Debating with Demons: Pedagogy and Materiality in Early English Literature 1843845652, 9781843845652

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This book argues that these encounters between demonic teachers and their pupils are both epistemological, altering the pupils’ knowledge, and ontological, affecting their state of being. As the pupils ‘learn’, the physical locations they occupy align with rhetorical and dialectical topoi, or conceptual spaces in the mind, as minds, souls, bodies, and places are integrated into cohesive lived experience. The volume thus explores early medieval pedagogy as a spirituo-material practice, both embodied and emplaced, with the potential to alter the onto-epistemological dynamics of the world. CHRISTINA M. HECKMAN is Professor of English at Augusta University, Georgia.

Christina M. Heckman

Cover image: MS Junius 11, p. 17 courtesy of The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.

Debating with Demons  

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n early English literature ca 700–1000 C.E., demons are represented as teachers who use methods of persuasion and argumentation to influence their ‘pupils’. By deploying these methods, related to the liberal arts of rhetoric and dialectic, demons become masters of verbal manipulation. Their pupils are frequently women or Jews, seemingly marginal figures but who often oppose the authority of demonic pedagogues and challenge their deceptive lessons. In poetic accounts of the Fall of the Angels, the Fall of Adam and Eve, and the lives of the saints, those who debate with demons redefine the significance of narrative, authority, and resistance in early medieval pedagogy.

Debating with

Demons Pedagogy and Materiality in Early English Literature

Anglo-Saxon Studies 41

DEBATING WITH DEMONS

Anglo-Saxon Studies ISSN 1475-2468 GENERAL EDITORS

John Hines Catherine Cubitt

‘Anglo-Saxon Studies’ aims to provide a forum for the best scholarship on the Anglo-Saxon peoples in the period from the end of Roman Britain to the Norman Conquest, including comparative studies involving adjacent populations and periods; both new research and major re-assessments of central topics are welcomed. Books in the series may be based in any one of the principal disciplines of archaeology, art history, history, language and literature, and inter- or multi-disciplinary studies are encouraged. Proposals or enquiries may be sent directly to the editors or the publisher at the addresses given below; all submissions will receive prompt and informed consideration. Professor John Hines, School of History, Archaeology and Religion, Cardiff University, John Percival Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff, Wales, CF10 3EU, UK Professor Catherine Cubitt, School of History, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of East Anglia, Norwich, England, NR4 7TJ, UK Boydell & Brewer, PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk, England, IP12 3DF, UK Previously published volumes in the series are listed at the back of this book

DEBATING WITH DEMONS Pedagogy and Materiality in Early English Literature

Christina M. Heckman

D. S. BREWER

© Christina M. Heckman 2020 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Christina M. Heckman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2020 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge

ISBN 978-1-84384-565-2 hardback ISBN 978-1-78744-842-1 ePDF D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate

This publication is printed on acid-free paper Front cover image: MS Junius 11, p. 17 courtesy of The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford

For my mother and father and for Stephen J. Heckman (1978–2008) in loving memory

Contents

Introduction: The Devil’s Secret Chamber

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Part I: Foundations 1 Spirituo-Materiality in the Early Middle Ages 2 The Artes Liberales in the Early Middle Ages 3 The Devil Within: Perils of Pedagogy in the Monastic School

15 44 73

Part II: The Demonic Magister in Early English Poetry 4 The Origin of the Teaching Demon: Lucifer as Magister 5 Demonic Teaching and the Fall in the Old English Genesis 6 Demonic Teaching and Saintly Discretio in Cynewulf’s Juliana 7 Inventing Materia: The True Cross and Saintly Disputation in Cynewulf’s Elene Conclusion: The Mysteries of Pedagogy

103 125 152 178 205

Bibliography 212 Index 235 Acknowledgments 248

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Introduction The Devil’s Secret Chamber

The teaching devil The Vercelli Book (Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare CXVII), an early English codex often dated to the late tenth century and famous for poems such as The Dream of the Rood, also includes a collection of homilies in Old English. One of these preaching texts, Vercelli Homily X, is an exhortation to repentance that includes an explanation of the Incarnation, an account of the Last Judgment, a commentary on the parable of the rich man in Luke 12:16–21, and a lament about the transitory nature of earthly life.1 In the homily’s Judgment scene, Satan represents himself as a musician who plays his harp to lure vulnerable souls away from God with the sweetness of his song.2 In the homilist’s account, these souls pursue their fate through physical actions, hearing Satan’s music, turning toward him, and entering the place Satan has prepared for them: woldon hie in minon hordcofan, [ond] þin cynerice eal forgeaton (‘they wished [to be] in my secret chamber, and completely forgot your kingdom’).3 The devil calls this chamber his hordcofa, a hidden room (cofa) where he keeps his treasure (hord). It is a private, enclosed place, contrasting with the vast realms of the Judge’s kingdom (cynerice) and providing the illusion of protection from exposure at the Judgment. In the devil’s chamber, vulnerable souls choose his secret sins,

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All references to Vercelli Homily X are from The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts, ed. D.G. Scragg (Oxford, 1992), pp. 196–218; here, see p. 191. See also Samantha Zacher, ‘Sin, Syntax, and Synonyms: Rhetorical Style and Structure in Vercelli Homily X,’ Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 103 (2004), 53–76 (p. 55). This scene appears between lines 67–100. On the motif of the devil as a musician, see Christina M. Heckman, ‘The Sweet Song of Satan: Music and Resistance in the Vercelli Book,’ Essays in Medieval Studies, 15 (1999), 57–70 (pp. 60–61, 66–67). The Vercelli Homilies, ed. Scragg, p. 201, line 88. All translations from Old English are my own. Scragg and Zacher note that the Vercelli X homilist adapted much of his material from Latin sources, including Chapter 62 of Paulinus of Aquileia’s Liber exhortationis ad Henricum comitem; Pseudo-Augustine’s De remedia peccatorum; and Isidore of Seville’s Synonyma, II.89–98. See The Vercelli Homilies, ed. Scragg, p. 196 and Zacher, ‘Sin, Syntax, and Synonyms,’ p. 54. Citing Scragg, Zacher also observes that the homilist significantly alters the speech of the devil at the Judgment.

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Debating with Demons yearning for his presence and rejecting God’s teaching. His hordcofa is both metaphorical and physical, not only thought but seen, heard, and felt. It is both a state of mind and a place, a locus in which the spiritual, material, and spatial coincide. And, though this chamber seems to provide safety, it is the place of greatest danger to Satan’s listeners, whose misdeeds will ultimately be revealed openly before the Judge and punished with damnation. In the homily, the movements of the soul-in-the-body represent the choices of the will, as the souls who first go astray through the operation of their senses eventually yield to more dangerous instruction. Drawn into Satan’s secret room by his music, they are taken in by sensual enjoyment: ðonne ic mine hearpan genam [ond] mine strengas styrian ongan, hie ðæt lustlice gehyrdon, [ond] fram þe cyrdon [ond] to me urnon (‘when I took my harp and began to stir my strings, they heard that with pleasure, and turned from you and hastened to me’).4 Initially persuaded by their fleshly experience, these souls, enjoying the deceptive safety of Satan’s hordcofa, ultimately accept him as magister, their master-teacher.5 Ic hie mine leahtras lærde, he says, [ond] hie me hyrdon georne (‘I taught them my crimes, and they eagerly heard me’).6 Satan describes his actions using the Old English verb læran, meaning ‘to teach’ or ‘to persuade.’ Attaining his pedagogical aims partly through music, the Vercelli devil perversely parodies the teachings of Gregory the Great, who compares ‘the ideal teacher’ to a musician who can adapt his song to the disposition of the listener.7 Although these souls would not hear God’s word before, they now turn their senses to learning Satan’s lessons, willingly accepting his instruction. Many early English readers knew of the teaching devil: he was commonplace in patristic literature, as Eric Jager has argued, and, in this particular homiletic form, he survives in nine manuscript copies from the eighth through the eleventh centuries.8 The souls instructed by the Vercelli devil encounter his teaching through physical experiences which, 4

5 6 7

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The Vercelli Homilies, ed. Scragg, p. 200, lines 83–85. On the link between music and materiality, see John Shepherd and Peter Wicke, Music and Cultural Theory (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 97–100. On this motif, see Eric Jager, The Tempter’s Voice: Language and the Fall in Medieval Literature (Ithaca, 1993), pp. 40, 44. The Vercelli Homilies, ed. Scragg, p. 200, lines 85–86. This reference appears in the prologue to Book III of Gregory’s Liber regulae pastoralis, Patrologia Latina, Patrologiae Cursus Completus, 2nd series, ed. JacquePaul Migne (Paris, 1844–1855), 77, Col. 49C. Cited in Irina Dumitrescu, The Experience of Education in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Cambridge, 2018), p. 12. Jager, The Tempter’s Voice, pp. 14, 24–26, 38–48, 166–171. Samantha Zacher describes Vercelli Homily X as ‘one of the most widely circulating homiletic compositions to survive from Anglo-Saxon England’ apart from those of Ælfric. Preaching the Converted: The Style and Rhetoric of the Vercelli Book Homilies (Toronto, 2009), p. 108.

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Introduction while metaphorical, are also presented as embodied, demonstrating the power, immediacy, and persuasiveness of the pedagogical encounter. And Satan’s ‘pupils’ eventually become teachers in their own right. Instructed through Satan’s verbal arts, they learn to reproduce those arts themselves: Æt me hie leornodon scondword [ond] lease brægdas, [ond] þine soðfæsten lare hie forgeaton [ond] þinne dom ne gemundon; ac minre neaweste a wilnodon [ond] þine forhogodon (‘from me they learned foul words and false deceits, and they forgot your true teaching and did not remember your kingdom; but they always desired my fellowship and despised yours’).9 When Satan teaches his students, they ‘learn’ or ‘study’ (leornian) his arts, which include ‘shame-words’ (scondword) and ‘deceits’ (brægdas). Satan’s students forget God’s soðfæsten lare, literally his ‘truth-fast teachings,’ his divine lore. By learning Satan’s lessons instead, the souls acquire new destructive knowledge and lose the godly knowledge they had earlier possessed. In the devil’s secret room, these souls, in being deceived, master the arts of deception. Taught with false words – or, even more dangerously, truths spoken for manipulative purposes – they learn to mislead others.10 Their memories fail, their previous knowledge of God’s teaching replaced with the devil’s arts, which depend for their efficacy on his seductive presence. Such scenes of demonic pedagogy reside at the intersection of spirituo-materiality and onto-epistemology.11 That is, these scenes unfold as verbal debates that stimulate material and spiritual transformations in both the demon’s pupils and the world around them. Such transformations are epistemological, altering how and what the pupils know or think they know. But these changes are also ontological, affecting the pupils’ state of being. In these transformations, physical places align with conceptual space, resulting in change that is at once intellectual, spatial, and spiritual. Because demons’ pupils are frequently women, these scenes suggest ways of thinking about gender that thoroughly undermine any binary opposition of masculine ‘spirit’ with the feminine ‘body.’ Scenes of demonic pedagogy necessitate a more dynamic view of gender in which spiritus pervades all bodies and gender norms constantly fluctuate, responding

9 10

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The Vercelli Homilies, ed. Scragg, p. 201, lines 89–91. Andrew Cole, ‘Jewish Apocrypha and Christian Epistemologies of the Fall: The Dialogi of Gregory the Great and the Old Saxon Genesis,’ in Rome and the North: The Early Reception of Gregory the Great in Northern Europe, ed. Rolf H. Bremmer, Jr., Kees Dekker, and David F. Johnson (Paris, 2001), pp. 157–188 (p. 162). The term ‘onto-epistem-ology’ is taken from Karen Barad, ‘Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter,’ Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28 (2003), 801–831 (p. 829), reprinted in Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman, eds., Material Feminisms (Bloomington, 2008), pp. 120–154 (p. 147). A more complete discussion of this term can be found in Chapter 1.

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Debating with Demons to the demands and transformations inherent in the pedagogical encounter. Within such encounters, the voicing of narratives, emanating from bodies in space, transforms those spaces into newly significant places and thereby alters the onto-epistemological dynamics of the world. Vercelli Homily X’s devil, like other teaching demons, is a figure of material immediacy: he appeals to souls-in-bodies through beautiful sounds within a particular ‘place,’ his secret chamber, merging the spiritual and the material. The devil’s teaching in this scene is so compelling partly because of his nearness; his seemingly physical immediacy makes it easy to forget about God, who is himself truth, goodness, and power, but who also seems more challenging, more remote, less sensually appealing, and less present in a direct material sense. Vercelli Homily X’s devil speaks at the Last Judgment, the ultimate ‘place,’ representing sin and salvation as destinations toward which the souls travel: drawn by sensory pleasure, they choose one direction, one place over another, accepting the devil’s teaching once they arrive in his secret chamber.12 The Vercelli devil represents the spiritual in physical and spatial terms, merging materia and spiritus in a fusion which, as he deploys his musical and verbal arts, he recognizes and uses to his advantage. A fundamental premise of this book is that, despite ongoing post-Cartesian attempts to separate the material, the spiritual, the spatial, and the linguistic, these categories only take on being and meaning in relation to one another. My argument here counters the emphasis in postmodern criticism that privileges language and discourse over materiality. Recent responses to this ‘linguistic turn,’13 most of which aim to ‘[bring] the material back in,’ in Susan Hekman’s words,14 are especially exciting for those who study medieval cultures, in which the material, the linguistic, and the ‘invisible and visible were … part of one whole,’ not divided between ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural,’ as Helen Foxhall Forbes claims.15 It is seem12

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The spirituo-material integration represented here has a solid foundation in theology: as Helen Foxhall Forbes has noted, at the Judgment, bodies would reunite with their souls, and the body that was mortal and prone to decay would be no longer, if it were, in fact, ever completely severed from the soul. Forbes mentions numerous sources, including Gregory’s Dialogues, which articulate a belief in the body’s ongoing connection with the soul after death. See Heaven and Earth in Anglo-Saxon England: Theology and Society in an Age of Faith (Aldershot, 2013), pp. 265, 269. See also Leslie Lockett, Anglo-Saxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions (Toronto, 2011), pp. 200–202. Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman, ‘Introduction: Emerging Models of Materiality in Feminist Theory,’ in Material Feminisms, ed. Alaimo and Hekman, pp. 1–19 (pp. 1, 6). Susan Hekman, The Material of Knowledge: Feminist Disclosures (Bloomington, 2010), p. 2. Forbes, Heaven and Earth in Anglo-Saxon England, p. 65. Deirdre O’Sullivan also makes this point in ‘Space, Silence and Shortage on Lindisfarne: The Archaeology of Asceticism,’ in Image and Power in the Archaeology of Early

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Introduction ingly impossible to discuss the ‘movements’ of the soul without recourse to physical and spatial metaphors, figures which only have resonance in relation to material processes. This book therefore draws on medieval theories of matter as well as recent research in feminist materialism, religious studies, medieval studies, and theories of space and place to elucidate the intersection of materiality, spirituality, epistemology, and ontology in early medieval culture. Although this study focuses on English primary texts written between 700 and 1100 c.e., it is intended for a diverse audience in the hopes of bringing several fields into mutually enriching conversation.16 Within that dialogue, medieval theories of materiality have an essential place.

Demonic pedagogy and spirituo-materiality In early English literature, the implicit questions and arguments engaged in poetic demonic debates are embedded within overtly pedagogical encounters. To represent the devil’s activity as a teacher, early English writers such as the Vercelli X homilist used a number of common terms, especially læran, a verb meaning ‘to teach,’ ‘persuade,’ or ‘preach.’17 Læran is by far the most frequently used word relating to teaching in the Old English corpus, along with related terms such as lar, ‘lore, teaching … doctrine,’ and lareow, ‘teacher.’18 In comparison, tæcan, to show or teach by demonstration or example, is less common,19 most frequently used to represent the teaching of the saints and Christ himself, who also, according to Gregory’s Dialogues, can guide and teach the soul internally if no earthly

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Medieval Britain: Essays in Honour of Rosemary Cramp, ed. Helena Hamerow and Arthur MacGregor (Oxford, 2001), pp. 33–52 (p. 35). When quotations from Latin and Old English are included in this book, I have provided modern English translations. Information about full published translations is always included in the footnotes and Bibliography. S.v. læran in Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller’s Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (Oxford, 1898). The source of the contemporary word ‘learn’ is another Old English word, leornian. S.v. ‘learn, v.,’ Oxford English Dictionary Online (Oxford, 2018), www.oed.com, accessed 19 March 2019. S.v. lar and lareow, Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, ed. Bosworth and Toller. Lær- and related fragments occur over 2200 times in the Old English corpus; in contrast, a search for tæc- and tæht- returns about half as many. See the Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, compiled by Antonette DiPaolo Healey with John Price Wilkin and Xin Xiang (Toronto, 2009), http://tapor.library. utoronto.ca/doecorpus/, accessed 19 March 2019. Tæcan more often means ‘to show’ rather than ‘to teach.’ On the association of these terms with demonic speech, see Margaret J. Ehrhart, ‘Tempter as Teacher: Some Observations on the Vocabulary of the Old English Genesis B,’ Neophilologus, 59 (1975), 435–446 (pp. 438–439).

