Memory, Sight and Love in Cynewulf’s Elene

ABSTRACT

It is conventionally assumed that Cynewulf is not interested in depicting any psychological realism in his characters, only figural truths, and that Elene is structured around a binary opposition such as that between the letter and the spirit. In fact, Cynewulf does create characters whose actions are psychologically plausible on a literal level, if we accept that psychology is influenced by culture. Cynewulf does not depict a spiritual development that is oppositional, or which adheres to ideas of hierarchies of cognition, but one which is holistic and tripartite, and which resembles Augustine’s trinity of the soul. Each character encounters the Cross through learning, experience and the grace of rewarded receptivity. They can gain each of these three modes of understanding in any order, but it is only when they have united all three that they receive affective wisdom from the Holy Ghost.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Heather O’Donoghue, Andy Orchard and Susan Irvine for their comments on earlier versions of this paper, and Francis Leneghan for his generous advice at several stages of its development.

Notes

1 Hill, “Sapiential Structure,” (1971); Fish (1975); Sharma (2009). Regan provides another early (1973) figural reading of the poem, but it is less dualistic, treating Elene as enacting the role of the Church Militant and Judas the role of Catechumen.

2 Heckman, 450.

3 Ibid., 469.

4 See Irvine; Dyer; and Gillingham, 53–4.

5 Quotations of Gregory's Epistle are from the Patrologia Latina 75, columns 0509D–0516C.

6 Translations of Gregory provided in brackets are from Morals on the Book of Job.

7 Campbell, 242.

8 Hill, “Bread and Stone,” 256.

9 Campbell summarizes the problems of taking any extant version of the Acta Cyriaci as we have it now as Cynewulf's model in “Cynewulf's Multiple Revelations,” 230. The version of the legend which is believed to be most similar to the one Cynewulf would have known can be found in Holder's edition of the Inventio Sanctæ Crucis.

10 Harbus, 102.

11 Calder, 137.

12 Cf. Bjork's observation of “triadic structure” in several of the poem's speeches, 62–89.

13 See Godden, “Anglo-Saxons on the Mind,” 276.

14 Lockett, 313–73, esp. 336 and 340–2. See also Gatch.

15 See Godden and Irvine, Vol. 1, 140–51.

16 Godden, “Did King Alfred Write Anything?” 17.

17 Augustine mentions this trinity of the soul in De Trinitate Libri XV Book 4, Chapter 21, and develops the idea further in Books 10, 14 and 15.

18 Doubleday; Selzer.

19 Lapidge, 287.

20 Selzer, 231.

21 Godden and Irvine, Vol. 2, 304.

22 Nam primum quidem fundamenta historiae ponimus; deinde per significationem typicam in arcem fidei fabricam mentis erigimus; ad extremum quoque per moralitatis gratiam, quasi superducto aedificium colore vestimus. (For first, we lay the historical foundations; next, by pursuing the typical sense, we erect a fabric of the mind to be a strong hold of faith; and moreover as the last step, by the grace of moral instruction, we, as it were, clothe the edifice with an overcast of colouring.)

23 See Bede, 166, and also Irvine, 295.

24 Quotations of Elene are from The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records edition by Krapp and translations are my own. All subsequent references to Elene are cited parenthetically by line number.

25 Sharma, 283.

26 References to the Holy Spirit appear in ll. 49, 54, 299, 320–1 and 358 of the Inventio Sanctæ Crucis.

27 Regan, 274.

28 Hill, “Sapiental Structure,” 210.

29 Calder, 121

30 Hill, “Sapiental Structure,” 211.

31 Hill convincingly argues for the appropriateness of seeing Judas as a type of Christ in this scene because it evokes Joseph's captivity in the dry well, which is a type of the Harrowing of Hell, which is itself a typological allusion to baptism. See Hill, “Bread and Stone,” 255.

32 Regan, 268.

33 Scragg, 133–8, l. 24.

34 The existence of the discipline of Cultural Psychology attests to this.

35 Bedingfield (171–90) argues that the catechumenical period of fasting was only occasionally practised in Anglo-Saxon England due in the early period to the practicalities of missionary work and in the later period to the prevalence of infant baptism.

36 Scragg, 70.

37 Ó Carragáin, 69. See also Leneghan, 649.

38 The Dialogue of Egbert describes of a period of fasting which became a firm custom among both monks and laity and was kept quasi legitima—as if it were law—which suggests some degree of compulsion, if only through social pressure. Haddan and Stubbs, 413. See also Mayr-Harting, 254–61.

39 E.g., gif he þin nære / sunnu synna leas, næfre he soðra swa fela / [ … ] wundra gefremede (if he were not your sinless son, he would never have worked so many miracles; ll. 776b–8b).

40 The Acta Cyricaci also says that they must wait for the ninth hour, but it does not say that this was at Judas' instigation, or mention the singing. Mayr-Harting (188) has written about the importance of the ninth hour in Anglo-Saxon prayers on the passion.

41 DiNapoli, 625.

42 Cameron, et al., “And-weardlīce”, Dictionary of Old English.

43 See also Birkett.

44 Notably Wright, 540, and Regan, 260. Regan draws a distinction between the preaching (Kerygma) Elene does to the Jews and the teaching (Didache) she does to Judas.

45 Leneghan, 632.

46 Ibid., 633.

47 Sharma, 281.

48 Abdou, 195; Ó Carragáin, 67.

49 See also Irvine, 442.

50 Wright, 546.

51 Birkett, 777, 789.

52 Used, for example, by Ælfric in the “Libellus,” 228. See also Hill, “A Riddle”.

53 Sharma, 290.

54 Whatley, 202 (emphasis mine).