresses the problems inherent in the task of writing such a work— the impossibility of finding all the facts, the difficulty of keeping the book at a reasonable length, and finally the question of how best to organize the narrative line.** How reminiscent
Felix's words are of those of Arthur Bryant, cited in Section I, on the task of the biographer! How far Felix's almost apologetic statement as he begins his task is from the bold opening of the oral poetic tradition— "we have heard of the deeds of men of old," a proclamation which binds poet, audience, and ancestors into a community of shared knowledge and sentiment.
The delicate balance in literate history between the desire to reach a pre-existing but atemporal ideal of historical accuracy and the
*2 This is Jones' rendering of this term; another translator renders the passage— "Ergo quantacumque de vitae ipsius ortonomia stilo perstrinxero"— "so however much my pen has touched upon concerning his rule of life..." (Felix's Life of Saint Guthlac, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1956) 65). Although this seems like a vast difference in meaning, the fact that the sentence goes on to discuss the inability of the historian to tell everything and the necessity of being selective indicates to me that Jones' translation is more in keeping with Felix's concern at the moment.
** The concluding statement of Felix's Prologue— "arranging the text of the present document as best I could,...I have placed the beginning in the beginning, the end in the end (textum praesentis cartulae, prout potui, digessi,...principium in principio, finem in fine conpono)"— is particularly interesting, in that it implies that Felix was aware of the in medias res structure of heroic epics and chose not to arrange his story in this way (Latin text Colgrave 64; translation mine). necessity of meeting the needs of an ever-changing audience results in a self-perpetuating sense of historical progress toward collective self-knowledge that exists quite independently of ethical and religious beliefs. It is important, however, not to confuse this sense of progress with a belief that society is growing better; rather it is a sense that a culture's historical understanding of itself is improving.
Furthermore, while the oral historian seeks to hold back changes in cultural attitudes, the literate historian at the very least records and in practice actually encourages such change by altering society's perspective on its past. As Goody demonstrates, this fostering of change in cultural attitudes is first manifest in literate societies in ' attempts to separate myths from history: "the distinction between mvthos and historia comes into being at the time when alphabetic writing encouraged mankind to set one account of the universe or pantheon beside another and hence perceive the contraditions that lie between them" (14). That this type of change in perspective was thrust upon the Anglo-Saxons by literacy is evident in the mutation of pagan deities into heroic ancestors in early English aristocratic geneologies, as for example in the first section of the Genealogical
Preface to the Parker version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: "& se
Cerdic was . Elesing. Elesa. Esling. Esla. Gewising. Giwis. Wiging.
Wig. Freawining. Freawine. Fripugaring. Fripugar. Branding. Brond
Baldaging. Ba;dag Wodening.*4
’4 And this Cerdic was the son of Elesa, son of Esla, son of Gewis, son of Wig, son of Freawine, son of Fripugar, son of Brond, son pf Baldag, son of Woden. 176
Driven by this newly acquired analytical habit of mind, historians
in recently literate cultures continue to use the narrative mode of
their oral predecessors and like them, as a rule, continue to focus on
martial exploits; however, as Havelock points out with reference to the
first literate Greek historians, "they also gave much attention to the
mores— the ethos and nomos— of societies both Greek and foreign as
though they instinctively recognized the didactic role of preserved
speech (oral tradition] acting as the instrument of classical
tradition" (Muse 110). In other words, literate historians seek to
verbalize the implicit role played by their oral predecessors as preservers of ethical norms. However, what the oral historical
tradition presents from an experiential point of view, by means of ritual action and ’heavy' characters, literate history examines from an existential point of view: "gradually, if sparingly, the verb ’to be' appears as the copula required for a stated historical ’fact' replacing the powerful and mobile ’presence' assigned to the personalities of oral narrative" (Havelock, Muse 110). Maxims of behavior, common to both oral and recently literate historical narratives, slowly evolve from statements of patterns of action, as in ’John, the good king, does wise deeds,’ into statements of patterns of being, ’the good king is wise.' Anglo-Saxon wisdom poetry, such as Maxims I and II and
Precepts, even that filled primarily with collections of secular gnomes, clearly is the product of both literacy and Christianity: in
Maxims II and Precepts, for example, not only have proverbial statements been separated out of their original narrative contexts; they have also been bound into a larger framework of religious 177
sentiment. Furthermore, in Old English, this change in focus from
concrete exemplum to abstract aphorism may also to tied to the
differences between bi& and sceal maxims, for it is the sceal maxims, with their larger sense of timeless necessity, which pave the way for wisdom statements abstracted from specific, immediate reality.
This shift in viewpoint from individual action to general behavior is also reflected in the differing manners in which pre-literate versus literate historians assert the validity of their accounts, an issue also connected with changes in audience, as I discussed earlier. While oral poets in order to convey the cultural relevance and timeless truth of their tales rely on situational analogues, such as those which provide the meaningful background for the refrain in Deor, literate historians establish and then draw on a new tradition which maintains the “orthodoxy of the book" (Goody 37); in other words, they base their claims of factual accuracy on their reliance, primarily, on already accepted, usually written, sources. It is for this reason that most medieval historians began and/or ended their works with statements of their methodology, such as that given by Felix in the Prologue to his
Life of St. Guthlac, or outlines of the sources of their information, such as that given by Bede in the preface to his Ecclesiastical
History. In most cases, the weight of tradition expressed in oral histories by stated and implied analogues is derived in written histories from explicit references to the works of other historians: where the Beowulf poet 'prefaces' the tale of his hero with a brief survey of tales from the illustrious tradition against which the deeds of the hero will be measured, Felix and Bede validate their work by 178
referring Co methods and works reecognized as part of received
tradition. Jones points out that early English chroniclers in
particular tended to limit themselves "to what previous teachers of the
subject had written— that is, chronicles, brought up to date by the
annalistic entries on the attached Easter-tables" (17). Even the fact
that the Parker version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle begins with a
genealogical preface probably is due less to the strength of the oral
tradition than to the fact that such information, by Alfred's time, had
come to be regarded as just another orthodox source, like the Bible and
monastic records. Indeed, the fact that in some versions of the
Chronicle, Laud for example, this preface was replaced by a passage
drawn from the opening of Bede's Ecclesiastical History indicates that
works from both the oral and written traditions were valued equally as
literate historical sources.
The coming of literacy to Anglo-Saxon England forced Anglo-Saxon
historians not only to reconsider their own historical traditions but
also to reconcile both the matter and the methodology of their own
tradition with those of other literate cultures. While the primary
points of conflict arose from already discussed differences between the
Germanic and Christian concepts of history, educational materials
employed by Christian monks for the teaching of rhetoric and other
liberal arts also exposed the Anglo-Saxons to the vast storehouses of
classical learning. In the literary products of the Mediterranean world, most written in genres entirely alien to the Germanic oral
tradition, Anglo-Saxon writers were confronted with extra-cultural
experiences in the forms of both descriptive accounts and scientific 179 treatises, and through such exposure they were made aware of a variety of alternatives regarding everything from interpretations of natural phenomena to definitions of civil rights. In order to contend with the new literate tradition, early English writers had to create a reconciliation of often contradictory information and attitudes, and in fact, as Alexandra Olsen points out in her recent study of the Cynewulf canon, in much Old English poetry the matter of the inherited Germanic- heroic tradition is often so well blended with that of "boclar, Latin learning," that "it is often difficult to determine authoritatively which poetic elements derive from which tradition.",a As I will discuss in the next section, Andreas is an excellent example of just how thorough this blending can be.
Of course, such a reconciliation was neither swiftly nor uniformly achieved, and the transformation from an oral to a literate culture, especially with regard to the vernacular narrative tradition, was also achieved only gradually and even then not entirely by the close of the
Anglo-Saxon period. Indeed, because for the pre-Christian English their Germanic cultural ethic was so closely intertwined with their oral methods of historical preservation, the transition had to be gradual if they were not to lose their cultural heritage and with it their identity as a people. Right from the start, Germanic society seems to have been aware of the threat literacy presented to their culture, and on the continent and in England alike, the secular hierarchy resisted the development of and dependence on vernacular
*s Alexandra Hennessey Olsen, Speech, Song, and Poetic Craft; The Artistry of the Cynewulf Canon, American University Studies, Ser. IV English Language and Literature vol 15 (New York: Peter Lang, 1964) 2. 180 literacy. In his article on literacy in early medieval society,
Patrick Wormald cites a variety of examples of the peculiarly Germanic habit of resistance. For example, although in the Eastern empire the development of barbarian vernacular literacy was encouraged and hence these languages flourished, in western Europe "the barbarians accepted, even defended the domination of literate communication by the language of their Roman victims" ("The Uses of Literacy" 99). As a particular case in point, Wormald cites Theoderic, the "barbarian champion of civilization," who maintained a deliberate and vocal stance of illiteracy because he felt that the acquisition of literacy conflicted with the martial values of his people, both by teaching timidity and distracting from training in "methods of war and the hunt" ("The Uses of Literacy" 97, 98). In this, Northern European attitudes clearly differed markedly from both Roman and Hebraic attitudes: Julius Caesar and King David were greatly admired by their peoples both as warriors and as learned writers.
Wormald's contention of the Germanic resistance to vernacular literacy, especially among the aristocracy, is borne out in England as well. Even up to Alfred's time, literacy outside of the clergy was a rarity, and Alfred in the preface to his translation of Pastoral Care indicates that among the clergy only recently had vernacular literacy in any way rivaled Latin literacy. Alfred's own life makes clear how unusual his preoccupation with book learning for the laity was.
It is not, as often, easy to be sure what Asser means, but it looks as though, for all his enthusiasm, Alfred did not learn to read at all until he was forty, and that he then learnt simultaneously to read English and Latin....The judges whom Alfred sought to make literate were unable to read even Saxon books (though some had slaves who could), and Asser's account 181
hardly suggests that they shared their ruler's love of letters until their jobs were at stake (Wormald, "The Uses of Literacy" 105).
Asser's account makes clear that reading, in their mother tongue or in
Latin, was still not considered a necessary, or even particularly suitable, pursuit for the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy, and Alfred's stated reasons for his program of fostering education in the vernacular imply that he regarded the project not as an interesting innovation, or even as an especially good idea, but rather as a necessary evil precipitated by clerical laxity: "no more than his continental contemporaries would he have considered the vernacular any long-term substitute for the
Latin scholarship which alone could bring true wisdom" (Wormald, "The
Uses of Literacy" 106). Based on Alfred's case, as well as additional, more broadly based evidence, Wormald concludes that "the traditional view of restricted literacy is substantially valid for the whole early
English period," and his statement is further validated by Clanchy’s observation that the oral pleader or official tale-teller, whose job was to make the litigant's formal claim, retained his role in the
Anglo-Saxon legal system throughout the period.**
Counterbalancing the evidence against widespread literacy in
Anglo-Saxon England, of course, is the survival from the period not just of a substantial body of Latin literature but also of the largest corpus of early medieval vernacular prose and poetry. While the size of the former testifies to the strength of the Romano-Christian literate tradition, the very existence of the latter testifies to both
** "The Uses of Literacy" 113: M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066-1307 (London: Edward Arnold, 1979) 221. 182 the Importance of their native tradition to the Anglo-Saxons and the ability of that tradition to adapt to new cultural conditions if given the chance to do so. Furthermore, the existence of such a dual body of literature provides indications of why the Anglo-Saxons were the first northern european people to become vernacularly literate. First, in religious terms, the Roman missionaries from the start both stressed the importance of literacy and used native oral traditions to spread their religious message, even to the point of developing and disseminating a means of writing down the hitherto oral language and poetry of the Anglo-Saxons. Second, in secular terms, the Anglo-Saxons developed a stable political culture, if not a single unified kingdom, well before the rest of their continental relatives, a development which both necessitated and allowed for the spread of vernacular literacy. Finally, in both the religious and political spheres, history was of great importance, a fact that established a strong line of continuity with the oral Germanic culture of pre-Christian Britain.
Proof of both the strength of the religious commitment to literacy in England and the interaction of monastery and monarchy in fostering learning is evident within a century of the arrival of Gregory’s missionaries. Throughout England monasteries were already being established which were to serve not just as places for religious retreat and contemplation, as Iona largely did in Ireland, but more significantly as centers of learning from which missionaries of both
Christianity and education, such as Alcuin, were to sally forth; for while it was necessary in the late ninth century for Alfred to obtain teachers from the Frankish court, a century before it was the Anglo- 183
Saxons who had helped first to convert the Franks and then in the age
of Charlemagne to educate them. It is also important to remember that
the first flowerings of learning in England coincided with the rise to power of the first strong political centers in Anglo-Saxon England, in
Mercia and Northumbria. Of course, in the establishment of a literate
Anglo-Saxon tradition of vernacular language, literature, and history,
Alfred undoubtedly stands in a key position. As Wormald quite rightly points out, Alfred's "reign and achievements" show the profound impact of "Romano-Christian inspiration": "Alfred learnt from the Franks and
from the Bible of the advantages of a written history of his dynasty, and of written law; he also learnt that literacy was essential if he and his subjects were to acquire the wisdom that God demanded" ("The
Uses of Literacy" 113). On the other hand, Alfred's fostering of Old
English as "a respectable vehicle of literature"*7 can not simply have been a fortuitous accident; while he may have begun a program of translations because of a regretted decline in Latin literacy, he also chose to establish and maintain a national historical record in the native tongue of his people.
The importance of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, whether commissioned by Alfred himself or simply inspired by his reign, can not be overstated: as the only history written in its native tongue before
1200, other than the Irish annals and an early Russian history, it is both "the first national continuous history of a western nation in its
77 Christopher N.L. Brooke, "Historical Writing In England Between 850 and 1150," La Storiographia Altomedievale, Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi Sull'alto Medioevo XVII (Spoleto: Presso La Sede Del Centro, 1970) 226. 184
own language" and "the first great book in English prose" (Garmonsway
xvi).** Most important, for the development of a new Old English
historical perspective from the blending of new methodology with old
concerns and traditions, through its "marriage between the tradition of
the Frankish annals and the narrative technique of Old English verse"
(Brooke 234), it sanctioned and legitimized in written form the primary oral concern of the Anglo-Saxon pre-Christian Germanic heritage,
secular history. Indeed, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a microcosm of
the development in England of a new form, vernacular prose, of a
traditional genre, secular historical narrative, starting as a fusion of oral data from regnal lists and lays with extra-cultural classical and Christian historical materials, continuing as a collection of incidents deemed politically relevant or locally interesting, and finally developing into full, though usually brief, narrative episodes which at times engage in political analysis while preserving the oral historical function of commemorating those worthy of great praise or condemnation. As remarkable as the growth in maturity of the vernacular prose style of the Chronicle is the delicate balance it achieves between the conflicting elements of the four historical traditions at work within it, for just as it remains secular in focus though probably kept by clerics, so it adopts chronology without insisting on future orientation.” In this fusion of old historical
1' For a brief discussion of the controversy surrounding Alfred's connection with The Chronicle, see Garmonsway xxx-xxxi and Brooke 226-229.
” In a lecture delivered at the Newberry Library on 11/25/86 on the subject of Chronicle History, Antonia Gransden pointed out that many chronicles were written in terms of advance tabulations, that is. 185
perspective and new form, the Chronicle provided a vital secular prose
parallel to Cadmon's action of adapting the old poetic forms to the new
Christian historical vision. Together, Cadmon and the Chronicle
ensured the survival of the English vernacular historical tradition by
making a place in the new for the old.
were set-up much as a modem appointment calender would be, with a space and date notation provided for each year far into the future. Such a methodology argues in favor of at least a computational concept of future. There is no evidence, however, that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was kept in this way; even later manuscripts, copied for the years up to the twelfth century and maintained by individuals from them on, would appear to have been added to year by year, with the annalist looking back over the year just completed and writing down any events he deemed significant. Plummer's parallel edition of Parker and Laud makes note of three places in Parker where "single-line annals had been marked out, which afterwards had to be erased": 971-3 (the years against which The Battle of Brunanburh is entered); 993 (the entry for Byrhtnod's defeat at Maldon); 1001 (a lengthy account of the Viking raids). The facts that these alterations occur in such a short space of years and that they begin in the year in which one scribal hand takes over and end in the year at which that hand ceases would seem to indicate that either one of the Parker annalists made advance notations of the years ahead, or that one copyist numbered years ahead as he copied a pre-existing text and was taken by surprise by the length of these entried, or that the entries for these campaigns were later added to. Whatever the cause for these alterations, the occurrence of such erased, advance single- line year notations is peculiar to this section of Parker alone, and hence does not indicate a future orientation to the chronology of the Chronicle enterprise as a whole. Conclusion
A Look Ahead
I began this section with two quotations written over 800 years apart, one by the twelfth-century historian Anna Comnena describing history as a river and the other by twentieth-century historiographer
R. G. Collingwood describing history in terms of events which can be presented as having both an inside and an outside. Although these two statements seem quite different, in fact they are making much the same point--the task of shaping history involves establishing a relationship between content and form, between data and interpretation, between the river water and the river bed, between 'inside' and 'outside.' As a result of their conversions to Christianity and literacy, the Anglo-
Saxons had to contend with fundamental changes in both the 'inside' and the 'outside' of their historical vision, had to make a transition not just from a past to a future-oriented tradition of understanding human existence but also from a highly ephemeral yet culturally restricted means of conveying history to a permanent yet more individually determined means of doing so. What enabled them to make this change was the reliance all four of their streams of historical consciousness placed in the necessity of perceiving and preserving individual action in terms of patterns valid to both author and audience. In the next and final section of this dissertation, I will examine how three
186 different narratives, Bede's Ecclesiastical History, Beowulf, and
Andreas, represent through differences in content, form, and theme three stages both in the fusion of the old and new traditions and in the development of a unified and coherent pattern of history in Anglo-
Saxon literature. SECTION III
PATTERNS OF CREATION
Coleridge has defined what seems to me to be a central attribute of epic: in epic, he says, Fate subordinates human will to its purposes; human will, in effect, subserves the larger ends of destiny. Such a Fate-controlled universe we find in Homer, in Vergil, in Milton. Odysseus's will, for example, in a sense serves the purposes of Poseidon and Athena, and Hector stands before Troy's gate because Fate will have it so; Aeneas leaves Dido to fulfill his destiny and Rome's; and Adam and Eve, though acting freely, are clearly attuned to God's providence. In Beowulf, epic effect is achieved differently. Wyrd and God may be repeatedly mentioned, but their force is less personal, less directive, than the Olympian and Heavenly decrees. The poem gives us no sense that Beowulf moves through his heroic deeds in accord with a higher will. Rather, Beowulf’s is an historic destiny, as are all the doom-laden movements in the poem. The Scylding dynasty will fall— because historically it fell; the Geats will lose their national independence— because history records the loss. Wyrd will no longer grant Beowulf unalloyed victory when he fights the dragon— because the doom of the Geats is nigh. There is no "higher" destiny in Beowulf; and yet there is epic sweep. If there is a distinction and withal a similarity between other epics and Beowulf, it is in the kinds of destiny manifest; and it is precisely in the accretion of historical material...that we are made epically aware. While the universal quality of other epics may reside in the assimilation of human motives and forces to suprehuman though basically anthropomorphic purposes, in Beowulf, it would appear, history subsumes the hero as an individual.1
1 Stanley B. Greenfield, "Geatish History: Poetic Art and Epic duality in Beowulf.11 Neophil 47 (1963): 217.
168 189
As different from the other verse saints' lives as they are among themselves, Andreas emerges from the Old English poetic canon as perhaps the most unusual example of hagiography. The poet burdens his work with a full panoply of traditional heroic conventions....Additionally, the fantastic elements In the poem— the cannibalism, the speaking stone, the flood— occasion epithets revealing wonder In even the most sympathetic critics. But despite the poem's idiosyncrasies,...the words-deeds theme is a strong here as elsewhere in Old English poetic hagiography, and direct discourse again expresses a spiritual odyssey. It, together with the central themes of moving from darkness to light, from blindness to perception, and of recognizing a dying world's need for spiritual refreshment, dramatizes the mysterious nature of Christian faith. The emphasis on typology is not arbitrary; it encourages the reader to see that by Immersing himself in the pattern of Christianity, by believing in and obeying Christ, he delivers himself from the ravages of time and history, becoming one with the Savior.3
3 Robert E. Bjork, The Old English Saints' Lives: A Study in Direct Discourse and the Iconography of Style (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1985) 123. Introduction
Bede
In Section Two, "Patterns of Remembrance," because my focus was on
defining the characteristics of the four streams of Anglo-Saxon
historical tradition, I used aspects of a variety of works from the Old
English period, poetic and prosaic, Latin and Anglo-Saxon, secular and
religious, to illustrate those individual characteristics. At times, I
even repeatedly used the same part of a particular work, such as
Widsid, to illustrate several different, often unrelated points and
thereby incidentally also indicated the inseparable nature of these
traditions. However, in order to understand fully the working and
interweaving in narrative of these traditional approaches to history,
it is necessary to examine how poets created and shaped entire
individual works in terms of the patterns outlined in the preceding
section.
In choosing the works for treatment in this section, I was guided by several basic criteria. First, to be chosen, a work both had to have as its most basic purpose the telling of a story which the author presented as true and had to be of sufficient breadth and length to allow for the extended use of narrative-historical patterns; on these grounds, the elegies and such brief poems as Dream of the Rood and
Maldon were dismissed from consideration. Second, a work had to
190 19i
provide ample evidence of having been profoundly and extensively
influenced by at least two opposing traditions, Germanic and Christian,
oral and written; on these grounds, such lengthy but almost exclusively
Christian narratives as Juliana and such contemplative works as Christ
and Satan were also dismissed. Third, in its surviving form, it had to
be generally accepted to be the product of one author; on these
grounds, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, despite its obvious historical
focus, was dismissed. Finally, wishing to use the smallest number of
works to illustrate the greatest degree of difference in authorial
handling of the conflict and reconciliation of the four historical
traditions, I chose works which by methodology and point of view, if
not by date, illustrated stages in the transition from oral to literate
and from Germanic-pagan to Christian. In light of these principles,
two choices seemed self-evident— Bede's Ecclesiastical History and
Beowulf; the third choice, Andreas, requires a bit more justification.
I begin this section with a brief, almost prefatory discussion of
Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Analorum because it represents the
earliest extended attempt to reconcile the historical matter of England with the historical vision of Christianity, a focus implied even in its
title, which also forms the first four words of Bede's Preface to the work. As a work written in Latin prose, the History is a clear
representative of the new tradition; the thoughtful approach to the writing of history Bede expresses in his Preface, combined with a breadth of vision and incident on matters of native English history
akin to that found in the digressions of Beowulf, also allows us to see 192 how Bede's vision of history, as well as his approach to the task of writing it, varied from that of other early Christian historians.
It is in the native poetry, however, that the first major evidence of the interaction of the old and new historical traditions can be found, and it is for this reason that I have devoted the major chapters in this section to a discussion of two lengthy poetic narratives, one in the native tradition, the other in the Christian. Aside from its general excellence, Beowulf is the only complete, extended work in the
Old English corpus representative in content and theme of the matter of pre-Christian Germanic history. Furthermore, as I will demonstrate shortly, it combines breadth of vision and incident with unity of theme. My reasons for selecting Andreas, a poem referred to by one critic as the product of a "poetical dunderhead,1" are equally valid, if less self-evident. On non-aesthetic grounds, the work qualifies by both its length, which is comparable to that of the Beowulf, and its completeness; more significant is the fact that it possesses a greater breadth of vision and incident than any of the other hagiographical narratives, except perhaps Elene. Furthermore, while the poem's indebtedness to a Latin hagiography places it firmly in the literate-
Christian tradition, its often-discussed stylistic ties to Beowulf, combined with its frequent use of heroic language and sentiment, suit it admirably to a study of the fusion of these four historical traditions.
* Eric Gerald Stanley, "Beowulf." Continuations and Beginnings; Studies in Old English Literature, ed. E. G. Stanley (London: Nelson, 1966) 114. 193
At the earliest stages, the interaction between the old and new traditions was more one of information than methodology— Ccdmon set to heroic verse the stories of the new religion, Bede in his
Ecclesiastical History of the English People had to contend with the matter of pre-conversion Britain. In fact, it is in Bede's History that we are able to see a historical methodology developing which, although almost purely of the literate-Christian traditions, provides insight into the paths along which the eventual reconciliation would take place.
These is no doubt that Bede's Ecclesiastical History both was written in and was regarded by its author as representing the new approach to history brought to England from Rome: Bede's upbringing, as might be expected for a man who entered a monastery at the age of seven,4 necessitated this; his Preface to the History espouses this; and modem studies of his sources confirm this. Indeed, the Preface to his History, in its listing of sources, provides us with some particularly interesting evidence regarding Bede's own sense of the tradition in which he was writing. Here the author, in addition to making a conventional statement that his materials are drawn from proper authorities, also gives specific credit, rather
4 Patrick Wormald points out that the fact that Bede entered the monastery at Jarrow is vitally important, because at that particular community, whose founder Benedict Biscop stringently pursued in art and letters the values of "ultramontanism" and rejected the native aristocratic practices followed in many other Germanic monasteries, Bede would have been especially "cut off from contemporary aristocratic society and its values, and buried..., from boyhood, in a world of books," books reflective of Christian belief, culture, and scholarship (Patrick Wormald, "Bede, Beowulf, and the Conversion of the Anglo-Saxon Aristocracy," Bede and Anglo-Saxon England. British Archaeological Reports 46 (1978) 62-63). 194 uncharacteristically for historians of his time, to those sources he finds especially worthy of note. Interestingly enough, all of the authors he mentions by name are English, English churchmen to be exact.
No mention is made, for example, of Gildas at this point, although much of the material of the entire first book, which has as its subject pre conversion Britain, is drawn from that author's De Excidio et Conauesto
Britanniae:3 such an omission is made all the more interesting by the fact that towards the end of this book (HE I, 22) Bede does mention
Gildas and accords him the title historicus, a term he applies to none of the authors whose names he mentions in his Preface. Similarly, he makes no mention of Orosius or Eusebius, although scholars generally agree that he was not only familiar with the works of these historians but more significantly that he also was working in "the tradition of
Eusebius and OrosiusI,1 fitting British and English history into the history of salvation" (Hanning 67).
Although we, reading the History now in full knowledge of Bede's acknowledged and unacknowledged sources, may find these 'oversights' glaring, Bede himself indicates to his readers elsewhere in the Preface his reasons for pointing his mentioned sources in such a narrow way.
I warmly welcome the diligent zeal and sincerity with which you study the words of Holy Scripture and your eager desire to know something of the doings and sayings of men of the past, and of famous men of our own nation in particular. For if history records good things of good men, the thoughtful hearer is encouraged to imitate what is good: or if it records evil of wicked men, the devout, religious listener or reader is encouraged to avoid all that is sinful
3 For a full examination of the extent of Bede's debt to Gildas, as well as of his adaptation of that historian's material, see: Robert W. Hanning, The Vision of History in Early Britain (New York: Columbia UP, 1966) 71-84. 195
and perverse and to follow what he knows to be good and pleasing to God (HE Preface).*
In this, his opening address to King Ceolwulf, by praising his patron
for an interest not just in the Holy Scriptures but also in secular,
especially native, historical traditions, Bede both identifies his work
as concerning the matter of England and equates the purpose of his
native history with the exemplary, didactic historical approach of the
Scriptures.
At the conclusion to the Preface, Bede again places his work
firmly within the world of native historical tradition when he asks
that he be forgiven any inaccuracies in his work— they are the result
of his methodology, the gathering of what is known by common report
("quae fama vulgante collegimus"), which is, after all, the true law of
history ("quod vera lex historiae est").