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Debating with Demons teacher is available.20 In contrast, Satan and his demonic minions teach not by example but by persuasion and trickery. They are skillful with words, clever in their speech, capable of using verbal arts to manipulate their chosen pupils and lead them astray. Demonic teaching therefore requires an immediate personal encounter and a conversation, a dialogue between the deceptive magister and a pupil willing to engage with him. Materiality, mutual embodiment and occupancy of a particular place are essential to Satan’s pedagogical project. And pedagogy, though written works must tell much of its story, is not simply linguistic or textual, but rather is grounded in embodied and emplaced encounters. Materia has special status in these encounters, sanctified through Incarnation but also dangerous in its instability. While the material immediacy of pedagogical practice makes students vulnerable to demonic deception, materia in early medieval texts is also sacred, shaped through divine creation and sustained through its laws. Early in Vercelli Homily X, the homilist notes that the Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, ennobled matter through the Incarnation, descending to dwell in the body of the Virgin.21 When Christ was born of his human mother, he united the material and spiritual realms, as the ealles middangeardes hælend 7 ealra gasta nerigend 7 eallra sawla helpend (‘savior of all middle-earth and preserver of all spirits and Helper of all souls’).22 When the divine spirit came to earth, matter united with it, the human and the divine merged in a gesamnung (‘joining’), providing a refuge from Satan and nourishment for both soul and body.23 Such a spirituo-material integration occurred not only in scripture but also in the lives of ordinary human beings, especially through the Eucharist, in which matter is transformed in its substance into the divine.24 The Vercelli homilist notes that this fusion of matter and spirit, this ontological change, coincided with an epistemological transformation as God onbyrhte hie mid leohte andgyte, þa hie þæt ongeaton [ond] oncnawan meahton 20

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22 23 24

Gregory the Great states that Benedict’s Rule provides the only account of his life one would need, since his ‘teaching’ was perfectly exemplified in his actions. See Gregory the Great, Dialogues de Grégoire le Grand, tome II: Livre I–III, ed. Adalbert de Vogüé and Paul Antin, Sources chrétiennes, 260 (Paris, 1979), I.1.6, I.9.7, II.36. Translation in Saint Gregory the Great: Dialogues, trans. Odo John Zimmerman (New York, 1959), pp. 8, 36, 107. The Vercelli Homilies, ed. Scragg, p. 197, lines 15–17. Lines 9–54 of Vercelli Homily X, which emphasize the Incarnation, are not taken from any of the homilists’ three main sources. See Zacher, Preaching the Converted, pp. 109–110, 117–118. The Vercelli Homilies, ed. Scragg, p. 197, lines 19–20. Ibid., p. 197, lines 23–25. F.E. Peters, The Children of Abraham: Judaism, Christianity, Islam (Princeton, 2004), pp. 171–172; Robert Orsi, History and Presence (Cambridge, MA, 2016), pp. 1–4, 16–20, 216–217.

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Introduction hwa him to helpe [ond] to feorhnere on þas woruld astah (‘enlightened [the faithful] with clear understanding, so that they might perceive and know who descended into this world as a help and refuge for them’).25 The term feorhneru in this passage means ‘preservation of life,’ ‘salvation,’ but also ‘nourishment’ or ‘food.’26 Through the Eucharist, Christ provides both spiritual enrichment and bodily nourishment, as his truly present body and blood are absorbed into the bodies of those who receive them. Thus Christ becomes one with his people, spiritually and physically. The homilist’s use of feorhneru foregrounds the identification of spiritual processes with material sustenance, also practiced in the monastic lectio divina.27 In taking a human body, the Vercelli homilist says, Christ left his home in heaven to sanctify earth, along with those who dwell in it. The homilist’s description of heaven as a place also represents salvation as a book, associations which cannot be relegated completely to the realm of metaphor or separated thoroughly from the realm of the spatial and material. With the Fall, the homilist says, human beings were orphaned, adilgode of þam þryðfullan frumgewrite ða we wæron to hiofonum awritene (‘blotted out from the original charter when we were inscribed in heaven’),28 but later re-inscribed by the Son. Salvation itself is thus represented as a physical entity, a written text with inscriptions and erasures. And now no barrier can stop human souls from finding their way from place to place on the way to heaven: Ne gelette us þæs siðes se frecna feond, ne us ðæs wilweges ne forwyrne, ne us þa gatu betyne þe us opene standaþ, ne us þære byrig ne ofteo þurh his lease brægdas, ne us ðæs rices ne forwyrne þe we to gesceapene syndon, ne us ne dwelle þæs rihtan geleafan þe we to gelærede syndon.29 Nor does the wicked enemy hinder us on this journey, nor prevent us on the pleasant way, nor shut before us the gates that stand open to us, nor deprive us of the city through his false deceits, nor hinder us from the kingdom for which we are created, nor [prevent] us from dwelling in the right belief that we have learned. 25 26

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28 29

The Vercelli Homilies, ed. Scragg, p. 197, lines 31–33. S.v. feorhneru, The Dictionary of Old English: A to I, ed. Angus Cameron, Ashley Crandell Amos, Antonette dePaolo Healey et al. (Toronto, 2019), https://tapor. library.utoronto.ca/doe/, accessed 2 February 2019. On the association of sanctity, ‘cosmic order,’ and food, see Allen J. Frantzen, Food, Eating and Identity in Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 2014), pp. 11–12. Duncan Robertson, Lectio Divina: The Medieval Experience of Reading (Collegeville, 2011), pp. 62–64. Alex J. Novikoff traces such ‘meditative reading’ back to ‘Augustine’s use of dialogue and dialectic.’ The Medieval Culture of Disputation: Pedagogy, Practice, and Performance (Philadelphia, 2013), p. 23. See also Mary Alberi, ‘“The Better Paths of Wisdom”: Alcuin’s Monastic Philosophy and the World Court,’ Speculum, 76.4 (2001), 896–910 (p. 901). The Vercelli Homilies, ed. Scragg, p. 198, lines 36–37. Ibid., p. 198, lines 40–44.

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Debating with Demons Faith is here presented as something to be learned and known, but also something to be dwelt in, taught through movement from place to place. If souls allow the devil to draw them into his secret room, if they listen to his song and turn toward him, they will learn his deceit and lose their opportunity to share God’s home. If the souls discern and resist Satan’s lies instead, they may travel down the road through the gates to God’s city, experientially ‘learning’ the kingdom itself. The spiritual, material, and spatial fate of these souls depends in part on whose authority (auctorita) they choose to accept. To be saved, a soul must discern the righteous storytellers among many who seek to explain the spirituo-material implications of human actions, narrating an epistemology with ontological implications. In this book, the term auctorita does not refer only to patristic authorities and the explication of scripture. Authority can also belong to aspiring auctors on the margins, especially demons, women, and Jews, who articulate narratives beyond or against those of the scriptural and patristic authorities who likewise sought to define the epistemological means of ontological change.30 In their ‘alterity,’ demons, women, and Jews, ‘linked by pride, disobedience, and carnality,’31 contribute through those very associations to an understanding of the relationship between materiality and spirituality, knowing and being, as the often disembodied teachings of patristic auctors cannot. The demon, the woman, and the Jew, as ‘an unholy trio, a dark reflection of unresolved doubt and anxiety,’32 establish knowledge with existential consequences for those who accept their accounts of the world. For early medieval male clerics especially, the places in which these marginal figures engage in pedagogical encounters become simultaneously ‘safe’ spaces, comfortingly distant from official ecclesiastical authority, and places of great epistemological and ontological risk. The negotiations occurring in these places can be intellectual as well as experiential, literal as well as metaphorical, spatial as well as material. And they occur within a place, a topos or locus in which arguments can be found to navigate existential matters of good and evil, damnation and redemption, judgment and incarnation, and the ambiguous territory in between. These places can be primal, such as Eden or Calvary, or local, such as the monastic school or the saint’s shrine. In early English literature, conceptual topoi align with literal places, and spiritual processes occur partly through material means. The spiritual

30

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On ‘the patristic concept of an “auctor,”’ see Clare Lees, ‘Didacticism and the Christian Community: The Teachers and the Taught,’ in Old English Literature: Critical Essays, ed. R.M. Liuzza (New Haven, 2002), 236–270 (p. 256). Joan Young Gregg, Devils, Women, and Jews: Reflections of the Other in Medieval Sermon Stories (Albany, 1997), pp. 18–19. Ibid., p. 20.

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Introduction and material realms are thus merged and interwoven with diverse consequences ranging from the Fall itself to the bold defiance of saints who refuse the teaching of demons and thus thwart their narratives. These saints construct alternative stories, becoming auctors themselves. Such competing tales also constitute struggles over spaces, which are transformed into places of special significance by voices emanating from ensouled bodies. The resonance of the embodied voice within a specific ‘place’ during the pedagogical encounter can itself lead to epistemological and ontological transformation. And when that place is inhabited by a demon, especially one in the powerful position of magister, the stakes become especially high, since his arguments are fallacious but extremely persuasive. Any literary pedagogical encounter can become a dispute over authority within a particular topos, a ‘place’ to find arguments for how knowledge and being mutually emerge within early medieval culture. Within this topos, an onto-epistemological place established in part through narrative, arguments emerge with implications for the real experiences of real people within real places. The literary devil-as-magister provides a model, if a cautionary one, for real teachers.33 In other words, the narrative ‘school’ of a demon,34 by emphasizing the instability and potential danger of pedagogical methods as well as the importance of the pupil’s discernment, can provide essential insight into early medieval attitudes toward teaching, learning, and their risks. By ‘teaching,’ this study refers not only to clerical preaching but also to lay teaching, frequently associated with teaching by example, and pedagogy in the monastic schools of early medieval England, as well as the attitudes of masters, pupils, and others toward the verbal arts practiced therein.35 Grammatica was widely studied in pre-conquest England to support the reading and writing necessary to understand and explicate scripture. Dialectica and rhetorica, however, the more ‘artful’ of the verbal arts, were less widespread and more suspect, potentially used in fallacious argument and persuasive deception as well as the pursuit of truth. In comparison to grammar, dialectic and rhetoric were more unstable, more easily manipulated, and therefore more ambiguous. And in these verbal arts of persuasion, the devil was a master.

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Those early English teachers known to us are predominantly monastic and male; monastic female teachers were working in England during the period, though few of their names are known. Sarah Foot, Veiled Women: The Disappearance of Nuns from Anglo-Saxon England, vol. 1 (Aldershot, 2000), pp. 24–25, 78–79. Jager, The Tempter’s Voice, p. 44. On the relationship between monastic and lay teaching, see Robert K. Upchurch, ‘Homiletic Contexts for Ælfric’s Hagiography: The Legend of Saints Cecelia and Valerian,’ in The Old English Homily: Precedent, Practice, and Appropriation, ed. Aaron J Kleist (Turnhout, 2007), pp. 265–284 (pp. 272–273).

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Debating with Demons This book is arranged in two parts. The chapters in Part I, ‘Foundations,’ provide essential context for the close textual analysis of Old English verse in Part II, ‘The Demonic Magister in Early English Poetry.’ Chapter 1, ‘Spirituo-Materiality in the Early Middle Ages,’ establishes a theoretical foundation for this study by examining medieval and modern theories of materiality, spirituality, and place to explore their onto-epistemological implications. Among these theories, recent research conducted by scholars in religious studies and medieval studies shows great promise for elucidating a comprehensive history of thinking about materiality, a history which inevitably incorporates embodied spirituo-material practices such as pedagogy. Chapter 2, ‘The Artes Liberales in the Early Middle Ages,’ examines the liberal arts practiced in Carolingian Europe and early medieval England as essential background for assessing the ‘informal logic’36 of poetic dialogues. In the late eighth and early ninth centuries, Alcuin (d. 804 c.e.), scholarly advisor to Charlemagne, deployed dialectical methods for theological purposes, using those methods to debate such fundamental doctrines as the Trinity and the Incarnation. Early English scholars seemingly possessed some familiarity with treatises on dialectic and its theological implications, important context for understanding the dynamics of demonic debate in Old English poetry. Chapter 3, ‘The Devil Within: Perils of Pedagogy in the Monastic School,’ investigates the dangers and onto-epistemological risks inherent in early English views of teaching and learning. Though demonic pedagogical encounters present far greater risks than the general instability and ‘ambivalence’ of early medieval education,37 the monastery is nevertheless a place suffused with peril, not least because the pedagogy governed by the monastic Rule can be easily undermined by both pupils and their masters. Ironically, those masters themselves, notably Bishop Æthelwold (d. 984 c.e.), Ælfric of Eynsham (d. 1010 c.e.), and Ælfric Bata (d. early eleventh century c.e.), construct dialogues in which the Rule, the idealized ‘story’ of the monastic community’s highly ordered life, is threatened by the voices of schoolboys, who articulate the principles of monastic discipline as they learn Latin grammar and poetics. While Ælfric of Eynsham’s carefully scripted Colloquy aims to contain potential discord in the monastery and its surrounding community of laborers, a set of Æthelwoldian Anglo-Latin Altercatio poems and Ælfric Bata’s Colloquia inscribe potential disorder and even demonic threats as possibilities within the monastery itself. In the larger scheme of early English literature, the monastic magister is potentially aligned both with Christ,

36 37

See Leo Groarke, ‘Informal Logic,’ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2017, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-informal/, accessed 2 February 2019. Dumitrescu, The Experience of Education, pp. 5, 15–16.

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Introduction the perfect teacher-by-example,38 and with Satan, the skillful orator and disputant gifted in the verbal arts of persuasion. The chapters in Part II, ‘The Demonic Magister in Early English Poetry,’ build on the foundations established in Part I to provide close textual analyses of demonic teachers in several Old English poems: Christ and Satan, Genesis A and B, and two poems by Cynewulf, Juliana and Elene. Chapter 4, ‘The Origin of the Teaching Demon: Lucifer as Magister,’ examines accounts of the Fall of the Angels incorporated into two poems of the Junius 11 manuscript, Christ and Satan and the Old English Genesis. These texts represent the devil as a teacher who deploys verbal skills to manipulate the wills of his ‘pupils,’ the lesser angels, who, according to the Genesis poems, are ‘replaced’ by human beings. The Fall of Adam and Eve is the subject of Chapter 5, ‘Demonic Teaching and the Fall in the Old English Genesis,’ which explores the narrative struggles and pedagogical manipulations of the first parents’ encounter with the serpent in Genesis B. The primal debate between a demonic magister and Eve in the garden of Eden establishes not only the story of the Fall but also the origin among human beings of the verbal arts, used by the demon to persuade Adam and Eve to eat the fruit of the poem’s Tree of Death. When they do so, transforming human epistemology and ontology forever, they demonstrate the primary necessity of exercising discretio, the skill to discern false teaching, in all future pedagogical encounters. In Chapter 6, ‘Demonic Teaching and Saintly Discretio in Cynewulf’s Juliana,’ the saint participates in just such an encounter, resisting the manipulative pedagogy of her father and the demon who visits her prison cell. In becoming a teacher herself, Juliana undermines and re-articulates fundamental premises and arguments about the strength and status of young women, transforming the places she inhabits through her formidable powers of discretio, her own magisterial authority, and the new ‘life’ which dwells in her relics after her martyrdom. The practice of hagiographical pedagogy is complicated, however, in Chapter 7, ‘Inventing Materia: The True Cross and Saintly Disputation in Cynewulf’s Elene.’ This chapter explores the dependence of Christian teaching in Elene on the True Cross, the most powerful relic in Christendom and the ultimate proof of the vibrancy of matter. The True Cross is the ostensible object 38

Augustine of Hippo, De magistro, Patrologia Latina, Patrologiæ Cursus Completus, 2nd series, ed. Jacques Paul Migne (Paris, 1844–1855), 32, 10.35. Translation in Augustine of Hippo: Against the Academicians and the Teacher, trans. Peter King (Indianapolis, 1995). Augustine’s treatise De magistro was extant in early medieval England in London, British Library, Royal 8.C.iii, a tenth-century manuscript from St. Augustine’s, Canterbury. See Helmut Gneuss and Michael Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (Toronto, 2014), p. 387.

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Debating with Demons of Elene’s quest and a secret that her nemesis, the Jewish wise man and future Christian saint Judas Cyriacus, wishes to hide. As these saints, preoccupied by their verbal battles, struggle over Christ’s primary relic, the True Cross continually recedes even further from view. In its own time, and only then, does the True Cross arise, its disturbing material potentialities immediately contained through the pious devotion of Elene, the newly converted Judas Cyriacus, and the imperial Roman Church. As vital and living materia, the True Cross testifies to the inseparability of spirit and matter, knowing and being. In tracing the volatile interactions of relics, saints, demons, and schoolboys, these chapters establish the significance of early medieval pedagogy as lived experience, a set of practices embedded within face-to-face encounters that are both onto-epistemological and spirituo-material in their significance. From the primal pedagogy of Eden to the disorderly lessons of the monastic school, masters and pupils contend with diabolical dangers in their attempts to teach and learn, even within the most sanctified places. Lucifer and his fallen angels begin this struggle, their debates establishing the foundation for Adam and Eve’s demonic ‘education.’ These lessons taught to the first parents are resisted in turn by the more discerning argumentation practiced by Cynewulf’s Juliana and the contentious disputes of Elene’s saints. By examining these poetic texts within a living world of early medieval intellectual culture and monastic education, Debating with Demons articulates the dangerous and transformative potential of embodied, emplaced, and inspirited pedagogy, both in the past and in the present.

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PART I FOUNDATIONS

1 Spirituo-Materiality in the Early Middle Ages

An examination of early English teaching demons must begin with understanding how materiality and spirituality interact within an early medieval cultural context, producing onto-epistemological effects. Such an understanding requires moving back beyond the Cartesian divide to imagine what materia reintegrated with spiritus might look like. This chapter, therefore, surveys both early medieval and modern concepts of materiality, foregrounding especially the recent work of scholars in religious studies and medieval studies. These scholars lay the groundwork for an understanding of medieval language, literature, and culture that acknowledges the co-emergence of spirituality and materiality. Ennobling matter through its integration with spirituality is the mystery at the heart of Christianity, as the divine becomes embodied, uniting eternity and immortality with mortal flesh. The fusion of the material-­intellectual-spiritual with the ontological and epistemological is foregrounded in many tales of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. The pedagogical narratives of teaching demons, though perverse and destructive, actually echo and reinforce the integration inherent in the doctrines and practices relating to the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Eucharist, the other sacraments, and the cults of the saints. The spirituo-material dynamics of early medieval culture, addressed on its own terms rather than through the Cartesian dichotomies that have driven modern and postmodern conceptions of matter, emerge clearly in demonic narratives and in the frequently dissenting responses of the pupils who engage with infernal ‘teachers.’ Within these pedagogical dialogues, matter is created by God and is therefore alive and blessed, infused with spirit even in its potential to decay and fall into weakness.1 The relationship of the material to the non-material – the physical, the spiritual, the ineffable, the wondrous, as well as the places in which these forces interact – is very much at stake in the claims advanced in demons’ encounters with their pupils. Matter and its meaning are negotiated partly through the pedagogical relationship itself, a fundamentally unstable interchange in which authority can be simultaneously asserted by the demonic magister and resisted by his pupil. 1

Caroline Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New York, 2015), pp. 32, 232.

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Debating with Demons Elucidating this relationship requires the definition of fundamental concepts underlying the teaching of early English poetic demons. These concepts include early medieval understandings of materia and substantia, examined in connection to distinctly English views of the integrated soul, spirit, mind, and body. Such premodern views align in perhaps surprising ways with modern theories of materiality, which, when examined together with recent work in both feminist materialism and religious studies, question the post-Cartesian separation of mind, matter, and spirit to foreground instead their integration. Such integration is enhanced by the relationship among voice, body, and place as material phenomena, with theorists of space and place, both medieval and modern, asserting the dynamic and transformative nature of embodied encounters, particularly those relating to pedagogy.

Materia, substantia, and the soul In the early Middle Ages, what is meant by materia? This question is fundamental in the verbal arts, which are deployed within embodied encounters in which the fusion of the spiritual and the material incorporates not just the human ‘mind-body-spirit,’ envoiced and emplaced, but other ‘bodies’ as well.2 In Book XIX of his Etymologies, Isidore of Seville (ca. seventh century c.e.) associates materia (‘matter’) with lignum (‘wood,’) the material ‘from [which] something is made.’ Because materia comes from mater, or ‘mother,’ ‘to Isidore, matter is, in its essence, maternal – that is, fertile and capable of becoming,’ in Caroline Walker Bynum’s words.3 Bodies are composed of matter, but, as Bynum has argued, the medieval body ‘meant something closer to “living thing” … than to “human being.”’4 The term included human, non-human, sentient, and non-sentient bodies, i.e. ‘things.’ Conversely, a human being is much more than a ‘body (corpus).’ Medieval theorists, Bynum notes, ‘understood “body” to mean “changeable thing”: gem, tree, log, or cadaver, as well as living human being.’5 Furthermore, such bodies, especially in their identification with spiritual forces, were constantly debated: ‘exactly how God acts through matter was a disputed question long after the belief that Christ 2 3

4 5

Meredith B. McGuire, Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life (Oxford, 2008), pp. 113, 120. Isidore, Etymologiae, XIX.xix.3–5, Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum Libri XX, vol. 2, ed. W.M. Lindsey (Oxford, 1911). Translation in The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, ed. and trans. Stephen A. Barney, W.J. Lewis, J.A. Beach, and Oliver Berghof (Cambridge, 2006), p. 382. See also Bynum, Christian Materiality, p. 231. Bynum, Christian Materiality, pp. 232, 32. Ibid., p. 32.

16

Spirituo-Materiality in the Early Middle Ages was both God and man (man being understood as a psychosomatic unity) was established as dogma.’6 ‘Things’ in medieval discourse are therefore often seen as arguments in themselves, enacting significant changes on the world and the bodies dwelling within it.7 But medieval ‘things’ do not ‘become’ in separation from spiritual forces, rather the reverse. Spirit and matter are mutually implicated, coeval, always simultaneously emerging. In the early Middle Ages, materia is inevitably associated with substantia, hyle (ΰλη) in Greek, which refers to the ‘substance’ or ‘the first matter of the universe.’8 Substantia was intimately concerned with spirituality in late antiquity and the Middle Ages, particularly in debates about the Incarnation and the Eucharist. Substantia and materia also concerned origins and were frequently associated with women, as the root of materia, mater or ‘mother,’ suggests.9 Investigations of substantia (Greek ουσία or usia), the universe’s ‘first matter,’ while they originated with Aristotle (fourth century b.c.e.), found a somewhat different form in the thinking of Augustine (fourth–fifth century c.e.) and Boethius (fifth–sixth century c.e.), who ‘made usia that on which everything depended in order to exist.’10 Usia was thus identified with divinity, the first cause of all matter, creator of all substance. Boethius’s conception of usia and substantia emerge from his work with Aristotle’s Categories, a set of classifications in dialectical theory which, by establishing distinctions among the types of ‘things’ that exist in the world, became essential in defining and debating Christian doctrine. In the treatise De Trinitate, Boethius deploys the Categories and the theory of predicables to support theological arguments about the Trinity and the Incarnation. For example, he states that si de Patre ac Filio et Spiritu Sancto tertio praedicatur Deus (‘if God be predicated thrice of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’) – that is, if, in a sentence, God is made the predicate of these three subjects, as in the propositions ‘the Father is God,’ ‘the Son is God,’ and ‘the Spirit is God,’– then non igitur … idcirco trina praedicatio numerum facit (‘the threefold predication does not result in plural number’).11 In 6 7 8 9 10

11

Ibid., p. 33. For a discussion of ‘thing theory,’ see James Paz’s introduction to Nonhuman Voices in Anglo-Saxon Literature and Material Culture (Manchester, 2017), pp. 3–5. S.v. matter, etymology, and hyle, Oxford English Dictionary Online, accessed 9 February 2019. S.v. matter, etymology, Oxford English Dictionary Online, accessed 9 February 2019. John Marenbon, From the Circle of Alcuin to the School of Auxerre: Logic, Theology and Philosophy in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 141, 28. For a discussion of substantia in the context of Aristotle’s Categories, see Christina M. Heckman, ‘The Order of the World: Boethius’s Translation of Aristotle’s Categoriae and the Old English Solomon and Saturn Dialogues,’ Carmina Philosophiae: Journal of the International Boethius Society 22 (2013), 35–64. Boethius’s De Sancta Trinitate is edited in Boethius: De consolation philosophiae;

17

Debating with Demons other words, there are three Persons, named in three possible propositions in which ‘God’ can serve as predicate, but only one God. The Category of substance likewise became essential for Boethius in defining the nature of God. About substantia, Boethius claims that homo non … est … substantia (‘man is not substance’) because quod enim est, aliis debet, quae non sunt homo (‘what man is he owes to other things which are not man’), that is, God. In comparison, Deus vero hoc ipsum Deus est; nihil enim aliud est nisi quod est (‘God is simply and entirely God, for he is nothing else than what He is’).12 Boethius further provides other propositions demonstrating God’s difference from man: while a man might be iustus (‘just’) or magnus (‘great’), Deus vero idem ipsum est quod est iustum … Deus vero ipsum magnus exsistit (‘God is justice … God is greatness’).13 Divine substance itself esse ipsum est et ex qua esse est (‘is very Being and the source of Being’).14 In the other treatises of the Opuscula Sacra, Boethius reiterates that God is the ontological basis of all things, their first and final cause. By Alcuin’s time, in the late eighth and early ninth centuries, substantia provided a conceptual foundation for theological debates about the fusion of the spiritual and the material, especially in the Eucharist and the Trinity. John Marenbon argues that for philosophers of the early Middle Ages, substantia was ‘the ontological prop of the universe. Without it there is nothing; it is the very linchpin of reality.’15 The question of how one knows about substance – that is, the onto-epistemological account that explains what one knows, or claims to know, about being itself – is of primary importance in understanding medieval theories of matter. In comparison to materia, the terms ‘spirit’ and ‘mind’ are notoriously difficult to define.16 ‘Spirit’ refers to an immaterial, animating force

12 13 14 15

16

Opuscula theologica, ed. Claudio Moreschini, Bibliotheca Teubneriana, 2nd ed. (Munich, 2000), 3.14–15. Translation in Boethius: The Theological Tractates and the Consolation of Philosophy, ed. H.F. Stewart and E.K. Rand (London, 1938), pp. 2–31 (p. 15). Boethius, De Sancta Trinitate, ed. Moreschini, 4.204–207; Boethius: The Theological Tractates, trans. Stewart and Rand, p. 19. Boethius, De Sancta Trinitate, ed. Moreschini, 4.212, 215; Boethius: The Theological Tractates, trans. Stewart and Rand, p. 19. Boethius, De Sancta Trinitate, ed. Moreschini, 2.82–83; Boethius: The Theological Tractates, trans. Stewart and Rand, p. 9. Marenbon, From the Circle of Alcuin, p. 15; on substantia and usia, see pp. 13, 28–29. See also John Marenbon, Early Medieval Philosophy (480–1150): An Introduction (London, 1988), p. 49 and Toivo Holopainen, Dialectic and Theology in the Eleventh Century (Leiden, 1996), pp. 67–76 and 124–132. Holopainen focuses especially on the theology of Anselm of Canterbury and Lanfranc. On early English conceptions of the relationship between the mind and the soul, including these and related terms – in Old English, they include ferhð and mod as well as sawol, sefa, hyge, among others – see Lockett, Anglo-Saxon Psychologies, pp. 33–35.

18

Spirituo-Materiality in the Early Middle Ages which, though it dwells in individual creatures – angels, human beings, animals, even plants – is mysteriously linked to the greater force associated with divinity, especially the halig gast or ‘holy spirit,’ the third person of the Trinity. Spirit infuses and connects all things, pervading the ‘matter’ present in the world. In the early Middle Ages, the body and soul were seen as distinct but not separate; the soul was somehow a spiritual entity, but spiritus was not limited to one single soul. In its most literal meaning, spiritus refers to the breath produced by the body as well as the breath of God. In the Hebrew Bible, ‘adamah, ‘clay’ or ‘human flesh,’ is ‘animated’ by ‘moving air … ruah or “spirit.”’ As ruah animates ‘adamah, it ‘[exhibits] a quality called chai, “life.”’17 The life of the spirit in biblical tradition, therefore, depends thoroughly on the elements of air and earth, spirituality itself emerging from the fusion of material and immaterial. The diverse interpretations of spiritus and related terms in early English sources testify to the complexity and ambiguity of medieval views of spirituality and matter. Defining and describing how early English thinkers conceived of the relationship of mind, soul, and body is an ongoing critical problem. In Old English texts, these three elements are fused in what Leslie Lockett has called a ‘psycho-physiological pattern,’ a ‘mind-body partnership’ within a well-established ‘anthropology of body, mind, soul, and life-force’ going well beyond the metaphorical.18 Both Lockett and Antonina Harbus critique the Cartesian ‘mind–body dualism’ that has been imposed on early medieval theories of the mind, discerning instead ‘deeply holistic representations of mind and body’ in Old English and Anglo-Latin texts that emphasize ‘embodied experience.’19 Materia, especially in the form of a body fused with spirit, has important implications for the practice of education as well. As Clare Lees has noted, ‘the homology between body and soul – feeding and regulating the body and feeding and regulating the mind – is fundamental to Anglo-Saxon didacticism, and a reminder that both body and soul are the material effects of specific practices.’20 This ‘homology’ requires a thorough inquiry into early English views of the mind, the soul, the spirit, the body, and the relationship among them. 17 18 19

20

Michael Simone, ‘The True Bread,’ America (20 August 2018), p. 50. Lockett, Anglo-Saxon Psychologies, pp. 5–6. Ibid., pp. 8, 11–12. Lockett’s approach, which emphasizes the ‘hydraulic model’ of the mind, is grounded in theories of ‘cognitive linguistics and transcultural psychiatry’ as well as Anglo-Saxon theories of the mind, especially those diverging from that of Augustine of Hippo. See pp. 5, 9. The strict divide between material and immaterial associated with Descartes’s philosophy is especially ironic in that his famous dictum ‘I think, therefore I am,’ by his own account, contributed to an ‘incomplete … theory of human beings,’ ‘a temporary or conditional position.’ See Desmond Clark, Descartes: A Biography (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 210–211. Lees, ‘Didacticism and the Christian Community,’ p. 245.

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Debating with Demons While the soul is considered spiritual, it is not identical to spiritus. It is impossible to know exactly what pre-conquest writers meant when they used terms generally translated as ‘mind,’ ‘soul,’ or ‘spirit.’ The many Old English terms for ‘mind,’ including mod, ferhð, sefa, gemynd, and hyge, are famously indeterminate, running counter to what Harbus calls the modern ‘compartmentalised construction of the mind.’21 According to Harbus, these Old English words, especially mod, ‘are especially slippery because the ideas they connote were … fluid.’ The mind, whichever term one used to describe it, was both ‘a person’s spiritual centre’ and ‘the seat of emotions and thought,’ residing in either the heart or the head.22 Ferhð had a spatial semantic association as ‘a place where emotion is registered’ and ‘the place of wisdom and resolution,’ whereas gemynd more specifically denoted the ‘memory’ and gewitt referred to ‘the cognitive faculty or the wits,’ sometimes associated with the Latin term sensus.23 Hyge was also spatial, ‘the place of thought or intention,’ while sefa referred to ‘understanding,’ though it is also linked to sensus.24 Modsefa was ‘the definitive character of a person, governed consciously by the will.’25 Many of these meanings depend on physical or spatial metaphors, associating the mind with a ‘place,’ a ‘sorting-house of experience and the individual’s centre of being.’26 Seemingly, it was not possible to conceive of the mind or soul without recourse to material and spatial metaphors. Early English thinkers viewed ‘the mind [as] an integrated whole,’ based in the logical ‘universal’ of ‘the physical embodiment of the mind’ as well as ‘the paradox of the metaphysical mind in the physical body.’27 Some early medieval sources, including Gregory’s Dialogi, suggested that the divide between body and soul was not considered absolute, even after earthly death.28 In the Dialogi, the body can hold back but not prevent the motions of the spirit. Gregory speaks to his pupil, Peter the Deacon, of being able to move his mind outside the limitations of the physical body, deploying his reason to recognize the immortality of the soul. The bodily senses, Gregory tells Peter, are given their powers of perception by an animae inuisibilis (‘invisible soul’) which gives vitality to the body. The bodies of the martyrs are living still, working daily miracles, and will be fully 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

Lockett, Anglo-Saxon Psychologies, pp. 33–35 and Antonina Harbus, The Life of the Mind in Old English Poetry (Amsterdam, 2002), p. 187. Harbus, The Life of the Mind, pp. 37–38. Ibid., pp. 33, 47, 42, 45. Ibid., p. 47. Ibid., p. 51. Ibid., p. 58. Ibid., p. 187 and Antonina Harbus, Cognitive Approaches to Old English Poetry (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 15, 49. Forbes, Heaven and Earth in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 265–269.

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Spirituo-Materiality in the Early Middle Ages restored with their souls at the resurrection of the dead.29 In hell, seemingly, the flesh also endures, suffering and dying eternally, never finding rest from torment. The fires of hell cause both body and soul to suffer.30 For Gregory, the fate of those in heaven or hell is spatial as well: they are separated and assigned to appropriate locations. In response to Peter’s questioning, Gregory confirms that hell is an actual, probably subterranean, place.31 Gregory further relates numerous tales to Peter as exempla of his teachings regarding the relationship between the body and the soul. In one story, Bishop Sabinus of Canosa is nearly poisoned by an envious archdeacon who wishes to usurp his position. When, after signing himself, Sabinus drinks the poison, the treacherous archdeacon, though far away, falls down dead, the poison affecting his body even though the bishop had drunk it.32 Gregory further tells the story of a Roman artisan from whose grave, after his death and burial, a voice is heard crying ardeo, ardeo (‘I burn! I burn!’). When the grave is opened for investigation, the craftsman’s clothing is found intact, but his body has vanished, seemingly to the fires of hell. For insisting on a church burial in his unrepentant sinfulness, the craftsman is punished, like all qui indigni sunt ab eisdem sacris locis diuinitus proiciuntur (‘the unworthy [who] are cast out of the sacred places through the power of God’).33 Fire consumes the craftsman’s body, the flames of hell simultaneously demonstrating their physical as well as spiritual force. In Gregory’s text, occasionally materia issues judgment on other kinds of materia, teaching spiritual lessons through physical means. In his account of the life of St. Benedict, Gregory tells of a monk, excessively devoted to his mother and father, who deserted the monastery without permission of his abbot Benedict, promptly dying as soon as he arrived at his parents’ home. After being buried, the corpse repeatedly reappears above the earth. In other words, the earth refuses the young monk’s body while his misconduct against the monastic community remains unresolved. When 29

30 31 32 33

Gregory the Great, Dialogues de Grégoire le Grand, tome III: Livre IV, ed. Adalbert de Vogüé and Paul Antin, Sources chrétiennes, 265 (Paris, 1980), IV.3, 5.2, 6; Saint Gregory the Great: Dialogues, trans. Zimmerman, pp. 4, 191–192, 197–200, 219. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, tome III, ed. de Vogüé and Antin, IV.29–30; Saint Gregory the Great: Dialogues, trans. Zimmerman, pp. 226–227. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, tome III, ed. de Vogüé and Antin, IV.43–44; Saint Gregory the Great: Dialogues, trans. Zimmerman, pp. 252–255. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, tome II, ed. de Vogüé and Antin, III.5; Saint Gregory the Great: Dialogues, trans. Zimmerman, pp. 118–119. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, tome III, ed. de Vogüé and Antin, IV.56; Saint Gregory the Great: Dialogues, trans. Zimmerman, p. 265. On Ælfric’s version of this story, see Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, Stealing Obedience: Narratives of Agency and Identity in Later Anglo-Saxon England (Toronto, 2012), pp. 98–101.