I humbly beseech the reader, that if he shall find anything set down otherwise than truth in this that I have written, he will not impute it unto us, as the which have endeavored with all sincerity to put in writing to the instruction of our
* Bede, A History of the English Church and People, trans. and ed. Leo Sherley-Price, rev. ed. R. E. Latham (1955; New York: Penguin Books, 1968) 33. Satisque studium tuae sinceritatis amplector, quo non solum audiendis Scripturae sanctae verbis aurem sedulus accommodas, verum etiam noscendis priorum gestis sive dictis et maxime nostrae gentis virorum illustrium, curam vigilanter impendis. Sive enim historia de bonis bona referat, ad imitandum bonum auditor sollicitus instigatur; seu mala commemoret de pravis, nihilominus religiosus ac pius auditor sive lector devitando quod noxium est ac perversum, ipse sollertius ad exsequenda ea quae bona ac Deo digna esse cognoverit, accenditur (Baedae, Opera Historica. 2 vols., ed. with trans. J. E. King (London: William Heinemann; New York: Putnam, 1930). Unless otherwise indicated, all future quotations from Bede' Ecclesiastical History will be taken from the King edition if in Latin and from the Sherley-Price translation if in English. 196
after comers such things as we have gathered by common report, which is the true law of history (HE Preface).7
This statement, one of the most frequently pondered in all of Bede's
writings, is especially interesting because although Bede uses it
elsewhere to explain apparent inaccuracies in the Gospel accounts and
even in this use is echoing the words of Jerome's discussion of the
same scriptural passage,* his definition of the true law of history,
that is, his equation of historical accuracy with popular belief rather
than isolated fact, is reminiscent of the historical vision of the
Germanic scop, who strove to preserve not events as they truely
happened, or even as he interpreted them, but rather as they were
recalled to have happened by his people.* In his Preface, then, both
by his definition of his task and by the listing of his sources, Bede
7 Lectoremque suppliciter obsecro, ut si qua in his quae scripsimus aliter quara se veritas habet posita repererit, non hoc nobis imputet qui, quod vera lex historiae est, simpliciter ea quae fama vulgante collegimus ad instructionem posteritatis literis mandare studuimus. Although as a rule I use King's bi-lingual edition of Bede's History only for the Latin text because I find Sherley-Price's English translation to be less ponderous and for the most part equally reliable, in this instance I have used King's rendering of this selection because I find it to be both more precise and a better reflection of Bede's meaning.
* Peter Hunter Blair, "The Historical Writings of Bede," La Storioaraphia Altomedievale 17 (1970): 201-2. Blair points out that Bede uses this phrase first in his scriptural commentary on Luke, in which Joseph is referred to as Jesus' father, an expression which Bede, in imitation of Jerome, attributes to the fact that "there is a distinction...between revealed truth and what was held to be true among common people."
* Bede seems to be implying a debt to native historical traditions again in the autobiographical note which he appends to the History, in which he states that he has drawn his material "from ancient writings, from the traditions of our forebears, and from my own personal knowledge" ["vel ex literis antiquorum, vel ex traditione maiorum, vel ex mea ipse cognitione"1. 197
declares his work to be national rather than universal in scope,
religious rather than secular in significance, and written in a
methodology which though clearly literate finds some affinity with the
native oral historical tradition.
Despite this stated intention to concern himself with national
history, Bede's work is nothing like that of other early Christian
historians of Germanic nations, such as Paul the Deacon, writing in the
late eighth century of the Lombards, and Widukind, writing in the mid
tenth of the Saxons. Although these men were writing after Bede, their
works devote much more attention, and much more enthusiasm, to the
events in their nations' histories that occurred prior to their
conversion. Wormald points out, for example, that Paul spends far more
time giving "rousing stories" of his people's pagan past, offered
"usually without censure," than on their conversion and post-conversion history; similarly, although Widukind tells almost nothing of his nation's conversion, perhaps because that event was "too painfully
associated with memories of Frankish conquest," he tells so much about
their pagan history that it is now possible "to reconstruct the pagan iconography of the Wesermund bracteates" based solely on his account
(59). Even Gregory of Tours in his late sixth century history of the
Franks, a work which is far more limited in focus than Bede's history,
focusing as it does primarily on "the period of his own active life"
(Wormald 59) and which has as its purpose "to record the history of the
Franks as a chapter in the history of salvation," fails to maintain or even fully establish a unity of perspective. As Hanning, among others, points out: "attempts at interpretation in the tradition of the 198
Christian theology of history remain in contrast to Gregory's keen
awareness of harsh barbarian reality; the miracles of Frankish saints
and the feuds of Frankish warriors compete for our attention at every
turn" (69). Only the mid-sixth century historian Gildas, in his
history of the Britons, maintains a unity of tone and purpose
throughout his work, whether writing of his people's pagan past (Chaps.
3-7), their conversion (Chaps. 8-12), or their subsequent history of
success and failure in morality and prosperity.1*
Bede, by contrast, passes over the entire history of his native
people, the Anglo-Saxons, prior to their conquest of the errant though
Christian Britons, and even of this involvement he gives little
information, turning his attention almost immediately from their
conquest of England in the mid-fifth century to the sending of
Augustine's mission from Rome at the close of the sixth. As Wormald so
effectively puts it: "Bede turned upon the heroes of the English pre-
Christian past his unrivalled capacity for withering silence" (60).
Similarly, unlike Gregory, who spent much of his work strongly
criticizing what he considered to be the immoral practices of the
Frankish nobility, Bede avoids the problem entirely, failing to record not just the deeds of his pagan forebearers but also the lapses in
t# It should be noted that Gildas did not see his work primarily as a history, and the distribution of history to hortatory, (26 chapters to 83) bears him out in this opinion. In his eyes, it was "a tract addressed to his nation, and especially to some of its errant rulers, rebuking them for their evil ways, warning against the vengeance of an angry God, and urging immediate and sincere repentance" (Hanning 45). Clearly, Gildas, in writing De Excidio et Conctuestu Britanniae, had more in common in purpose with Wulstan, in writing Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, than with Bede, in writing his History. Nevertheless, it is of Gildas that Bede uses the term historicus. 199
morality and faith occurring in his own period, except in those
instances which were either too well known to overlook or proved to be
temporary and subsequently rectified abberations, mentioning, for
example, the apostasy of the kings of Bemicia, only to tell us that
they were destroyed soon after abandoning their Christian faith by the
"godless" Cadwalla who in turn, after a year of tyranny, was defeated
by King Oswald, a model of Christian faith (HE III, 1). Indeed this
particular account gives us great insight into Bede's methodology.
This year remains accursed and hateful to all good men, not only on account of the apostasy of the English kings, by which they divested themselves of the sacraments of the Faith, but also because of the savage tyranny of the British king. Hence all those calculating the reigns of kings have agreed to expunge the memory of these apostate kings and to assign this year to the reign of their successor King Oswald, a man beloved of God (fffi I1*-
Bede's statement that this year was so terrible that regnal
chronographers have wiped it from reckoning is reminiscent of his own
custom of not recording those things better left unremembered. In
other words, Bede's tendency to remain silent on those events which are bad examples, despite his statement in the Preface that such incidents
can be instructive, is fully in keeping with history as it was practiced in England, in keeping, that is, with the true law of secular history among his people.
But what guided Bede in his decisions regarding what was worthy of being remembered and what not? After all, he chooses to tell his
1‘ Infaustus ille annus et omnibus bonis exosus usque hodie permanet, tarn propter apostasiam regum Anglorum qua se fidei sacramentis exuerant, quam propter vesanam Bretonici regis tyrannidem. Unde cunctis placuit regum tempora computantibus, ut ablata de medio regum perfidiorum memoria, idem annus sequentis regis, id est, Osualdi, viri Deo dilecti regno adsignaretur. audience of Che apostasy of these two kings, an event which English secular historians, for their own reasons, elected to delete from their records. Clearly, in some measure, he was guided, as he states in the
Preface, by a desire to focus on those things from which a lesson could be learned. Indeed, Wormald contends that Bede's is "one of the most morally didactic histories of the whole medieval period" (63).
Nevertheless, his work is didactic in a very particular way: his focus is on good men and not just on good men in the abstract sense but rather on men who revealed their goodness by advancing the cause of
Christ in society; evil men are to be mentioned only when as a result of their actions the hand of God can be seen to be acting all the more clearly: the sinning kings of Bemicia are given a place in Bede's
History not just because in their defeat by that evil and godless tyrant Cadwall could be seen the scourging hand of God but also because their defeat made the eventual victory of Oswald all the more dramatic, all the more meaningful, all the more pre-ordained, a point Bede emphasizes by devoting the succeeding 12 chapters of Book III to
Oswald, describing both his achievements in this world and the miracles connected to him after his death.
Indeed the arrangement of the Oswald section provides us with insight into Bede's historical methodology. First he acquaints his audience fully with all that Oswald accomplished during his reign--the defeat of Cadwalla, the conversion of his people through the ministry of Aidan, whose mission was in response to Oswald's request to the
Scots for a teacher, and the establishment of peace between the warring factions among within his kingdom. Next Bede elaborates greatly on all 201
Che miracles attendant upon Oswald's death. Bede's purpose here seems clear, to show God's providence working among the English people through Oswald and to affirm, lest any should doubt It, the divine
Inspiration of all that Oswald achieved. In the account of Oswald, then, we see operating two of the most basic principles of Bede's historical method: first that the writing of history simply and solely
Involves making clear to those who come after the pattern of God's will
In the actions of the past, and second, that. In the words of Hanning,
"to Bede...the Christian vision [of history] Is preeminently a social one In the last analysis" (85).
There Is, however, another vision at work In Bede's History, a pattern which unlike the two just discussed. Is entirely alien to the native historical tradition of England, a tradition which In both Its poetry and Its regnal lists was socially oriented and which also was directed towards delineating the patterns Inherent In the history of a nation's past. Throughout his work this Interaction between meaning and 'pastness' Is at all times complemented by a vision of the future, seen by the historian though as yet not experienced In history. This habit of mind Is evident very early In the history, most notably In
Book I, Chapter 1, In which Bede describes Britain as a land of "five languages and four nations— English, British, Scots, and PictsI:] each of these have their own language; but all are united In their study of
God's truth by the fifth— Latin— which has become a common medium through the study of the scriptures."13 It Is clear that In this
12 Haec In praesentl,...qulnque gentium llnguls,...Anglorum videlicet, Brettonum, Scottorum, Plctorum, et Latinorum, quae medltatlone Scripturarum ceteris omnibus est facta communis. 202
passage Bede is presenting Britain not as it was for the great majority
of people in his day, that is, divided by four languages, but rather as
he sees it will be, united by the language of God.
Bede's future-oriented habit of mind, however, is nowhere more
evident than in his account of the scattering of the Britons.
Amid the wreckage of deserted cities destroyed by the enemy, the citizens who had survived the enemy now attacked each other....Then were all restraints of truth and justice so utterly abandoned that no trace of them remained, and very few people even recalled their existence. Among other unspeakable crimes, recorded with sorrow by their own historian Gildas, they added this— that they never preached the Faith to the Saxons or Angles who dwelt with them in Britain. But God in his goodness did not utterly abandon the people whom he had chosen; for he remembered them, and sent this nation more worthy preachers of truth to bring them to the Faith (HE I, 22).
Here Bede turns Gildas' account of the providential destruction of the
earliest inhabitants of England into a vision of the destiny of the new
nation as yet unborn. Where Gildas is still wholely concerned with
providence, that is, with a present and future fixed by the deeds of
the past, Bede accepts that providential reading of the past and turns
his attention to destiny, that is, to a future known but visible only
as a starting place stretching off into uncharted territory, a
territory whose boundaries have still not been reached by the end of
Bede's journey through his nation's history:
14 Nanebant exterminia civitatum ab hoste dirutarum ac desertarum, pugnabant contra invicem qui hostem evaserant cives....ita cuncta veritatis ac justitiae moderamina concussa ac subversa sunt, ut earum non dicam vestigium, sed ne memoria quidem, praeter in paucis et valde paucis ulla appareret. Qui inter alia inenarrabilium scelerum facta, quae historicus eorum Gildas flebili sermone describit, et hoc addebant, ut numquam genti Saxonum sive Anglorum secum Brittaniam incolenti, verbum fidei praedicando committerent. Sed non tamen divina pietas plebem suam, quam praescivit, deseruit, quin multo digniores genti memoratae praecones veritatis, per quos crederet, destinavit. 203
As such peace and prosperity prevail in these days, many of the Northumbrians, both noble and simple, together with their children, have laid aside their weapons, preferring to receive the tonsure and take monastic vows rather than study ' the arts of war. What the result of this will be the future will show. This then is the present state of Britain, about two hundred and eighty years after the coming of the English to Britain, but seven hundred and thirty-one years since our Lord's Incarnation. May the world rejoice under his eternal rule, and Britain glory in his Faith. Let the multitude of isles be glad thereof, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness (HE V, 23).14
It is on this note of destiny, of hope and certainty, that Bede concludes his History of the English Church and People, ends without ending, transforming past into future, binding the past of his nation
to the eternal rule of God.
It seems clear, when we compare Bede's work with that of other early Christian native historians, that the vera lex historiae of Bede refers not just to what the historian records about the past but also
to how the past is recorded and united with the future. Moreover, the law of history he is following owes as much to the native customs of his people as to the doctrine of Christianity. Like the Anglo-Saxon scop telling the tales of his people in terms of the true patterns of underlying all action, Bede presents his story of the famous men of his nation in terms of the one true pattern underlying all their actions,
44 Qua adridente pace ac serenitate temporum, plures in gente Nordanhymbrorum, tarn nobiles quam privati, se suosque liberos depositis armis satagunt magis accepta tonsura monasterialibus adscribere votis, quam bellicis exercere studiis. Quae res quern set habitura finem, posterior aetas videbit. Hie est impraesentiarum universae status Brittaniae, anno adventus Anglorum in Brittaniam circiter ducentesimo octogesimo quinto, Dominicae autem incamationis anno septingentesimo trice simo primo: in cuis regno perpetuo exultet terra, et congratulante in fide eius Brittania laetentur insulae multae, et confiteantur memoriae sanctitatis eius. Che pattern of God's saving hand working through his favored nation, bringing them to unity and prosperity under Him. Finally, presenting his History in terms of a pattern evident in events past but to be completed in events yet to come, Bede paves the way for the acceptance by the native historical tradition, with its emphasis on patterns of action whose meaning is set in events already past, of the new
Christian vision of history, with its emphasis on patterns of action whose meaning await future fulfillment. Chapter One
Beowulf
In Che passage employed as the first headnote to this section,
Stanley Greenfield attributes to Beowulf a characteristic which he contends both creates the poem's epic quality and sets it apart from other epics, that is, its self-contained sense of "historic destiny."
J. R. Tolkien seems to foreshadow Greenfield's point regarding both the weight of history in the poem and the source of that weight in the
Germanic tradition when in his famous 1936 article he writes that in
Beowulf "the author has used an instinctive historical sense, a part indeed of the ancient English temper."13 Roberta Frank also attributes to the Beowulf poet a "sense of history," notable in particular in the poem's avoidance of anachronisms, internal consistency, and
"chronological acrobatics," although she sees the poet's time sense not as a product of his heritage but rather as extraordinary and "full of oddly advanced notions."11 However, although the introductions to most editions of Beowulf focus largely on the poem’s historical background, not all critics agree with Greenfield, Tolkien, and Frank about the
15 J. R. R. Tolkien, "Beowulf; the Monsters and the Critics," PBA 22 (1936): 247.
14 Roberta Frank, "The Beowulf Poet's Sense of History," "Beowulf": M o d e m Critical Interpretations, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House Publications, 1987) 54.
205 206 historical viewpoint of the poem. Morton Bloomfield, for example, comments on what he calls the "lack of true historical perspective" in
the poem, and Adelaide Hardy contests Tolkien's reading of Beowulf,
saying "it is to be doubted that before the coming of Christianity the
Anglo-Saxons possessed 'an instinctive historical sense.'1,1 7
Such contradictory readings of Beowulf return us momentarily to the dispute discussed in Chapter Two of Section One regarding the historicity of Maldon. Once again, we find ourselves forced to ask how it is possible to account for such different answers to the same question, and once again the source of dissension is the definition of history, more specifically, a definition of history based on a modern rather Anglo-Saxon point of view. As Hardy says, "the urge to create an identity through the illusion of continuity with the past is obviously different from 'historical sense,' which depends on the desire to distinguish between fact and fiction, and the ability to place events in their proper chronological context," the desire and ability, that is, "to preserve the details and chronology of events from the past" (431, 441). Bloomfield bases his rejection of the historical sense in Beowulf on the same modern principles when he condemns the Beowulf poet for simultaneously presenting his hero as a pagan and occasionally having him express general Christian sentiments
(371).
17 Morton W. Bloomfield, "Patristics and Old English Literature," An Anthology of "Beowulf" Criticism, ed. Lewis E. Nicholson (Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 1963) 371 n. 6; Adelaide Hardy, "Historical Perspectives and the Beowulf Poet," Neophil 63 (1979) 441. As I will be demonserating subsequently in this chapter, these criticisms of the poem are accurate. They are not, however, valid— not in their assertion that the native tradition, which countenanced chronological and factual irregularities, cannot be equated with history and not in terms of the principles we know to have guided the oral, Germanic sense and presentation of the past. Indeed, even the most untrained modern reader cannot escape the weight of history that seems to pour out of Beowulf from its opening description of the founding of the Scylding dynasty to its closing description of the impending destruction of the Geats. When our own historical prejudice and knowledge is held at bay, everything in the poem contributes to this effect: the methodology with its reliance on allusions and tale- telling; the internal viewpoint with both its presentation of all events in the poem as inextricably bound to a time continuum which begins and ends in the past and its emphasis on the individual as the representative of his society; and the speaker's viewpoint with its distanced voice which asserts the poem's world to be admirable yet lacking a future. In this way, the Beowulf poet conveys simultaneously the sense that this poem contains all history and that in this history is contained all the sense of the poem. Beowulf's world feels both broad and closed, hemmed in by the weight of history.
It is through the poem's methodology and style, both of which owe much to the oral historical tradition, that the audience of Beowulf first becomes aware of the weight of history. Indeed, lack of understanding and appreciation of the workings of this tradition has resulted in many rather harsh criticisms of the poem's narrative 208 approach. E. G. Stanley, for example, in his insightful analysis of
"The Narrative Art of Beowulf." summarizes what are often cited as the
"deficiencies of its (the poem's] narrative art: lack of steady advance; lack of narrative turning point demanding resolution; lack of the critical point of the action."1* Similarly, Paul Bauschatz writes of what he terms the poem's lack of narrative continuity: "Some events are presented in chronological order...but the direct evolution of one event into another is not emphasized....Likewise, events are not likely to follow one another with any strong feeling of cause and effect."1*
Such a style has led many critics to describe the poem's style as non narrative. In fact, in the true sense of the word narrative, Beowulf can be described by no other term so well, in that its methodology at its most basic is pure story-telling.3* What the style of the poem
l* E. G. Stanley, "The Narrative Art of Beowulf.11 Medieval Narrative: a Symposium, ed. Hans Bekker-Nielsen, et al (Odense: Odense UP, 1979) 66.
13 Paul C. Bauschatz, The Well and the Tree (Amherst, MA: U of Massachusetts P, 1982) 95. Dorothy Whitelock makes a similar point when she states, regarding the presentation of the "allusions of lesser or greater length to other stories," that "an ignorant audience might not only fail to see the bearing of the several detached allusions, but might well fail to connect them with one another, separated as they are by stretches of text dealing with other matters (Dorothy Whitelock, The Audience of Beowulf. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951) 34).
aa Although many critics use the word narrative as though it carried with it restriction to a linear format, the Latin root of the word, narro, simply means 'to tell' or ’to relate.' Hence, a narrative, or narratio. is a 'telling' or 'relating,' that is, a story. If any word in English is to be associated with the linear progression in a narrative, it is probably ’plot,' derived as it is from the idea of marking a course or charting a plan, a meaning from which all other related uses of the word ’plot' are derived— a devious plan, a specified area of land the boundaries of which are marked with reference to a ground plan, etc. Along these lines, I would agree that Beowulf is a narrative in which the elements of the story cannot be plotted, that is, cannot be made to chart a linear course. 209 undoubtedly is, however, is non-progressive, and in this it is representative of the oral approach to telling or shaping history.
Oral history, for a variety of reasons discussed in the previous sections, is incapable of sustaining extended linear actions, and although the Beowulf poet, by virtue of his literacy, an issue to which
I will return shortly, would have been able to develop a linear narrative, there are astonishingly few linear developments for him to work with in the story of his hero as he presents it: the hero as a young man comes to Denmark.and rids old King Hropgar of two monsters which have been plaguing his kingdom; the hero returns home in triumph and tells his own king, Hygelac, of his feat; the hero as an old man and a renowned and successful king of his people fights and kills a dragon which has been ravaging his land, but dies as a result.
Clearly, there could have been much more to the story than the poet chose to give us— what of the hero's childhood, his battles for his own king, his winning of the throne? That the poet 'knew' more is evident in the fact that we are told at least something about each of these events, but always they are presented almost as asides to the main story. We can only conclude that Beowulf lacks narrative progression because the poet chose to present his story in this way.
Why might the poet have made such a choice as this? In part, the answer lies in Greenfield's reading of the poem, cited at the start of this section: "In Beowulf,...history subsumes the hero as individual," and in this fact the poem strongly reflects both the oral and Germanic senses of history, since the function of individuals in these traditions is representative and exemplary, not personal. In keeping 210 with this point of view, what the poem lacks in narrow linear development of the life of its hero, it makes up for, indeed gains, in historical continuity and breadth of vision. As Bauschatz rightly points out, in Beowulf "the importance of any action lies not so much in the process or manner of its occurence but in the fact of this occurence and the possibilities this fact has for allowing the action, now fixed, to be related to other facts" (97).31 In this quest for relationship, the movement of the poem constantly spreads horizontally from a point in its vertical narrative axis, outwards to other action- facts, usually referred to, inaccurately, as digressions, each of which expands through contrast or reflection the historical significance of the individual hero's action, before returning eventually to the poem's vertical axis. As John Niles points out, in Beowulf, events "are wrapped in layers of allusions to other analogous events from the realm of history and legend,...the poet's emphasis...not on ultimate things but on the integrity of human action in a time-bound world."32
31 Bauschatz proceeds to point out the poet's presentation of "action as fact (or related as fact)" (98), existing in the poem on the same plane of existence as any other fact, a sword, a place, a hall, a treasure, a name...a history.
33 John D. Niles, "Beowulf11; The Poem and its Traditions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1983) 194. In a chapter entitled "The Dimension of Time" (181-193), Niles determines that the poem involves the complex interweaving of six "temporal relationships": 1) "mythic past" (Creation, Cain and Abel, the Flood), a level which both is distant and holds the prospect of "potential presentness" through God's presence and living power (183); 2) "legendary past," the level of "timeless" exemplary heroes such as Sigemund and Heremod; 3) "historical past" (Geats and Hrodgar), the level in which the past, present, and future in the narrative unfold; 4) "present of the poem's performance (real or imagined) (181),... identifiable chiefly through narrative asides" (188); 5) the level of "the present reading of the text" (181); and 6) "mythic future," the level which, though introduced "only in passing" (193) "answers to the 211
Such a movement has little in common with the single-minded,
steady advancement we associate with pursuit of the course of rising
action; rather it resembles a dance,2* and like a dance its raison
d'etre lies in pattern not progress. The quality of pattern in the
narrative style of the Beowulf poet was perhaps first noted by John
Leyerle in his application to the poem of the interlace technique
characteristic of Anglo-Saxon art. This pattern, which involves not
just the weaving together of many separate strands but also the
blurring of distinctions between the heads and the tails of individual
elements, especially in zoomorphic design, is relevant not just to the
binding together of hero and allusion but also to the presentation of
individual stories in segments the chronological order of which is
often difficult to determine. Note, for example, how stories of the
falls of the Geatish and Scylding dynasties are broken up, presented in bits and pieces throughout the poem in such a way that it is almost
necessary for the chronologically-minded reader to take notes in order
to reassemble the cause and effect relationship between the various parts; note also how the tales of Beowulf's youth are embedded in the mythic past and thereby provides a framework within which all profane history takes its course" (193). Niles also points out, however, that despite the existence of these different historical levels, "the action of the poem can tnotl be plotted on a time-line like the events of history"— each action can, and often must, be seen not in isolation but in a temporal dimension of richness and depth" (180).
** This image of dance was suggested by Stanley's rendering of Wilhelm Grimm's description of the movement of folk-epic: "our poet keeps good measure in tarrying and in advancing, he shows ease (Unbefangenheit) and skill in breaking off and in linking together" ("Narrative Art" 66). [The punctuation of Stanley's translation of Grimm's sentence is a bit unclear— either there should be a comma after "tarrying" or there should be a semi-colon after "advancing;" I would opt for the latter.] 212 account of his exploits in Denmark and how the events of his intervening years are divided up and buried in the telling of his final encounter. As a result of this approach, much of the narrative action in Beowulf is both allusive, and thereby relies on audience knowledge to provide details, and elusive, and thereby implies that knowledge of temporal connections is not entirely relevant or necessary to the movement of the poem. It is also the poet's tendency to juxtapose two apparently unrelated narrative events, without "expressed logical connection between the apposed elements," which has caused Fred
Robinson to term the overall style of Beowulf "appositive," a style patterned after the old English poetic syntactic device employed in variation and nominal compounds.34
The extent to which this interlace or appositive technique is developed and implemented in Beowulf seems to be unique to this poem.
For example, while the use of the interlace pattern in Beowulf has much in common with the use of repetition and variation in oral history, in that both rely on doubling back to get their point across, in Beowulf the function of the device runs far deeper than the establishment of continuity and remembrance. As Leyerle points out, in the poem,
"events widely separated in time are juxtaposed and so connected as to reveal the ironies and portents difficult to perceive in a chronological account."23 While Leyerle focuses on the interrelationship of events, in fact the poet interweaves not just
24 Fred C. Robinson, "Beowulf and the Appositive Style (Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1985) 3.
23 John Leyerle, "Beowulf, the Hero and the King," M 34 (1965): 96. 213 actions along the horizontal and vertical axes but also action and reflection, reflection expressed in gnomic statements, in speeches, in descriptions. Indeed, Stanley would include in the reflective component of the poem all those events which move along the horizontal axis: Beowulf in single combat with silent monsters advances the action "balanced always against" the reflective weight of
"descriptions, digressions, and episodes," a distinctive relationship through which is created a "many stranded reference to a central moral theme" ("Narrative Art" 62, 70). Seen in this light, Beowulf reveals itself to be a poem of nine parts reflection, conveyed in analogues and gnomic speeches, to each individual 'historic' action performed by the hero.
This sense of pattern designed to highlight moral reflection is heightened by the literate historical elements to which Beowulf owes a great, if not immediately apparent, debt. Although the debate over oral versus written composition of Beowulf has raged almost since the first critics approached the poem, the case for a literate creator of the work in the form in which we now have it grows stronger every year, with most critics now agreeing that while some of the material in the poem may have "come to the author in [pre-existing] metrical form," such sections have been so thoroughly integrated into the fabric of the work as a whole that even they cannot be removed "by mere excision, however ingeniously done."2* Evidence of literacy, however, is not
** Frederick Klaeber, Introduction, Beowulf, 3rd ed. with 1st and 2nd supp. (Lexington, MA: Heath, 1950) ciii. All references to the text are drawn from this edition. Whitelock approaches the issue of literate composition from a different perspective, pointing to the existence in the poem of Latin 214
evidence of a literate approach to history— of the latter there is none
in the poem. The nature of a far more subtle debt is perhaps best
expressed by Stanley:
Though the devices of sense and sound, variation and paronomasia, could in themselves be explained as the vehicles of an associative imagination working extempore, when they come, as in Beowulf, in combination with the careful exploitation of every aspect of what was available to an Old English poet, it seems more likely that this highly wrought poem is the product of a lettered poet, or at least of a slow, non-extemporising poet (“Beowulf11 127).
In other words, literacy enabled the poet to use to fullest advantage
the characteristics of the oral approach to composition and to history.
For example, while it is not possible to argue absolutely that an oral poet would have been incapable of composing and reciting a work the length of Beowulf, it does seem unlikely that an oral poet could have created a work of such length, possessing such consistency of theme,
tightness of expression, and compression of multiple narrative strands.
Indeed, it could be argued that by choosing to extend to literate length a tale told in the oral style, the Beowulf poet immeasurably complicated his task. Rather than interweaving analogous allusions with a brief account of a single heroic encounter or steadily and
loan words, references to rather obscure elements of the Bible, such as the giants of Genesis, and easy use of Christian poetic formulas; although I do not agree with all of her conclusions, such as her contention that the poem must be rather late because in the practice of conversion,"stories of the Old Testament could be left till later," her evidence for Christian and therefore learned composition is convincing (7, 5-11). Another critic has even argued that in composition style, Beowulf may owe more to late classical, that is non-Homeric, epic than to oral poetry, citing as proof the surprising lack of formular economy and strict repetition (Alistair Campbell, "The Use in Beowulf of Earlier Heroic Verse," England Before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources Presented to Dorothy Whitelock. ed. P. Clemoes and K. Hughes (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1971) 283-92). 215
single-mindedly building a single plot with many related elements, the
Beowulf poet interwove analogies with an extended account of several
events in a single hero's life.
Another example of a way in which the Beowulf poet used the
flexibility literacy brought him to heighten, and perhaps even alter,
the effect created by an oral technique lies in his handling of repetition. While some have criticized the poem for being repetitive, in fact, rather than relying on simple repetition to reinforce his point, as an oral poet might, the author of Beowulf on occasion chose
to present the same event, such as the killing of Grendel and his dam or the Geatish wars, in multiple accounts between which exist slight variations that create a sense of multiple perspectives. Undoubtedly, the best analysis of the creation by the poet of such a multi-faceted point of view is Greenfield's already cited article "The Geatish Wars:
Poetic Art and Epic Quality in Beowulf."
Greenfield points out how each of the three accounts of Geatish history in the second half of the poem presents the story from a slightly different perspective. In the first passage, the narrator provides a link between his hero's actions as a youth in Denmark and the upcoming battle with the dragon, recounting the primary activities of Beowulf's life and focusing in particular on his role in the events in Geatish history which lead to him becoming king (1. 2354-96).
Greenfield points out that although we might expect the theme of this section to be heroics, the story as told focuses less on actual combat than on survival and misfortune:
In brief, the poet...has so colored his historical picture that he depicts Beowulf's career as one of survival in a 216
world in which even the best must fall, friend and foe alike: the great Geat Hygelac, the helpful Heardred, the aggressive but admirable Onela. 'Sic transit gloria mundi'--and Beowulf goes to fight the dragon (213).
In the second passage (1. 2425-2508a), Beowulf is the speaker, and not surprisingly, his speech, a warrior's “qylp" (215) delivered as he prepares to enter into combat with the dragon, is more heroic in tone and theme, focusing not only on the glories and sorrow of familial and political loyalty and vengeance, illustrated by events in Geatish history, but also on his own actions as loyal retainer and avenger of
Hygelac. In the final passage (1. 2922-98), which occurs after
Beowulf's death, the messenger tells of the impending doom awaiting the
Geatish nation at the hands of the Swedes, a result of prior warfare between the two nations, strife which he attributes to the resumption by the Geats of a long-standing feud: "8a for onmedlan arest gesohton
/ Geata leode Gud-Scilfingas" (then out of arrogance the Geatish people sought out the Swedes). Greenfield concludes that in such subtle variations of tone, theme, content, and detail,37 the Beowulf poet in these three accounts presents us "with refractions of historical truth seen through the prisms of the speaker's perspectives and states of mind" (216), creating thereby through an oral technique a sense of historical truth which has little in common with the communal
’I ' of the oral historian.
37 Greenfield discusses numerous discrepancies in detail between the three accounts--for example, the lonely survivor, "earm anhaga" (1. 2368), of the first becomes the avenging warrior of the second— and contends that these differences are not evidence of multiple authors or scribal errors but rather reflections of deliberately created differing viewpoints on the same events. 217
The heightened effects created by this delicate balance between
oral and literate methodology in Beowulf is perhaps nowhere more
evident than in the opening of the poem. Here, long before the hero
himself enters the picture at 1. 194, before even the tale at hand is
begun at 1. 67, the poet introduces all the major themes of his work,
preparing us through a brief account of the history of the Scylding
dynasty and the deeds of its greatest hero, its first king, Scyld
Scefing, for a fuller account of the history of the Geats and the deeds
of their greatest hero, their last king, Beowulf. In an economy and
with a degree of forethought possible only in a literate text, no phrase is wasted and no narrative detail is given which does not relate
to events which will unfold later in the poem.
"Hwat, we Gar-dena in geardagum / peodcyninga prym gefrunon, / hu da apelingas ellen fremedon!"— and instantly we are pulled, through word and formula, into the world of the Germanic past, Germanic history, Germanic poetry. Contrary to Alistair Campbell's assertion
that in these opening lines we find ourselves in a time "far away and rather misty,"3* the harshness of that opening "Hwaet" brings to us a past which is almost simultaneously immediate and distant ("in geardagum"). This impression of immediacy and continuity is fostered in others ways as well. The formulaic opening, found also in other
Anglo-Saxon, albeit Christian, epic histories— Exodus, Andreas, Fates
2* Alistair Campbell, "The Time Element of Interlace Structure in Beowulf," NM 70 (1969): 431. Campbell is not alone in focusing on the retrospective quality of the opening lines; Frank also points to "the temporal distance between past and present, acknowledged in the opening lines of the poem" (52). Such readings, however, fail to account for the formulaic function of those same lines, which were through their familiarity intended to bind past and present together. 218
of the Apostles, places the audience in the communal world of oral poetry, while the focus on the Danes rather than the Geats defines the location of that world as the continental, pan-geographic world of
Widsid's wanderings. Finally, the balanced variations of lines 2 and 3 define the inhabitants and activities of that world, winners of glory
("prym...ellen fremedon"), nobles and kings of the people
("peodcyningas"/"cpelingas"), to whom we as the audience are bound by the simultaneous and immediate acts of speech and hearing ("gefrunon").
In the next section of the opening (1. 4-25), the poet sets up two patterns of ideal behavior by describing briefly two of the glorious inhabitants of the world of the first three lines, Scyld Scefing and his son Beowulf. The first eight lines of the passage are devoted to the history of Scyld, a foundling who through heroic deeds won sufficient honor to establish a prosperous and feared kingdom. Indeed, his actions win him the speaker's praise at 1. 11--"pet wes god cyning"— the implication being that a good king is one who fights hard, amasses treasure, and wins fame despite the vicissitudes of fate.3*
The last eight lines of the passage are devoted to Scyld's son Beowulf
(not the hero of the poem), a young man who won fame by his great generosity (1. 21a— "fromum feoh-gifturn") while a prince, still under his father's protection (1. 21b— "on f*der bearme").
It seems clear that in drawing these two pictures the poet was establishing patterns of behavior which would both spring to mind when
3* This epithet is repeated at 1. 2390 where it is applied to Onela, another king renowned for his military prowess and 'proper'heroic attitudes, demonstrated in the poem by his killing of Heardred, Hygelac's son, to avenge the death of his own father, Ongendeow. 219
Beowulf himself entered the picture and color our interpretation of all that hero's subsequent actions. Indeed, the parallels between Scyld and Beowulf are so strongly evident that they have often been remarked upon:** both enter the story with little personal history, unencumbered by family history, men of little reputation in youth; both through their military prowess protect their nations by their presence from threat of attack by neighbors. (These ties between Scyld and
Beowulf are reinforced in the next passage (1. 26-52), which contains the famous description of the funeral ceremonies for Scyld; in both cases the bodies are carried by mourning comrades to the shore where they, together with great treasure, are consigned, in ship or smoke, to the sea.) The parallels between the two Beowulfs at first seem less obvious; however, when we first see the main hero, he is accompanied by a band of young men, attached to him by personal loyalty, who are later rewarded for their service. In fact, throughout his career, the later
Beowulf is noted for his loyal and generous behavior. In light of this fact, I find it hard to dismiss the possibility that the repetition of names was neither an error, nor an accident, but rather a means of preparing the audience to notice not just the hero's physical and military prowess but also his generosity.
In the six lines intervening between the descriptions of father
*• See, for example, Adrien Bonjour's discussion of the Scyld Episode: The Digressions in "Beowulf11, Medium Aevum Monographs 5 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970) 3-6. Arguing against Klaeber (cvi), who sees Scyld as a preface only to the Grendel section of the poem with the dragon section being a later addition, Bonjour sees Scyld "as a prologue to the epic as a whole," including the dragon section. 220
and son is a statement by the poet of the importance to Scyld's people
of the birth of his son Beowulf:
D*m eafera was xfter cenned geong in geardum, pone God sende folce to frofre; fyrendearfe ongeat, pe hie xr drugon aldorlease lange hwile; him pxs Liffrea, wuldres Wealdend woroldare forgeaf [;] (1. 12-17)*1
Through this passage, the poet introduces several of the other themes of the poem. At 1. 12, a son is b o m to continue Scyld's house, sent we are told, at 1. 13, by God. Here in two lines the poet juxtaposes
two vital themes, the deeds of man and the hand of God. The implication seems clear: without such intervention, Scyld would be incapable of establishing a continuity of success. It is also important to note that the poet chose to term this external force acting in Scyld's life "God," rather than wvrd or even a more formulaic and potentially ambiguous name, such as those found in 1. 16 or 17.
Through this word, the poet defines Beowulf's world as one in which a deity, albeit one of undefined nature, plays an active role in the destiny of men, if not as an earthly arbitor of victory and judgment
(there is no indication that Scyld has been given the child as a reward for good behavior) then as the hand of capricious fortune, making some men's fame and line ephemeral and other men's lasting.
In the succeeding two and a half lines, the importance of the continuity Scyld's son represents is clarified: the child has been
11 To him a son was then begotten, a youth in the dwelling— God sent him as a comfort to the people: a great fear was beginning because they had endured before a long time with a lord. The Lord of life granted him worldly honor. (The semi-colon at the end of the passage cited above is taken from Wrenn's edition of the poem and appears as a comma in Klaeber.l 221
sent as a comfort to his father's people, a protection against a return
to lordlessness, a shield against the enemies Scyld has made in his
rise to fame. Also, in telling us of first the joy and then the cause
of joy through a brief reference to a past sorrow, the poet reflects
that history shows us that often God, or fate, is not so kind; the two
tense structure of Anglo-Saxon is used to superb effect here as well,
pulling an event of the distant past into the moment of 'present'
comfort, placing joy in continuity and fear of lordlessness on
simultaneous planes of being within history.
The final line and a half of the passage turn upon another verbal
ambiguity: does the "him" of the phrase "him pes Liffrea, wuldres
Wealdend, woroldare forgeaf" (to him the Lord of life, the Ruler of
glory, gave worldly honor) refer to Scyld or to his son? From the
context, it is impossible to say: by verbal parallel, the line looks back to Scyld, to whom a son was granted; by content, the line seems to
look ahead to the son, of whom we are told in the first line of the next passage "Beowulf was breme — bled wide sprang— " (Beowulf was
renowned— glory spread far). Given that the two surrounding passages
stress the deeds of the two men, however, I would argue that the honor being spoken of here has nothing to do with human action— the poet makes clear these men won that kind of glory for themselves. Instead, it pertains to a granting of continuity to that hard-won recognition, a continuity which could only be established through an heir to carry on one's name and which could only be granted by God.
In the next two passages, 1. 26-52 and 1. 53-63, the poet develops two examples which, through their juxtaposition, expand upon these 222
themes of the transitory nature of all human achievement and the
importance of continuity. In the first, which begins with the lines
"Him da Scyld gewat to gescaphwile / felahror feran on Frean ware"
(Then at the time destined for him Scyld departed— the powerful one was
to journey to the Lord 1. 26-27), the elaborate funeral of Scyld is described in great detail. We are told that, in keeping with his
command ("swa he selfa bad" 1. 29b), he was carried to the seashore, placed in a ship filled with treasures he had won for his people
("peod-gestreonum" 1. 44a), and commended to the ocean from which he had come as a child. After telling us that his people mourned his loss, the poet concludes the first fit of the poem by stating that even
the wisest men, counsellors in the hall, cannot truthfully say who received that cargo ("Men ne cunnon / secgan to sode, seleradende, / haled under heofenum, hwa pam hlaste onfeng" 1. 50b-52). In light of what precedes and follows this description of the death and funeral of
the great warrior king, it is interesting to note that no mention is made of Scyld's son in this passage, thereby heightening the implication of the previous section— that but for the caprice of God in granting him a son, the death of Scyld would also have been the death of the glory of the Spear Danes. This theme of the transitory nature of human achievement is further emphasized by the elaborate description of the treasures and the ship sent with Scyld on his last voyage, all of which, together with the precious man's body, is lost beyond human ken.
Once again, the parallels to the tale of the primary hero are so obvious that they must be regarded as intentional. Both men die at their appointed time: the poet implies this for Beowulf by telling us at the start of the second half of the poem (1. 2309a-ll) that the attack of the dragon which began as a terror to the people would end with the death of the king, more specifically, of the treasure giver
("sinc-gifan" 1. 2311a). The significance of this piece of fore knowledge lies in a poet's statement but a few lines before (1. 2291-
3a) that the plunderer of the dragon's hoard escaped untouched because it was not his time to die— "Swa mag unfage ea&e gedigan / wean ond wrecsiS, se £e Waldendes / hyldo gehealdep" (in this way the unfated man whom the Ruler's strength guards may easily survive woe and exile).
Clearly, just as it was not fated that this man die, so it was fated that it was the people's time to suffer and Beowulf's time to die. The parallel between the two heroes implied by the pre-ordained nature of their time of going is even more evident in the manner of their departure: their funerals are so similar, in ways that I pointed out previously, that Beowulf's seems almost to be an expansionof Scyld's, except that while Scyld's body is literally committed to the ocean in a ship, Beowulf's is committed in smoke and his grave monument is to serve as a marker to ships at sea (1. 3155b-3158). Indeed, the ties between the two events are so strong, though unexpressed, that Robinson argues that "the impressive funeral, described near the beginning of the poem finds a kind of appositional restatement in the funeral which concludes the poem" (24).13
13 Bonjour also comments on the ties between the two passages but argues that the poet is drawing a stark contrast between the "brilliance and splendour" of Scyld's departure, at which mourners fade into the background in an event which is a "symbol of a glorious future," and the "depressing and sorrowful" nature of Beowulf's 224
In fact, the lines which conclude passage describing Scyld's death have resonances for me both of Beowulf's mysterious end at line 3155b—
"Heofon rece swealg" (Heaven swallowed the smoke)— and of the account of the sparrow in the mead hall, notably in the emphasis all three accounts place on the unknown nature of man's existence or even state after death. It is particularly interesting to note that in the account of Scyld's death, the Beowulf poet begins by saying that Scyld was to journey to the Lord, with his use of the words "feran ware,11 rather than the simple past tense ferde (journeyed), giving the statement a rather uncertain feeling, a feeling which is thoroughly reinforced by the concluding statement that not even the wisest counselors in the hall (another parallel to the description by Edmund's counselor) know for sure what became of that cargo. In its attitude of uncertainty, the account of the passing of Scyld also reflects the God- sense conveyed in the previous passage, a sense of a divine being who controls man's coming in and his going out but of whose power little else is known.
The only major difference between the funerals which begin and end the poem is one which the poet allows to fade from his audience's consciousness as he describes the sorrow and mystery of Scyld's passing— while Beowulf died childless and possibly heirless, leaving his people vulnerable to the ravages of their enemies, Scyld left a son to continue his line and the glory of his people. And so, having established firmly in the mind of his audience the transitory nature of human achievement, the poet launches into the brief genealogy of the departure, at which even the barrow "suggests a terminus" (9, 10). 225
Scylding dynasty with which he begins the second fit of the poem and by
which he both returns to his theme of historic continuity and
establishes an artistic continuity between the world of Scyld in which men lived whose lives gave birth to the patterns of history and the world of Scyld's great-grandson Hrodgar, and of Beowulf and the Geats,
in which men strove to live by those patterns.
In brief, then, in these first 63 lines, the Beowulf poet binds
together all the strands which will create both the methodological and
the thematic patterns of the entire poem. He interweaves oral and written methodologies in such a way that literacy allows for the full development of the artistic potential of the oral method of presenting history." This interlace is carried on in the body of the poem
through the interplay between the allusions, which bear the matter and methodology of oral history, and the primary story line, which develops
the patterns inherent in that matter to artistic heights. We might say then that the relationship between oral and written history in Beowulf is one of 'inside' and 'outside': the 'inside' voice, the one which speaks to us from the content of the poem, especially in the historical allusions, is the voice of oral history; the 'outside' voice, the one which is created by the art of the poem, by the choice, for example, of one word rather than another, or by the careful juxtaposition of action and reflection, is the voice of the poet, a voice carefully camouflaged
" Tolkien makes a similar point when he argues that in Beowulf "the illusion of historical truth and perspective... is largely a product of art" (54). Of course, I do not agree that the poem creates merely "the illusion of historical truth and perspective" but rather that its sense of history seems an illusion to us because, although it does not meet our criteria for history, it was history in a very real sense to its original audience. 226
to make art seem like nature. This idea of 'inside' and 'outside' is also extremely important in understanding the blending of Germanic and
Christian elements in the poem, for just as the art of literacy is almost invisible behind a carefully manipulated oral structure, so the
Christian viewpoint is only evident through the poet's careful and pointed presentation of Germanic themes. In short, the point of view within the poem is thoroughly Germanic, and it is only by stepping outside the world of the poem and joining the poet in his point of view that we can see that the message of Beowulf is also unshakeably
Christian.
Regardless of the critical claims that have been made for a
Christian reading of Beowulf, my own included, there is no doubt that in content, theme, and especially in presentation of history what leaps out of the poem is its complete indebtedness to Germanic tradition.
Indeed, the tie is so strong that even after close reading it is difficult to find even one unambiguously Christian element in the entire poem. Even the often cited condemnation of the Danes for their heathen practices (1. 175-68) is clearly made by the poet standing outside the events of the poem.
Hwilum hie geheton at hargtrafum wigweorpunga, wordum badon, pat him gastbona geoce gefremede wid peodpreaum. Swylc was peaw hyra, in modsefan, Metod hie ne cupon, dada Demend, ne wiston hie Drihten God, he hie huru heofena Helm herian ne cupon, wuldres Maldend. Wa bid pern de sceal purh slidne nid sawle bescufan in fyres fapm, frofre ne wenan, wihte gewendan! Wei bid pam de mot after deaddage Drihten secean 227
ond Co Fader fapmum freodo wilnian. (1. 175-188)*4
Regarding what this passage reveals about the world of Beowulf, it important to note that although critics often refer to the actions of the Danes as a relapse into heathen ways,*5 the exact wording of the text in no way supports such a claim. For example, in 1. 178b, the poet uses the verb form "was," a simple past tense indicating that the
Danes acted as was their practice. Furthermore, twice in the subsequent condemnation of this practice the poet takes care to use the construction "ne cupon" and once "ne wiston" to make clear that the
14 Sometimes they gave orders for pagan ceremonies at the idols' holy places, prayed aloud that the soul slayer should help them against this distress of the people. Such was their custom, the comfort of heathens; they thought of hell in their spirits. They did not know the Ruler, the Judge of Deeds; they did not know the Lord God, not did they truly know how to praise the Guardian of Heaven, the Wielder of Glory. Woe is to those who through a terrible affliction must thrust their souls into the embrace of fire, (who must) not expect solace, (not expect) to change in any way. Well it is for those who are allowed after their death-day to seek the Lord and to ask the Father for peace in his embrace.
19 The passage has even been translated (inaccurately) in this way: "On occasions they offered homage to idols at pagan shrines and prayed aloud that the slayer of souls might afford them help against their collective sufferings. Such, the optimism of heathens, had become their practice— they recalled things infernal to mind" [underlining mine] (S. A. J. Bradley, Anglo-Saxon Poetry: An Anthology of Old English Poems in Prose Translation with Introduction and Headnotes (London: Dent— Everyman, 1982) 416). This example from Bradley is particularly enlightening of critical attitude toward this passage because Bradley's is generally regarded as literally accurate, if uninspired. Cf. also Klaeber's extensive note to this passage: "Since Hrodgar is throughout depicted as a good Christian, the Danes' supplication to a heathen deity (termed gastbona. 'devil'...) might conceivably indicate that in time of distress they returned to their former ways— as was done repeatedly in England....But it is at least equally possible that the author, having in mind the conditions existing among the Danes of the sixth century..., at this point, failed to live up to his modernized representation of them." By Klaeber's interpretation, one way or another this passage is a lapse. 228
Danes performed Che reprehensible act of worshipping idols because they
did not know any better, the poet offering their ignorance not as an
excuse but as an explanation.
Finally, in the concluding pair of opposing maxims, the poet
speaks of the woe which is set for those who "sceal...sawle bescufan in
fyres f«pm, [sceal] frofre ne wenan, [sceal ne wenanl wihte gewendan"
(must thrust their soul into the embrace of fire, must not expect
comfort, must not expect to change in any way); the sense of this
entire statement rests on the word "sceal," a verb form which in
maxims, as I demonstrated in the preceding section, conveys a sense not
of future but of necessity ('must' rather than ’will') predicated upon
a pre-existing condition. And what is that condition? The poet simply
tells us that these unfortunate ones will suffer in this way "purh
slidhe niS," or through terrible affliction— not through evil or
through choice but through the terrible affliction of unenlightenment
("ne cupon"), in other words, through their paganism. This sense of
the Danes' lack of the choice of salvation is further emphasized in the concluding maxim for which the operative verb is "mot," derived from
the verb moton, meaning 'to be able' or 'to be allowed,' indicating
that those who get to heaven do so by choice, not by fate. Clearly,
rather than presenting the Danes as lapsed Christians, the poet is making clear in this passage that the world within the poem is wholly
that of pre-Christian Germanic history.**
** Robinson points out that although m o d e m readers are somewhat startled by this seemingly abrupt reference to the heathen nature of the world of the poem, an audience contemporary with the poet would have been aware "from the very beginning, when the poem is set temporally 'in geardagum' and geographically 'Scedelandum in'...that 229 ft The use of the word "sceal" in the preceding passage Is
significant in another way as well— it tells us that that the world within Beowulf is governed by the Germanic time sense, governed, that is, by Urd, and by Skuld. Numerous critics have commented on the unusual sense of time which characterizes the entire poem. Campbell,
for example, speaks of the "double time element" or "double focus" of
the poem (425).*1 Hardy also implies a dual time sense in Beowulf when she writes that "within his timeless visionary world the poet brings past and present into confrontation and conflict" (441).** It is
Stanley, however, who provides us with the clearest descriptions of the movement of time within the poem. In his article "Beowulf," Stanley discusses the parallels between the poet's narrative technique in creating the poem and the poetic technique of the s c o p s the poet describes on two occasions within the poem (1. 867-74 at the feast held the subject of the narrative is pre-Christian Germanic folk" (9). Robinson proceeds to list a number of other details, such as Beowulf's cremation, by which the poet reminded his audience of the "paganism of the poem's characters" (10).
*T In his use of these terms, Campbell is referring to the relationship between the world of the "border" or "atmosphere" in which the poem begins, a time which he defines as "the days of old when as forever in story, men were incomparably bold and strong," and the world of the main story in which Beowulf and Hrodgar "present themselves" as Christians in a time "contemporary with the poet and his audience" (431). Although I do not agree with Campbell that the world of Beowulf and Hrodgar is depicted as Christian and as contemporary with the world of the poet and his audience, I think his contention that the poet employs a dual time frame is accurate.
** Hardy also equates the past and present of the poem with Germanic paganism on one hand and Christianity on the other; she, however, sees the conflict as being external to the timeframe of the actions of the poem, existing rather in the themes and characters. I agree that the conflict between past and present exists and that it is between Germanic and Christian ideals, but I see the contrast as existing between the world of the poem and the world of the poet. 230 at Heorot in honor of Beowulf's killing of Grendel and 1. 2105-14 in
Beowulf's account of the festivities to Hygelac). Having pointed out
that the poem's created s c o p s bind truth into their tales ("sode gebunden" 1. 871) by "recalling past events to provide fit comparison for present deeds of glory" (124-5),** Stanley goes on to say that "we know, merely through the poet's choice of subject, that he resembles the ideal minstrel he presents to us on two occasions in this, that he too delights in the exercise of a well-stored memory deeply imbued with traditions" ("Beowulf" 134).
In a subsequent article, Stanley expands on this parallel when he states of the Beowulf poet's technique that "whenever he delays the steady advance of narrative action he is binding in truth" ("Narrative
Art" 81), in other words, binding truth into his created world by means of references to the traditional historical narratives of the past.
Stanley further demonstrates what he calls the "Janus-like quality" of the time frame in the poem by showing that the "main bearers of grammatical looking forward or backward" are for the most part
"ambiguous" in their usage: of the three primary temporal connectors in the poem, the two which can refer both forward and back (pa, meaning
'then' and 'when,' and siddan, meaning ’thereupon' and 'from the time that') are used far more frequently than the unambiguous ond pa, which can only refer forward ("Narrative Art" 60).
** Stanley is well aware of the controversy surrounding the interpretation of the phrase "sode gebunden." While he admits that it could taken as a reference to alliterative methodology, and hence mean ’truly linked," he points out that the phrase is paralleled in the second account by the words "sod ond sarlic," a phrase which, due to the fact that it describes "syllic spell" (wondrous tale), must be interpreted as "true and sad" (124-5). In all of these temporal qualities— the fusion of past and present, the finding of present meaning in past event, the circular, non-progressive nature of temporal movement— Beowulf shows marked affinities with the Germanic sense of time and history discussed in
Chapter Two of the previous section. Nowhere is this affinity more evident than in the total lack of a future time sense within the world of the poem. Greenfield implies this fact in the head-note quotation when he demonstrates that all those events predicted by the Geatish messenger after Beowulf's death happen because "history records" that they did happen. In other words, in Beowulf even the future is a foregone conclusion bound inextricably with the events of the past.