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Debating with Demons his parents appeal to Benedict for pardon on behalf of their deceased son, the abbot gives them the Eucharist and instructs them to bury it with the young man, after which his body is accepted by the earth, remaining in the ground.34 Gregory assigns agency to both the corpse and the earth itself in this story. While both act on their own, they naturally seem to do so in accordance with the divine will. Gregory’s tales contribute significantly to ongoing debates about early English views of the mind, examined by Lockett, Harbus, Malcolm Godden, and others who have foregrounded Augustine of Hippo’s teachings about the immaterial soul.35 Old English terms for mental and spiritual processes prove disruptive to a purely Augustinian view of the matter, if such a view exists; Augustine’s own ideas about the soul changed significantly over time.36 In linguistic terms, early English theologians such as Ælfric glossed the Latin spiritus, ‘breath,’ with gast, a term with a broad semantic field ranging from literal ‘breath’ to ‘the Third person of the Trinity’ or ‘the active essence or essential power of the Deity, conceived as a creative, animating or inspiring influence.’ Gast could also refer to ‘wind’ or air in movement, a vital principle or ‘concomitant of life,’ a ‘spiritual force,’ the ‘virtue’ of fortitude or bravery, or ‘the immaterial, intelligent or sentient element in a person; the spirit as the seat of thought, understanding, [and] emotions.’37 In comparison to gast, the Old English term sawl, glossing the Latin anima, refers to ‘the soul,’ ‘the animal life’ or animating force, ‘the intellectual and immortal principle,’38 meanings related to but not identical to those of gast.39

34 35

36

37

38 39

Gregory the Great, Dialogues, tome II, ed. de Vogüé and Antin, II.24; Saint Gregory the Great: Dialogues, trans. Zimmerman, p. 94. Malcolm Godden, ‘Anglo-Saxons on the Mind,’ in Old English Literature: Critical Essays, ed. R.M. Liuzza (New Haven, 2002), pp. 284–314. Michael Matto provides an overview of the relevant critical literature in ‘Vernacular Tradition: Exploring Anglo-Saxon Mentalities,’ Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 115.1 (2016), 95–113 (pp. 95–96). On Augustine’s insistence on the need for material signs and his changing ideas about materiality, see Jager, The Tempter’s Voice, pp. 52, 54, 59–61, 78. Frequently, Jager notes, Augustine and other patristic writers, such as Ambrose, elide the materiality of signs, transforming them into metaphors, but some dogmas – the Resurrection, the Eucharist – cannot be considered metaphorical for the Church Fathers; see pp. 76–77. S.v. gast in The Dictionary of Old English: A to I, accessed 9 February 2019. See also spirit in the Oxford English Dictionary Online. This broad semantic field runs counter to Harbus’s claim that ‘gast and sawl refer exclusively to the spirit which leaves the body after death;’ see The Life of the Mind, p. 57 and Michael J. Phillips, ‘Heart, Mind, and Soul in Old English: A Semantic Study’, Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois (1985), p. 19. ‘Spirit’ entered the English language after 1100. S.v. sawel in An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, ed. Bosworth and Toller. For a study of the relevant terms, including gast, sawol, gehygd, gemynd, andgyt,

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Spirituo-Materiality in the Early Middle Ages The classic early English account of this distinction, mentioned by Godden, Lockett, and Harbus, is from Ælfric’s homily on the Nativity of Christ, the first text in his Lives of Saints. He emphasizes the annyss, ‘oneness’ or unity, of the soul, which is þære halgan þrynnysse anlicnysse (‘in the likeness of the Trinity’), comprised of an sawul … and an lif and an edwist (‘one soul … and one life and one substance’), incorporating gemynd and andgit and wyllan (‘mind [or memory] and understanding and will’).40 According to Ælfric, following Alcuin’s De anima ratione,41 the soul is ungesæwenlic and unlichomlic butan hæfe and butan bleo mid þam lichaman befangen and on eallum limum wunigende … Heo is on bocum manegum naman gecyged be hyre weorces þenungum. Hyre nama is anima þæt is sawul and seo nama gelympð to hire life. And spiritus gast belimpð to hire ymbwlatunge. Heo is sensus þæt is andgit oððe felnyss þonne heo gefret. Heo is animus þæt is mod þonne heo wat. Heo is mens þæt is mod þonne heo understent. Heo is memoria þæt is gemynd þonne heo gemanð. Heo is ratio that is gescead þonne heo toscæt. Heo is uoluntas þæt is wylla þonne heo hwæt wyle. Ac swa þeah ealle þas naman syndon sawul ælc sawul is gast ac swa þeah nis na ælc gast sawul.42 is invisible and incorporeal, without weight and without color, clothed by the body and dwelling in all its limbs … It is called by many names in books according to the service of its work. Its name is anima, that is soul, and the name pertains to its life. And spiritus, gast, pertains to its contemplation. It is sensus, which is perception or feeling, when it perceives. It is animus, that is mod, when it knows. It is mens, that is mod, when it understands. It is memoria, that is memory, when it recollects. It is ratio, that is reason, when it distinguishes [one thing from another]. It is voluntas, that is will, when it wishes [for something]. But nevertheless all of these names are the soul. The soul is spirit, but yet each spirit is not a soul.

This passage, which does propose a unitary and single soul, also testifies to the fusion of spirit, mind, memory, intellect, will, and sensory perception (sensus). Harbus notes Ælfric’s recognition of ‘the complex functions of the soul’ within ‘one guiding essence,’ a ‘multivalent entity with variable attributes.’43 This idea is not unique to Christianity: in the classical world, especially in Plutarch, scholars recognized that ‘the soul is not a simple, homogeneous substance: it is a composite, consisting of many layers’ in

40

41 42 43

and others, see Soon-Ai Low, ‘Approaches to the Old English Vocabulary for “Mind”,’ Studia Neophilologica, 73 (2001), 11–22 (pp. 11–13). Nativitas domini nostri Iesu Christi, Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, vol. 1, ed. Walter W. Skeat, Early English Text Society, o.s. 76 (London, 1881), pp. 11–25; here, see pp. 16–18, lines 120, 113–116. Lockett, Anglo-Saxon Psychologies, p. 374. Ælfric, Nativitas domini nostri Iesu Christi, pp. 16–22, lines 176–177, 180–189. Harbus, Cognitive Approaches to Old English Poetry, pp. 146–147.

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Debating with Demons ‘a hierarchy’ linking ‘the self to God’ and the bodily senses to the mind and soul.44 Harbus, Lockett, and Godden do not comment on what Ælfric means by sensus,45 which he defines as andgit oððe felnyss (‘perception or feeling’).46 While andgit can indicate ‘understanding’ as well as sensory perception, Ælfric associates andgit with the physical senses, such as sight, in other homilies.47 On that basis, one might conclude that his theory of the soul, instead of insisting on its complete immateriality, rather emphasizes the integration of the immaterial and the material in the human person.48 Anima or sawl, though it incorporates so many different functions, is nevertheless a narrower theological category than spiritus or gast, which can incorporate spirits other than the human soul. The sawl is tied to the senses; perception and feeling, in Ælfric’s estimation, are functions of the soul. The physical senses, therefore, are integrated with the mind and other aspects of the soul. Due to Ælfric’s emphasis on sensus, there seems to be space within his theory for Lockett’s view of an early English ‘mindbody complex … a body composed of both unthinking flesh and thinking flesh, the latter being the organ of the mind.’49 According to Lockett, the body is not simply matter; it incorporates ‘the mind-in-the-heart,’ associated with ‘both rational thought and emotion.’50 Once again, the body, heart, soul, and mind co-emerge in a mysterious unity. If sensus, or andgit and felnyss, are part of the soul, and if, as Lockett notes, Ælfric claims in the same text that ‘the soul resides in … the limbs,’51 one can perceive in Ælfric’s theory a thorough integration of the soul, mind, spirit, and body.52 Other patristic commentaries available to early 44 45

46 47

48

49 50 51 52

Peter Brown, The Cult of Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity, enlarged ed. (Chicago, 2015), p. 51. Godden, ‘Anglo-Saxons on the Mind,’ pp. 291–293, 309; Lockett, Anglo-Saxon Psychologies, pp. 417–418; and Harbus, The Life of the Mind, pp. 35–36. Harbus later associates sensus with ‘“perception” or “outlook;”’ see p. 47. Ælfric, Nativitas domini nostri Iesu Christi, p. 2, line 183. S.v. andgyt, The Dictionary of Old English: A to I, accessed 9 February 2019. Ælfric connects andgyt with the senses in numerous homilies, including his homily for Christmas Day, included in Twelfth-Century Homilies in MS. Bodley 343, ed. A.O. Belfour, Early English Text Society, o.s. 137 (London, 1909; repr. 2016), pp. 78-96. Low mentions andgyt but comments minimally on its association with the physical senses, viewing references to it as ‘extension by metaphor;’ see ‘Approaches to the Old English Vocabulary for “Mind,”’ pp. 13–14. In Lockett’s view, this passage, in contrast to other writings of Ælfric, articulates ‘the concept of the strictly incorporeal, unitary soul.’ See Anglo-Saxon Psychologies, p. 374. As a contrast, Lockett discusses Assmann homily 4 on p. 399. She further notes that the ‘incorporeal unitary soul’ of the patristic model is not a given in early medieval England; see pp. 177–178. Ibid., p. 41. Ibid., pp. 88–89. Ibid., p. 413. Elsewhere, Ælfric separates the mind and soul more thoroughly, integrating, in Godden’s view, ‘two … traditions,’ one which ‘[identified] the intellectual

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Spirituo-Materiality in the Early Middle Ages English writers, such as those of Isidore and Alcuin, struggled to maintain the doctrine of the ‘incorporeal’ soul, as Lockett has noted. In her words, ‘it is one thing to assert that the soul is “incorporeal” insofar as it is distinct from the human body … it is quite another thing to espouse the Platonic notion that the soul is utterly incorporeal, or that it is not a body of any kind.’53 Distinction is the key point. The soul certainly was not identified with the body; they were different. But they were inextricably connected through the same divine mystery that resides at the heart of the Incarnation and the Eucharist.54 Even Augustine, known for strictly separating the soul and body and emphasizing the complete incorporeality of the soul, constantly adjusted his views on the matter.55 There is a certain indeterminacy in his configuration of the relationship of the soul, spirit, and body, especially in De Trinitate. For Augustine, the soul, like the body, was mutable, but capable of sapientia (‘wisdom’) that is immutable. The soul can be more or less alive depending on its wisdom, and the same soul can transform over time, alternating between sapientia and folly. Although the body encumbers the soul, dies, and decays, the body can be redeemed along with the soul when they rise together at the Judgment. Such a restoration occurs within the parameters of both nature and the miraculous: the body is bonded naturally to the soul in the womb, and by the same divine agent, the body and soul can be miraculously reunited. The soul can cause the body to change, Augustine says, although God is the divine source of all bodies.56 For Augustine, the soul as well as the body can die, the result

53 54

55

56

mind with the immortal soul and life-spirit’ and another ‘which preserved the ancient distinction of soul and mind, while associating the mind at least as much with passion as with intellect.’ See Godden, ‘Anglo-Saxons on the Mind,’ p. 284. As Lockett has noted, however, several configurations of the relationship between soul and mind existed in early medieval England, especially a ‘tripartite’ model incorporating the ‘fleshly body … animating soul … and … intellectual spirit.’ Citing Ælfric’s configuration of the spirit as part of the soul, Lockett associates sawol with ‘that part of the human being that participated in the afterlife’ and feorh as the force which ‘[enlivened] the flesh.’ Lockett, AngloSaxon Psychologies, p. 17. Lockett, Anglo-Saxon Psychologies, pp. 207–209, 288. Lockett mentions Alcuin’s De anima ratione and Isidore’s Differentiae and Sententiae. These doctrines required both an acknowledgment of Christ as ‘genuinely corporeal’ and a recognition of the ‘supernatural status of Christ even as body,’ as ‘Flesh’ united with ‘Light’ and ‘Word.’ See Karmen MacKendrick, Fragmentation and Memory: Meditations on Christian Doctrine (New York, 2008), p. 49 and Word Made Skin: Figuring Language at the Surface of Flesh (New York, 2004), p. 27. On the complexity of Augustine’s engagement with ‘words and bodies,’ as well as the persistent ‘tensions’ resulting from his ‘[refusal] to disavow either the incorporeality of God’s will or the corporeality of the Incarnation,’ see Virginia Burrus, Mark D. Jordan, and Karmen MacKendrick, Seducing Augustine: Bodies, Desires, Confessions (New York, 2010), pp. 33–34, 117. Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate, ed. William J. Mountain, Corpus

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Debating with Demons of sin: the soul is dead once it separates from God, while the death of the body results from the soul’s departure. Repentance, however, can restore the life of the soul, which then can restore the body’s life. After death, the body can be restored again, but not until the last days. The body can be infused with Spirit as well, not identical to the soul. If God’s Spirit lives in a person, that Spirit will also fill the body with life.57 For Augustine, soul and body are distinct, though joined together in one person. Both body and soul are at once simplex et multiplex, ‘simple and complex.’ The soul, composed of spirit, is simplicior (‘simpler’) than the body because it does not occupy space, but it is also diverse, capable of remembering, knowing, and feeling emotion. Augustine claims that the whole person is comprised of soul and body, and both are eternal. Spirit, in contrast, is a much more diffuse term. It can belong to animals and natural forces, human beings and God himself. Augustine further associates human bodies with other kinds of bodies, heavenly as well as earthly, and the mens (‘mind’) with the spiritus (‘spirit’).58 In the theology of Augustine and his inheritors, the soul and spirit are complex, diverse, and variable, at all times subject to debate. In Augustine’s writings, as in those of other late antique and early medieval patristic commentators, a holistic spirituo-material ontology emerges. The variability of these accounts suggests that what Helene Scheck has called ‘the idealized soul of religious belief systems’ is at least in part a modern construction. Scheck draws on Michel Foucault’s representation of the relationship between the body and ‘a soul born of historical reality’ in Discipline and Punish, a soul which, for Foucault, ‘exists … [and] has reality … produced permanently around, on, within the body by the functioning of a power that is exercised on those punished.’59 Certainly medieval thinkers would not subscribe to Foucault’s characterization of the soul, insisting instead on its divine origin and creation. What Scheck calls ‘the vexed relationship between body and soul,’60 however, is very much in evidence in late antique and early medieval sources.

57 58 59

60

Christianorum Latinorum, 50, 50A (Turnhout, 1958), III.2.8, V.4.5, III.4.10, III.6, III.8.15. Translation in On the Holy Trinity, trans. Arthur West Haddan, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 3, ed. Philip Schaff (Edinburgh, 1887), pp. 58, 88–89, 59–62. Augustine, De Trinitate, ed. Mountain, IV.3.5; On the Holy Trinity, trans. Haddan, pp. 71–72. Augustine, De Trinitate, ed. Mountain, VI.2.3, VI.6.8, XIII.9.12, XIV.16.22; On the Holy Trinity, trans. Haddan, pp. 98, 100–101, 173–174, 195–196. Helene Scheck, Reform and Resistance: Formations of Female Subjectivity in Early Medieval Ecclesiastical Culture (Albany, 2008), pp. 20–21 and Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York, 1995), p. 29. Scheck, Reform and Resistance, p. 21.

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Spirituo-Materiality in the Early Middle Ages Within this relationship, the body was essential, providing the soul with a home.61 The soul depended on the body for its earthly journey toward its final, ideally heavenly, destination, and would be once again united with the body at the Last Judgment. According to Bynum, far from ‘[hating] or discount[ing] the body,’ medieval Christianity emphasized ‘not bodysoul dualism but rather a sense of self as psychosomatic unity.’ Within this unity, ‘physicality was integrally bound to sensation, emotion, reasoning, identity – and therefore finally to whatever one means by salvation.’62 In early English texts, as Britt Mize emphasizes, the mind, ‘interiority,’ and mental states are closely connected to materiality.63 This integration extends to include the spiritual state, likewise inseparable from both body and mind.