This fusion of what is to be with what has been runs even deeper within the timeframe of the poem itself. It is evident, of course, in the use of sceal in the passage discussed earlier. On a larger scale, it is apparent in all uses of the verb sculan throughout the poem, a fact particularly well illustrated in the glossary to Klaeber's edition of the poem, in which the forms of this verb are defined variously: in general as, in the present tense, "shall, must, ought, is to," and, in the preterite tense, "had to, was to, should;" in special instances as
"shall (am determined to);"4* in the optitive as "should, were to, would;" in reference "to the performance of an act (or to a state) in accordance w. one's nature or custom or as a duty (semi-periphrastic) as "were wont to;" or in "suggesting duty" as "is sure to" (392). Note how carefully Klaeber both avoids 'will' and combines all uses of
4* Although Klaeber characterizes this definition "as chiefly expressive of futurity," his parenthetical remark on determination bases this so-called future sense firmly in the present. 232
'shall' with other verbs, such as 'must' and 'should,' which indicate
necessity or intention rather than futurity.41
This sense of a ’future' of necessity, arising out of the deeds of
the past, is also evident in the two passages in the poem which seem to
look ahead. In the first (1. 2024-69), while reporting to Hygelac his
experiences at Hrodgar's court, Beowulf expresses his concern over the
unlikelihood of peace resulting from the treaty-bond marriage of
Freawaru, Hrodgar’s daughter, to Ingeld, lord of the Danes' enemies the
Heathobards. Although a number of aspects of this passage defy precise
linguistic interpretation,43 several points are clear. Directly, or
through allusion to a past event,4* Beowulf is painting a vivid picture
of the ill consequences he believes may arise from Hrodgar's well-
intentioned marriage of his daughter to Ingeld, a point expressed most
41 It is only with reference to this Germanic sense of the future that I find Niles definition of the temporal levels in Beowulf potentially misleading and perhaps even contradictory. While at one point he states that "the destruction of the Geats foretold in the last part of the poem...may or may not have occurred in history" (182), and thereby implies an open-ended sense of the future, his tying together of the temporal levels of "mythic past" and "mythic future" comes closer to the Germanic sense of a closed future. But even in this, I am troubled by the fact that Niles seems to have reversed the Germanic and Christian senses of the future, granting openness to Germanic secular history as presented in the poem while closing Christian history with a future Doomsday which is bound to the distant past.
43 There is some confusion over whether this conflict occurs at the Danish or the Heathobard court. There is also the complication created in the opening maxim by the use of the apparent oxymoron "oft seldan." Fortunately, the meaning of the passage in no way is dependent on the resolution of these cruces: the reviving of old enmity as a result of close contact between all too recently bitter adversaries is the inevitable outcome Beowulf sees to such marriages.
4* Klaeber's note on 1. 2034 ff. briefly cites the various interpretations that have been made regarding the setting, time, and participants in this conflict (203). clearly In his concluding statement— "'py ic Hea&o-Beardna hyldo ne
telge, / drhytsibbe del Denum unfacne, / freondscipe fastne'"
('therefore I do not account Heathobard loyalty, the measure of their peace with the Danes, (to be) without deceit, (to be) a firm friendship' 1. 2976-69a). Nevertheless, despite the apparently predictive quality of this statement, all of the verb forms in this account are in the simple present tense, unintensified by even one use of sceal. Finally, the passage is introduced by a maxim, also expressed in the present tense, presented by Beowulf as a truth so universal that it fixes the outcome of a present situation as though it were already occurring— '"Oft seldan hw*r / after leodhryre lytle hwile / bongar buged, peah seo bryd duge!'" ('As a rule, after the death of a prince the deadly spear rests but a little while, though the bride be good' 1. 2029b-3i). The ordering of this passage— maxim, description, conclusion--makes clear that from the point of view of
Beowulf, all actions present or to come arise out of patterns of behavior laid down by past experience. A similar attitude is evident in the Geatish messenger's gloomy assessment of the fate his people face upon the death of Beowulf; by recapping the history of the
Geatish-Swedish feud, he implies that what lies ahead is merely the unavoidable working out of the consequences of past actions. For both speakers, then, all levels of time and history— what has happened, what is happening, and what must happen— are bound together as recurring enactments of established truths which are best conveyed through accounts of past events. 234
What then are the truths bound into Beowulf? What patterns of history does the poet present the world within his poem as being built upon? As we might expect from the bi-axial movement of the poem, the poet presents us with two sets of related patterns, one bound into the reflective allusions and the other depicted in the actions of Beowulf’s life. Furthermore, as we might expect from the contrast between transitoriness and continuity established in the opening section of the poem, one pattern, that expressed in the historical allusions, is portrayed as an unavoidable condition of life, while the other pattern, that exemplified by Beowulf, is presented as an ideal all too rarely achieved. And as we might further expect from the relationship between oral and literate techniques evident in the first fitt, in presenting these patterns, the poet uses the real historic references of one pattern to validate the fictional depiction of the ideal in the other.
As I pointed out in Section One, early critics read Old English poetry for what it contributed to their knowledge of pre-Christian
Germanic Europe, and given this interest, it is not surprising to discover that much early study of Beowulf also focused on analyzing and interpreting the so-called digressions from the main story, since it was in these passages, such as that recounting Hygelac's ill-fated campaign against the Frisians, that the first proof of reference to real historic events was found. Long after this approach was discredited, however, critics remained fascinated with the significance of these sections to the whole scheme of the poem,44 with many critics
44 There are far too many examples of criticism which takes as its main focus the digressions rather than Beowulf himself for me to be able to offer a complete list. Some essays and books which I have 235 commenting in particular on the negative nature of the themes explored in these passages. For example, Greenfield, in his previously- discussed analysis of the three accounts of Geatish history, points out that in different ways the poet's and the messenger's accounts both stress the theme of inevitable doom and death, while Beowulf's own account, part of a boasting crvlp, focuses on the importance of vengeance, a progression which, I contend, establishes a clear sense of cause and effect. Similarly, R. W. Chambers in his companion to the poem points to the poet's interest in the same theme when, in comparing the two poetic accounts of the battle at Finnsburh, he comments that
"whereas the Fragment is inspired by the lust and joy of battle, the theme of the Episode, as told in Beowulf, is rather the pity of it all; the legacy of mourning and vengeance which is left to the survivors.1,4*
Bon jour points out that by means of this theme of "the precarious peace" the Beowulf poet creates a bond between the Finn, Heathobard, and Geatish episodes, and because "this element is to the background of the Danish part what the impending renewal of the Swedish-Geatish feud is to that of the dragon part," at the end of the poem "one shudders at the presence of such implacable doom," shudders, that is, at the found to be especially interesting are: Bonjour, The Digressions in "Beowulf"; Norman E. Eliason, "The Thryth-Offa Digression in Beowulf." Franciplegius. eds. Jess Bessinger and Robert Creed (New York: New York UP) 124-38; G. N. Garmonsway and J. Simpson, "Beowulf" and Its Analogues (New York: Dutton, 1968); Greenfield, "Geatish History;" Adelaide Hardy, "Some Thoughts on the Geats," Paragon 9 (1974): 27-39; Bernard Huppe, "A Reconsideration of the Ingeld Episode of Beowulf." JEGP 38 (1939): 217-25; and Kemp Malone, "Time and Place in the Ingeld Episode of Beowlf." JEGP 39 (1940): 76-92.
45 R. W. Chambers, Beowulf: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1932) 248. 236 rekindling of a feud which cannot help but end as tragically as the
fatal feast at Finnsburh (59, 62, 63). Indeed, Stanley Kahrl demonstrates the ways in which the theme of feud, or fah&e, informs all of the major actions within the poem, the hero's contests with the monsters as well as the tribal wars, creating in Beowulf a world the
"tragedy" of which is that "in the affairs of men violent solutions lead only to further violence, to a train of revenge that leads finally to the extermination of one of the feuding parties."4*
This sense of a society doomed to violent self-destruction is explored most fully by Harry Berger and H. Marshall Leicester in an article entitled, "Social Structure as Doom: the Limits of Heroism in
Beowulf.114 T Taking as their critical focus the implications of the destruction of Heorot, alluded to at 1. 83b-65, Berger and Leicester interpret this event as but one manifestation of the inherently doomed nature of Germanic society as depicted in the poem.4* According to the
4* Stanley J. Kahrl, "Feuds in Beowulf: A Tragic Necessity?" MP 69.3 (1972): 198. For discussion of this theme, see also Bernard F. Huppe, "The Concept of the Hero in the Early Middle Ages," Concepts of the Hero in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Norman T. B u m s and C. J. Reagan (Albany: State U of New York P, 1975)— in Beowulf, "much of the action takes place not providentially, but fatalistically: we are given a picture of the inevitable fate of a war-like society governed by the law of revenge" (21); Elizabeth Liggins, "Revenge and Reward as Recurrent Motives in Beowulf," NM 74 (1973): 193-213; E. R. Anderson, "Formulaic Typescene Survival: Finn, Ingeld, and the Nibelunaenlied,"ES 61 (1980): 293-301. Liggins and Anderson are concerned primarily with the occurrence, rather than the implication, of this theme.
47 Harry Berger, Jr. and H. Marshall Leicester, Jr., "Social Structure as Doom: The Limits of Heroism in Beowulf." Old English Studies in Honour of John C. Pope, ed. Robert B. Burlin and Edward B. Irving, Jr. (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1974) 37-79.
4* The authors see their argument as a compromise between the position of Irving, who in a very Anglo-Saxon manner, attributes the fall to the "instability and imperfection, because created in a 237
authors, Beowulf depicts the inherently contradictory nature of most
Germanic institutions. For example, "kinstrife," that is the duty and
right of feud, increases in frequency as the bonds of kinship are
"extended to, or augmented by, the bonds of comitatus." because while
the comitatus provides the protection of greater numbers, it also
"relies on raiding for economic purposes, and therefore encourages
ellen and honour-seeking, which in turn provide a heroic context of
motivation for the acquiring and redistributing of treasure" (43). In
other words, as is depicted best perhaps in Hygelac's two campaigns,
Germanic society establishes as order-keeping devices family,
comitatus, and revenge for wrongful death but undermines the
effectiveness of these devices by relying on violent conflict for the
winning of the honor and treasure necessary for the perpetuation of the
warrior band and hereditary dynasties.
Another example of the unintended destructive potential inherent
in the Germanic socio-political system is the fact that the amassing of
gold and reputation, far from ensuring the lasting prosperity and peace
Hrodgar clearly hoped for in his building of Heorot, acts as a
challenge, an opportunity for another to win fame through conquest; in
the same way, peace-weaving marriages, as Beowulf himself points out,
difficulty world, of all human achievements" and so sees it as the result of "cosmic doom," and the position of Halverson, who sees the fall as a product of the conflict in Germanic society between heroic individualism and the need for communal co-operation (40). Cf. Edward B. Irving, A Reading of "Beowulf" (New Haven: Yale UP, 1966; John Halverson, "The World of Beowulf," ELH 36 (1969): 593-608; and Halverson, "Beowulf and the Pitfalls of Piety," UTO 35 (1966): 260-78. In their reading of the fall as generally socially-critical, rather than critical of Hrodgar, all four authors oppose the arguments of Robert Kaske, "Sapientia et Fortitudo as the Controlling Theme in Beowulf." SP 55 (1958): 423-57. 238
far from achieving their intended goal, "bring into close contact
groups which would otherwise be enemies at a distance, thus
exacerbating tensions and increasing the chances that sooner or later
peaceweaving will become war-making" (43). As a result of all these
underlying tensions within the system, the king or leader, who through
strength, generosity, and 'wise' marriage, establishes and maintains peace and prosperity for his people, also both sets his nation up as a
challenge and prize and breeds in his warriors as sense of complacency, lulling "the members of the warband into the sleep of false security"
(60). By Berger and Leicester’s reading, the patterns of behavior which spell doom for the world within Beowulf arise from the very patterns established for its protection.
Against this background of historical doom, the Beowulf poet presents the story of a man who is the embodiment of all that is good in this fated society,4* and in order to heighten that contrast, he carefully divorces his hero from the historical world in which the poem is set. Note, for example, how Beowulf enters the poem from outside
4* Niles points to this dichotomy when he states that "the narrator is not stingy in bestowing praise, neither does he withhold blame," and in the presenatation of the story, it is Beowulf, "model hero and king," who is "the referent of many superlatives," with negative assessments being conferred on those who exhibit "patterns of conduct that deviate from the ideal values represented by such people as Scyld, Hrothgar, Wealhtheow, and Beowulf" (202). As the statement above indicates, however, Niles does not see the Beowulf poet as being in any way critical of the society depicted in the poem; he sees "no tragic flaw in either the hero or his society," only a criticism of the Geats, "whose failure to live by the heroic ideal proves to be impractical in the extreme" (246). The problem with this reading of the poem, and Niles is not alone in making it, is that it fails to take into account the carnage at Finnsburh and Ravenswood, two events which foreshadow the downfall of the Geats but which, unlike the doom of the Geats, are purely the result of living by the ideals which Niles contends the Geats are doomed for having abandoned. 239
Che history which the poet has so carefully set up in the first 193 lines, and note also how he is depicted not only as a man of mystery to the Danes (1. 229-90a and 331a-98) but also as a youth of unknown quantity to his own people:
Hean was lange, swa hyne Geata b e a m godne ne tealdon, ne hyne on medobence micles myrdne, drihten Wedera gedon wolde; swy&e wendon, pat he sleac ware, ■deling unfrom. (1. 2183b-88a)s#
Furthermore, although he is greeted by Hrodgar as the son of a friend and says that he has come in part to repay a family debt, he is regarded among his own people as man of little history or family— "Ic lyt hafo / heafodmaga nefne, Hygelac, Sec" (I have few close kinsmen except for you, Hygelac 1. 2150b-52).
This tendency to divorce Beowulf from the surrounding history of the poem is also evident in the second half. Here, in the real battle in which Hygelac fell, Beowulf plays a major role only in his own
*• (Prior to his great exploits among the Danes) he was long despised, since the sons of the Geats did not account him brave; nor did the lord of the Weders wish to make him worthy of a great place on the mead bench; they firmly thought that he was slow, a feeble nobleman. This statement is especially interesting in light of the fact that when Beowulf first arrives at the Danish court he says that men of wisdom ("snotere ceorlas" 1. 416b) at Hygelac's court, knowing of his many youthful exploits ("mmrda fela...on geogope" 1. 408b, 9a) and great strength ("mmgenes crmft minne" 1. 418) advised that he should do as he wished and go to help Hrodgar. That this statement might have been intended ironically by the poet, however, is indicated earlier when Beowulf first enters the poem and we are told (1. 194-204) that he was a man of uncommon strength and physique and that wise men among his people in no way discouraged him from this venture, though they loved him; they urged him on, having considered the good omens ("hcl gesceawedon" 1. 204b). (The convoluted wording in this passage makes me suspect that the poet is hinting that the willingness of the leaders of the Geats to lose such a great warrior would be rather surprising, unless they truly did not yet recognize his potential.] 240
account of the event: in the poet's account, with which the section
opens, he is simply painted as a survivor, and in the messenger's
concluding account the emphasis is on the arrogance of Hygelac in
attacking the Frisians and of the Geats in pursuing the Swedish wars.
Indeed, in this final section, the message is strongly conveyed that
Beowulf is the force which has been holding back the inevitable
historical doom of the Geats:
’Pet ys sio fehdo ond se feondscipe, weIniA wera, das de wen hafo, pe ys secead to Sweona leoda, syddan hie gefricgead frean userne ealdorleasne, pone de ar geheold wid hettendum hord ond rice, after haleda hryre, hwate scildwigan, folcred fremede, odde fordur gen eorlscipe efnde.' (1. 2999-3007b)s 1
With the death of Beowulf, history reasserts itself. As Kahrl points
out, "Beowulf could save the Danes and the Geats from the monsters
ravaging their land. He could not save them from themselves" (198). He
could not save them from the weight of historical destruction already
laid upon them by the patterns of their past.
But what exactly does Beowulf represent? What are the qualities
in this man that both are the product of all that is portrayed as being
positive in Germanic society and yet are also insufficient to effect a
permanent change in the negative force of history? Many critics have
addressed this issue at length, and while dissention has often arisen
41 ’That is the feud and the enmity, the deadly violence of men, which I expect the Swedish nation to visit upon us once they hear of our lord now life-less, he who had preserved against our enemies treasure and kingdom and keen shield-warriors, following the death of men (referring to the starting of feuds or perhaps to the death first of Hygelac and then of his son?], acted for the benefit of the people and further still performed heroic deeds.' 241
over Che Issues of Che cype of Ideal, chac is, secular or religious,
che hero represencs and Che excenc Co which Che poec wishes us Co be crlclcal of Chls Ideal, mosc cricics conclude chac on some level ac lease Beowulf. In Che words of Garmonsway, serves as:
...a kind of eighth-century Mirror for Magistrates or Book Named che Governor, wherein chose in auchoricy mighc have piccured cheir obligacions and responsibilicies, and from which chey could have gleaned polieical wisdom had Chey so desired, and learned some useful lessons abouc current moral saneCions governing behavior in general, and heroic conduce in particular.*2
Scanley, who reads che poem as a whole as "a book Co ceach kings wisdom,...an exemplificacion of Hrodgar's sermon," also sees "Che single vircuous procaganisc...[as] a mirror for princes" ("Narrative
Art" 62). Similarly, Robert Farrell, who contends chat "che brilliant and elevated picture of che early kings of Scandinavia" given in
Beowulf is unequaled by any northern account of Che same people, sees che poem, and especially its hero, as a secular exemplum, stating Chat
"even a cursory reading leaves one with Che firm impression Chat we are expected to view Hrodgar, Hygelac, Freawaru, and Beowulf himself as noble representatives of an heroic past and role models for future actions."s*
52 G. N. Garmonsway, "Anglo-Saxon Heroic Attitudes," Francipleqius. ed. Jess B. Bessinger and RoberC P. Creed (New York: New York UP, 1965) 139. Levin L. Schticking first referred Co Che poem as a "Fiirstenspiegel ('mirror of a prince')" in 1929: "Das Konigsideal im Beowulf." MHRA Bulletin 3 (1929): 143-54; trans. and rpt. as "The Ideal of Kingship in Beowulf," An Anthology of "Beowulf" Criticism, ed. Lewis E. Nicholson (Notre Dame and London: U of Notre Dame P, 1963) 36.
** Robert Farrell, "Beowulf and Che Northern Heroic Age," The Vikings. ed. Farrell (London: Phillimore, 1982) 206, 181. 242
In light of such an approach Co che poem, ic is noc surprising Co discover chac criCics have focused accencion on Chose aspeccs of
Beowulf's characcer oosc essencial for him Co funccion as a good leader— prowess, generosicy, and wisdom. Kaske, for example, reads
Beowulf as an exploracion of Che areas of conflicc and sympachy in che
Germanic-pagan and Judeo-Chriscian concepCs of forcicudo and sapiencia, wich Beowulf himself "deliberaCely made Co behave wisely and bravely according Co boCh codes" (Kaske 274). Schucking, who sees in Beowulf a combinacion of heroic acCion and non-Germanic moCive (38), also concends chac che hero fulfills boch che Germanic and Auguscinian ideals of kingship, a poinc Roberc Kindrick noc so much concradiccs as side-sCeps when he argues Chac Che balance of wisdom and prowess
Beowulf represencs should be read as an indicaCion ChaC "Germanic culcure was developing ics own sec of rescraincs on unchecked valor and wild heroism."94 Kindrick's approach Co Che poem is much like chac of
Thomas Hill, who, alChough he admics Che Chriscian pocencial of che ideal represenced by che hero, concends chac che poec deliberaCely defines Beowulf "as an anCi-Volsung, as a hero and king who has avoided che heroic faulcs which are so large a pare of Che scory of Che
Volsungs," Chose heroes of che Scandinavian eradicion who consisCencly are "Coo energecic in defending, coo eager Co fighc, wheeher or noc ic is necessary, and unable Co accepC limiCaCion," who conscancly engage in "kinship violacion," and who "gain cheir ehrones by violence and
94 Roberc L. Kindrick, "Germanic Sapiencia and Che Heroic Echos of Beowulf," Medievalia eC Humaniscica n.s. 10 (1981): 13. 243 maintain it by constant, aggressive warfare."35 A similar conflict over the Germanic or Christian nature of the ideal Beowulf embodies arises in discussion of the hero's generosity, a quality depicted in the poem not so much through the distribution of wealth by the hero as by his offering of himself and his skills for the benefit of others, a quality which can be associated with both Christian self-sacrifice and the duties of comitatus.
Whatever the poet's personal source for the patterns of behavior upon which Beowulf's character is so clearly built, within the world of the poem, the source of the ideal is history, as is evident from the opening of the poem in which the history of the Scyldings is pared down to three figures, each of whom represents one quality— Scyld prowess,
Beowulf generosity, and Hrodgar wisdom.3* That the poet intended his audience to perceive Beowulf not just as a representative of these three qualities in particular but also as a general ideal is evident in the way that both halves of the poem are framed by four brief, almost gnomic statements of his hero's value, the first and third spoken by the poet, the second by Hrodgar, and the final one by the Geats. It is
33 Thomas D. Hill, "The Confession of Beowulf and the Structure of the Volsunaa Saga." The Vikings, ed. Robert Farrell (London: Phillimore, 1982) 172, 168, 167, 173. Hill bases his conclusions on Beowulf's final "confession" (1. 2732-43), the hero's summing up of his life-history as he lies dying from wounds inflicted by the dragon.
33 In fact, Hrodgar is represented as possessing all three qualities— prowess in youth, "Fa was Hrodgare heresped gyfen, / wiges weordmynd" (Hro&gar next was given success in war, honor of battle 1. 64-65a) and generosity as king, building Heorot for the express purpose of having a hall suitable for giving to young and old all the God had given him (1. 67b-74)— but in the action of the poem it is his wisdom which is most fully demonstrated by his words and deeds and most frequently praised both by the people within the poem and by the poet himself. 244
not surprising that of these four passages critics have focused most
attention on the last (1. 3169-62), since it both summarizes what
Beowulf meant to his people and serves as the conclusion to the entire
poem. Hro£gar's speech (1. 1840-66), however, which closes the account
of Beowulf's sojourn in Denmark, provides an even more pointed
summation not just of Beowulf's virtues but also of what Beowulf's
actions represent to the Danes.
In the section of the speech cited below Hrodgar places Beowulf's
actions in the larger context of Danish-Geatish history:
’Me pin modsefa licgad leng swa wel, leofa Beowulf. Hafast pu gefered, pat pam foleum sceal, Geata leadum ond Gar-Denum sib gemane, ond sacu restan, inwitnipas, pe hie ar drugon, wesan, penden ic wealde widan rices, mapmas gemane, manige opeme godum gegrettan ofer ganotes bad; sceal hringnaca ofer heafu bringan lac ond luftacen. Ic pa leoda wat ge wid feond ge wid freond faste geworhte, aghwas untale ealde wisan.' (1. 1853b-65)ST
According to Hrodgar, Beowulf through his actions, has both ensured a
lasting peace between these two nations and enabled the old king to
return to his custom of generosity for which he had been known before
the coming of Grendel. In essence, in Hrodgar's eyes, Beowulf has
restored harmonious patterns of history, a point emphasized by
17 ’Your spirit of heart pleases me ever the better, beloved Beowulf. You have brought it about that between the Geatish nation and the Danish people shared friendship is destined to be and the strife, the enmity which they had engaged in, is destined to rest, that as long as I rule the breadth of this kingdom many a one is destined to greet another with goods across the gannet's bath, to bring over the sea in a ring-prowed ship shared treasures, gifts and love-tokens. I know the people, know you all with friend and with foe, to be firmly disposed in the old way.’ 245
Hrodgar's use of sceal in speaking of the destined consequences of
Beowulf's actions. When Hrodgar concludes this speech by saying he knows the Geats, Beowulf's people, to have acted in feud and friendship in fixed accordance with the old ways, he also implies that this destined peace brought about by Beowulf is fully in keeping with the mandates of tradition.
This relationship between the deeds of Beowulf and the patterns of historical traditon is even more evident in the two passages in which the narrator idealizes his hero.
P*t fram ham gefrsgn Higelaces pegn god mid Geatum, Grendles dada; se was moncynnes magenes strengest on pam dage pysses lifes, apele ond eacen. (1. 194-9da)
Swa bealdode b e a m Ecgdeowes, guma gudum cud, godum dadum, dreah after dome; nealles druncne slog heordgeneatas; nas him hreoh sefa, ac he mancyrmes maste crafte ginfastan gife, pe him God sealde, heold hildedeor (1. 2177-83a) ...syddan Beowulfd brade rice on hand gehwearf; he geheold tela fiftig wintra — was da frod cyning, eald epelweard— , (1. 2207-10a)5*
Within the world of Beowulf, the first passage, which serves as an introduction to the hero as he enters Danish history, pointedly
s* (1. 194-98a) From his home, Hygelac's thane, a good man among the Geats, heard about Grendel's deeds. He was of all men in this life at that time the strongest in might, noble in birth and powerful. (1. 2177-83a) So Ecgdeow's son showed himself a man famous for his battles and for good deeds, acted in pursuit of reputation; he did not slay his hearth-companions when drunk; in him there was not a savage spirit but rather brave in battle he ruled over his great strength, the liberal gift God gave him, for mankind. (1. 2207-10a) Then the broad kingdom passed into the hands of Beowulf; he ruled well for fifty winters— he was a wise king, the old guardian of his native land. describes Beowulf's qualifications for the job in an abstract manner completely unlike that which characterizes the deed-oriented introductions accorded all other figures, Scyld, Hrodgar, and even
Grendel, who have entered the poem up to this point. Similarly, the other passage, which begins at the end of the first half of the poem and ends at the beginning of the second and thereby forms a bridge between the crowning two events of Beowulf's youth and old age, presents a summary of the hero's personal history in terms of his greatest attributes rather than the deeds of his life, implying that in the 'history' of this hero, pattern is more important than events.
Along these lines, it is especially important to note that the qualities accorded to Beowulf in the abstract in this second passage are an inversion of the deeds for which Heremod was presented earlier by Hrodgar as an example of heroic potential gone wrong (1. 1709b-22a).
Taken together, these two passages also serve as a bridge between the world within the poem, represented by the praise-speeches of Hrodgar and the Geats, and the viewpoint of the poet towards that world.
Just as the careful placement of these speeches serves to remind us of the exemplary role Beowulf is intended to play in this poem, so the poet's skillful structuring of his hero's story, especially his constant juxtaposition of Beowulf's battles with the deeds of 'other' famed figures, allows the poet simultaneously to grant his hero personal success while demonstrating the inability of even the successful individual to bring about permanent, or even long-term, changes in social destiny. By means of the victorious battles with fictitious creatures rather than real men, the poet is able to depict 247
Beowulf as che embodiment of a historical ideal who is nevertheless divorced from the real matter of history. Through his careful presentation of the three monsters, the poet is able to grant his hero individual victory over the darkest elements in Germanic society. As
David Williams points out in his analysis of the function and meaning of the Cain tradition in Beowulf, all three monsters lend "to the poem the metaphysical dimensions of the moral history of mankind," because they are both representative of "the survival of Cain's monstrous progeny and the symbol of his sin in those who formed the bestial clan dedicated to the destruction of social harmony and brotherhood."9*
However, the significance of all three monsters to Germanic society is much more specific than this.
As Tolkien first pointed out, there are dramatic reasons why
Beowulf fights monsters rather than men, and three monsters rather than one. Thematically, the Beowulf poet also employs each of the monsters for different, though historically related, purposes, each representing a specific danger inherent in Germanic society, dangers which Beowulf overcomes with ever-increasing degrees of difficulty. Grendel, for example, clearly represents the most basic threat to any warrior culture, the threat of hostility engaged in for its own sake and without the hope for cessation. He bursts into the hall which Hrodgar has established as a place to celebrate peace and prosperity bought
David Williams, Cain and "Beowulf"; A Study in Secular Allegory (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1982) 71. Williams goes into a detailed analysis of the specifci symbolic nature of each of the three monsters, which is far too detained for me even to summarize here. His reading of the monsters, however, is tied to general problems of human morality, not specific problems of Germanic history. 248 with prowess. From the outset, Grendel is cast as a creature of motiveless and almost timeless hatred and violence: "se ellengmst" (1.
86a the powerful demon); "se pe in pystrum bad" (1. 87b he who in darkness waited); "Wiht unhelo, grim ond grxdig...reoc ond repe" (1.
120-22a Creature of destruction, fierce and greedy, savage and cruel).
In these descriptions, Grendel would seem to represent both ageless evil in general and the potential for purposeless violence in particular, the temptation. Hill might say, to be a Volsung, a temptation which Beowulf overcomes by offering his talents on behalf of others.
By contrast, the violence of Grendel's dam is depicted as being fully motivated and therefore understandable— she has come to avenge her son's death, a fact the poet develops prior to the attack and which Hrodgar recognizes afterwards; to stress the theme of ’kinstrife' in connection with this monster the poet also develops the ties to Cain much more fully at this point (1. 1255b-78). As the historical parallels should lead us to expect, Beowulf has a far harder time quelling this demon than he had with her irrational son; indeed, the intensity of the struggle reflects Beowulf's own awareness of a warrior's duty to exact immediate vengeance (expressed in his summary of Geatish history), while his ultimate success foreshadows the several occasions on which he will resist the temptation to benefit from the consequences of kinstrife (demonstrated in his subsequent refusal to usurp either the Geatish or Danish royal lines).
Finally, in the dragon the poet has his hero confront a danger which has something in common with the two previous monsters: like chat of Grendel, the threat of the dragon is ageless, waiting beneathe
the earth since before recorded memory, as Grendel and his kind have
stalked the dark reaches of the mere almost since creation; like
Grendel's mother, the dragon is prompted to anger by a single action, motivated to attack by a justified grievance, for the dragon the robbery of its hoard, for Grendel's dam the killing of her son.
Nevertheless, despite these similarities, the presentation of the dragon is markedly different from that of either mere-monster.
Relatively few pejorative adjectives and nouns are used to describe this creature; the poet's emphasis is almost entirely on the dragon's anger now horribly aroused— "pat sie onfand, / big-folc beoma, pat he gebolgen was" (the people of the neighboring nation discovered that he was enraged 1.2219b-20). Indeed, the story of the angering of the dragon is reminiscent of nothing so much as the sudden alighting of old enmities in the Finn and Heathobard episodes. The catalyst to fury is an item whose worth lies more in history and possession than in monetary value; just as che Heathobard sword is but one spoil of war of many, so the item stolen from the dragon is but one piece of a treasure, all of which is associated with prior strife— as the Last
Survivor cries when he is burying his people's treasure, "'Bealocwealm hafad / fela feorcynna ford onsended.'" ('Hostile killing has sent away many of the race of men' 1. 265b-66). The anger aroused by the loss of this item is sudden, horrifying, disruptive of peace, and all- consuming, a fact whose significance is symbolized especially by the parallel between the dragon's fiery breath and the burning of the feud- doomed halls of Heorot and Finn. Clearly, the poet is depicting the 250 dragon as an enemy in an age-old feud, one party in a long-dormant but still smoldering strife which but awaits the inevitable and often accidental catalyst to be blown once more into full fire. In a larger sense, the dragon is also the force of history itself, of violent potential grounded in deeds of the past, of enmity which, as Beowulf reminds us earlier, sleeps but awhile. In the words of the poet, "fa se wyrm onwoc, wroht was geniwad" (When the worm awoke, strife was reborn 1. 87). Of course, the dragon can really be nothing other than history, as the poet tells Beowulf's story, for it is in his fight against the historical enemies of the Geats that Beowulf achieves his most difficult, remarkable ("he geheold tela fiftig wintra"— he ruled well for fifty winters 1. 2208b-09a), but ultimately most ephemeral victory.
It is in the conflict with the dragon that the horizontal and vertical axes of the poem's narrative structure intersect with the greatest thematic impact. In general, however, the apposition of
Beowulf's victories over the monsters with historical and legendary tales from the Germanic past serves to remind us of the forces of social destiny, forces which always render the individual powerless against the weight of history. No sooner has a description of one of
Beowulf's solitary struggles with a mythic creature been completed than our attention is turned to an account of a historical event which amply illustrates the tragic potential inherent within the Germanic social structure and heroic ethic. For example, through the mouth of Beowulf, our attention is turned from the hero's youthful testing of strength with Breca to the unpunished fratricide by Unferd. Similarly, Beowulf 251
leads into has description to Hygelac of his success in Denmark with a
graphic depiction of the tragedy he believes awaits the Danes through
the marriage of Freawaru and Ingeld.
Nowhere, however, is the contrast between victorious ideal and
tragic reality more evident than in the celebration following Grendel's
destruction. It is wholly in keeping with this poet's narrative
technique and theme that the cleanest and simplest of Beowulf's
victories is followed by not one but three references to Germanic history: first we are told that in celebration of Beowulf's victory,
Hrodgar's scop sang the story of Sigemund, recounting the feuds and crimes of this son of Waels of which men are not entirely aware (1.
877-79a "Waslsinges gewin, wide sidas, / para pe gumena b e a m gearwe ne wiston / fehde ond fyrena"); then the narrator himself refers directly, though briefly, to Heremod, a warrior of promise seduced by the ’dark side' of the heroic ethic;4• and finally the entire lay of
Hildeburh and the slaughter at Finnsburh is recited (1. 1063-ii59a).
Despite such shifts in focus as these, however, in the first half of the poem it is Beowulf's deeds which occupy the foreground, with tragic
44 The text at this point (1. Q98-913a) simply tells us that Heremod, who had been great in strength and courage, inexplicably and to the regret of many who had had great hope in him, declined in heroic prowess, seduced like the giants into the realms of the fiends. It is not until Hrodgar's speech following the Beowulf's killing of Grendel's dam that we are told of the nature of Heremod's evil— the killing of his retainers when drunk, lack of generosity, excessive and irrational violence <1. 1709b-22a>. Traditionally, see for example Robinson (22), the references to Sigemund and Heremod are interpreted as being a positive reflection on Beowulf, in the case of the former, and either a warning to or a negative contrast with Beowulf in the case of the latter. Such an interpretation, however, fails to recognize the negative tone of the poet's reference to the dark deeds of Sigemund. 252 historic interludes fading in and out of the essentially victorious history of the hero, reminding us at times sharply, as in the Finn episode, that beneath the still but bloody waters of the mere which received Grendel's body are other creatures of history as yet unleashed.
All such bonds are cut loose in the second half. Here not only do the three accounts of Geatish history serve to bring the tragedy destined for Beowulf's people to the forefront; the so-called 'Lay of the Last Survivor' serves also to bind the mythic creature the hero battles firmly to the world of Germanic history, thus making Beowulf's victory over the dragon pale in comparison with the weight of history the dragon's coming and Beowulf's death together unleash. And so with
Beowulf's death, the poet returns to the matter of history, more particularly to the making of history, first in the words of Wiglaf and the messenger who speak of the working out in what is to come of the consequences of what has been, and finally in the words of the Geats as they recall the greatness of what they had and lost. For in the world of the poem, the world of the Geats and of the Danes, Beowulf is indeed an ideal, exemplary of all that can be described as god cvnina within the world of the poem— the strength and prowess of the Scyld, the generosity of his son, the wisdom of Hrodgar. Exemplary also, however, of the fact that even so his goodness is insufficient, unable to change destiny, unable to reshape history, unable to create a future.
How then are we to interpret the contrast the poet sets up in
Beowulf between the positive but ultimately ineffectual individual ideal and the negative consequences inherent in the social reality? 253
The answer lies in locating ourselves in the other viewpoint of the
poem, the viewpoint of the poet as expressed in his commentary on .
heathenism discussed at length earlier in this chapter. It is clear in
that passage that the poet is indicating a distinct separation between
the 'us' of himself and his audience and the 'them' of the Danes and,
by extension, the Geats. Indeed, it is in this passage that for the
first time the "we" of the opening line of the poem is shown to be not
just one of unity with the history of the heroes of "geardagum" but
also one of separation from heathen times. The poet also makes clear
at that point that the line of demarcation is a simple yet non-
transgressible one between those who have the choice of the saved and
those who have the destiny of the unsaved. Finally, by contrasting the
terms wa (woe) and wel (well), rather than.words indicating good and
evil, the poet emphasizes his point that this poem is concerned not with evil men but simply with unsaved men, a vital distinction in that
it allows the poet to acknowledge Beowulf as an ideal but also show
that ideal to be inadequate. As Robinson points out, the Beowulf poet, by highlighting the Christian virtues of the characters in the poem, casting their speech in "pseudo-Christian language," and downplaying
the "pagan details" of their lives, adapts "his pagan heroes for a devoutly Christian audience in such a way that the audience can admire
those heroes while remaining fully aware of their hopeless paganism" (ii).
In order to ensure that his audience does not miss this point, the point, that is, that the world within the poem is damned not because its inhabitants are evil, or even because it is doomed on its own 254
terms, but rather because it has not been given the choice of
salvation, the Beowulf poet cultivates in the heroes of his tale,
Beowulf and Hrodgar in particular, qualities which a Christian warrior,
as well as a pagan one, would value— generosity both of goods and of
self, wisdom, honor, duty, a certain humility in the face of death, and piety. Of these, generosity may be the most important. Through
generosity, the desire for treasure is tied to the properly noble custom of the lord sharing with his retainers, a custom of which Heorot
stands as a symbol from the start of the poem. More important, through generosity of self, that is, through the offering of one's skills in combat on behalf of others, both the quest for fame and the pride in and demonstration of martial prowess are turned to acceptably Christian ends. As Hardy says, in Beowulf "heroic endeavor finds its perfect expression in answer to the needs of others" (444). This is not to say that Beowulf is cast in the poem as a Christian man in a pagan world, or even as a man whose virtues, because more Christian than pagan, were anomalous in his own world— Beowulf is clearly the ideal of the
Germanic world as it is presented in the poem. Rather it is to say, that by emphasizing all that was good, in a Christian sense of that word, in the pre-Christian Germanic ethic, while still admitting the power of such non-Christian values as the duty to avenge the death of one's kin and comitatus. the Beowulf poet was able, in the words of
Hill, to create "a hero who suggests, by his gentleness and wisdom, as well as by his strength, what a specifically Christian heroism might imply to the Germanic world" (178), while also showing that without the 255
choice offered by God through salvation even these virtues are
insufficient.•1
The poet sets up this theme of a world doomed to relive its past
because lacking a future of salvation very early in the poem, not just
in the specific passage on the heathen practices of the Danes but in
the wider parallels he establishes between the world of the poem and
the world of another unsaved but still virtuous culture, that of the
Old Testament. The most obvious evidence of this association lies in
the background assigned to Grendel and his dam, an issue the poet
brings up not once but twice, lest the audience should be tempted to
forget: in the first passage (1. 99-115), Grendel is introduced as a
descendant of the murderous and exiled Cain, from whom were born all of
the evil brood ("untydras") — "eotenas ond ylfe ond orcneas, / swylce
gigantas, pa wid Gode wunnon / lange prange" (giants and elves and monsters, such as the giants who fought against God for a long time 1.
112-14a); in the second passage (1. 1258b-1266), we are reminded that
Grendel's mother is part of that exiled race descended from the fratri
cide Cain, from whom was born many fated spirits ("fela geosceaftgasta"
1. 1266). In many ways, the presentation of Grendel's history is a masterwork of interlace technique, binding together not only the world of the Old Testament with the world of the poem but also, through the
41 See also Robinson, speaking of Hrodgar's sermon to Beowulf (1. 1700-64): "The Beowulf poet no doubt emphasized points where Christian and pagan morality converged in Hrodgar's speech in the hope that the audience would notice them and marvel that this sixth century king, though deprived of revelation, could, in his wisdom, strike so close to Christian truths" (33). 256 mention of the ancient conflict with the giants, the Hebrew and
Northern myths of creation.*3
Old Testament parallels in Beowulf run much deeper than mere allusion, however. They are established first and foremost by the making of these pagans into monotheists, contrary to what the poet, his intended audience, and we know to have been historical truth. Indeed, no less than three times in the first five hundred lines characters within the poem speak of the will of God, as opposed to the hand of fate or the power of a Germanic deity, such as Wotan. For example, the guardian on the beach, after he grants Beowulf and his party leave to pass, sends the hero on with the following blessing: "'Fader alwalda / mid arstafum eowic gehealde / si&a gesunde!'" (’May the omnipotent
Father with favor hold you safe in your ventures' 1. 316b-18a). A few lines later, Hrodgar greets Beowulf and hails his coming in the following way: "’Hine halig God / for arstafum us onsende, / to
West-Denum, pes I wen hxbbe, / wid Grendles gryre’" (’Holy God out of his grace sent him to us, to the West Danes, against the terror of
Grendel, so I believe' 1. 381b-83a>. Finally, in his responding commitment to fight Grendel, Beowulf says of the outcome of the battle:
"’d*r gelyfan sceal / Dryhtnes dome se pe hine dead nimed'" (’He whom death takes there must accept the judgment of God' 1. 440b-41). Even in these few examples, it is also clear that another way in which the poet establishes a tie between the world of the poem and that of the
*3 Cf. also Robinson, regarding the blending of terms from "pagan demonology," used by the characters within the poem, with those from Christian scriptural history, which the narrator uses when speaking in his own voice (31). 257
Old Testament is in the depiction of God. God is cast as an all- powerful Father, a generous Protector, the final Judge.** Elsewhere in the poem, we also see God cast as Creator, Ruler, and Bestower of eternal rewards. All of these manifestations are in keeping with the
God of the Hebrews; none is specifically Christian, that is, none is associated with the Christ-like traits of forgiveness, gentleness, and, most important, self-sacrifice. Furthermore, as Robinson points out, all of the references to God, especially by characters in the narrative, are ambiguous enough in denotation to be not inappropriate to a pagan conception of deity.14
Nost significant in the characterization of God in Beowulf is the fact that there is no God the Savior in the poem, and consequently there is also no God who personally intervenes to alter the decrees of
Fate. As Mary Tietjen points out in her study of "God, Fate, and the
Hero of Beowulf." referring to lines 476-79 in which Hrodgar states that 11'God eape me / pone dolscea&an dada getwafan'" (’God can easily put an end to the deeds of that audacious ravager') and 1053-57 in
11 Cf. Hardy on the attributes of the God-figure in Beowulf (434- 35); Hardy reads the God as Christian, but the traits she discusses are in no way specifically New, rather than Old, Testament.
14 To support this argument, Robinson also points to the fact that in the Old English translation of Orosius, terms such as "Waldend" refer to pagan gods and that "the use of a definite or indefinite article with common nouns is not compulsory in Old English," even "god" can mean ’a god' (38-9). For a full discussion of ’God' terminology in Beowulf see Robinson's Chapter Two, "Apposed Word Meanings and Religious Perspectives," 29-59, up to 53 especially. See also: Mary A. Parker, “Beowulf" and Christ. American University Studies, ser. IV, English Language and Literature 51 (New York: Peter Lang, 1987) Chapter 4.B "Christian Language and Ideals" (135-68) in particular; Parker engages in a close semantic study of many words associated with God and Christian ideals. 258
which che poet cells us chac had che screngch of Beowulf and wise God
noc prevenced face ("wyrd forscode") Grendel would have killed many
more: "boch passages which expllclcly sCaCe ChaC God can averc Che
dlccaces of face refer Co God’s fucure concrol over events, and noc co
any ablllcy on God's part co change decrees of face chac, as 1C were,
have already been sec In raocion. "*3 Indeed, chls sense of a God who
judges and proCecCs che Individual buc does noc ace personally Co
Incervene In che course of destiny Is also reflected In Che passages
discussed earlier. Note how of Che three references Co God, only
Beowulf's expresses certainty: che guardian prays chac God will look
favorably on Beowulf's venture; Hrodgar tempers his statement Chat God
sent Beowulf to help che Danes against Grendel with Che conditional
"'pas Ic wen habbe'" (literally, 'of Chls I have expectation');
Beowulf, by contrast, states In confidence Chat at death man must face
God’s judgement. Indeed, Beowulf’s cercalnty In chls matter Is emphasized by his use of sceal, che same verb he uses a few lines later
to speak of che Inevitability of wyrd: "’Gad a wyrd swa hlo seel?'"
(’Wyrd goes always as It must?' 1. 455b).
Clearly, to Che hero of Beowulf, Che power of wyrd In Chls world carries with It Che same degree of necessity chac Che power of God as judge carries In che next: "God's function In Che world of Beowulf Is
to protect Che good man from Che forces of evil for as long as he Is destined to live, and to judge his earthly activities after his fated death has occurred" (Tletjen 167). The God of Beowulf grants dom but
43 Mary C. Wilson Tletjen, "God, Fate, and the Hero of Beowulf. JEGP 74 (1975): 163. 259 noc dea&es dag, lof but not lif, may send a son who is a gift to che people or a man whose strength is a protection but does not influence change in society through such individuals. Within the world of the poem, there is a God, but He does not act as personal intervenor, indeed, He cannot intervene because God's power is as yet unrevealed.
As we are reminded at the start of the poem, God is not yet known Cne cupon) to these nations, and so the people, good and bad alike, are all doomed to wa (woe). They are fated to live in a world of sceal. a world of no future controlled by wyrd, a world in which there is as yet no divinely granted maaan (choice) only human maqen (might), no future of open possibility only an endlessly repeating past. As Stanley
Greenfield so rightly says, "there is no higher destiny in Beowulf,11 only a "historic destiny" which "subsumes the hero as individual"
(216).
In the final analysis, however, the historic message of Beowulf is not entirely bleak. In the blending of 'inside' and 'outside' perspectives, the poet reminds his audience of the poem's pastness, both in time and attitude, and of their own futurity, both relative to the poem and in their Christian belief. In keeping with this dual perspective, Hardy defines the poem as a call to conversion, a plea to the Anglo-Saxons to save their noble but still damned continental brethren.44 Along these lines, it is easy to see how the poem might be
44 Hardy sees Bede's Ecclesiastical History as the Beowulf poet's inspiration: she argues that the poet was, on the one hand, "stirred by" Bede's "jubilant tone" in his account of the conversion of England and, on the other hand, aware of the difficulties and struggles already overcome in England and still ongoing among the missionaries preaching the word of God on the continent (441). Along these lines, Larry Benson amasses convincing evidence that 260
offered to such as Radbodr hesitating on the brink of conversion,
unwilling to abandon their ancestors, for the poet manages to convey a
sense that within the pagan world of the poem the ideal represented is
attainable and admirable, while making clear that for those to whom
something more is offered what was there is no longer enough.
Similarly, by the juxtaposition of the hero with his historic
background, the poet enables his audience to separate their history
into patterns of individual behavior to be emulated and patterns of
social destruction to be avoided at all cost. In this, Beowulf might
be seen to provide not just entertainment but also a mirror for the
secular aristocracy of Christian England. Whatever the poet's specific
purpose, however, I am certain that Beowulf was written first and
foremost to put its audience at ease with both the fated past of their
pagan ancestors and the open destiny of their Christian descendants, to
show them the true places of Uri and Christ, and to help them make the
change from sculan to maaan.
the Christian Anglo-Saxons felt "intense sympathy" for what they regarded as the "plight" of their pagan Germanic brothers on the Continent ("The Pagan Coloring of Beowulf," Old English Poetry: Fifteen Essays, ed. Robert Creed (Providence, RI: Brown UP, 1967) 12). Similarly, Robinson as further evidence of this attitude points to JElfric's sermon "De falsis diis," in which the devil is blamed for leading people "to euhermerize famous men" and worship them as idols (12). Chapter Two
Andreas
In Bede's Ecclesiastical History we see a work written primarily in the new literate-Christian approach to history by an artist nevertheless aware of and willing to use certain aspects of his own native secular historical tradition. In Beowulf we see a work in which
the methodologies and themes of the oral-Germanic approach to history are manipulated by a literate-Christian historian in such a way that the old heroic ethic reveals its own inherent inadequacy. It is in the
Old English poetic hagiographies, however. Andreas in particular, that we see the greatest amount of contact between the secular-heroic world of oral-Germanic history and the religious-Christian world of learaed-
Scriptural history.
In part our awareness of the points of contact, and conflict, between the old and new traditions is greatest in these poems because, as Schaar points out in his study of the Cynewulf canon, they "occupy the intermediate position in time between the earliest poetry (the
Cadmon group (Genesis A . Exodus, and Daniel1 and Beowulf) and late texts such as the Metres of Boethius and the Psalms."*T This is
*r Claes Schaar, Critical Studies in the Cynewulf Group (Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup, 1949) 9. Schaar, in keeping with most scholars, does not attribute Andreas to Cynewulf, but he does place the poem in his "Cynewulf Group," that is, in the group of poems not necessarily written by Cynewulf himself but written by immediate precursors or
261 262
important because just as the historical patterns and poetic
methodology of the old tradition evolved and were tested over a long
period of time, so the re-evaluation and reconciliation of these themes
and their mode of presentation in light of the new historical tradition
were only gradually achieved, as an audience accustomed to tales of
warfare and the power of wvrd became acclimated to tales of martyrdom
and the will of God. It is from midway along this progression, before
the matter and meaning of the old tradition became almost entirely
subsumed or transformed by that of the new that interaction between the
two approaches to history can most clearly be seen. Indeed, the poetic
hagiographies themselves are especially well-suited to the study of
this transition because, like heroic lays and epic, they offer in the
story of one person ideal patterns of action for the entire society.
This affinity between old and new genres is particularly evident in
Gordon Gerould's definition of a saint's legend as:
a biographical narrative...concerned...with the life, death, and miracles of some person accounted worthy to be considered a leader in the cause of righteousness; and whether fictitious or historically true, calculated to glorify the memory of its subject.**
disciples of that poet. For further information on the dating and provenance of Andreas, see the section entitled "The Authorship and Date of Andreas" in Brooks' edition of the poem (Kenneth R. Brooks, "Andreas” and "The Fates of the Apostles" (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961) xviii-xxii). Brooks points out that regardless of the unresolvable question of authorship, Andreas by the date of its manuscript must can have been written no later than the second half of the tenth century and perhaps as early as the middle of the ninth, placing the poem squarely in the middle of the Old English period.
** Gordon H. Gerould, Saints' Legends (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916) 5. 263
If, in che passage above, 'great deeds' were substicuced for "miracles"
and 'his people' or 'the heroic code' for "righteousness," then
Gerould's definition of hagiography would become an equally good
definition of heroic epic, particularly as exemplified by Beowulf.
Of the five Old English poetic saints' lives, Andreas is
undoubtedly the one best suited to the study of the tension between the
old and new traditions, a fact revealed by even the most cursory
reading of the poem. Indeed the dominant critical attitude toward
Andreas has been one of disdain for what is regarded as the poet's wholly inadequate blending of Christian and Germanic sentiment evident
especially in what Derek Pearsall terms the poem's "lavishly inappropriate use of heroic diction."** So great is the debt in
Andreas of formula, theme, and vocabulary to the world of heroic poetry in general and to Beowulf in particular that Krapp, in his edition, refers to the poem as the "Christian Beowulf,11,1 a comparison which has
** Derek Pearsall, Old English and Middle English Poetry (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977) 40.
"Andreas" and "The Fates of the Apostles": Two Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poems, ed. George Philip Krapp (Boston: 1906) li. Since 1879 when Arthur Fritzsche pointed out a possible indebtedness of the sea and military images found in Andreas to Beowulf ("Das angels&chsische Gedicht Andreas und Cynewulf," Anglia 2 (1879): 493), much of the criticism of the poem has been devoted to discovering the extent of the similarity between the two works and to proving or negating the claim concerning the dependence of Andreas on the secular epic. Krapp, in his edition cited above, points to almost 158 verbal parallels between the two, strong evidence in his opinion of literary borrowing (li-lviii); Klaeber, in his edition of Beowulf agrees with him (cxi). While scholars, after the coming of formulaic theories to the criticism of Old English poetry, have been more hesitant about making claims of absolute imitation, most still maintain that there is some degree of direct influence on Andreas by Beowulf. There have been some exceptions to this more moderate approach to the poem, notable among them being, at one extreme, Rosemary Woolf, who states that the author of Andreas repeated lines from Beowulf "for the 264
drawn much critical attention, most of it to the detriment of Andreas.
T. A. Shippey's assessment of the poem reflects that of most critics:
Whether he was imitating Beowulf or a whole epic tradition which just happens to include Beowulf, the author of Andreas obviously did his best to subordinate new matter to old form; in any tug-of-war between native and alien traditions he was the man who moved the least.71
A similar point of view is expressed by Kenneth Sisam when he writes of
the Andreas poet that he is "only half weaned from the heathen epic
forms."73 Even comments on the poem of a more positive nature, such as
that of Brooks in his edition of the poem, deal with the relationship between Christian and heroic elements:
Andreas is characterized by a vigorous if misplaced enthusiasm that sets it apart from the more conventional spirit of Cynewulf...and seems to foreshadow in some measure the technique of Wulfstan. He treats his Christian theme, derived from a fantastic and extravagant Oriental original, in the spirit of the old heroic poetry, representing the Apostles as the comitatus of the Lord and the Anthropophagi as servants of the Devil (xxvi).
In fact. Brooks' analysis of the Andreas poet's approach to his story is not only more moderate than that of Shippey and indeed of most other critics; it also provides us with a clearer sense of the cause of our sake of allusion rather than for their propriety in the new context" ("Saints' Lives," Continuations and Beginnings, ed. E. G. Stanley (London: Nelson, 1966) 51) and at the other end Of the scale, Leonard Peters, who sets out "to show in full detail that Andreas is not a ’Christian Beowulf' and that Beowulf should not be considered a model used by the Andreas poet in his retelling of a legendary episode in the life of St. Andrew" ("The Relationship of the Old English Andreas to Beowulf." PMLA 66 (1951): 844).
71 T. A. Shippey, Old English Verse (London: Hutchinson U Library, 1972) 117.
73 Kenneth Sisam, "Cynewulf and his Poetry," Studies in the History of Old English Literature, ed. Sisam (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1953) 16. 265
discomfort with the style of the poem. While Shippey equates the poem’s style with an extreme, retrospective conservatism, an attitude which seems indefensible on the grounds of the poem's debt for its material to the new Christian-literate tradition, Brooks places the poem's style within a continuum, moving away from an era in which
Christian and traditional themes were for the most part kept separate, as in Beowulf or Cynewulf's Juliana, towards the blending of theme and diction achieved in Wulfstan and, more significantly, Dream of the
Rood, a poetic companion piece to Andreas in the Vercelli Book.
In general, negative assessments of Andreas fail to look at the poem in its proper perspective and hence fail to take into account several very important factors relevant to the blending of the old and new traditions in the poem. First, it is important to view the poem in light of the larger social-historical context surrounding Andrew himself. Second, it is vital to recognize that whatever our problems with the heroic diction of the poem, in content, theme, sentiment, and source, Andreas is a product of not just the Christian tradition but by virtue of its Latin prose model of the learned tradition as well.
Along these lines, it is necessary to credit the many ways in which the
Old English poet improved upon his written source in such a way as to give the story a central unifying theme barely present in the original.
Indeed, it is in this subordination of all levels of the story, in narrative, character, and language, to a single thematic pattern that
Andreas can be seen to owe its greatest debt to the oral-Germanic tradition, with its dependence on universal patterns of action, heavy characters, and allusive rather than realistic language and imagery. 266
Third, it is equally important that we attune ourselves to the ways in which the Andreas poet adapts and transforms heroic themes and vocabulary to Christian purposes. Along these lines, we must begin by conceding that those aspects of language and tone which appear to modem eyes to be unmitigatingly martial might for Anglo-Saxon ones have possessed subtle shades of meaning and connotation. Only by taking all of these factors into account will we be able to recognize that in Andreas the world of Germanic history is transformed by and transforms the world of literate Christianity.