Reintegrating materia and spiritus: theories of matter A premodern approach to materia, which acknowledges the union of spirit and matter, has been recommended by some scholars as necessary and enriching to modern theories of matter. Kellie Robertson, for example, critiques some modern theories by noting how they ‘[leap] over the Middle Ages.’64 One such approach, though a major contribution to reassessments of materiality, is taken by Jane Bennett, who begins her discussion of ‘philosophical history in the West’ with Plato and Lucretius, ‘leaping’ forward, to use Robertson’s term, to Spinoza in the seventeenth century, incorporating only two brief references to Augustine.65 Bennett’s study celebrates the ‘energetic vitality inside … things … generally conceived as inert … vivid entities not entirely reducible to the contexts in which (human) subjects set them.’66 Her approach, though it also ‘[aims] … to detach materiality from … divinely infused substance,’67 is useful for reconsidering medieval practices relating to devotion, the cults of saints, craftsmanship, and labor. The ‘leap over’ the medieval period manifest in 61

62 63 64 65 66 67

Alcuin integrates this motif of the body as ‘the home of the soul’ into the Disputatio Pippini cum Albino scholastico, Patrologia Latina, Patrologiæ Cursus Completus, 2nd series, ed. Jacques Paul Migne (Paris, 1844–1855), 101, 975C– 980B (Col. 976C); see also Scheck, Reform and Resistance, p. 55. Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York, 1995), p. 11. Britt Mize, Traditional Subjectivities: The Old English Poetics of Mentality (Toronto, 2013), pp. 6–9. Kellie Robertson, ‘Materialism: A Manifesto,’ Exemplaria, 22 (2010), 99–118 (p. 102). Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, 2010), pp. viii, 38, 17–19, 5, 28, 36. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid., p. xiii.

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Debating with Demons Bennett’s study, however, as Robertson argues, can result in an incomplete view of the history of thinking about materiality.68 Robertson attributes the common opposition between ‘Christianity and materialism’ to both a ‘narrowly Neoplatonic understanding’ of religion in the Middle Ages and ‘the rough equation of “materialism” with some version of “physicalism.”’69 Responding in particular to Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve: How the World Became Modern,70 Robertson insists that his and other accounts construct a ‘“donut” materialist narrative with [a] medieval hole at its center.’71 Understanding matter in the Middle Ages, Robertson adds, was the province of poets and philosophers as well as scholars of the natural sciences and mathematics.72 In contrast to later worldviews influenced by Descartes, medieval thinkers and their classical predecessors, especially Aristotle, granted ‘volition’ to ‘inanimate matter,’ counter to ‘modern assumptions about what is material, what immaterial; what body, what mind.’73 Agency, in this view, is granted to matter, spirit, and mind alike. And knowledge is at once the province of mind, soul, and body, potentially affecting one’s very being. The relationship of ontology and epistemology has been addressed by feminist materialist theorists such as Karen Barad, who argues for an examination of ‘onto-epistem-ology – the study of practices of knowing in being,’ recognizing that ‘practices of knowing and being are not isolatable, but rather they are mutually implicated. We do not obtain knowledge by standing outside of the world; we know because “we” are of the world.’74 While Barad argues for the integration of body and mind, knowledge and being, spiritual matters do not enter into the discussion. For medieval auctors, however, patristic or not, to discuss epistemology and ontology without reference to the spiritual would be unthinkable. Materia, in premodern philosophy and theology, included not just physical entities, such as wood or other building materials, i.e. ‘that which has mass and occupies space,’75 but also spiritual forces and ‘matters’ of discussion and

68 69 70

71 72

73 74 75

Robertson, ‘Materialism: A Manifesto,’ p. 102. Ibid., pp. 102, 104. Robertson cites Jeffrey J. Williams, ‘Critical Self-Fashioning: An Interview with Stephen Greenblatt,’ Minnesota Review, 71-72 (2008), 47-61 (p. 61). See also Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (New York, 2011), pp. 9-12. Robertson, ‘Materialism: A Manifesto,’ p. 108. Kellie Robertson, Nature Speaks: Medieval Literature and Aristotelian Philosophy (Philadelphia, 2017), p. 1. Robertson argues that poetry is especially fruitful for ‘[promoting] a synthetic vision of knowledge’ that links the material with the mental and spiritual. See ‘Materialism: A Manifesto,’ p. 110. Robertson, Nature Speaks, pp. 8, 15. Barad, ‘Posthumanist Performativity,’ p. 147. S.v. matter, Oxford English Dictionary Online, accessed 9 February 2019.

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Spirituo-Materiality in the Early Middle Ages dispute. Theories of matter were constantly debated in the Middle Ages, as both Robertson and Bynum have noted.76 Twentieth-century philosophers of science such as Bruno Latour have exposed the strict division between matter and the human mind as mythical in itself. Latour insists on the need to question ‘the separation between humans and non-humans on the one hand, and between what happens “above” and what happens “below” on the other,’ realigning the relationships among human beings, ‘things, or objects, or beasts,’ and ‘a crossedout God.’77 The human scientist or explorer, in this view, despite claims of objectivity, can never reside ‘outside’ that which he or she studies. The radical separation between analyst and data is an illusion. Both analyst and data have agency and interact in ways that usually go unacknowledged in discussions of modern scientific method.78 In recent feminist theory, matter’s agency has also become prominent, and the body has once again become ‘real’ rather than wholly produced by discourse. As Susan Bordo’s work has shown, ‘discourses … create a very real reality for gendered bodies,’ one that has been displaced by an emphasis on language over matter.79 Bordo notes that, moving away from the Platonic notion of ‘the body as an epistemological deceiver, its unreliable senses and volatile passions continually tricking us into mistaking the transient and illusory for the permanent and real,’ postmodern theory addressed the body-as-discourse, losing sight of materiality. Bordo, however, examines bodies as more than ‘mere products of social discourse’ or ‘pure text,’ with ‘material locatedness in history, practice, culture.’80 In her study of maternity and feminism, Patrice DiQuinzio likewise argues for a ‘view of discursivity as enmattered and materializing.’81 Approaching the subject through science, Elizabeth Grosz describes ‘the body as “open materiality,”’ potential rather than fixed, passive matter.82 And in the social sciences, Hekman addresses the contributions of Barad and Nils Bohr to ‘bringing matter back [into]’ feminist theory and recognizing that ‘our constructed knowledge has real, material consequences…. 76 77 78 79 80 81 82

Robertson, ‘Materialism: A Manifesto,’ pp. 105–107, and Bynum, Christian Materiality, pp. 16–20. Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, MA, 1993), p. 13. For a modern example of this debate, see Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (New York, 2011), pp. 118–126. Susan Hekman, ‘Constructing the Ballast: An Ontology for Feminism,’ in Material Feminisms, ed. Alaimo and Hekman, pp. 85–119 (p. 90). Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Berkeley, 2003), pp. 3, 35, 38. Patrice DiQuinzio, The Impossibility of Motherhood: Feminism, Individualism, and the Problem of Mothering (London, 1999), p. 252n.3. Hekman, ‘Constructing the Ballast,’ pp. 90, 106. See also Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington, 1994), p. 191.

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Debating with Demons [moving] away from representationalism … [and] toward ontology.’83 Hekman acknowledges that, in contrast to postmodern perspectives that ‘reject ontology … because of their conviction … that “there is no there there,”’ Barad ‘[counters] that there is a there there, but it is fluid rather than fixed.’ In her critique of Judith Butler’s emphasis on the ‘discursive’ construction of the body and Foucault’s formulation of the same, Barad insists on ‘[allowing] matter its due as an active participant in the world’s becoming.’84 Feminist critics such as Barad, Bordo, and Grosz, according to Hekman, have ushered in ‘an ontology of the body’ in which ‘bodies exist … in intra-action with a complex array of forces.’85 To emphasize this, Hekman argues, is not to reject language but to expand on it, recognizing the many forces that ‘[construct] reality,’ as well as their potential for ‘agency and resistance.’86 This depends, however, on how the ‘material’ is defined, a problem on which Bynum, Robertson, and other medieval scholars have commented extensively. When the definition of ‘matter’ acknowledges medieval theories of materia, more diverse and widespread opportunities for resistance, grounded in diverse modes of knowing and being, become possible. Without the integration of medieval views, new binary oppositions potentially take shape. For example, Hekman describes the recent emphasis on matter as a ‘move from epistemology to ontology’ that ‘[seeks] to bring this new ontology into the social realm.’87 This phrasing suggests that epistemology and ontology are separate, or perhaps successive, rather than integrated. Hekman also claims, however, that ‘ontology is always in flux,’ and the task of the theorist is to ‘develop tools’ for understanding the ‘fluid’ nature of what is real.88 Those tools should perhaps include the recognition that epistemology and ontology can be contiguous and overlapping; one need not, in other words, move from one to the other, 83

84

85 86 87 88

Hekman, Material of Knowledge, pp. 73–74. See also Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham, 2007), pp. 3, 43, 97-131; Niels Bohr, ‘Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?,’ in The Philosophical Writings of Niels Bohr, Vol. 4, Causality and Complementarity, ed. Jan Faye and Henry J. Folse (Woodbridge, CT, 1998), pp. 73-82; and Niels Bohr, ‘Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics,’ in The Philosophical Writings of Niels Bohr, Vol. 2, Essays, 1933-1957, on Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge (Woodbridge, CT, 1963), pp. 32-66. Hekman, Material of Knowledge, pp. 74–76. See also Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, pp. 136-137, 147; Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (London, 1993; repr. 2011), pp. ix-x, xiv-xviii, 3-6; and Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings, 1972-1977, ed. Colin Gordon (New York, 1980), pp. 197-198. Hekman, Material of Knowledge, p. 82. Susan Hekman, The Feminine Subject (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 148, 180. Hekman, Material of Knowledge, pp. 88–89. Ibid., pp. 90–91.

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Spirituo-Materiality in the Early Middle Ages as Barad’s concept of ‘onto-epistem-ology’ demonstrates.89 Hekman’s approach does provide space for premodern conceptions of materiality in emphasizing the ‘social scripts’ operating in a given cultural context.90 Satya Mohanty’s emphasis on social experience likewise acknowledges the complex and diverse possibilities for agency within particular social parameters, claiming that ‘the oppressed may have epistemic privilege: certain social positions produce more reliable knowledge.’91 Such positions may also entail a cooperative rather than dominating relationship to matter: Bennett compares such an attitude to ‘the desire of the craftsperson to see what a metal can do, rather than the desire of the scientist to know what metal is.’92 Shaping matter requires a cooperation with it; one cannot dominate or force it, instead recognizing its vibrant potential. Bennett’s view of matter might seem to align with premodern theories of matter, succinctly describing, for example, the cræft of the smiths and sculptors and other artisans who populated early medieval England. To understand the ontology of such a smith in the premodern world, however, is to recognize the social norms contributing to the identities of early medieval people. And those norms incorporated a conviction that the material and the spiritual infused one another. To understand medieval matter is to imagine a world in which matter is alive in part due to its suffusion by the spiritual, ineffable as well as observable. Though feminist materialists rarely acknowledge the spiritual, Hekman has addressed the problem of how to understand the historically specific self/mind/subject by proposing a ‘social ontology’ related to Deborah Orr’s ‘holistic view of the human.’93 This seeks to define subjectivity in a particular society, that is, ‘what it means to be a subject,’ within the ‘social scripts’ operating in that context. Hekman, critiquing ‘Butler’s tentativeness’ on the subject, insists on the need for a ‘core sense of self’ which ‘allows us to talk about something that has been lost in the linguistic turn: identity.’94 Such an identity emerges not just through language but also through materiality, technology, and other forces. For Hekman, identities in this sense respond to ‘social scripts’ but are not defined by them: ‘I can resist the identity in society’s script,’ she says, without being ‘[reduced] 89 90 91

92 93

94

Barad, ‘Posthumanist Performativity,’ p. 147. Hekman, Material of Knowledge, pp. 93–94. Ibid., p. 103. Hekman cites Satya Mohanty, ‘The Epistemic Status of Cultural Identity,’ in Reclaiming Identity: Realist Theory and the Predicament of Postmodernism, ed. Paul Moya and Michael Hames-Garcia (Berkeley, 2000), pp. 29–66 (pp. 55–58). Bennett, Vibrant Matter, p. 60. Hekman, ‘Constructing the Ballast,’ pp. 113, 115. See also Deborah Orr, ‘Developing Wittgenstein’s Picture of the Soul,’ in Feminist Interpretations of Ludwig Wittgenstein, ed. Naomi Scheman and Peg O’Connor (University Park, 2002), pp. 322–343 (p. 323). Hekman, ‘Constructing the Ballast’, pp. 113–115.

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Debating with Demons … to the social script,’ acknowledging the reality of the body. Here, the material, natural, and social are inextricably intertwined.95 Within the ‘script’ of the early Middle Ages, however, supernatural, human, and nonhuman entities as well as places could perform actions. While the violence of martyrdom or the idea that life persists after death might be difficult for some modern theorists to accept, it is thoroughly in keeping with medieval ontological commitments related to belief in a complex, mysterious soul and the mutable, multiple nature of the body.96 When objects spoke, or when places reacted to spiritual entities, it was miraculous but nevertheless expected, part of a spirituo-material worldview in which natural and supernatural forces constantly interacted and mutually emerged. Contemporary material feminist theorists, while they question and diverge from dichotomies that have influenced gender, rarely acknowledge the spiritual/material divide as another dichotomy that requires reexamination. Feminist scholarship in religious studies, in contrast, intervenes in important ways in the Cartesian separation of matter, mind, and spirit.97 T.M. Lurhmann and Pamela Klassen have both addressed the ‘problem of presence’ in twenty-first century American Protestantism, examining, in Luhrmann’s view, the difficulty of providing ‘proof’ of an immaterial God, a ‘special sort of problem for epistemology.’98 Meredith McGuire, who frequently refers to medieval spiritual practices in her assessment of lived experience in contemporary religion, argues that ‘we must take seriously the connection between embodiment and spirituality.’99 McGuire looks to theorists of ritual such as Catherine Bell to emphasize the ‘interconnectedness of mind and body’100 in what Bell calls ‘the ritualized body,’101 describing pilgrimage, for example, as a practice that ‘involves the body and spirit simultaneously in moving through space, in reaching a special place’ through an affective, material, and spiritual 95 96 97

98

99 100 101

Ibid., p. 115. ‘Ontological Commitment,’ The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy, ed. Nicholas Bunnin and Jiyuan Yu (Oxford, 2004). Although it is frequently oversimplified, the position of Descartes himself on this question is quite complex and evolves significantly over time. See the Discourse (6.32–33), the Second Meditation (7.27), and the Sixth Meditation (3.694) in Discourse on Method and Related Writings, trans. Desmond M. Clarke (London, 1998) and Meditations on First Philosophy = Meditationes de prima philosophia, trans. George Heffernan (Notre Dame, 1990). T.M. Luhrmann, When God Talks Back: Understanding the Evangelical Relationship with God (New York, 2012), pp. xvii–xviii; and Pamela Klassen, Spirits of Protestantism: Medicine, Healing, and Liberal Christianity (Berkeley, 2011), p. 33. Orsi has examined similar questions in modern Catholicism; see History and Presence, pp. 5, 8–9, 102–106. McGuire, Lived Religion, p. 168. Ibid., p. 172. Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York, 1992), pp. 98–99.

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Spirituo-Materiality in the Early Middle Ages process.102 Within the pilgrimage, Cynthia Hahn also notes, ‘the pilgrim body’ joins with the memory, ‘[performatively] shaping’ the self through a deeply experiential form of devotion.103 The needs of the present day, let alone the medieval past, seem to require a holistic onto-epistemology which recognizes the mental, spiritual, and material dimensions of simultaneous coming-to-know and coming-into-being.104 Religious studies scholars such as McGuire and Robert Orsi have suggested an approach to spirituality that does not immediately limit it to a system of ‘hierarchies,’ complicating binary constructions such as sacred/secular.105 These constructions can lead modern thinkers to assume restricted forms of agency in diverse religious traditions of both the past and the present, as Talal Asad and Saba Mahmood have shown. Asad has critiqued the linear notion of ‘a conscious agent-subject’ who ‘[moves] in a singular historical direction … increasing self-empowerment and decreasing pain.’106 Mahmood likewise questions prevailing notions of agency, defining it ‘as a capacity for action that historically specific relations of subordination enable and create,’ as well as ‘the capacity to endure, suffer, and persist.’ Within this definition, Mahmood argues, the body is essential in the development of discipline and in the integration of ‘outward behavior’ with ‘interiority.’107 The arguments of Mahmood and Asad, who recognize that historical patterns of subjugation nevertheless allow for the emergence of agency, are relevant for considering agency in early medieval cultures as well. Such arguments align with current re-evaluations of Western religious traditions. McGuire recognizes the ongoing presence of ‘spiritualities,’ both past and present, ‘that challenge hierarchical notions of relationship with the deity.’ These spiritualities also disrupt ‘tidy, dichotomous notions of gender, sexuality, and the human Other’ and assert the importance of embodiment and affective power in lived spirituality.108 According to McGuire, religious ‘embodied practices’ are both reactive and proactive, crucial ‘[forms] of dissent and resistance and simultaneously a vision

102 103 104

105 106 107

108

McGuire, Lived Religion, p. 172. Cynthia Hahn, Strange Beauty: Issues in the Making and Meaning of Reliquaries, 400–circa 1204 (University Park, 2012), p. 18. On the longing for integrated presence in the modern world, see Orsi, History and Presence, pp. 2–3, 18–19, 37, 44–45. See also McGuire, Lived Religion, in which she argues for the recognition of the ‘mind-body-spirit,’ pp. 113, 120. McGuire, Lived Religion, p. 179. Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, 2003), p. 79. Saba Mahmood, ‘Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival,’ Cultural Anthropology, 16.2 (2001), pp. 202–236 (pp. 203, 217, 214). McGuire, Lived Religion, p. 181.

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Debating with Demons of alternative identities and communities.’109 While modern Western views of religion frequently seek to separate spirituality from the mater­ ial, McGuire argues for a recognition of the unity among spirit, mind, memory, and body, integrated through spiritual practice and ritual but also through domestic work such as cooking, feeding, eating, and caring for others, understood as forms of ‘bodily knowledge.’110 Such an approach expands epistemology significantly, incorporating ways of knowing not only through the mind but also through the body and spirit.111 While McGuire limits this claim to human bodies, the involvement and importance of other bodies must be considered as well, as Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and other scholars have shown.112 This consideration acknowledges, as Bennett argues, an ‘agency … [of both] human and nonhuman,’113 a description which might seem quite familiar to readers of medieval saints’ lives and miracle stories. The potential for medieval theories of materiality to enrich modern notions of matter, articulated by Bynum and Robertson, has also been convincingly established by scholars in early English medieval studies. In a 2010 article, Jacqueline A. Stodnick and Renée R. Trilling ask, ‘is the historically marked body of materialist theory an ahistorical phenomenon, or is it contingent to contemporary culture?’114 Stodnick and Trilling demonstrate how early medieval texts such as the Old English Soul and Body trouble modern theories about the body: ‘The spiritual self and the material self are inseparable, in some cases even beyond death, but the precise nature of the relationship between body and soul is difficult to determine. They confound conventional models of subjectivity that rely on Cartesian dualism; body and soul may be distinct elements, but

109 110 111

112

113 114

Ibid., pp. 183. Ibid., pp. 97, 99, 108. For a study of early English ‘food culture’ and materiality, see Frantzen, Food, Eating and Identity in Early Medieval England. McGuire’s discussion of the Shakers’ woodworking as an example of communal spiritual labor and bodily knowledge suggests the potentially spiritual nature of materia, as one of the term’s oldest meanings refers to timber or wood, the material used for building; likewise, the musical prayer of the Shakers testifies to the common knowledge that emerges from spiritual practice through unified voices. One could easily associate these Shaker principles with medieval monastic life, as Thomas Merton noted in the twentieth century. McGuire, Lived Religion, pp. 111–113. See Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman (Minneapolis, 2015) and his edited volume Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics and Objects (Santa Barbara, 2012), pp. 5–6. Bennett, Vibrant Matter, p. 21. Jacqueline A. Stodnick and Renée R. Trilling, ‘Before and After Theory: Seeing Through the Body in Early Medieval England,’ postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies, 1 (2010), 347–353 (p. 349). On Soul and Body, see also Lockett, Anglo-Saxon Psychologies, pp. 29–33.

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Spirituo-Materiality in the Early Middle Ages they are far from separate or inseparable.’115 Due to the contributions of feminist materialist theorists like Barad and Stacy Alaimo, Stodnick and Trilling acknowledge the possibility of a ‘material subjectivity’ that merges ‘nature and culture.’116 Such subjectivity is evident in many of the debates about materiality in the Middle Ages, as Kathleen Biddick has noted in relation to the ‘onto-epistemological … crisis … of the Eucharist’ from the eleventh century forward.117 Within that crisis, as Miri Rubin claims, the Eucharist becomes a ‘locus,’118 a ‘place’ in which the material and the spiritual fuse through transubstantiation, but also a place which supplies its own argument. Matter becomes sanctified, even deified, but it remains matter, fused with divinity in the case of the Eucharist, or with sanctity in the case of relics. In early English culture, however, it is not only sacramental or holy objects that hold such spirituo-material significance. Indeed, as James Paz has established, ‘things could talk in Anglo-Saxon literature and material culture,’ with the riddles of the Exeter Book and the speaking cross of The Dream of the Rood only the most obvious examples.119 As Paz describes it, emphasizing nonhuman agency and voice opens up new potential for rethinking not only the assumed division between the human and nonhuman but also the boundaries between the material and the spiritual. If, as Paz suggests, ‘Anglo-Saxon things’ provide a new and more complex account of agency,120 then they might also support a complete reconsideration of spirituo-materiality, from its smallest physical elements to spatial environments and spiritual forces. Studies that address medieval subjects in materialist terms emphasize the difficulty of discussing the spirituo-material dynamics of early medieval culture. Scholars influenced by materialist theories are understandably wary of addressing concepts such as spirit and soul, which Biddick describes as ‘the intrinsic vitality of things,’ or ‘some mysterious value-­ added.’121 Bynum’s caution about conflating ‘person’ and ‘body’ foregrounds the need to contend with the soul,122 an immaterial yet undeniable entity in a medieval framework. The first step in such a contention must be to recognize the complexity of teachings and debates about the rela-

115 116 117

118 119 120 121 122

Stodnick and Trilling, ‘Before and After Theory,’ p. 351. Ibid., p. 352. Kathleen Biddick, ‘Transmedieval Mattering and the Untimeliness of the Real Presence,’ postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies, 4 (2013), 238–252 (p. 239). Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991), p. 37. Paz, Nonhuman Voices, p. 1. Ibid., pp. 3, 6. Biddick, ‘Transmedieval Mattering,’ p. 245. Bynum, Christian Materiality, p. 32.

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Debating with Demons tionships between the body, spirit, and soul. Karmen MacKendrick makes this point compellingly, noting the tendency of contemporary scholars to ‘[dismiss] … that “spirit business” … [since] we are … long since over the rigidly stable and intensely hierarchical metaphysics in which we think [spirits] play a part.’ This dismissal, however, as MacKendrick argues, misrepresents the reality of spirit in both past and present. She notes that ‘the premodern sense of the spirited body is far stranger than this dismissive conception credits it with being; far less unified, orderly, singular, or stable.’123 A ‘stable … metaphysics,’ in other words, never existed in the Middle Ages or at any other time. Recognizing the complexity of early medieval bodies and conceptions of ‘spirit’ requires moving away from the Cartesian emphasis on the integrity, unity, and singularity of the body. Christ’s body in the Eucharist and, to a lesser extent, saints’ relics can be in many places at once, both alive and fragmented, with a ‘wholeness [that] means not reunification but multiplication.’124 In the Carmen Nyniae (ca. eighth century c.e.), for example, the Eucharist was represented on the altar as simultaneously bearing the appearance of bread and the form of a human child.125 MacKendrick further explores how the wounds of Christ ‘wander’ and appear in the bodies of stigmatic saints, granting the wounds themselves an ‘ontological fluidity.’ The ‘original body’ somehow duplicates and overflows but remains intact in its life and ‘ensouledness.’ What MacKendrick describes as moving beyond the ‘narrow span of modernity’ and ‘returning again to the excess of our humanity’ seems essential for considering spirituo-materiality in the Middle Ages.126 In other words, there is no separate materialism to be considered. There is only the spirituo-materiality of ensouled bodies, multiple and diffuse. Such insights encourage a thorough reconsideration of all cultural practices, from caretaking to ritual and pedagogy.

Voice, body, and place As spirituo-material events with onto-epistemological consequences, pedagogical debates instigated by demons convey knowledge of a potentially world-changing kind. This knowledge is voiced through a narrative in a particular place, emanating from the bodies which occupy it. Such a place thus becomes a topos or locus in which questions are posed and argu-

123 124 125 126

Karmen MacKendrick, ‘The Multipliable Body,’ postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies, 1 (2010), 108–114 (p. 109). Ibid., pp. 109–111. Samantha Zacher, ‘Rereading the Style and Rhetoric of the Vercelli Homilies,’ in The Old English Homily, ed. Kleist, pp. 173–207 (p. 200). MacKendrick, ‘The Multipliable Body,’ pp. 112–113.

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Spirituo-Materiality in the Early Middle Ages ments about ontological realities are articulated and potentially resisted. In understanding the holistic environment in which onto-­epistemology is negotiated, voice is essential.127 And yet, as wave rather than matter, strictly speaking, voice is challenging to discuss, ephemeral unless recorded in some form. Although voice has been essential to feminist discussions of agency and freedom, the voice is often considered largely metaphorical, as Leslie C. Dunn and Nancy A. Jones have noted, at the expense of ‘the concrete physical dimension of the female voice upon which this metaphor was based.’128 Building on the work of Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes,129 Dunn and Jones describe the voice as a ‘material link between “inside” and “outside,” self and other … “the locus of articulation of an individual’s body to language and society.”’130 Thus the voice also potentially becomes a ‘place’ of embodied authority. Scholars struggle to approach the voice, however, especially in its medieval forms in ‘the absence of an auditory referent.’131 But stories tell us that the devil’s voice resonated in space: in Vercelli Homily X, discussed in the introduction, Satan teaches vulnerable souls in his secret room, playing music and teaching lessons which ontologically change those souls and lead them to damnation. Since, according to most medieval accounts, Satan possessed a body, or at least that which gave him a voice, he became ‘a real power on earth.’132 The voice resonates and, through its vibrations, transforms space into place, into the topos or locus in which arguments could be found in rhetoric and dialectic. In early medieval poetry, the topos is frequently literalized as a narrative place saturated with spiritual forces.

127

128

129

130

131

132

On the relationship of the body, language, and voice, see Karmen MacKendrick, The Matter of Voice: Sensual Soundings (New York, 2016), pp. 6–8 and Chapter 1; and the introduction to The Voice as Something More: Essays Toward Materiality, ed. Martha Feldman and Judith T. Zeitlin (Chicago, 2019), pp. 3–35 (pp. 4–6). Leslie C. Dunn and Nancy A. Jones, ‘Introduction,’ in Embodied Voices: Representing Female Vocality in Western Culture, ed. Leslie C. Dunn and Nancy A. Jones (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 1–13 (p. 1). See Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, trans. Margaret Waller (New York, 1984), pp. 86-89 and Roland Barthes, ‘The Grain of the Voice,’ Image, Music, Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York, 1977), pp. 181–183. Dunn and Jones, ‘Introduction,’ p. 2. They cite Nelly Furman’s review essay, ‘Opera, or the Staging of the Voice,’ Cambridge Opera Journal, 3 (1991), 303–306 (p. 303). Eduardo Aubert, ‘Locating the Sound of the Medieval Voice: An Analytical Framework,’ in In Search of the Medieval Voice: Expressions of Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. Lorna Bleach, Katariina Närä, Sian Prosser, and Paola Scarpini (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 19–33 (p. 19). Katariina Närä, ‘“I make þals master and merour of my mighte”: Medieval Representations of the Devil,’ in In Search of the Medieval Voice, ed. Bleach, Närä, Prosser, and Scarpini, pp. 127–146 (p. 132).

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Debating with Demons This spiritual element has been recognized by some contemporary feminist materialist theorists, including Donna Haraway. She notes that in the ancient world, ‘the “topick gods” were the local gods, the gods specific to places and peoples.’ This specificity of place is essential for such deities and those who follow them, including the saints: the gods must ‘reinhabit, precisely, common places – locations that are widely shared, inescapably local, worldly, enspirited.’ In the process, the gods participate in storytelling as the ‘work of world building.’133 Narratives which emerge in pedagogical encounters in Old English poems are themselves embedded within narratives. The reader is confronted with layers of story, which offer competing accounts of the relationships of place, body, and voice, knowing and being, materiality and spirituality. Spirituo-material beings, whether ensouled humans, demons, or the God-Man Christ, cannot be separated from the places they inhabit and in which they find their arguments, whether Eden, Calvary, heaven, or hell. Within an early medieval worldview, space and place are inextricably linked to conceptions of the body and subjectivity, the spirituo-material dynamics of existence, in ways that scholars have not always recognized. Past scholarship on medieval spaces and places frequently promotes reductive views of medieval space. For example, Foucault famously claimed that ‘in the Middle Ages there was a hierarchic ensemble of … sacred places and profane places … this complete hierarchy, this opposition … constituted what could very roughly be called medieval space.’134 Scholars of the Middle Ages, however, recognize that the heterogeneity claimed by Foucault for contemporary places is also visible in medieval places and in the texts produced and read within them. As noted by Barbara A. Hanawalt and Michal Kobialka, ‘the practice of space in the Middle Ages was never homogeneous, but always in flux’ in its histor­ icity.135 Nicole Guenther Discenza’s recent study emphasizes that in early medieval England, the ‘places’ inhabited by humans are consistently described as fragile and transitory, ‘defined by relationships’ whereby a place becomes ‘a human creation … always in process.’136 In medieval sources, places constantly interact with the human and non-human agents who occupy them, both those in official authority and those who would resist such authority. In these texts, places and their meanings are consist133 134 135

136

Donna Haraway, ‘Otherworldly Conversations: Terran Topics, Local Terms,’ in Material Feminisms, ed. Alaimo and Hekman, pp. 157–187 (p. 159). Michel Foucault, ‘Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias,’ trans. Jay Miskowiec, Architecture /Mouvement /Continuité, 5 (1984), 1–9 (p. 1). See Barbara A. Hanawalt’s and Michal Kobialka’s introduction to Medieval Practices of Space, ed. Barbara A. Hanawalt and Michal Kobialka (Minneapolis, 2000), pp. ix–xviii (p. xi). Nicole Guenther Discenza, Inhabited Spaces: Anglo-Saxon Constructions of Place (Toronto, 2017), pp. 6–7.

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Spirituo-Materiality in the Early Middle Ages ently transformed by the events – the Fall, the Crucifixion, martyrdoms, saintly miracles – that take place in particular locations, especially wherever the material traces of that event remain. Research on place in early English culture has tended to focus on landscape, territory, and geography, as demonstrated in studies by Della Hooke, Nicholas Howe, and Fabienne Michelet, perhaps since landscape provides a suitable category for archaeological study.137 An emphasis on landscape, however, has its limitations. As Tim Cresswell notes, landscape is strongly associated with the privileged position of a ‘viewer’ who stands ‘outside’ the landscape, as opposed to ‘places, [which] are very much things to be inside of.’138 Nevertheless, medieval studies of landscape have usefully emphasized the significance of Britain itself as a disputed space. In medieval studies and other fields, the definition of ‘place’ is constantly shifting; while Michelet bases her definition on the Oxford English Dictionary, for example, grounding her study in ‘cultural and social circumstances’ rather than ‘personal and inner factors,’ scholars in Renaissance literature and classics associate place with memory.139 In

137

138 139

Della Hooke, The Landscapes of Anglo-Saxon England (Leicester, 1998), pp. xi– xiii; Nicholas Howe, Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England (Notre Dame, 2001), pp. x–xvi and Writing the Map of Anglo-Saxon England: Essays in Cultural Geography (New Haven, 2007), pp. 36–39; and Fabienne Michelet, Creation, Migration, and Conquest: Imaginary Geography and Sense of Space in Old English Literature (Oxford, 2006), pp. 269–273. Michelet takes a ‘metaphorical’ approach to space, examining ‘space as a mental structure’ in early English culture; see pp. ix, 4–5. Jonathan Locke Hart mentions early English landscapes briefly in ‘The Geography of Otherness: The Art of Moving and the Space of Time,’ in Landscape, Seascape, and the Eco-Spatial Imagination, ed. Simon C. Estok, I-Chun Wang, and Jonathan White (London, 2016), pp. 22–40 (pp. 26–27). On the study of medieval landscape, see also the introductions by Laura L. Howes and John M. Ganim in Place, Space, and Landscape in Medieval Narrative, ed. Laura L. Howes and John M. Ganim (Knoxville, 2007), pp. vii–xiv, xv–xxvi (pp. vii–viii, xii, xix–xx). On landscape and archaeology, see Setha Low, Spatializing Culture: The Ethnography of Space and Place (London, 2017), p. 31. Tim Cresswell, Place: A Short Introduction (Oxford, 2004), p. 10. Michelet, Creation, Migration, and Conquest, pp. 6–7. Much recent work on this topic in the Renaissance and late antiquity is by emerging scholars: see Susan L. Guinn-Chipman, ‘Religious Space, Resistance, and the Formation of Memory in Early Modern England,’ Ph.D. diss., University of Colorado-Boulder (2009); and Zhiyan Zhang, ‘Fluid and Loci: Death and Memory in Shakespearean Plays,’ Ph.D. diss., University of Exeter (2012). For an overview of studies on space, social practice, and memory in classical architecture and culture, see Ann Kuttner’s review essay in The Art Bulletin, 89 (2007), 360–364, on the following: The Roman Banquet: Images of Conviviality by Katherine M.D. Dunbabin; Houses and Monuments of Pompeii: The Works of Fausto and Felice Niccolini by Roberto Cassanelli, Pier Luigi Ciapparelli, Enrico Colle, Massimiliano David, Fausto Niccolini, Felice Niccolini; Domus: Wall Painting in the Roman House by Donatella Mazzoleni and Umberto Pappalardo; and The Social Life of Painting in Ancient Rome and on the Bay of Naples by Eleanor Winsor Leach.