There is little doubt that the story of St. Andrew was well-known and popular among the Anglo-Saxons. In addition to the poetic version in question, an Old English homily of the same story has also survived and can be found in two manuscripts: MS 198 Corpus Christi College folio 386-394* and the Blicklina Homilies. Andrew's popularity also seems evident in the fact that in The Fates of the Apostles, the poem which follows immediately after Andreas in the Vercelli Book, of the twelve whose deeds are briefly recounted, Andrew is given a billing second only to the combined entry for Peter and Paul. More significant, however, for our understanding of the social-historical context surrounding the story of Andrew is a description in JELfric's
Anglo-Saxon homily Natale Sancti Andrea Apostoli of the signification of the names of the original four apostles: Simon-Peter, John, James, and Andrew.
Eomostlice Simon is gereht ’gehyrsum,' and Petrus 'oncnawende,' Andreas 'degenlice,' Iacob is gecweden 'forscrencend,' and Iohannes 'Godes gifu': pas getacnunge sceal gehwilc cristen mann on his drohtnunge eallunga healdan....Gif he degenlice, for Godes naman, earfodnysse forberd, and werlice deofles costnungum widstent, donne 267
gefyli he on his deawum Andrees getacnunge, pe is rereht 'degenlice.171
In this homily, Che signification of Andrew, as "degenlice," that is,
'brave* or 'noble,* stands out for its eminently heroic nature not only from the other three qualities, all of which are more obviously related to the nature of Christian faith, but also from the homily as a whole, which in all other places is thoroughly Christian in both presentation and subject matter.
Indeed, the characterization of Andrew in heroic terms is also evident in the Fates of the Apostles, where Andrew's life and death is described in terms reminiscent of the Christ of Dream of the Rood;
Swylce Andreas in Achagia for Egias aldre genedde; ne preodode he for prymme deodcyninges aniges on eordan, ac him ece geceas. langsumre lif, leoht unhwilen, syppan hildeheard heriges byrhtme after gudplegan gealgan pehte. (1. 16-22)74
71 JELfric, "Natale Sancti Andraa Apostoli," Th» Hom-ilies of the Analo-Saxon Church, ed. B. Thorpe (London: iELfric Society, 1844) 586. This homily is in no way concerned with the story of Andrew in Mermedonia. In truth, Simon is interpreted as 'obedient,' and Peter as 'perceiving,' Andrew as 'brave (or noble),' James is named 'withering' and John 'God's gift': these significations must each Christian man hold to utterly in his way of life...If he bravely, in God's name, endures hardship, and withstands in a manly way the temptations of the devil, then he fulfills in his conduct the signification of Andrew, who is termed 'brave.'
74 Likewise, in Achaia before Egias Andrew risked his life; he did not hesitate in front of the power of any king on earth, but instead chose for himself eternal life more enduring, timeless radiance, after battle-bold in the clamor of troops, after war-play, he stretched himself on the cross. All future references to The Fates of the Apostles and Andreas are taken from the Brooks' edition of the poems, cited earlier. 268
It seems clear, from these various references, that even outside the
world of Andreas Andrew was conceived of In terms usually reserved for
secular warriors. In religious tradition, Andrew Indeed was a warrior
for Christ, and In this respect the choice of the word 'degenlice' Is
especially apt, with Its connotation of both nobility and bravery.
Given this association between the deeds of Andrew and the
behavior of secular warriors, the opening of Andreas Is unlikely to
have struck an Anglo-Saxon audience as Incongruously as It does a
modern one.
Hwxt, we gefrunan on fymdagum twelfe under tunglum tlreadlge hxled, peodnes pegnas. No hlra prym alag campradenne, ponne cumbol hneotan, syd&an hie gedaldon swa him dryhten sylf, heofona heahcynlng hlyte getahte. fas waron mare men ofer eor&an, frome folctogan ond fyrdhwate, rofe rlncas, ponne rond ond hand on herefelda helm ealgodon, on meotudwange; (1. 1-iia)73
In these opening lines, the heroes of Andreas are made, by use of the
"we gefrunan on fymdagum" formula of the first line, to step out of a world not just of communal history but also of the heroic more than
Christian past, a connection firmly established by the use of battle
Imagery: the disciples have become, as Brooks' comment above
Indicates, members of a comltatus: these men who died In their efforts
to teach the word of God have become valiant and fated warriors engaged
73 Listen, we have heard of twelve men under the heavens, glorious heroes In days of old, retainers of the lord. Their valor did not fall In warfare when banners clashed together, after they dispersed as the ruler himself, heaven's high king, showed their lot to them. Those were brave men on the earth, zealous chieftains and valiant warriors, bold In battle whenever shield and hand defended helmet on the battle field, on the plain of doom. 269 in glorious battle; and Christ himself has become both a lord of thanes and a noble king.
Indeed, as has been pointed out many times, this passage is one of the most ’irredeemably' heroic in the entire poem. The warfare
("campradenne" literally ’battle counselling') is real, complete with banners, shields, helmets, and hand combat on the battlefield. The warriors are also described by words which are strongly martial in both denotation and connotation. "Tireadige haled" (1. 2b), for example, a phrase which takes its coloring more from its adjective than its noun, has strong secular-heroic implications: the primary uses of
"tireadig," outside of Andreas, occur in Elene, Exodus, Fates of the
Apostles, and Beowulf, usually in heroic contexts; furthermore, all of these poems are works whose vocabulary as a whole is considered to owe a great debt to the secular poetic tradition.7* Similarly, the phrase
"frome folctogan ond fyrdwhate" (1. 8) employs three words of highly martial connotation, "folctoga" being found most frequently in Old
Testament poetic paraphrases referring in most cases to military leaders or members of the secular nobility, and "fyrdhwate," on two occasions combined with "frome," being used on all occasions to describe fierceness, usually in warriors. Finally, of all the
’man/warrior' words, such as haled, peon, and cempa, used in Old
English poetry, rinc, which occurs in 1. 9, has the strongest martial
74 For a fuller discussion of the coloring of the epithets applied to Andrew, his followers, and the disciples in Andreas see: Margaret Monteverde, "Andreas, ’Frist ond Frohtheard,'" M.A. Thesis Leeds U, 1988, 72-122. 270 connotations, occurring more frequently in Beowulf and Genesis A than in all other poetic works combined.
It has been argued that the use of such strongly heroic language in the opening lines of his poem is indicative of either the Andreas poet's poor artistic judgement or M s derivative style. It seems unlikely, however, that such a combination of strongly heroic words in one passage could have been entirely accidental. It cannot be denied that the opening to Andreas is formulaic in nature; as I have pointed out several times in the preceeding sections, this opening device is employed in a number of other Old English poems, the occurence in
Beowulf being but the best known. Nevertheless, it is important to note that in no other poem, including Beowulf in w M c h the 4-line opening speaks only in the most general sense of glory and deeds of valor, is the formula developed to such extended and specifically martial lengths. Exodus, for example, the most heroic of the biblical transcriptions, opens with a 7-line preface in w M c h the poet turns from M s standard "we haba& gefrigen" motif to focus on the decrees and promises of Noses. In M s 7-line preface, the DaMel poet recaps the
Mstory of Exodus as a tale of the wirming of gold and prosperity; even the army of the Isrealites, "wig wigena mcnieo" (an army of many soldiers 1. 5) departs from Egypt by a miracle not a victory. Even the creator of The Fates of the Apostles, who returns to this formula three times in the course of M s 122 line poem, only uses martial vocabulary, such as "ellen" (1. 3), "tireadige" (1. 4), and "frame fyrdhwate" (1.
12) in the opeMng formula, and even there focuses more on the fame, proselytizing, and ordained destiny of these chosen men than on their 271
bravery. Perhaps most interesting of all, however, is the fact that
this formulaic opening for a tale of the deeds of a hero is found in
only one of the other four remaining Old English poetic hagiographies,
Juliana. and, as Claude Schneider points out in his article examining
the anti-heroic quality of that poem, in Juliana the warriors of the
opening are the enemies of the Christian saint.77 Even the more
heroically-oriented Elene poet chose to forego the conventional epic
opening in favor of a statement which places the story of that saint
chronologically and historically in the world of the new Christian-
literate tradition.
In general, then, the Andreas poet's decision in the first place
to employ the "we gefrunan" formula at all and in the second place to develop the formula in such an explicitly martial manner argues in
favor of conscious effort on the part of the Andreas poet to depict his hero as a secular warrior in the opening lines of the poem. Further evidence that the heroic imagery with which the poem opens is the result of authorial intention rather than artistic ineptitude can be
found by turning our attention to the poet's source for his story of
Andrew's mission to Mermedonia. The tale of Andrew and the cannibals,
though Greek in origin, undoubtedly came to the Anglo-Saxon poet from a
Latin text, known as Acta Andrea et Mattia apud Anthropophagos.
Although no single version of the surviving five Latin recensions is sufficiently similar to the Old English poetic account in both narrative structure and detail to be recognized as the poem's direct
77 Claude Schneider, "Cynewulf's Devaluation of Heroic Tradition in Juliana." ASE 7 (1978): 107-18. 272 source, Che so-called Recensio Casanatensis as now accepted as being the one closest to that Latin source, bearing as it does the greatest resemblance in detail to both Andreas and the Greek text, designated
'P.'7'. Further insight into the individual nature of the poet's handling of his source material can also be gained be examining the
Anglo-Saxon homiletic version of the story, mentioned earlier, which while not drawn from the same immediate source as the poem, remains for the most part faithful to the Latin tradition of the tale and thereby makes clear that the poet's changes were not solely dictated by the needs of his Anglo-Saxon audience.
A comparison of the opening passages of the two prose works with that of Andreas, cited above, makes immediately apparent the fact that the martial tone of the poem is entirely the creation and inspiration of the Old English poet.
At that time all the apostles were gathered together and they divided the regions among themselves, casting lots to see which area each was to be assigned for preaching (Casanatensis Chap. I).7*
Her segd pat pam pe Drihten Halend Crist to heofonum astah, pat pa apostoli waron at-somne: and hie sendon hlot
7* For further information on the sources of Andreas see Brooks xv-xviii; Krapp xxi-xxix; Schaar 12-24; and Daniel G. Calder and J. B. Allen, Sources and Analogues of Anglo-Saxon Poetry (Cambridge: Brewer, 1976) 14-5.
77 This English translation of Casanatensis is taken from Calder and Allen, "Andreas: The Acts of Andrew and Matthew among the Cannibals,11 15-34. In illo tempore erant apostoli simul in unum congregati, et dividebant inter se regiones, mittentes sortes, quatenus agnoscerent unusquisque, qualis pars ad eum ad predicandum devenirent ("Die Latienischen Bearbeitungen der Acta Andrew et Mattie apud Anthropophagos," Zeitschrift fiir die neutestamentliche Wissenschaften 12, ed. Franz Blatt (Giessen and Copenhagen: n. p., 1930) 32-95; this collection also contains the Greek text of ’P'). 273
him betweonum, hwider hyra gehwylc faran scolde Co laranne (Blickling Homilv XIX, 229).••
Despite a few minor differences, the two prose accounts are much the
same, sharing not just the same, abrupt opening to the story but also
the same simple, straight-forward diction of Gospel narrative; note in
particular the total lack of any vocabulary which might be interpreted
as heroic— even "Drihten" is qualified by "Hclend Crist." In fact, the
differences between the prefatory statements of the prose and poetic
versions are so great, in both concent and style, that only one point
of comparison comes readily to mind: in both accounts, the mission of
each apostle is determined not by personal choice but by fate or
chance. Even in this similarity, however, there is a difference: where in the prose accounts, lots are cast, in Andreas the lot of each man is shown to him by God. While the alteration of such a minor
detail in the poetic account might be attributed to poetic license, the meaning in both cases being the same— that for a Christian, God governs
everything, even the fall of the dice, the change serves two other purposes as well, both in keeping with the readjusted focus of the entire opening. First, by making use of the potential for word-play in
the word 'lot' ("hlyt" or "hlot"), the poet expands a particular action
to a universal and therefore communal theme, the power of God in the life of man. Second, by generalizing the picture in this way, the poet
•• All Latin quotations from the Blickling Homily on Andrew are taken from Blickling Homilies, ed. R. Morris, E.E.T.S. o.s. 4 (1880): 228-249. It is said that at that time, after he who was the Lord and Savior Christ ascended into heaven, the apostles were gathered together; and they cast lots between themselves regarding whither each of them should travel to teach. 274
reinforces the tie between the warriors of the heroic-poetic past, whose lives and victories were always in the hands of inexorable fate,
and the heroes of his poem, whose lot in a holy warfare on behalf of
their lord is divinely determined.
Having set up this parallel between the worlds of Germanic and
Christian history, the Andreas poet in the middle of line ten moves
seamlessly from the general to the particular with the statement, "was hira Natheus sum" (one of them was Matthew), before proceeding to describe the deeds of that man:
se mid Iudeum ongan godspell arest wordum writan wundorcrafte. Pam halig God hlyt geteode ut on pat igland, par anig pa git ellpeodigra edles ne mihte, blades brucan; oft him bonena hand on herefelda hearde gesceode. (1. 12-18)*1
It is upon reaching this passage that modern discomfort with the opening suddenly blossoms: if this is a tale of warriors, why is the first individual deed described in the poem one not of martial prowess but of learning, the writing of the Gospel? Indeed the abruptness of this shift from heroic to Christian activity has been seen by many as further proof that the formulaic opening of the poem must be viewed as little more than an awkward and essentially meaningless addition, an indication that this unskilled poet could think of no other way to start a tale presented in the old manner. And yet, whatever the apparent lack of thematic connections between the first eleven lines
*1 That one first among the Jews began to write the gospel in words, with marvelous skill. Holy God appointed for him the lot out on that island (or land across the water) where any of foreign countries could enjoy no further the life of home; frequently the hand of the slayers fell heavily on him in the battlefield. and Che following eight pertaining to Matthew, it is important to note
that the poet has inseparably bound the passage above syntactically and
verbally to what has gone before. For example, the phrase "hira...sum" of line 10 refers simutaneously backward to the heroic warriors of
lines 8 and 9 and forward to Matthew, and the "se11 which serves as the
subject of lines 12 and 13 is simultaneously a demonstrative and relative pronoun, tieing the action of writing the Gospel to Matthew,
the "hira sum." Furthermore, when, having described Matthew's most
famous achievement, the poet turns to the less well-known story at hand, the tale of the saint's ordeal in a land across the sea whose murderous ("bonena") people are enemies to all strangers, explicit verbal parallels are used to tie this section to the opening, with
"hlyt" in line 14 drawing attention to the. repeated idea of God ordaining the hero's lot, and "herefelda" in line 18 re-establishing the battlefield location of the hero's trial.
The existence of such strong verbal ties between the two passages make it hard to see the relationship between the general preface and the brief account of Matthew's particular deeds as anything other than deliberately created by the Andreas poet and should cause us to question if the apparent disjuncture between the two passages might not be intentional as well. We would also do well to remember at this point that as great as our discomfort is with the abrupt and apparently illogical nature of the intersection of these passages, an Anglo-Saxon audience accustomed to the appositional style so characteristic of their native poetic tradition would not have been as disturbed as we are. As Bjork points out in the introduction to his study of the Old 276
English poetic saints' lives: "in Old English, formal features of
poetry and language imply meaning by creating patterns of expectation,
then disrupting those patterns at thematically or aesthetically crucial
points" (8). For an Anglo-Saxon audience, such an obvious disruption
of expectation as takes place between lines 11 and 12 would most
certainly have served as strong an attention-getting function as the
opening "Hw»t" of the poem.
But what possible purpose could the Andreas poet have had for
opening in such an overtly martial tone, only to contradict that tone
entirely in his depiction of Matthew's surrendering of himself to the
will of his enemies? His purpose would seem to be two-fold. On the
one hand, he is making use of the power of this formulaic opening to
bind Christian present to Germanic past. In fact, he establishes this
tie between the old and new historical visions explicitly when, after
opening his tale in the "we gefrunan" manner and heroic matter of the
old, at lines 12 and 13 he tells of Matthew's achievement in the
"wordum writan" manner and the "godspell" matter of the new.*2 More
significantly, having established that communal-historical bond between
old and new, he is forcing his audience to reconsider the true meaning
of Andrew's signification, degenlice, making his audience see Andrew's
*2 In fact, in this passage, the Andreas poet's word choices seem calculated as well to produce the maximum effect: "godspell" meaning not just generically 'gospel' but literally 'God's tale;' "wordum writan wundorcrafte" meaning not just 'to write skillfully' but also implying a contrast between the old skill of orally binding in truth (the "word oper fand sope gebunden" of 1. 871 of Beowulf) and the mysterious new craft of writing; and "Iudeum" referring not just to the people of the specific place in which Matthew wrote but also to the tradition by which they lived and he was working. 277 life as representative of the history of the new warrior, the warrior of Christ.
It is to the new purpose, unique to the poetic account, that the greatest difference between Andreas and the source material, namely the portrayal of Andrew himself, can be attributed. Employing a technique unique to his version of the story, the poet casts Andrew in two different roles, each of which personifies a specific and separate set of values and virtues, and alternation between which is a function primarily of the character's movement between spiritual or verbal and physical activity. Throughout Casanatensis, Andrew is always called either by his name alone or, most frequently, "beatus Andreas.11** But in Andreas, in marked contrast with the source, the epithets applied to
Andrew, as might be expected in an account.written in the Old English poetic style with its emphasis on variation, are numerous and varied.
Furthermore, in keeping with the presentation in oral-Germanic history of individuals as universal types, all of these appellations fall into two basic categories, of which one example of each is given below.
Andrew, the learned one and teacher: Da him Andreas Surh ondsware, wis on gewitte, wordhord onleac. (1. 315-16)
Andrew, the warrior of God: Fa was arende a&elum cempan, aboden in burgum, ne was him blead hyge, ah he was anrad ellenweorces, heard ond higerof, nalas hildlata.
** Significantly, in Blickling Homilv XIX. Andrew is always refered to, in imitation of the Latin account, as "se halga Andreas11 (saint Andrew or the holy Andrew); such consistency in rendering indicates that in no way can the dual-role presentation of Andrew in the poem be attributed to the character of the Anglo-Saxon language. 278
gearo, gude fram, to Godes campe. (1. 230-34)*4
The role of Andrew as teacher is clearly drawn both from the text of the original story, wherein on the voyage to Mermedonia Andrew attempts to teach the pilot about Christ, and from the scriptural tradition of the mission of the apostles to spread the word of God to all men.
Indeed, the idea of Andrew as teacher is so interwoven into the plot of the source material that it would have been almost impossible for the
Anglo-Saxon poet to ignore it or cut it from his version, even had he wished to do so.
In light of this fact, it is perhaps not surprising to discover that it is in this role that the Andreas poet brings his hero into the story:
Pa sio stefn geweard gehered of heofenum, par se halga wer in Achaia, Andreas was; leode larde on lifes wegt.l (1. 167b-70)*s
Nevertheless, although we might have expected Andrew to be presented in this role at this point, in fact, the explicit reference to Andrew as teacher is an addition by the poet, inspired perhaps by the statement in the Latin source, akin to that in Casanatensis which reads at this point that "the Lord Jesus came down to a city in Greece and taught His disciples there(, and] he said to blessed Andrew..." (Chapter 4). The
*4 Then in answer to Him Andrew wise in reason opened his wordhoard. When the errand was announced to the noble warrior in the stronghold, there was not a timid though in him, rather he was resolved upon bold deeds, resolute and valiant, not a coward, eager for battle, prepared for God's battle.
• * Then from heaven that voice was heard in Achaia, where Andrew, the saint, was; he was instructing the people in life's way. irony of Che ensuing discussion, in which Andrew, Christ's disciple and missionary of His word, doubcs Che physical power of His Lord Co transport him Co Mermedonia in time Co save Matthew, was not lose on
Che Andreas poet, even if it seems to have been on the creator of the original: Andrew may be versed in the words of a life in Christ's way, but he is not yet prepared fully to act on them without question in the physical living of his own life. As God says in chastising Andrew for his doubt, this teacher of life's way must learn to live his life with a bold resolve— "He meaht £u pas si&fxst sane weordan, / ne on gewitte to wac" (1. 2il-12a— You cannot be reluctant about this journey, nor in your mind too weak)— consonant with the might of the
“eallwealdan Gode" (1. 205b all-powerful God) whom he serves. And so, to emphasize the nature of the change which Andrew must go through, the
Andreas poet frames the presentation of the hero's mission in two different roles, opening with a depiction of Andrew as a teacher, who spreads the word of Christ and Christ’s message of the metaphorical new way of life, but transforming that picture, as the hero accepts and sets out on his mission, into that of a man who through resolve is making his own life a real manifestation of the metaphor he had so zealously taught.*4
*4 For a full discussion of the Andreas poet's use of the term "lifes weg" see: Lisa J. Kiser, "Andreas and the ’Lifes Weg': Convention and Innovation in Old English Metaphor," NM 85 (1984): 65- 75. It is important to note, however, chat although, as Kiser demonstrates, later in the poem this Christian metaphor is repeatedly given concrete manifestation, at this its point of introduction into the poem, the concept of "lifes weg" is used only in a metaphorical sense, thereby emphasizing the contrast the poet is setting up between spiritual belief and physical commitment. 280
While Che Andreas poec may have been inspired Co presenc his hero
in Cwo roles by whac he perceived Co be Che ironic nacure of Andrew's
doubCr Che fashioning of chac second role inCo a warrior of Chrisc is
encirely a creation of Che poec, a creation inspired perhaps by whac he
perceived Co be Che needs of boch his audience and Che poeCic cradicion
in which he was working buc sanccioned by Che presencacion in Che
source of Andrew as agenc and inscrumenc of Che will of a mighty,
almost Old Testament God. This theme of Che invincible power of God is
one which runs through Casanatensis. in Che miracles of Che calming of
Che sea, Che living statue, and Che punishment of Che Mermedonians, as well as in Che freeing of Matthew and Andrew, Che restoration of their
sight, and Che shielding of Andrew from Che eyes of his enemies.
Indeed, the plot of the story alone makes clear chac if Che Latin
source can be said to have a unifying theme, the almighty power of God is it. In keeping with this theme, Andrew is repeatedly presented in
Che prose source as God's agent, a fact Che Mermedonians recognize in
Chapter 31 of Che Casanatensis when they cry out as Che earth swallows
Che saint's tormentors, "Woe to us in our misery. For all this has been done to us by God. If Andrew wants to, he will destroy us and exact a terrible retribution from us for the things we inflicted on him." To which Andrew replies, "My children don't be afraid, for everything that has been done was for your sake, so you would know the
true God, who is in heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ, who has power in heaven and on earth, in the sea and the abyss." While the Andreas poet keeps this image of a supremely powerful God, he adjusts it
subtly, causing his God to demonstrate power in ways more appealing to 281
an Anglo-Saxon audience, emphasizing, for example, more chan in Che
prose accounc God's power over face, in Che cascing of Iocs, and over
Che cruel and hoscile sea. More imporcandy, however, Che Andreas poec
downplays Che ideas evidenC in Casanacensis of Andrew as God's passive
agenc and Che Mermedonians as observers of God's power, cransforming
Che laccer inCo men who having been shown God's power can now choose
cheir own face*7 and Che former inCo a warrior boldly acCing in his
Lord's behalf.
Ic is in Che cause of developing chis second role of Andrew as
warrior racher chan agenc, a role unique Co Che poeCic accounc, chac
Che poec makes Che deepest and mosc fundamental changes in his
presencacion of Andrew. In shore, by means of a carefully implemented
series of additions Co his source, Che Andreas poec provides his hero
with a coherent and consistent mindset which is altogether lacking in
Che Latin source. Returning for a moment to the passage cited earlier,
1. 230-34 in which Andrew is introduced for Che first cime Co Che
audience as a warrior, a fact which is often overlooked because of the
heroic tone of Che poem's opening, we should note chat although this
passage is often condemned for its presentation of Andrew as a warrior,
in fact its focus is not on Andrew's activities buc racher on his state
*7 This difference in the depiction of the Mermedonians is especially evident in Che poetic passage parallel to chat in Casanatensis when Andrew comforts Che people in cheir fear after they watch their brothers being swallowed up into Che earth: "’Ne beoi ge to forhte, peh pe fell curen, / synnigra cynn swylt prowode, / witu be gewyrhtum; eow is wuldres leoht / turht ontyned, gif ge teala hyegad'" (1. 1609-12 ’Do not be too afraid, even if they have chosen destruction— the kin of the wicked one suffered death, punishment according to their merits; Che radiant light of glory is opened for you, if you purpose rightly'). 262
of mind. Again, Che intentional nature of this focus becomes
especially apparent when we turn to the Latin version and discover chat
absolutely no mention is made there either of the saint's state of mind
as he embarks on this journey which may spell death for him or of his
reaction to God's rebuke of his hesitation. How much more effective is
the Andreas account! Andrew's moment of doubt has passed; he embraces
his mission now freely and with the fervor of a warrior entering battle
secure in the rightness of his cause and the indomitability of his might.
These changes in the hero's attitude run through the poetic
account. The extent of the difference between the Andrew of the poem
and the Andrew of the source is perhaps most evident, however, in the
speech in which Andrew, after he waking up.on the shore of Mermedonia and being told by his followers of their momentary transportation to heaven, apologizes to his Lord, who appears before him in person at
Andrew's request, for not having recognized Him as the pilot of the boat. (Although it is rather long, I have quoted the entire passage
from Casanatensis because its very length is evidence of my point.)
Feoll pa foldan, friodo wilnode, wordum wis haled, winedryhten fragn: "Hu geworhte ic pat, waldend fira, synnig wid seolfne, sawla nergend, pat ic pe swa godne ongitan ne meahte on wagfare, par ic worda gesprac minra for meotude ma ponne ic sceolde?" (1. 918-24)
When Andrew recognized Him, he immediately threw himself prone on the ground and worshipped Him, saying, "Please, forgive me, Lord Father. Forgive me, Lord Jesus Christ, because I thought you a man. Spare someone who is ignorant; spare someone who didn't believe; spare your servant's soul. My lips sinned when my spirit did not recognize you; my tongue sinned when my eyes did not recognize you. Therefore I spoke to you as a man; I dealt with you in my simplicity as 283
someone confronting a man. So I pray you to forgive me; I implore you to spare me; I beg you to pardon me. I am the servant, you the Lord. I am the disciple, you the Master. I am a man, you are God. I was created by you; you are the Creator. I am the one who listens; you are the one who commands. (Casanatensis Chap. 18)*'
In comparing the two, it is immediately apparent that Andrew's
condemnation of himself is considerably longer and more involved in the
prose version, into which, one is tempted to believe, the Latin writer
attempted to cram every cliche of self-abnegation he could think of.
In addition to the remarkable difference in the length of the two
passages, the tone of the saint's prayer in the two pieces differs
markedly as well. While the Andrew of the Latin account is abject,
almost groveling, before his Lord, the Andrew of the poetic version
speaks in a self-questioning attitude of dignified simplicity. Like
the Andrew of the source, he recognizes his guilt ("syrmig wid
seolfne"— sinful within myself), but unlike him, the Anglo-Saxon saint neither makes excuses for his lapse nor abases himself before his God.