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Debating with Demons contrast, contemporary spatial theorists like Cresswell and Setha Low associate ‘place’ far more strongly with subjectivity and the ability of individual agents to claim, shape, and reconfigure space. These theories of place are influenced by Foucault, Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau, Edward Soja, and Yi-Fu Tuan, among others.140 In contrast to Cresswell’s emphasis on localized ‘place’ over boundless ‘space,’ Kim Knott argues for integrating both place and space as part of a fluid process of human interaction with space. Knott formulates a ‘spatial methodology’ for religion that establishes ‘the foundational role of the body for our experience and representation of space,’ recognizing the body’s importance for understanding ‘relationships, time and progress, and the sacred.’ Responding to the work of Lefebvre, Foucault, George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, and Mary Keller, Knott further emphasizes that the body must be the ‘bio-spatial starting point’ for the attempt ‘to locate religion.’141 Within this paradigm, space becomes a place of contention, the foundation for the ‘resistance and subversion’ of existing values and the formation of new values. Knott argues that ‘people’s agency is continually expressed in and through [space],’ and ‘spaces … are not only products. At times they may reproduce themselves,’142 a claim that seems to grant some agency to space. Citing the work of Mircea Eliade, Gerardus van der Leeuw, David Chidester, and Edward T. Linenthal, Knott notes that ‘sacred space’ is constantly subject to dispute and negotiation. Following Jonathan Z. Smith, Knott argues that ‘place is more than a natural or material space. It is lived first and foremost in hearts and minds, and is socially organised’ through ritual and other social practices.143 In the

140

141

142 143

See Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, 1991); Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley, 1984); Edward Soja, ‘Thirdspace: Expanding the Scope of the Geographical Imagination,’ in Human Geography Today, ed. Doreen Massey, John Allen, and Philip Sarre (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 260-278 and Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places (Oxford, 1996); and Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis, 1979; repr. 2001). Kim Knott, ‘Spatial Theory and Method for the Study of Religion,’ Temenos, 41 (2005), 153–184 (p. 155–156, 158). See also Lefebvre, The Production of Space; Foucault, ‘Of Other Spaces’; Mark Johnson, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination and Reason (Chicago, 1987); George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago, 1980) and Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought (New York, 1999); and Mary Keller, The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power and Spirit Possession (Baltimore, 2002). Knott, ‘Spatial Theory and Method for the Study of Religion,’ pp. 161–162, 166. Ibid., pp. 169–170. See also Mirca Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (San Diego, 1959); Gerardus van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation (Princeton, 1933; repr. 1986); the introduction to American Sacred Space, ed. David Chidester and Edward T. Linenthal (Bloomington, 1995), pp. 1-42; and Jonathan Z. Smith, ‘The Wobbling Pivot,’ in Map is Not Territory:

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Spirituo-Materiality in the Early Middle Ages Middle Ages, these practices would have included religious ceremonies and relic veneration as well as everyday activities such as storytelling, eating, drinking, caring for the ill, and burying the dead. It is useful to consider the spirituo-material dynamics of medieval places in relation to modern views which associate space and place with agency and resistance. Recognizing these potentialities of place leads one to consider the body also as a ‘place,’ with its own ability to subvert dominant practices. Knott argues a crucial point about the relationship between place and the body: It is not enough … simply to have ‘body’ in mind when thinking about an object or place; one needs an awareness of the way in which spatial conceptions have emerged from our embodiment, of how particular spaces or places are derived from bodies and their location in space, and of the way in which the body itself is a produced space acted upon and informed by orders and regimes of various kinds.144

For thinking about medieval spirituo-material phenomena such as martyrs’ shrines and relics, Knott’s insight into the body-in-place is valu­ able. Sacred space and the configuration of place are fundamental to understanding how medieval bodies moved and lived in the world. The modern experience of those medieval movements must come secondhand, through story rather than experience. Considering de Certeau’s insight that ‘every story is a travel story – a spatial practice,’145 however, it is important to examine how medieval writers represent bodily movements through space and understand their significance. The onto-epistemological implications of transformations within space are concentrated in scenes of demonic teaching. And the inherent instability of pedagogy itself concentrates the power of these transformations. Demonic teachers, in their role as storytellers, provide a narrative framework through which to understand such actions. De Certeau describes a story as a ‘foundation’ which ‘opens a legitimate theater for practical actions. It creates a field that authorizes dangerous and contingent social actions.’146 Teaching is inherently contingent, and even the most skillful of demonic teachers runs the risk that his lore will be rejected, that he will be shamed and defeated. Thus the place in which the pedagogical encounter occurs can be transformed through story into a place of potential struggle and resistance.

144 145 146

Studies in the History of Religions (Chicago, 1978), pp. 88-103 and To Take Place: Toward a Theory of Ritual (Chicago, 1987). Knott, ‘Spatial Theory and Method for the Study of Religion’, p. 176. De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, p. 115. Cited in John Inge, A Christian Theology of Place (London, 2003), p. 26. De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, pp. 124–125.

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Debating with Demons The competing narratives articulated by demons, women, and Jews in early medieval texts indeed tell stories that are as spatial and bodily as they are spiritual. But those stories can be questioned and subverted, partly because they occur within ambiguous places. Steve Pile notes that, even when authority figures seem to dominate particular places, their power is never complete, unified, or stable. Those on the margins, Pile claims, can circumnavigate the ‘rules’ of the ‘game’ and ‘continually seek to find their own places: they rat run through the labyrinths of powers.’147 As peripheral figures, demons, women, and Jews can engage in such ‘rat runs’ as official authority figures cannot. Like language itself, bodies, places, and stories are ‘always becoming,’ in the words of Allan Pred, who emphasizes the power of story-making in the operation of place-as-­ process.148 In textual pedagogical encounters, place fosters both the storytelling of participants and their resistance to others’ narratives, such as those constructed by demons. Sometimes that resistance is successful, sometimes not, but it provides insight into how pedagogy and the materia connected with it, including bodies, sacred objects, and sacred places, can be negotiated in world-changing ways.

Conclusion In illustrating the complexity of early medieval views of materiality, spirituality, and the soul, as well as examining recent work in feminist materialist theory and religious studies, this chapter has argued for the reintegration of materia and spiritus. This is an ongoing critical project to which scholarship in medieval studies has already made important contributions. By synthesizing theories of space and place, this chapter has also emphasized the spatial elements of early medieval materiality and the crucial interaction of body, spirit, voice, and place in onto-­epistemological transformation. The theoretical foundation has therefore been laid for examining early medieval pedagogical encounters, which are not only intellectual, spiritual, and linguistic but also material, envoiced, and emplaced. In the early Middle Ages, such encounters occurred formally within monasteries and their schools, places which claimed privileged access to knowledge of the verbal arts as well as a fundamental role in the salvation of all people, whether inside or outside the cloister. Monastic

147

148

Steve Pile, ‘Introduction: Opposition, Political Identities and Spaces of Resistance,’ in Geographies of Resistance, ed. Steve Pile and Michael Keith (London, 1997), pp. 1–32 (p. 15). Allan Pred, ‘Place as Historically Contingent Process: Structuration and the Time-Geography of Becoming Places,’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 74 (1984), 279–297 (p. 285).

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Spirituo-Materiality in the Early Middle Ages communities, however, struggled with the constant tension between the ideals of an authoritative text, the monastic Rule, and the disorderly realities that constantly threatened to undermine the monastery’s claims about itself and its place in the divine order. Learned authorities regularly confronted the fact that Christian doctrine, which should above all things be unassailable, was nevertheless subject to external threats, internal challenges, and constant redefinition. This doctrinal indeterminacy had both epistemological and ontological implications, potentially affecting the souls, minds, and bodies of all people. Whenever the verbal arts were deployed to stabilize and defend fundamental Christian teachings, these arts simultaneously rendered these teachings questionable, open to doubt and therefore apt to be exploited by weak or deceptive teachers, including demons. To examine this paradox, the following chapter explores how early medieval thinkers shaped the verbal arts of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic to meet the needs of the souls, bodies, minds, and places in their care.

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2 The Artes Liberales in the Early Middle Ages

If early English poetic devils deploy the verbal arts to debate with their ‘pupils,’ an understanding of how those arts were practiced in the early medieval period is fundamental. Research on the study of the artes liberales in the Carolingian Empire and early medieval England is ongoing. While the study of grammar by English scholars in this period has been thoroughly examined, much remains to be discovered about their knowledge and teaching of the two more ‘dangerous’ verbal arts: rhetoric, the art of persuasion, and dialectic, the logical art of argumentation. Although early English writers demonstrate awareness of rhetorical and dialect­ ical theory, there is limited direct evidence of the widespread practice of Latin learning, including the study of dialectical and rhetorical treatises, in pre-conquest England.1 Existing studies of the verbal arts in early medieval England have tended to emphasize grammatica first and rhetorica second,2 focusing on Old English and Anglo-Latin written texts rather than the art of oral delivery.3 Both Carolingian and pre-conquest English writers, however, demonstrated significant interest in dialectic, especially in its applications to theological questions. This suggests that an understanding of dialectic provides an important foundation for the informal logic deployed in early English poetic debates, particularly those involving demons. Such debates required engaging with the liberal arts of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic, all of which were inevitably associated with memory, violence, and place. In the early Middle Ages, some

1 2

3

Michael Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature Vol. 2, 900–1066 (London, 1993), p. 4. Most approaches to early English education and the emerging trivium emphasize grammar and rhetoric rather than dialectic, including Jager’s discussion in The Tempter’s Voice; Martin Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture: ‘Grammatica’ and Literary Theory 350–1100 (Cambridge, 1994); Janie Steen, Verse and Virtuosity: The Adaptation of Latin Rhetoric in Old English Poetry (Toronto, 2008), pp. 3–5, 10–15; and Mary Carruthers, ‘Reading with Attitude, Remembering the Book,’ in The Book and the Body, ed. Dolores Warwick Frese and Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe (Notre Dame, 1997), pp. 1–33. See also Gabriele Knappe, Traditionen der klassischen Rhetorik im angelsächsischen England (Heidelberg, 1996), pp. 185–188. See Zacher, ‘Rereading the Style and Rhetoric of the Vercelli Homilies,’ pp. 185, 188–189 and Charles D. Wright, ‘Old English Homilies and Latin Sources,’ in The Old English Homily, ed. Kleist, pp. 15–66 (p. 42). See also Robert Stanton, The Culture of Translation in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 2002), p. 23.

44

The Artes Liberales in the Early Middle Ages scholars did study and deploy the methods of dialectic, most prominently Alcuin, architect of Charlemagne’s educational reform. These early dia­ lectical experiments among the Carolingians have important implications for the study of the verbal arts in early medieval England.

The verbal arts: memory, violence, and place The arts of rhetoric and dialectic are those deployed most often by early English poetic demons, who use these arts to establish magisterial authority and effect ontological change in their pupils. While crucial for educating preachers, philosophers, legal scholars, and theologians, the disciplines of rhetoric and dialectic were highly ambiguous due to their association with argument, persuasion, and therefore potential deception and manipulation. Pre-conquest scholars demonstrated significant interest in the account of the liberal arts of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric in Books III–V of Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (fifth century c.e.), extant in seven English copies from the ninth through the eleventh centuries.4 The representation of the verbal arts in De nuptiis, a standard textbook throughout the Middle Ages, helps to illuminate the relationship between grammar on the one hand and dialectic and rhetoric on the other, since dialectic, especially in the pre-conquest period, was seemingly understood in terms more theoretical and conceptual than practical and methodological.5 In Books III through V of Martianus’s account, the three verbal arts are represented as female allegorical figures who appear in an assembly before the Roman gods. The elderly Grammatica carries a sharp knife to correct children’s grammar mistakes, as well as medicines to treat diseases of the body and sharpen the mind. Since Grammatica is also master of reading, writing, and comprehension,6 she resides at the intersection of the spiritual and material. Dialectica, in contrast, is a Greek who carries ‘weapons’ of contortis stringens (‘complex and knotty utterances’). She wears her dark hair ornately curled and conceals a snake beneath her

4 5

6

Michael Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library (Oxford, 2006), p. 321; see also Gneuss and Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp. 56, 106, 297, 346. This question of how frequently rhetoric and dialectic were taught in early medieval England will be expanded in Chapter 3. On Martianus Capella ‘as a founder of the system of the liberal arts,’ see John Marenbon, ‘Carolingian Thought,’ in Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, ed. Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 171–192 (p. 173). Martianus Capella, De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, Martianus Capella, ed. James Willis (Leipzig, 1983), III.223–224, 230. Translation in Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts, Volume II: The Marriage of Philology and Mercury, ed. William Harris Stahl and E.L. Burge (New York, 1977), pp. 65–67.

45

Debating with Demons cape, carrying tablets inscribed with formulas which, when they capture her opponents in disputation, draw them toward her serpent. In her speech before the gods, Dialectica vulgo inexplanabile loquebatur (‘[keeps] saying things that the majority could not understand’) and ac solam se discernere, verum quid falsumve sit, velut quadam divinantis fiducia loquebatur (‘[claims] that she alone discerned what was true from what was false, as if she spoke with assurance of divine inspiration’). A master of deception, Dialectica frightens and claims authority over Grammatica.7 In response to Dialectica’s long speech, Pallas Athena criticizes her for dum ambage ficta praestruis sophismata / captentulisve ludis illigantibus (‘prepar[ing] sophisms fraught with guile, or seductively [making] sport with trickeries from which one cannot get free’).8 Thus Martianus makes clear the deceptive potential of Dialectica’s art. Finally, Rhetorica enters, a tall woman with daunting weapons who persuades her listeners to do her will. A genius in speechmaking, auratae vocis (‘golden-voiced’), she utters her position within a debate, alternately seducing and exciting the crowd, throwing her listeners into turmoil.9 In Martianus’s representation, Rhetorica and Dialectica use their arts to manipulate others of lesser skill. Grammatica, though more overtly violent in wielding her sharp knife, is nevertheless less dangerous with her emphasis on correctness and clarity in language use. The arts of argumentation and persuasion – especially that of Dialectica, with her serpent and her verbal trickery – seem to be suspect and frightening in this account so well-known to early English scholars. Grammar is founded on memory, precision, and violence. Rhetoric, in her compelling speech, dazzles her audience and causes confusion. Dialectic relies on stealth, sophistication, and ‘tricks,’ her snake ready to strike the unwary at any time. And these last two arts, especially dialectic, are prized by the devil, who exploits them for deceptive and destructive purposes in his pedagogical encounters. The dangers of the artes liberales were expounded in the vita of Benedict of Nursia himself. In Book II of Gregory the Great’s Dialogi, Benedict flees from Roman-style schooling in the liberal arts, having witnessed its evil effect on his peers and fearing such a fate for himself. For Benedict, the austerity of monastic life is an alternative to learning grammatica, dialectica, rhetorica, and all the rest, which tend more often to evil than to

7 8 9

Martianus Capella, De Nuptiis, ed. Willis, IV.327–330, 333; Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts, trans. Stahl and Burge, pp. 106–108. Martianus Capella, De Nuptiis, ed. Willis, IV.423; Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts, trans. Stahl and Burge, p. 153. Martianus Capella, De Nuptiis, ed. Willis, V.428–429; Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts, trans. Stahl and Burge, pp. 156–157.

46

The Artes Liberales in the Early Middle Ages good.10 In keeping with this suspicion of the verbal arts, stories of teaching demons most vividly demonstrate that pedagogy is an activity fraught with potential danger due to the vulnerability of the geong (‘young’) disciple or pupil, often too inexperienced to exercise discretio effectively. Epistemology itself is unstable, a perilous enterprise with ontological consequences. False knowledge, therefore, and the potentially dangerous methods used to encourage it, pose an existential threat. In these methods, demons were highly skilled, deploying the verbal arts, especially dialectic and rhetoric, to achieve their aims and presenting a special danger to the as-yet-unlearned. The verbal arts are closely integrated with mnemonics, the art of memory, since one cannot practice the verbal arts without being able to remember the linguistic, persuasive, or argumentative material one must use. These arts all emphasize the need to find things – remembered facts, arguments, questions – in a topos or place which is both conceptual and, in pre-conquest poetry, literal, mapped onto the narrative settings in which pedagogical encounters take place. Limited and local, the topos was considered secondary in Platonic philosophy to limitless space, or chora, later known as spatium or spacium, associated with infinitude.11 In premodern dialectical and rhetorical theories, however, the topos or locus becomes the place where ontological arguments can be found in response to fundamental quaestiones. Epistemology also was considered in spatial terms, as was reading itself, conceived of as an encounter in which the physical book, as a material artifact, connected those who made it with its readers.12 But reading was also viewed as a material and sensory activ­ ity,13 one which required ‘placing’ oneself within the text and establishing ‘routes’ to move around within it.14 This process of traveling through a text is explained by Mary Carruthers, who emphasizes only reading and rhetoric in her analysis, never mentioning dialectic. The art of inventio she addresses, however, or the ‘discovery’ of arguments in particular ‘places’

10 11 12 13

14

Gregory the Great, Dialogues, tome II, ed. de Vogüé and Antin, II, preface; Saint Gregory the Great: Dialogues, trans. Zimmerman, pp. 55–56. David Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley, 1997), p. 134, cited in Inge, A Christian Theology of Place, p. 5. Catherine E. Karkov, Text and Picture in Anglo-Saxon England: Narrative Strategies in the Junius 11 Manuscript (Cambridge, 2001), p. 142. Robertson, Lectio Divina, pp. xiv, 93. See also Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. Catherine Misrahi (New York, 1961), p. 17. Carruthers, ‘Reading with Attitude,’ pp. 7–10; and Lisabeth C. Buchelt, ‘All About Eve: Memory and Re-Collection in Junius 11’s Epic Poems Genesis and Christ and Satan,’ in Women and Medieval Epic: Gender, Genre, and the Limits of Epic Masculinity, ed. Sara S. Poor and Jana K. Schulman (New York, 2007), pp. 137–158 (pp. 137–139).