Reading on in the two accounts, we further discover that the change in attitude is not part of an effort on the part of the poet to mitigate
•• Then the wise hero fell to the ground, implored protection, asked the generous lord in words, "How did I wrought it. Ruler of men, that I sinful within myself could not recognize you so very good, Savior of souls, on the sea voyage when I spoke more of my words than I should have before the creator?" At ille cum agnovisset eum, statimque corruens pronus in terram, adoravit eum dicens, "indulge mihi queso to domine pater. Indulge mihi domine iesu christe, quia ut hominem to considerabam, parce ignorantibus, parce incredentibus, parce animi servo tuo, peccaverunt enim labia mea dum to non cognivit spiritus meus. Peccavit lingua mea, dum te non cognoverunt oculi mei, propterea ut homini locutus sum, propterea ut hominem aspiciendo in simplicitate tecum agebam. Ideo te deprecor, ut indulgeas. Ideo supplex rogo ut parcas, ideo obsecro ut dimictas. Ego servu, tu dominus, ego discipulus, tu magister, ego homo, tu deus. Ego a te creatus, tu creator, ego auditor, tu preceptor. 284
his hero's wrongdoing; quite the contrary, in fact. While the Christ
of the Latin account hastens to pardon Andrew, without specifying if
the forgiveness is for his blindness on the boat or for his doubt in
Achaia, and tells him that He only made him "'endure all those things
on the sea'" Cilia omnia tecum experui in mare') because Andrew had
said "'Lord, I cannot Go to the city of Mermedonia quickly'" ('domine
non valeor celeriter pergere mermedonie civitatas'), in other words to
demonstate to you the true extent of My power, the Christ of Andreas
responds by straightforwardly pointing out to Andrew the true nature of
his sin: "'No Su swa swiSe synne gefremedest / swa 8u in Achaia
ondsac dydest'" (1. 926-27 'You do not commit commit such a great sin now as you did in Achaia when you contradicted me'). Clearly the
function of the brevity of poetic Andrew's.speech to Christ is not to
downplay Andrew's sin but rather to stress Andrew's strength of character, to bring him more in line not just with the proud retainer of the Germanic-heroic ethic but also with the consistant stance of mental and physical boldness to which we were introduced on the beach in Andaia and of which we are now reminded at the gates of
Mermedonia.**
** Another example of this difference in attitude between the Andrew of the Latin material and the Andrew of the poem can be found in the scene depicting the saint's confrontation with the devil near the end of the hero's torment— Casanatensis Chap. 27 and Andreas 1. 1372- 87. In the interest of time, I will not cite these passages in full, but a comparison of the two points to a marked contrast in the tone of Andrew's reply to the Devil. In the Latin version, Andrew, in a calm, reasonalble, and almost detached manner, warns Satan of the punishment which is awaiting him. But in the poem, Andrew, in a derogatory and defiant tone, cites God's previous treatment of the devils as adequate proof that Satan's power can easily be overcome by God and taunts the Devil with a bitter reminder of the torment God has meeted out to His enemies, a torment that will continue for all time. In fact, this 285
While a comparison of Andreas and Casanatensis reveals many ways
in which the poet altered his source material in order to present.his
hero as both a teacher and a resolute warrior, an analysis of the poem
on its own makes clear that the warrior Andrew of Andreas is not
entirely a warrior of the Germanic-heroic poetic tradition. Before
moving on to a discussion of the specific ways in which the Andreas
poet altered aspects of the Germanic-heroic ethic in his presentation
of the saint as warrior, it is first necessary to confront the fact
that the chosen task which faced the poet was daunting, for the story
of Andrew among the Mermedonians is anything but heroic in nature.
Basically, it is the story of a man who, at the request of his lord, who could far more easily have taken care of the problem himself, goes
to rescue a friend, another servant of the. same lord, in a hostile land
inhabited by people who kill and eat strangers. The man sets his
friend free and then willingly gives himself over to the hands of his
enemies. After suffering torture meekly for three days, he is released by the power of his lord and, after revealing the might of his lord by punishing his tormentors, saves his former captors from their own evil
and powerless leader and restores them to prosperity so they will no longer have to be depraved cannibals. At last, having brought joy back
to these people and made himself welcome in that country, he leaves to return to his homeland where eventually he suffers martyrdom. As this plot summary suggests, the story contains none of the elements which characterize the stories of heroic history as recorded in Beowulf; in
the words of David Hamilton, Andreas "contains no physical combat, no
scene, as presented in Andreas, resembles nothing so much as a heroic flvtina. 286
heroic feasting or giving of gifts, and no instances of vengeance; the
titular hero is a pauper who willingly endures torture and insults and
when he is finally in a position to avenge himself, forgives his
enemies.11** And yet, of all the surviving Anglo-Saxon poetic saints'
lives, Andreas is the most heroic in presentation, primarily because of
the manner in which the poet creates and emphasizes those aspects of
Andrew's character and actions which are most consonant with the
Germanic tradition of the warrior-hero, while subtly adjusting those
qualities to bear a Christian interpretation.
The first quality the Andreas poet emphasizes in his hero is that
of loyalty, since this is the one characteristic which all Christian
and heroic subject matter have in common. The correlation between
hagiographical literature and heroic epic is particularly strong in
this respect, and the story of Andrew among the cannibals is no
exception: it is a tale which focuses primarily on a test of one man’s
loyalty to his lord and on his reward for keeping faith and secondarily
on the terrible results of loyalty to a false lord. Nevertheless, the
type of loyalty presented in Andreas, as in all Christian hagiographies, is fundamentally different from that of the Germanic heroic code, since the relationship which exists between lord and
follower is not the same in both cases. In a heroic society, such as
that depicted in Beowulf, loyalty is a reciprocal arrangement, mutually beneficial to both parties: as Michael Chemiss points out, "the
Germanic lord and his retainers share a common goal, personal glory,
** David Hamilton, "Andreas and Beowulf: Placing the Hero," Anglo- Saxon Poetry, ed. Lewis E. Nicholson and Dolores Warwick Frese (Notre Dame and London: U of Notre Dame P, 1975) 82. 287
and depend upon the loyalty of one another to achieve this goal."*1 On
the other hand, the Christian relationship, while a reciprocal one, in
that the retainer must be loyal, as demonstrated by spiritual faith and
physical endurance, in order to receive his Lord's protection and the
reward of eternal life, is not a mutually beneficial one; Christ has no need of followers and the profit is all on the side of the retainer.
Whatever the differences in the nature of the relationship itself, however, the emotion inspired in both the Christian and heroic retainer, that is, the deep and total commitment to believe in and defend one's lord, if necessary with one's life, is at heart the same.
Although three types of loyalty bonds are developed in Andreas, that between Christ and His disciples, that between Andrew and his disciples, and that between Satan and his Mermedonian minions, it is only the first with which I will concern myself in examining the ways in which the poet brings together two ethical traditions in the person of Andrew. In fact, the entire first part of the poem is devoted to a presentation of Christian loyalty, perfect in Matthew, flawed in
Andrew. In the first speech in the poem (1. 63-87), Matthew speaks the words of the absolutely faithful Christian retainer, announcing himself ready to suffer and die for his Lord, commending himself to God's will, praying that he be rewarded for his faithfulness. How disloyal Andrew is made to appear by comparison when a little over a hundred lines later he hestitates in the face of that same Lord's request that he go to Mermedonia to rescue his glorious, steadfast brother Matthew (1. 184
*1 Michael D. Chemiss, Inqeld and Christ (The Hague and London: Mouton, 1972) 35. 288
,l,sigebro4or...festne'">! God's reply to Andrew has in it all the disappointment of one whose belief in another has been shaken:
"Eala Andreas, pat 3u a woldest pas sidfates sane weorpan! Nis pat unea&e eallwealdan Gode to gefreoaanne on foldwege, pat sio ceaster hider on pas cneorisse under swegles gang aseted wyrde, breogostol breme, mid pam burgwarua. gif hit worde becwid wuldres agend. Ne meaht <5u pas sidfates sane weordan, ne on gewitte to wac, gif 8u wel pencest wid pinne waldend ware gehealdan, treowe tacen." (1. 202-14a),a
Although the sentiments expressed in this passage can also be found in
Casanatensis (Chapter 4), in the poem God's rebuke is phrased in much stronger language and the tone employed, particularly in the last four lines, is reminscent of that of Wiglaf criticizing Beowulf's reluctant followers (Beowulf 2631-60 and 2860-74a). By questioning his Lord,
Andrew not only is revealing a flaw in his spiritual trust in Christ's power, as the poet points out in the first half of the rebuke, but also is breaching his heroic commitment to serve his lord willingly and whenever possible without being asked, as the poet implies in the second half.
After this one moment of doubt, the now resolute Andrew's loyalty is never seen to wane. Indeed, in the midst of being tortured by the
Mermedonians, he voices his loyalty quite effectively in speeches (1.
*2 "Alas Andrew that you would ever be reluctant of that journey! It is not difficult for the all-powerful Lord to bring it to pass upon earth that the stronghold in that country, that famous principality, with its people, be cast down beneathe the circuit of the sky, if the glorious Lord commanded it in words. You cannot be reluctant of the journey, nor in your mind be too weak, if you will think to keep your covenant, your pledge of good faith, with your Ruler." 1281-95 and 1398-1427) reminscent of Matthew's opening pledge of faith to God. In addition to developing the unswerving nature of Andrew's renewed commitment through direct discourse, the poet steps aside from the action at other points in the narrative (see for example 1. 5ib-58 and 1262b-68a) when either Matthew or Andrew is suffering physical torment and informs the audience that the courage of the saint remains unfaltering, his faith unwavering, emphasizing repeatedly in this way that the two men have kept their bonds of loyalty intact despite severe hardships and trials. These passages are especially important for understanding the ways in which the Andreas poet alters the Latin source material in order to present the story from a consistant thematic viewpoint, because although there are passages pertaining to loyalty in Casanatensis (see Chapter 2 and. 27 in particular), it is only the Andreas poet who uses the technique of narrative aside to highlight the theme of loyalty. Furthermore, it seems clear that in
Andreas this distancing technique is developed for the additional purpose of making it clear to the Anglo-Saxon audience that although
Andrew and Matthew are showing it by non-traditional methods, the quality which these saints are displaying is the familiar one of loyalty.
The Andreas poet is also concerned to show that the loyalty which
Andrew and Matthew render their lord does not go unrewarded. This of course is in keeping not just with the Christian concept of God's power to reward the faithful and punish the transgressor but also with the heroic definition of loyalty wherein the lord, in return for service and devotion, is expected to protect and reward his retainers: as the 290
opening role models and final epitaph of Beowulf make clear. In the
pantheon of virtues a Germanic lord must possess, generosity Is second
only to prowess.** Fittingly, In Andreas the power of God Is
frequently demonstrated In the reward of his faithful servants: for
example, at Matthew's request, God sends Andrew to Mermedonia to rescue
His servant, and at Andrew's request, God calms the fears of Andrew's
retainers and rewards their faithfulness with a vision of heavenly
bliss. The Andreas poet Is not content, however, to demonstrate the
Lord's commitment and generosity to His followers simply through the
action of the poem. On three separate occasions, the commitment of
Christ to those who believe Is stressed In speeches spoken by Matthew
and Andrew, who having suffered great physical torment on His behalf
call upon their Lord for relief.
Of these pleas, the clearest statement of the reciprocal
relationship between Christ and his followers Is made by Andrew when,
after being tortured by the Mermedonians, he reminds his Lord of His
promise to protect His twelve disciples If they would follow Him:
"Du Sat gehete purh pin hallg word, pa Su us twelfe trymman ongunne, pat us heterofra hild ne gesceode, ne llces dal lungre oSSeoded ne synu ne ban on swaSe lagon, ne loc of heafde to forlore wurde, gif we pine lare lastan woldon; nu slnt slonwe toslopen. In mln swat adropen llcgaS after lande loccas todrifene, fex on foldan. Is me feorhgedal
** The Importance of generosity In kings Is also commented upon In Andlo-Saxon gnomic poetry: "Cynlng sceal mid ceape cwene geblcgan, / bunum ond beagum; bu sceolon arest / geofum god wesan" (Maxims I 1. 81-83a A king must buy a queen with goods; both must be virtuous with glft-glvlng); "Cynlng sceal on healle beaga dalan" (Maxims II 1. 28b- 29a A king must share rings In the hall). leofre mycle ponne peos lifcearo. (1. 1417-28)*4
It is important to note that although Andrew's request for succor is phrased in similar terms in Casanatensis, in the Latin version Andrew's reminder is far briefer and couched in Biblical rather than the heroic language of Andreas ("heterofra" and "hild" for example). It seems clear that once again, the poet is reminding his audience that the relationship between Andrew and God is consonant with the behavioral ethic of both the Christian and Germanic traditions. Simultaneously, of course, this passage also serves to remind the audience how much more rewarding the Christian concept of loyalty can be, for while the
Germanic hero may enter into combat out of loyalty to his lord, in the fight itself he cannot look to his lord for protection— ultimately, he stands alone. By contrast, the follower of Christ in times of need is never completely alone; in the midst of conflict he can turn to his
Lord for physical assistance and spiritual comfort. In his fusion of
Germanic warrior language with Christian activity in the passage above, the poet demonstrates to his audience both the inadequacy of the old lord/retainer relationship and the promise of the new for the man willing to place his fate solely in the hands of God.
The presentation of the theme of loyalty in Andreas is a superb example of the way in which, by associating selective aspects of particular heroic concepts with Christian activities, the Anglo-Saxon
*4 "You promised by your holy word, when you began to encourage us twelve, that the fierce enemy would not harm us in battle, that neither would any part of the body be entirely torn off, nor sinew nor bone lie in the earth, nor lock of hair from the head perish, if we would follow your teaching. Now my sinews are torn apart, my blood is shed, throughout the land the locks of my hair are scattered upon the ground. Death to me is more beloved than this wretched life." poet fused old and new ethical traditions. The resonances which the
Andreas poet repeatedly builds into his text of the heroic concept of
loyalty serve another purpose as well. Just as the use of the
traditional formula for introducing historical narrative forces the
audience to reassess its notion of the proper matter of history, so the
engaging of the Germanic ethical consciousness by means of the subtly
re-focused concept of lord/retainer loyalty forces that audience to
reconsider the purpose and action of the ideal social figure. Once
again, the poet redefines the hero by emphasizing points of contact
between the old and new traditions, the ideals of social conscience and
courage evident in Beowulf, and then turning those ideals to new purposes. In general, the poet subordinates all physical elements
traditionally associated with heroic loyalty? such as those related to
actual combat, to the more conceptual aspects and ideals which also
form component parts of the heroic ideal.
In many ways, the story the poet found in his Latin source material provided him with superb root stock for the grafting together of these two seemingly incompatible traditions. For example, neither
Elene nor Guthlac B is centrally concerned with physical conflict: the heroine of the former, though a figure of power and victory, is never called upon to prove her beatitude by suffering great physical torment, and the hero of the latter dies a natural death at an advanced age.
Similarly, while the action in Guthlac A and Juliana is concerned with physical conflict, in neither does the saint undergo these trials for the sake of society: as Schneider points out regarding the latter,
"Juliana is unlike the traditional epic hero in acting not for the 293 welfare of her society but to support her personal religious integrity"
(114). By contrast, Andrew in his actions embodies perfectly what
Schneider calls one of "the fundamental qualities of the traditional epic hero," in that "he uses his strength actively for the welfare of
society; his loyalty is defined as a commitment to serve physically the interests of his lord...and friends" (109). When Andreas goes to
Mermedonia, he does it out of loyalty to both his Lord and to his friend, knowing full well that he risks his own life in doing so (1.
174-88 and 216-24). After freeing Matthew, he remains in the city to be captured and tortured, so that by the example of his fortitude many of the Mermedonians may be converted to Christianity and led away from their life of evil (1. 956b-59a and 973-76). In both instances,
Andrew's acts of self-sacrifice performed not for personal gain but rather to be of assistance to others— his Lord, his friend, and his fellow men. Such selfless motivation, as we have already seen in
Beowulf, is in keeping with the heroic code. Furthermore, Andrew's actions are also consistent with the behavior of the heroic warrior, in that they redound to the greater glory of his Lord and thereby spread the dominion of His power.
Andrew's loyalty and social conscience are not the only personal attributes of the saint which lend themselves to heroic treatment despite the ultimately Christian nature of both the story and the character of Andrew. Turning again to those qualities which Schneider designates as being essential to the epic hero, we find that Andrew fits the bill surprisingly well.
(The epic hero] is a man of great physical prowess and courage....His feats are difficult and dangerous and he 294
undertakes them knowing he may lose his life. The prospect of death is not welcome to him. His readiness to risk his life in a selfless cause is at the centre of this distinction (109, 110).
The plot of Andreas is such that it would be impossible, not to mention contradictory to all the Christian sentiments upon which the story is based, for Andrew to display any impressive exhibition of physical prowess. On the other hand, Andrew's courage, although not related to the commission of heroic deeds, is undeniable, as it is repeatedly emphasized by the poet both through the hero's speeches and through narrative asides. When told to go to Mermedonia, after a moment of hesitation, Andrew sets out on his journey, bravely dismissing, as the warrior he is depicted as should, the warning which the pilot gives him regarding the danger into which he ventures. Later, when he becomes a prisoner, he remains bold in spirit and unshaken in faith, despite the torment which he suffers and the prospect of further suffering awaiting him (1. 1238b-52).
Having likened the mental courage of Andrew to the physical courage of the Germanic warrior, however, the Andreas poet proceeds to make clear the ways in which the courage of his saint is unlike that of the heroes of the old tradition. One difference he highlights is the divergent attitudes of warrior and saint to death. While the Germanic hero regards death as inevitable and as a means to glory if it is the culmination of the life of heroic achievement, he does not regard it as being in any way desirable. By contrast, the Christian saint sees death as a gateway to eternal reward and hence, as Schneider points out with reference to Juliana, as “a welcome escape from the trials of the world," something to be approached "not so much with courage as with 295
enthusiasm" (116). And yet, lest we should hasten to question Andrew's
courage, the poet takes great care to point out that when the hero
enters into his conflict with the devil and the Mermedonians, this
avenue of escape has been closed to Andrew by God: "’Ne magon hie ond ne moton...pinne lichoman...deade gedslan, deah du drype polige, mirce manslaga'" (1. 1215-17b ’Nor can they or may they consign your body to
death, although you suffer strokes, evil wicked blows'). With the
"reward" of death made impossible, Andrew's actions can once again be considered courageous.
Still, Andrew's courage cannot be said to be that of the Germanic hero. The difference between the two types of courage is a fundamental one involving the ways in which heroic warrior and Christian saint react to a challenge which must be met with bravery; one acts and the other endures, or to put it another way, the hero fights and the saint suffers. The principal weapons of the Germanic hero in combat, perhaps even more than martial prowess, are impetuosity, at times verging on rashness, and dogged tenacity: hence Byrhtnod's rash decision to allow the Viking raiders to cross the causeway not only leads to his defeat but also provides the opportunity for a greater display of courage; similarly, Beowulf's determination, more than his skill, is the cause of Grendel's mother's death. On the other hand, the only weapon at the disposal of the Christian saint is his patience: he neither attacks nor defends himself against his enemy but instead willingly endures all manner of suffering until his opponent is forced to concede that he cannot be overcome. In other words, the hero is an active figure, an actor, and the saint is a passive one, one who is acted upon. And yet, 296
here again the Andreas poet brings together two seemingly
irreconcilable attitudes in his presentation of his hero. For, as I pointed out earlier, the Andrew of the Anglo-Saxon poem is not the passive, abject character of the Latin source; in his own way, in
attitude if not in action, he is as bold an any Germanic hero: as
Greenfield says, "bold he is but in patience, a quality more eminently
suited to a saint that to a Germanic hero."*9
Ultimately, it is in his creation of his new warrior and in his marriage of that creation to the teacher of the Latin source that the
Andreas poet made one of his greatest, though perhaps least acknowledged, achievements. For it is a marriage that the poet creates, both of the two roles of Andrew and within his presentation of the warrior: the Andrew teaching "lifes weg" in Achaia is transformed by inner resolve into the warrior on the beach; the warrior who boards the ship with his band of retainers proves his spiritual worthiness to
Christ both by his calm in the face of the storm and by his knowledge of the Lord's teachings; the teacher left sleeping before the stronghold of the Mermedonians awakens in the guise of a warrior; and the agent of God, bold in both passive endurance and punishment of the devil and his minions departs from Mermedonia once again the "leofne lareow" of his first appearance, returning to Achaia to teach and to die for his Lord. Furthermore, if we find ourselves still troubled by the manner in which the poet forces his audience to confront the apparent areas of dasjuncture between these two roles, we would do well
99 Stanley B. Greenfield, A Critical History of Old English Literature (New York: New York UP, 1965) 105. 297
Co remember chat Che funccion of Che apposicive scyle in Old English
poecry was Co allow Che audience members Co make cheir own logical
cormecCions beeween juxCaposed elemencs and in doing so Co become
personally engaged in Che ace of sCory-celling whereby sociecy affirmed
boeh ies own communal nacure and ics cies Co a larger paceem of
universal cruch.
From Che viewpoinc of a hiscorical vision, Che Andreas poec's
achievemenc in his presencacion of his hero Andrew as boch new warrior
and ceacher is several fold. Firsc of all, he has reconciled Cwo
apparenely inco>:sisCenC cradiCions of ideal individual behavior and
creaced a new ideal which borrows elemencs from boch buc owes ics
componenc pares Co neicher on ics own. Secondly, he has Caken a
rambling narracive of che new licerace cradi Cion and by providing ic wich a consiscenely presenced cencral characCer, whose funccion mighc be compared Co chac of Beowulf, has unified all of Che original sCory's
incidencs inCo a single paCCem of accion, che cescing and revelacion
of che hero’s vircue on che spirieual as well as physical levels.
Finally, by making che paecern of Andrew's individual behavior che universal paccem for all accion in Che poem, Che Anglo-Saxon poec has provided his celling of che scory of Andrew among che Mermedonians wich a unifying cheme alcogecher absenc in che original version. In essence, wichin Che world of che poem he has caken over che paCCeming
funccion of Urd, imposing on all levels of Chis narracive, characCer, accion and language, a cencral mode of human behavior which cakes on an exiscence of ics own ouCside che boundaries of cime and space. 298
This desire on che pare of che Andreas poec co use all che verbal, chemacic, and narracive cools ac his disposal co emphasize che paccem of hiseorical meaning which he saw as lying ac che hearc of che scory of ehis parcicular sainc is evidenc throughout che poem, buc nowhere more so chan in che passage which describes Andrew's depareure for his mission among che Mermedonians.
Gewac him pa uhcan mid ardcge ofer sandhleodu co sas farude, prisCe on gepance, ond his pegnas mid, gangan on greoce; garsecg hlynede, beocon brimscreamas. Se b e o m was on hyhce, sydpan he on warude widfadme scip modig gemecce. Pa com morgencorhc, beacna beorhcosC ofer breamo sneowan, halig of heolstre; heofoncandel blac, ofer lagoflodas. He dar lidweardas, prymlice dry degnas mecce. modiglice menn, on merebace siccan sidfrome, swylce hie ofer sa. comon. Pas was dryhcen sylf, dugeda wealdend, ece almihcig, mid his englum Cwam. Maron hie on gescirplan scipferendum eorlas onlice, ealidendum ponne hie on flodes fadme, ofer feorne weg on cald wacer ceolum lacad. (1. 235-53)
When morning came, blessed Andrew wenC down wich his disciples and began Co walk along che seashore as Che Lord had commanded him. While he was walking along looking incencly across Che waves, he saw a liccle boat riding through che middle of Che waves. Only chree men were siccing in ic. The Lord himself was in che boat wich two angels and He had transformed both them and Himself into che image of men. Casanacensis (Chapter 5)**
** Then he went from them in che early morning at daybreak, over che sand hills Co Che sea-surf, bold in thought and his followers wich him, Co walk along Che sand; che ocean resounded, che sea-currents beat. The warrior was joyful when he found a wide-bosomed ship on che shore. Then brilliant in che morning che brightest of beacons came over che sea Co hasten them, che holy one out of its hiding place, che radiant candle of heaven over che water-flood. There he met Chree seafarers, glorious retainers, valiant men siccing in che ship eager Co depart, just as they had come, across che sea; it was che Lord himself, almighty, eternal ruler of warriors, wich two of his angels. They were 299
The most obvious difference between these two passages is that what in
the prose account is a stark statement of events, in the poem is
developed into a fuller descriptive narrative, complete with background
and mood. For example, the author of the Latin begins with the word
“mane,'' which means ’in the morning' and in context little more than
’on the next day.' But in Andreas, the scene opens "on uhtan mid
xrdxge," two very precise terms meaning ’dawn,' ’early morning,' or
’daybreak;' clearly the poet is interested not so much in the temporal
value of the morning, synonymous with the idea of the following day, as
in the cormotative significance of that particular time of day, a
significance which he emphasizes a few lines later by adding an
extended description of the sunrise.
Of course, because Andreas is a poetic rendering, it is to be
expected that it be longer and more colorful than the prose model, the poet being forced to consider not only the needs of the story but also
those of the Anglo-Saxon alliterative line and poetic style. In fact,
though, the details added to the poetic account serve several far more
important thematic functions as well. First of all, as was demonstrated by David Crowne, many of the details added to the scene are part of an Old English poetic formula known as "the hero on the
in the garments of sailors, seafarers like to lords when they travel in ships upon the expanse of the ocean, over distant paths on the cold water. Mane autem facto beatus andreas una cum suis discipulis descendit, et cepit ambulare secus litus maris, uti preceperat ei dominus. Cum autem ambularetur intendens mediis fluctibus, et vidit perambulantem per medium fluctibus maris parvam naviculam, tres tantum viros in ea sedentes, quern dominus paraverat per sanctam suam potential#, etiam ipse dominus erat in ea cum duos angelos, quibus se et eis, transficuraverat in hominum effigia. 300
beach.",T By means of this formulaic presentation of what in the prose
version is a simple account, coupled with the description of the hero's
state of mind as "priste on gepanc" (bold in thought), the poet
reinforces the ties to the heroic tradition established in the opening
passage, preparing his audience mentally for the trial his hero is
about to undergo in a distant land. More importantly, however, by
bringing what in the original is a small incident to life through a
wealth of descriptive and allusive detail, the Andreas poet draws
attention to this moment as being, in his presentation of the story,
one of great importance in the plot structure.
In order to analyze this passage in terms of this second function, however, it is necessary first to understand the position it occupies
relative to the poem as a whole. As presented in Andreas, the story of
Andrew among the Mermedonians is divided into three distinct stages:
1.) The Introduction— 1. 1-234, in which the missions of Andrew, both
as one of the apostles rescue Matthew and the Mermedonians from the deceit of Satan (1. 10b- 234) is revealed; 2.) The Testing of Andrew— 1. 235-1477), in which Andrew's faith in Christ is tested, both spiritually (1. 235-828) and physically (1. 829-1477); and 3.) The Epilogue— 1. 1478 to the end, in which Andrew, by God's power, both punishes the Mermedonians for their unbelief and brings them to faith in the divinity of Jesus Christ. While the basic plot of Casanatensis is essentially the same as that of Andreas, these divisions are not as clearly delineated in the prose version as they are in the poem. Indeed, in the prose account, there tT David K. Crowne, "The Hero on the Beach," NM 61 (1960): 362-72. 301 is no special emphasis, either in style or language, placed on the testing of Andrew, nor is any indication given that the torment of Matthew and the conversion of the Mermedonians are in any way subordinate to that central issue. By contrast, in Andreas each section opens with a brief passage of approximately 15-23 lines which stands out as a unit completely separable from the surrounding matter: the heroic opening of The Introduction (1. 1-18); the Hero-on-the-Beach theme in the central section (230-53); and the poet's personal statement in the Epilogue (1. 1478-91). Also, unlike the Latin prose version which maintains at all times the bare, undecorated style of New Testament narrative, relating the events as history, in a cold, impersonal, passive manner, Andreas moves away from this historic tone, which characterizes much of The Introductipn and Epilogue, into the richer, fuller, and more emotive style which characterizes the testing sequence. The Hero-on-the-Beach passage which opens the central section of Andreas is the first place in the poem where the action is presented against a naturalistic background and where the language serves not only to tell the story but also to create a mood. Although, as Crowne points out, the precise images which the Andreas poet uses in this scene owe much to the poetic motif with which they are associated, in this instance they are being used for the further purpose of illustrating a concept which is the pattern for action underlying the entire poem, the movement from darkness to light, blindness to revelation, sin to salvation. In fact, all three elements of this scene, the naturalistic background involving the rising sun, the 302 seeking and finding of a boat, and the mood of Andrew as he searches, are developed on parallel courses in order to heighten the awareness by the audience of this symbolic movement. Daybreak being a time of greyness, the Andreas poet initially concentrates on the sounds of the surf— "garsecg hlynede, beoton brimstreamas" (the ocean resounded, the sea-currents beat); this shadowy quality, punctuated by the roar of the waves, corresponds to Andrew's mood as "priste on gepance" (bold in thought) he seeks a boat to carry him on his mission to Mermedonia. Suddenly, as he sees the ship and his mood changes to joy— "se b e o m was on hyhte" (the hero was joyful), the scene fills with the radiance of the rising sun, a descriptive detail to which the poet devotes the next three lines of the scene. In fact, this sunrise is far more than just background material; it is also an excellent example of the way in which the Andreas poet ties his poem at all levels to one central pattern of meaning by manipulating the language of his telling of the story so that individual words and phrases can bear simultaneously concrete and metaphorical significance. As Lisa Kiser demonstrates in her study of presentation of the Christian concept of "lifes weg" in the poem as both an abstract metaphor for Christ as the ’way of life' and a series of physical paths on which the saint travels throughout the poem, this device is one of the hallmarks of the Andreas poet's style: "he borrows certain Christian metaphors and mines them for their literal possibilities, simultaneously...proving that native Anglo-Saxon conventions," in this case the use of concrete imagery of the type so often used in Beowulf, "can comfortably accommodate the doctrines of 303 Christianity" (66). In this description of the rising sun, a detail peculiar to his account, the Andreas poet provides a concrete manifestation of a theme which runs through not just this scene but the poem as a whole, the spiritual movement of human beings from darkness into light, from uncertainty and blindness into enlightened faith: as Shippey points out, "most of the characters are at one time or another 'modblinde menn'" (125). On the broadest level then, the rising of the sun is a suitable metaphor for the mission on which Andrew is about to embark. Within the context of the scene, however, the metaphor is used in an ironic sense, which while implied in the Latin source is developed to its full thematic and verbal potential only by the Old English poet. As I pointed out earlier in my discussion of the poet's presentation of his central character, Andrew, whose appointed task is to free the blinded Matthew from captivity, release the Mermedonians from the dark practices of the Devil, and enlighten them to faith in Christ, is himself blind at this moment, blind in having questioned, but 50 lines earlier (1. 189-201), God's purpose in sending him on this mission and blind for the next 600 lines to the presence of Christ in the person of the boatman. Furthermore, lest such narrative parallels should prove insufficient to establish in the mind of the audience a tie between physical and spiritual light, the Andreas poet emphasizes the thematic implications of the sunrise through his third and final poetic variation for the sun's coming, "halig of heolstre," a phrase which literally translated means 'the holy thing out of darkness,' but which 304 also through "halig" clearly refers to Christ and through "hleostre," refers to place hidden from human eyes, in other words, to heaven. It Is not simply through his metaphorical use of sunrise Imagery that the poet emphasizes his theme of Andrew's blindness as he embarks on what will be a test of his faith In Christ. In a developement quite unique to the poetic account, at every turn the splendid nature of both the ship and its seaman is referred to: the "parvan naviculam" (little boat) of the prose account becomes the "widfrndme scip" (wide-bosomed ship) and "heahstefn naca, snellic samearh" (1. 266— tall vessel, high- beaked seahorse); the "tres viros" (three men) become "prymlice pry pegnas" (three glorious retainers) and are likened to "eorlas" (lords) who travel upon the sea. Both Brooks, in his introduction to the poem (xxiv), and Arthur Brodeur, in his analysis of the poem's diction,** state that such descriptions of the ship and its occupants are improper and irrelevant, not in keeping with the source, and hence, they conclude, a borrowing from Beowulf. In fact, however, as we have already seen, the Andreas poet frequently strays from his source and usually with a very plausible effect. A closer examination of the entire voyage section of the poem makes clear that the verbal changes employed in the opening of this scene are but part of a larger pattern of alteration whereby the poet reminds his audience, not just in word choice and imagery but also through Andrew's repeated marvelling at the »• Arthur G. Brodeur, "A Study of Diction and Style in Three Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poems," Nordica et Analica: Studies in Honor of Stefan Einarsson, ed. Allan H. Orrick (The Hague: n. p., 1968) 98. 305 unique appearance, qualities, and skill of the pilot, that neither this ship nor its sailors are in any way ordinary.** The poet's intention in altering his depiction of the ship and its inhabitants is made abundantly clear during the sea voyage itself when Andrew describes at length both the miracles Christ performed while among Jews and the resistance of that people to the truth which lay so clearly before their eyes. As Andrew says in concluding his description of the fantastic occurence of the living statue: "Nu du miht gehyran, hyse leofesta, hu he wundra worn wordum cy&de, swa peah ne gelyfdon laron sinum modblinde menn." (1. 8il-i4a)1** Andrew's point here is clear: the miracles Christ performed were so great in magnitude and so public in performance that only those who are blind at heart could fail to recognize both their marvelous nature and the divinity of Him who performed them. The irony of Andrew's point is also clear: the magnificence of the boat and the exceptional ** At times, the ironic disjuncture between Andrew's awareness of the pilot's special character and the saint's blindness to the true identity of his companion becomes so great that it almost seems as if the poet is toying with his audience. No where is this more true than at 1. 510-54: here, when in response to the pilot's acknowledgement of the power of Andrew's faith to guide the ship through safe paths, Andrew cries out, "Was 3u gebledsod, brego mancynnes, / dryhten halend" (1. 540— Blessed are you, ruler of mankind, lord savior), we are momentarily convinced that at last Andrew's eyes have been opened. But no, ten lines later it is made clear that Andrew's speech is but a prayer of thanksgiving to God for granting this young pilot such vision and insight? The conscious nature of the effect created in this scene becomes clear when we turn to the Latin source and discover that Andrew's reply there is the far briefer and completely unambiguous, "May the Lord bless you; and blessed be the Lord for joining me with a good man" (Casanatensis Chap. 9). ‘•* "Now, dearest youth, you can understand in words how He revealed many wonders, although men blind at heart do not believe in his teachings." 306 appearance and skill of the pilot are also portrayed by the poet as being so obvious that Andrew could and undeniably should have recognized their wondrous nature— only one blind to the truth of God's power, as Andrew was In Achaia, could fall to see that power at work beneath the thin disguise.1'1 Furthermore, by putting these words In Andrew's mouth, the poet Is demonstrating simultaneously In action Andrew's temporary blindness, the result of his momentary lapse In boldness, and In words the spiritual Insight which causes Christ to forgive him and return vision to his eyes. Through this brief statement, then, present only In the poetic version, the Andreas poet not only gives meaning to a narrative element which In the Latin original seems to be a pointless Intrusion Into the main story but also explains the purpose underlying the pattern of changes which begins with the transformation of a 'little boat' Into a ’wide-bosomed ship.' Furthermore, he fuses together the two roles of Andrew into a single speech when the words of the teacher highlight the former blindness of the warrior, evident in his hesitation to embark on a mission for his Lord. Finally in bringing together in a single instant the chronologically separate incidents of sin (Andrew's past failure to recognize the omnipotence of God), atonement (Andrew's 1,1 The Andreas poet highlights Andrew's blindness through another interesting change he makes in his telling of the story when he changes Andrew's initial question to the sailor's of the ship from "Where are you going?" (Ubi ambulatis?) to "Hwanon comon ge?" (From whence have you come?), an alteration in the poetic version which Implies that Andrew knows where the boat will be going— it has been sent as promised by his Lord to carry him to Mermedonia. But even knowing that this glorious ship has been provided by God, Andrew still fails in his blindness to recognize the pilot as Christ Himself accompanied by two of His angels. 307 present demonstration of spiritual insight), and reward (the future clearing of Andrew's eyes before the gates of Mermedonia), the poet steps outside the bounds of real time into the eternal pattern of Christian history— transgression, redemption, and judgment. In fact, this passage is but one of many ways in which the boundaries of earthly time are dissolved in the Andreas poet's depiction of the voyage to Mermedonia. Just as the irony that Andrew should speak these words reminds us of the saint's specific, past moment of blindness while the meaning of the words themselves informs us of his awareness of eternal truths, so throughout the voyage we are shown simultaneously Andrew's distance at this moment in time from physical awareness of Christ and Andrew's fusion with Christ through the living of his own life after the pattern of the "lifes weg" of his Lord.'•8 Indeed, as Bjork and Hamilton, among others, have pointed out, the entire voyage is filled with typological resonances between Andrew and Christ, many inherent in the source but highlighted only by the poet. For example, only in the poetic account (1. 369b-468) is the storm at sea developed to its full imagistic and thematic potential, for although the facts of this incident are much the same in the Latin source material (Chapters 7 and 8), only the poet vividly depicts the fierceness of the storm and thereby emphasizes the contrast between the fear of Andrew's followers and the calm of their leader and the pilot, 1•1 Bjork sees this juxtaposition as one of irony and typology: "Andreas's failure to recognize his Lord and the irony resulting from that lack of perception...become the barriers he must surmount in his rite de passage to sainthood. Dramatic irony in Andreas...comes to signify a separation from God; its breakdown signifies an increased typological identification with him" (113). 308 a parallel whose point is enforced by Andrew's own account of his previous fear in the boat of his Lord during the storm on the Sea of Galilee. Bjork also points out that through verbal repetition, the Andreas poet emphasizes the fact that Andrew goes to risk his life among hostile people, thereby drawing a clear tie between the Christ's mission on earth and the mission Andrew has undertaken at Christ's behest. In fact, much as the patterns of action preserved by Ur5 and the Germanic scop through repetition dissolved the chronological distinctions within the events of the past, so in Andreas, through the words of the teacher on the voyage and the deeds of the new warrior in Mermedonia, "repetition becomes...a deliverer from the mundane and from history, as it abolishes profane time and projects man and Andreas into mythical time" (Bjork 114). In general, then, an analysis of the relationship between Andreas and its Latin source material provides us with several important conclusions regarding the Anglo-Saxon poet's historical vision. In the manipulation of language and imagery, we see the techniques of Anglo- Saxon poetry turned to the presentation of the matter of the new literate tradition. In the character of Andrew we see the methodology of the oral-Germanic tradition, with its emphasis on universal patterns of action and sentiment, turned to the task of reconciling and fusing two apparently incompatible behavioral ethics. In the presentation of the narrative, especially in the ironic juxtaposition of Andrew's blindness with his spiritual insight, we see the patterning function of Urd turned to the presentation of both the typological and eschatological message of Christian history. 309 However, for che purpose of understanding che Andreas poet's vision of history and his own awareness of the relationship between his vision and that of the traditions on which he was drawing, no passage in the entire poem is more important than the one which opens the third and final section. Hwmt, ic hwile nu haliges lare leo&giddinga, lof pas pe worhte, wordum wemde, wyrd undyme. Ofer min gtmet mycel is to secgarme, langsum learnung, pat he in life adreag, eall after order; pescell aglawra maim on moldan ponne ic me talige findan on ferde, pat from fruman cunne eall pa earfedo pe he mid elne adreah gimra gu&a. Hwadre git sceolon lytlum sticcum leo&worda dal furdur reccan; pat is fymsagen, hu he weorna feala wita ge&olode, heardra hilda, in pare hm&enan byrig. (1. 1478-91 )“ * To anyone accustomed to reading Anglo-Saxon narrative poetry, perhaps the most astonishing aspect of this passage is its personal nature; while I can think of numerous places, both in this poem and more traditional works such as Beowulf, where narrators comment on the action of the poem, I can recall no other place where a narrator steps out of his role of presenter and commentator of events of the past to comment on his own act of presenting the story. Indeed, if this 11 * Listen! For a time now I have been telling in words the story of the saint, telling in poetry the famous event in praise of him who achieved it. There is much to tell beyond my ability— everything that he endured in his life from birth would be a lengthy work of study; that man on earth will be more learned in divine law than I consider myself to be who finds that he knows in his mind from the beginning all the hardship of fierce warfare which he endured with courage. However, we will still relate further in small pieces a portion of poetry; it is the ancient tradition, how he suffered very many torments, cruel battles, in that heathen city. 310 passage Is reminiscent of anything we have seen before it is the Preface to Bede's Ecclesiastical History, in that both authors acknowledge their debt to source material as well as the individual nature of their own presentation of that material. By its very existence, this passage serves as proof that the three-part structure, discussed earlier, into which the narrative of Andreas is divided is intentional on the part of the poet, since there is no internal motivation for this comment within the source material. In the poem, this authorial comment is interjected between the healing by God of Andrew's body and the punishment of the Mermedonians by flood, as commanded by the saint from within his prison. In the Latin source, however, there is not even a break between these two events; they even occur within the same chapter. A blinding light appeared to blessed Andrew in the prison and out of the light the Lord stretched forth his hand and lifted up Andrew sound and whole. Blessed Andrew immediately fell down and adored him, saying, "My Lord Jesus Christ, I thank you." Then he saw a tall marble column with a marble statue standing on it. He made the sign of the Holy Cross in front of it saying... (Casanatensis. Chap. 29) Clearly, the Anglo-Saxon poet wished to draw a clear line of demarcation between these two events, even though no such division existed in the original. And, of course, in the story as he has refashioned it, with the spiritual and physical testing of Andrew as its focus, this is a logical dividing place— Andrew has completed his trial, has demonstrated by his spiritual faith and his physical resolve his worthiness to be Christ's instrument and servant, and his Lord has just acknowledged this fact by fulfilling His covenant with Andrew to protect His retainer from harm— "Aras pa mmgene rof...hal of 311 hefte...was eft swa ar purh pa a&elan miht / lof ladende, ond on his lice trum" (1. 1469-77 passim Then he arose, valiant in might, unharmed from captivity...by the power of the almighty he was again as before, giving praise and whole in his body). The central action of the poem having been completed, what will follow is simply a winding down, a proof of Andrew's renewed status as God's agent and teacher. Why, then, does the poet not end his story here? The simple and obvious answer is that he wished to be faithful to his source, or at least to the received tradition of this apparently well-known and popular story. The content of the narrator's personal comment, however, reveals another deeper purpose at work, a purpose which can only be understood if we recognize that the passage itself, like the poem, breaks down into three sections. The poet opens with the statement that he has been telling his audience a well-known tale. Then, in lines 1481-87b, the poet tells his audience that there is much more to the story than he has told; others may know and choose to tell more, the whole story of Andrew from his birth ("eall after orde"). The passage concludes with the statement that he will complete this story as it is traditionally known. As I mentioned above, this passage at first seems to be little more than a conventional expression of self-deprecation so often found at the start or finish of medieval narratives. However a closer examination of the language of the three sections reveals some rather startling facts. In the first part, for example, the opening "Hwaet" pulls us back to the world of oral-Germanic history, a tie which is reinforced first by the word "leodgiddinga" (poetic song), by which the speaker identifies the method of the section he has just completed with that of the native historical tradition, and then by the words "wyrd undyme," a phrase which literally is being used in the sense of 'famous happening' but which conjures up images of the fated world of Germanic history and the role of the Germanic scop in making un-secret the patterns guiding human action in the past. This tie to the world of Germanic history is completed by the use of a singular noun ("wyrd") to refer to what has gone before, indicating that in the poet's eyes, the story as he has presented it thus far is a single action, unified by a single pattern of meaning, an approach to historical narrative which the poet, as I demonstrated earlier, borrowed from his native tradition. Indeed, the only way in which this first section seems divorced for that old historic-poetic tradition is in the use of the first person singular, a pronoun which serves to make this speaker's telling of history individual rather than communal. The second section focuses not on the poet's methodology but on that of others who have told this tale, a group of people whose abilities and methods, the speaker tells us, are quite different from his own. Just as in the first section the language is carefully chosen to align the poet's telling of Andrew's story with the oral-Germanic historical tradition, so in the second section numerous explicit ties are drawn to the literate-Christian tradition. First the poet makes pointed reference to the literate approach to history when he tells his audience that he lacks the ability of those whose work is the result of much study ("langsum leamung"), those who know everything which has happened to Andrew from the moment of his birth; in fact, the poet 313 returns to this issue of the literate passion for chronology twice in six and a half lines. Then the poet tells us that such biographers as these are learned in divine law (“■glawra"), a clear reference to the Scriptural tradition of history. It seems evident in this passage that the Andreas poet is pointedly distancing both his own abilities as a hagiographer in general and his account of the life of Andrew in particular from the literate-Biblical historical methodology. The final section, in which the poet tells his audience that he will proceed a little further with his story, is a fascinating fusion of ideas from the preceeding two sections. In the second line, for example, the piece-meal methodology of chronologically-oriented history ("lytlum sticcum"— by little pieces) is bound together with the native poetic method of presenting history in small, unified pieces ("leoSworda dal"— a portion of poetry). In the next line, reference is made to an ancient tradition ("fyrnsagen") of the saint's life to whose matter, "feala wita" (many torments) and "heardra hilda" (cruel battles), the poet wishes to be faithful; here the poet binds together the matter of both ancient traditions, Christian and heroic, as well as the two roles of his teacher/warrior hero, Andrew. Most interesting of all, however, is the fact that in the first line of this section the poet readopts the first person plural he abandoned in the opening of the entire passage and in this new 'we' which is no longer simply the "we“ of heroic history or the 'they' of learned history he establishes a new community guided by a new universal pattern of history. In many ways, this final section of the poet's personal statement, a statement which by its placement mirrors the function of the historic 314 formula wich which Andreas opens, and which serves as far more chan a simple preface co che final seccion of Che poem, is really a summary by Che poeC himself of Che naCure of his achievemenC in his reCelling of che familiar Cale of Andrew, che sainc reknowed above all ochers for ueqenlice. In Chis passage, che Anglo-Saxon poec simulcaneously places his own work in concinuicy wich previous hiscorical Cradi Cions and assercs Che difference becween his hiscorical vision and chac of all who have gone before him. In essence, Chen, in celling his cale of Andrew among Che Mermedonians, Chis poec so ofCen condemned for his lack of poecic ability and derivacive and conservacive accicude has reshaped Che maccer of Che new licerace tradition in accordance wich che unifying, pacceming mechodology of Che old oral Cradi Cion and placed ac Che hearc of his new history che.cimeless Christian pattern of transgression, atonement, and reward, a pattern in which che spiritual faith of che teacher of life in Christ's way is fused wich Che physical actions of Che new warrior who walks on chac path. Conclusion A Pattern for the Future By the end of the Old English period, the two streams of tradition governing the composition and function of historical narrative which had been brought into confluence by the coming of Augustine to England were about to redivide along new lines which would eventually develop into our modern genres of history and fiction. Each new river would owe much in form and focus to one of the streams from which both flowed, history to the literate-Christian tradition and fiction to the oral-Germanic, but neither would be entirely synonymous with anything that had gone before. Both new genres would be concerned with human and social truths, but while the truth of the re-formed river of English history would reside primarily in the 'outside' of Collingwood's definition, that is, in the accumulation of accurate and verifiable details and secondarily in the 'inside' of his definition, that is, in the pattern of meaning which those facts could be shown to reveal, the truth of the newly formed river of fiction would lie primarily in its 'inside,' that is, in a central pattern of meaning to which all details would be subservient, important not in their own right but as concrete carriers of abstract truths. Similarly, both the new history and fiction would be concerned with the relationship between time and human existence, but while in history the chronology 315 316 of Che narrative would have to be consistent with and connected to that of the world in which the narrative was being written, in fiction consistency and connectedness of the chronology would only have to be internal to the narrative itself. As a result, while the insights of history would relate to a specific timeframe external to the work itself and hence be retrospective in focus, those of fiction could exist outside 'real' time and hence be universal in focus. Finally, while the truths contained in both rivers would be reflections of the moral, religious, scientific, and cultural beliefs of the societies to which their authors belonged, history would reflect a communal consciousness of human nature and social custom, and hence would be answerable to the group's notion of truth; fiction by contrast would reflect an individual consciousness answerable to the group only in its ability to communicate its own internal vision of truth to them. Indications that this evolution had already begun in the Old English period can be found in the works discussed in the preceding chapters. The Ecclesiastical History of Bede, for example, is not just an example of the literate-Christian tradition from which the reformed genre of later English history would arise; it is also an example of the way in which the Anglo-Saxons made a vision of history alien to their own answerable to the beliefs and practices native to them as a people. The thorough naturalization of this foreign vision to the needs of the English, though slow to take place, is evident in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which both incorporated native regnal material to the new form and did so in the vernacular rather than Latin. Similarly, in Beowulf not only do we see the writing down of the matter 317 and methodology of the native oral-Germanic historical tradition, which with its patterned approach to action, character, and theme would evolve into the new genre of fiction; we also see the cultivation of two cultural voices, a technique made possible by literacy and developed in fiction into the individual voice of the created narrator. These techniques begun in Beowulf can be seen brought to artistic fruition in the central section of Andreas: in which all details of language, imagery, character, and action are bound together by and subservient to a single, central theme; in which, through setting, repetition, and typology, action and discourse on the sea-voyage have been cut off from external chronology and tied to universal truths and states of being; and at the close of which, in perhaps the first example of the truly individual narrative voice in English literature, the speaker, looking back over the story he has just told, asserts that this tale, in both its content and its presentation, is his own and unlike the work of any others who have told or will tell the story of this particular man. The clearest indication of the growing separation of the genres of history and fiction by the end of the Old English period lies in two poems, The Battle of Brunanburh and The Battle of Maldon, the former probably written around the middle of the tenth century and the latter no later than the middle of the eleventh, both of which have as their basic subject matter verifiable historical events. However, it is not the ties between the poems and 'real' battles which make these two works important in tracking the beginnings of a separation of the genres of history and fiction; rather it is the fact that for each 318 poetic account a brief prose entry for the same event can be found in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. If we look at the Chronicle entries for these two events, Brunanburh in 937 and Maldon in 991, we will discover that although the former was apparently a great victory and the latter a rather minor, if bloody, defeat, the entries are much the same in length and content. 937. Her £&estan cing (& Eadmund his broder) ledde fyrde to Brunan byri. & par ge feht wii Anelaf. & Xpe (Christe) fultumegende sige hafde. (& par ofslogan .v. cingas & .viii. eorlas. (Canterbury] 993. Her on dissum geare com Unlaf mid prim & hund nigentigon scipum to Stane, & forhergedon plat] on ytan, & for 8a darton to Sandwic, & swa danon to Gipes wic, & p(atl eall ofer eode, & swa to Mxldune; & him par com togeanes Byrhtno* ealdorman mid his fyrde, & him wi& gefeaht. & ’"/ pone ealdorman par ofslogon, & walstowe geweald ahtan. (Parker!1*4 The Maldon entry above, from the Parker version, is the fullest account of the event; Laud and Canterbury simply note that "991. Her wa G(ypes)wic ge hergod. & after pam swi&e ra£e (’Her' in Canterbury] was Brihtnod ealdorman ofslagen at Maldune" (In this year Ipswich was harried, and very soon after that (in this year] ealdorman Byrhtno6 was slain at Maldon). The Brunanburh entry, by contrast, is the shortest, with all other versions of the Chronicle have in place of the standard brief prose annal the poem Brunanburh. The poem Maldon is in no way 144 937. In this year King ff&estan and his brother Edmund led their militia to Brunanburh. And there they fought Anlaf. And Christ helping they won victory. And 5 kings and 8 earls were slain there. 993. In this year, Unlaf (Olaf) came to Folkestone with 93 ships and harried outside (the city], and then went of to Sandwich, and so on to Ipswich and then traveled all over, and so on to Maldon. And there he came together with Ealdorman Byrhtno* and his militia. And they slew the ealdorman there and held possession of the place of slaughter. Two Anglo-Saxon Chronicles; Parallel, ed. Charles Plummer (Oxford: Clarendon, 1892). 319 connected with the Chronicle account and, although its exact provenance is unknown, is generally accepted as having been written some years after the battle itself. This situation leaves us with several questions: why was Brunanburh included among the annalistic entries of the Chronicle? why is the entry for Maldon so brief if, as the poem implies, the battle was one of importance? are there any differences between the two poems which might account for the inclusion of one in a work for the most part, by this time, written in the new, data-oriented approach to history? As these are just concluding comments in a dissertation which has already reached, from my point of view at any rate, a staggering length, I do not intend to engage in a thorough analysis of these two poems and their analogues, or even to propose answers to all of these questions. Instead I will content myself with a few points pertinent to the issue at hand, the changing perception of history by the close of the Old English period. First, it must be noted that there are some marked differences between the two poems. Not only is Brunanburh less than one-fifth the length of even the surviving portion of Maldon. the content differs markedly, as well: the former focuses exclusively on the events of the battle— who was present, who died, who ran away, what the outcome was, and so forth; in stark contrast, roughly one quarter of Maldon is taken up by speeches, and while Brunanburh provides an overview of the battle, very rarely entering the fray on the level of personal conflict, Maldon focuses exclusively on the actions, in battle and before, of individuals. Furthermore, while both make use of poetic 320 formulas, to describe both people and the battle itself, only in Maldon do we see both sentiments and a methodology which belong so clearly to the Germanic tradition: the story is built around several 'heavy' characters representative of the central pattern of action in the poem; the action itself is built on many traditional formulas— heroic flyting between Byrhtnod and the Viking messenger, the death of the leader, the pledges of loyalty and revenge by the followers; and as we see in both Beowulf and Andreas speech itself becomes action through the making and fulfilling of beots. Finally, while the narrators of both interject comments, only in Maldon are we given the sense that these are personal rather than communal judgments. All of these differences between the two poems lead me to conclude that, despite the fact that Brunanburh is written in poetry rather than prose, both its focus on the accumulation of detail and its expression of a communal point of view make it far more suitable than a poem such as Maldon for inclusion in a document written in what was to become the new form of English history. Maldon. on the other hand, with its presentation of the behavior of specific individuals in terms of universal patterns of action, its removal of the action from the specific world in which the real event took place,1•* its subjugation of all details of narrative, character, setting, and language to a single theme, and its oblique offering of a personal point of view, is 1,5 Note by comparison the ways in which the Brunanburh poet constantly reminds his audience of the larger geo-political situation; in Maldon, most such references have been removed— /Weired, the king to whom Byrhtnod owed allegiance, is mentioned only twice, and even the battlefield itself could be any of a number of places where an island in a river or estuary is joined to the land by a narrow causeway which is flooded at high tide. 321 more representative of the new genre of historical fiction which was developing in England by the end of the Anglo-Saxon period. This is not to say that I think Maldon is fiction or even that its author would have felt that his poem was in any sense less historical than a poem like Brunanburh. What I am saying is that we need to consider the possibility that our problems with the historicity of Maldon may lie with the poem's transitional nature, belonging wholly neither to the old Germanic-heroic historic tradition, which it so clearly attempts to imitate but which it does not entirely resemble, nor to the new genre of fiction which was just beginning to emerge. If we approach the poem from this point of view, always bearing in mind that for this work at least there is no simple answer to the questions "Is this history or is this fiction?" then all other critical questions, relative to both specific social, political, and historical issues and more universal patterns of cultural and religious meaning, will bear fruitful results. LIST OF REFERENCES AElfric. "Natale Sancti Andrac Apostoli." 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