47

Debating with Demons (topoi or loci) in the mind,15 applies to both rhetoric and dialectic, although topoi serve different functions in these disciplines and in mnemonics. Invention, the process of discovery, involved ‘finding’ one’s material, whether for the purposes of remembering, persuading, or disputing. But inventio, Carruthers notes, also involves both ‘[creating] something new’ and developing an ‘“inventory” of materials for one’s use.’16 Even in the sophisticated and abstract thought processes of the mind, ‘materials’ and ‘places’ are unavoidable. Discovering or ‘inventing’ arguments about knowledge required accessing those ‘places’ in the mind where such ‘material,’ ideas and arguments, were kept. Making an argument, therefore, involved making a place for oneself, an imaginative world through which one could acquire, store, retrieve, and convey knowledge. Spatial methods for organizing the mind were quite familiar on the continent in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages due to the influence of Book II of Cicero’s De oratore, including his account of the invention of the ‘art of memory’ by Simonides of Ceos. According to Cicero’s version of the story of Simonides, those who wish to remember things can imagine material structures, architectural ‘places’ within the mind, arranging objects within them and then mentally moving through them to retrieve the information they require. Cicero further associates ‘places [with] waxen tablets’ and the objects within them with ‘letters,’ identifying the spatial and material with the textual.17 The Rhetorica ad Herennium, a standard rhetorical tract, likewise describes the memory as ‘the treasure-house of the ideas supplied by Invention … the guardian of all the parts of rhetoric.’18 This same text, as Majorie Curry Woods has noted, provided a model for pedagogy, in particular ‘methods of making the hearer “receptive (docilum), well-disposed (benivolum), and attentive (adtentum).”’19 These qualities are seen as highly desirable in pupils, at least when the magister is well-intentioned. When a demon poses as a

15

16 17

18

19

Carruthers, ‘Reading with Attitude,’ pp. 8–9. See also Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 11–12; and Jody Enders, Rhetoric and the Origins of Medieval Drama (Ithaca, 1992), p. 47. Carruthers, ‘Reading with Attitude,’ pp. 8–9. Cicero, De oratore, II.lxxxvi. Cicero on Oratory and Orators, ed. and trans. J.S. Watson (Carbondale, 1986), pp. 142–401 (p. 326). See also Carruthers, ‘Reading with Attitude,’ pp. 3–4. Rhetorica ad Herennium, III.xvi, Ad C. Herennium de ratione dicendi (Rhetorica ad Herennium), trans. Harry Caplan (London, 1964). For a more extensive discussion, see Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago, 2001), Chapters 1–2; Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 2008), Chapters 1–3; and Carruthers, ‘Reading with Attitude,’ pp. 3–4. Marjorie Curry Woods, Classroom Conversations: Teaching the Poetria Nova across Medieval and Renaissance Europe (Columbus, 2010), p. 10.

48

The Artes Liberales in the Early Middle Ages master, however, such docility and receptiveness are both epistemologic­ ally and ontologically destructive. Teaching and learning depended strongly on mnemonics, as Augustine of Hippo noted in his dialogue De magistro (‘On the Teacher’). To teach, Augustine tells his pupil and son Adeodatus, is to remember, and to remind others, recognizing that no one can truly teach another except for God. During instruction by human teachers, a student learns by listening to the words spoken by teachers about their disciplinae (‘disciplines’). Students then compare the teachers’ statements to their own interiorem … vertatem (‘inner Truth’), evaluating those statements before accepting or ‘learning’ the lesson.20 In Augustine’s description, teaching is a primarily linguistic and intellectual enterprise: students listen to words and process those words in their minds. Cicero’s De oratore and the Rhetorica ad Herennium, in contrast, rely much more strongly on material and spatial metaphors to explain the art of memory and the process of learning. Neither De oratore nor the Rhetorica ad Herennium appear to have been studied in pre-conquest England, according to Michael Lapidge, because they were not necessary for studying scripture and ecclesiastical matters.21 But other rhetorical works, as well as the dialectical treatises of Boethius and Alcuin, were available in English libraries, as will be detailed later in this chapter. In these treatises, as in most other mnemonic, rhetorical, and dialectical texts, memory and the mind become highly dependent on objects, places, and embodied travel through those places.22 With embodiment, however, comes the possibility of pain. The stakes of dialectical questions, arguments, and topoi are raised when the violence inherent in these activities is acknowledged. The violent connections between memoria, rhetoric, and the body in the Middle Ages have been most fully addressed by Marjorie Curry Woods and Jody Enders.23 Woods comments that medieval schoolboys regularly studied rhetorical texts in which diverse forms of violence, particularly rape, served as ‘common narrative [vehicles]’ for ‘teaching verbal skills’ from the time of Plato. These scenes both provided a ‘cathartic effect’ and socialized boys as they prepared for ‘manhood,’ also allowing them, by speaking in women’s voices, to explore the personae of both ‘powerless victim’ 20

21 22 23

Augustine of Hippo, De magistro, Col. 13.5.20–25, 35–40; 1.1.20–25; 14.45.5–10. Augustine: Against the Academicians and The Teacher, trans. King, pp. 144–145, 95, 146. Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library, p. 129. For a meditation on memory, objects, and places, see Caroline Walker Bynum, ‘The House,’ Common Knowledge, 22.2 (2016), 171–177 (pp. 176–177). More recently, the ambiguity, diversity, and specificity of pedagogical uses of violence in late antiquity and the Middle Ages have been examined by Ben Parsons in Punishment and Medieval Education (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 3–4, 7–10, 44–50, 127, 209.

49

Debating with Demons and ‘powerful’ aggressor.24 Enders, though her analysis of medieval drama often blurs the distinction between rhetoric and dialectic, also has closely examined the association of the verbal arts with violence. Cicero, she claims, represents a pedagogy of ‘torture as a … rhetorical proof.’ Classical and medieval rhetoric, according to Enders, ‘constitutes a complex epistemological matrix … with a view toward discovering, disseminating, and performing truths.’25 Her description here would seem to apply more clearly to dialectic, the art of discerning truth, than to rhetoric, the art of persuasion. In her study, Enders emphasizes formal rhetorical occasions such as competitions between rhetoricians, judged by masters, or the staged disputes of actors, evaluated by the audience of the drama into which such a formal debate is integrated. In early English poems, however, the ‘pupils’ often do not even know that they are ‘performing’ a role at all. They must struggle to discern truth within a verbal web spun by the demonic master, who specializes in the verbal manipulation taught through the arts of the trivium. Both rhetoric and dialectic share an emphasis on ‘inventio’ and ‘memoria,’ two activities within the verbal arts that Enders associates with violence. Memory, she notes, ‘provided the mental space in which the violently discovered “truths” of invention were visualized.’ Therefore, rhetoric, while ‘non-violent’ itself, was used ‘to mediate the violence that it condemns, requires, and even ennobles.’26 In Enders’s view, the rhetorician – and, by extension, the dialectician – are complicit in violence simply by deploying their skills: citing Isidore’s Etymologies II.xxiii.1, Enders compares ‘the legendary “open hand” of rhetoric’ to ‘the “closed fist” of dialectical inquiry,’27 an image familiar from the Categoriae Decem, an anonymous fourth-century treatise which provides an overview of Aristotle’s Categories, later integrated into Alcuin’s De dialectica and other sources.28 The ‘open hand’ and the ‘closed fist,’ Enders notes, despite their differences, can both ‘[inflict] pain.’ She associates the quaestio 24

25 26

27 28

Marjorie Curry Woods, ‘Rape and the Pedagogical Rhetoric of Sexual Violence,’ in Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages, ed. Rita Copeland (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 56–86 (pp. 58, 66, 69, 73). Jody Enders, The Medieval Theatre of Cruelty: Rhetoric, Memory, Violence (Ithaca, 1999), pp. 2, 4. Ibid., pp. 5, 16. On ‘memory [as] only one of several psychological effects’ associated with violence, see Parsons, Punishment and Medieval Education, p. 135. Enders, The Medieval Theatre of Cruelty, p. 39. Categoriae Decem is included in Aristoteles Latinus, Vol. I, 1-5: Categoriae vel Praedicamenta, ed. Lorenzo Minio-Paluello (Bruges and Paris, 1961), pp. 43-79. On the history and date of the Categoriae Decem, see Christophe Erismann, ‘Aristoteles Latinus: The Reception of Aristotle in the Latin World,’ in Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Aristotle in Antiquity, ed. Andrea Falcon (Leiden, 2016), pp. 439–459 (p. 448).

50

The Artes Liberales in the Early Middle Ages (‘interrogation’), progymnasmata (‘scholastic [exercise]’), and quodlibet (‘disputations’) with the violence of invention,29 although she does not acknowledge that dialectical as well as rhetorical arts might be deployed in such verbal contentions. Fundamental in the practice of both rhetoric and dialectic was mnemonics, which depended strongly on violent metaphors and narratives to foster the retention of information in the memory, as Enders claims in her discussion of Simonides, drawing on Cicero, Quintilian, and Martianus Capella. In their accounts, Simonides leaves a feast, and in his absence, the banquet hall collapses on the revelers, destroying their bodies so utterly that they cannot be identified. Simonides reconstructs the scene based on where the feasters had been sitting, ‘able to remember what had been dismembered.’ These violent deaths, Enders claims, are the foundation of the art of memoria in which Simonides is so gifted. The legend of Simonides ‘founds an exemplary epistemological space according to which mnemotechnics makes things present by requiring that they first be absent and revives things by requiring that they first be dead.’30 The deaths, furthermore, make the very act of remembrance necessary, providing the impetus for mnemonic processes that would never have otherwise begun. This does not mean that the art of memory is essentially violent. For those unfamiliar with the story of Simonides, Enders admits, the ‘ars memorandi’ would not necessarily have involved death and violence; the ‘memory place’ was not always full of dead bodies. Cicero, however, described the memory-place as ‘a crypt,’ ‘a place whence death, new life, and art begin,’ an association that takes on new significance, Enders notes, when that crypt belongs to Christ. The body of the risen Christ generates a ‘tale of absent presence,’ going far beyond the ‘epistemological connection between mnemotechnics and embodiment.’31 Not included in Enders’s discussion is the fact that the death and resurrection of Christ, as the foundation of sacramental life, are both epistemological and ontological in significance. The knowledge of these events gained through reading scripture is not just held in the memory, but also re-enacted ‘in memory’ during the Eucharist, brought continually into presence. Christ, though divine, participates, like other embodied beings, in what Enders calls ‘the epistemological instability between bodies in spaces and bodies as spaces,’ with ‘the human body itself’ as ‘the ultimate space’ on which to inscribe knowledge, ‘[blurring] container and contained.’32 This is especially true of Christ’s body, which sanctifies the places where it dwells but also is ingested in the Eucharist, integrated into the bodies of all who receive 29 30 31 32

Enders, The Medieval Theater of Cruelty, pp. 39, 41–43. Ibid., pp. 63–64, 75. Ibid., pp. 66, 68, 71–72, 75–76. Ibid., pp. 101, 96, 102.

51

Debating with Demons it. This ongoing life, however, occurs only through suffering and violent death in the Crucifixion. The salvation gained through Christ’s torment, death, and resurrection is the goal of monastic education, which emphasized memorization and the discipline of the body. In the monastic school, Enders notes, pedagogy ‘[translated] … mnemonic visions of virtual discipline into pedagogical performances of actual discipline.’ Lessons were written on the body itself, and the ‘process’ of mnemonic development became ‘as violent as it was spectacular.’ Boys were encouraged to see themselves as both ‘victims’ and ‘future victimizers who inscribe lessons violently and sexually.’33 Irina Dumitrescu’s recent study explores this phenomenon in the early English school, whose texts, notably the colloquies of Ælfric Bata, emphasize the violent punishment visited upon schoolboys by masters and by one another.34 English schoolboys suffered violence when they failed to follow monastic discipline and when they struggled to learn grammatica, the foundational liberal art required for understanding language and reading the scriptures. Grammatica was considered the most necessary discipline in early medieval England, rhetorica and dialectica receiving considerably less emphasis. In the Carolingian Empire, where many English monastic leaders were educated, dialectic and logic ‘were increasingly held in suspicion’ and ‘regarded … with mistrust’ by many, with Alcuin as a notable exception.35 For both the Carolingians and the English, arguments deployed in debate relied primarily on evidence from scripture and patristic authority. Since such evidence was mastered through the study of grammar, training in this discipline was the established standard in English monastic schools, though not all students were able to achieve proficiency. Rhetoric, however, was valuable for preachers, and dialectic was eventually to become essential for participating in theological debates about fundamental dogmas such as the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, and the Eucharist, with Anselm of Canterbury’s eleventh-­ century Cur Deus Homo? (Why Did God Become Man?) perhaps the most prominent example. Carolingian and English study of the liberal arts provided an essential foundation for these later developments.

33 34 35

Ibid., pp. 129, 134, 144. Dumitrescu, The Experience of Education, pp. 60–61. See also O’Keeffe, Stealing Obedience, pp. 118–122. Irene van Renswoude, ‘The Art of Disputation: Dialogue, Dialectic and Debate around 800,’ Early Medieval Europe, 25.1 (2017), 38–53 (pp. 39–40).

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The Artes Liberales in the Early Middle Ages

Grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic in the early Middle Ages Accounts of the liberal arts generally ‘leap’ from the Carolingians to the twelfth-century Scholastics, although the Old English dialogues of Solomon and Saturn are occasionally mentioned in passing.36 If the liberal arts were a powerful force in Carolingian education, how did that translate to an English context? Although knowledge of the study of the liberal arts, especially the verbal arts, in English monasteries is fairly limited, important work on pre-conquest English scholars’ study of grammatica and rhetorica has been completed by Helmut Gneuss, Vivien Law, Gabriele Knappe, Martin Irvine, and others.37 It remains, however, for scholars to assess early English scholars’ mastery of dialectica and the integration of logical treatises by Alcuin, Boethius, and others into the curriculum shaped subsequent to the Benedictine revival of the tenth century. In the schools, grammar was the ‘safest’ and most fundamental of the disciplines, teaching pupils to engage with language so they could read and understand scripture and other written texts. The figure of Grammatica in Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis is an aged, respectable matron; though she carries a punishing knife, her violence is in the open, unlike that of Dialectica with her convoluted words and hidden serpent. Many scholars have examined the study of grammatica in early medieval England since Helmut Gneuss’s 1972 essay on ‘The Study of Language in Anglo-Saxon England,’ in which he argues that grammatical study served two functions: ‘the practical aim of teaching its students the ratio recte scribendi et loquendi’ and, ‘as scientia interpretandi … opening the doors to literary criticism and … biblical exegesis … to enable pupils to read intelligently both English and Latin works … and to equip them for active participation in Mass and Office.’38 As Gneuss argues, Æthelwold, Ælfric, Abbo, and Byrhtferth all taught grammar during and after the Reform period. Ælfric wrote a grammar, accompanied by prefaces in Old English and Latin, as well as a glossary and a Colloquy, generating in the process ‘a complete system of linguistic terminology.’39 Ælfric’s grammatical

36 37

38 39

Robertson, ‘Materialism: A Manifesto,’ p. 102 and Novikoff, The Medieval Culture of Disputation, pp. 27–28. See Helmut Gneuss, ‘The Study of Language in Anglo-Saxon England,’ Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 72.1 (1972), 3–32; Vivien Law, The Insular Latin Grammarians (Woodbridge, 1982) and Grammar and Grammarians in the Early Middle Ages (London, 1997); Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture; and Knappe, Traditionen der klassischen Rhetorik im angelsächsischen England. Gneuss, ‘The Study of Language in Anglo-Saxon England,’ pp. 4–5. Ibid., pp. 12–13, 15–16.

53

Debating with Demons works were considered essential for use in English monastic schools after the Benedictine Reform. Earlier, during the seventh and eighth centuries, grammatical study focused strongly on the Ars maior (Part II) of Donatus, and secondarily on grammars by Bede, Aldhelm, Boniface, and Tatwine.40 Scholars in the British Isles likewise studied the treatises of pseudo-Cassiodorus, Priscian, Eutyches, Martianus Capella, Augustine, and Isidore of Seville, especially the Etymologiae Book I, among others. Although Virgilius Maro Grammaticus was likewise very influential, it is unknown where or when he wrote, although it was certainly before the time of Charlemagne. In his Epitomae, Virgilius mentions his ‘equivalent of the Seven Liberal Arts: poema, rehtoria [sic], grammar, leporia, dialecta, geometria, astronomia,’ using Isidore as a source and influencing Bede, Boniface, and Aldhelm.41 From the eighth century on, according to Law, it was common for scholars to assemble material from many different Latin grammars into a new text: for elementary students, such collections would emphasize word classes, endings, and wordlists with examples. Alcuin, who, along with his students, provided many grammatical resources for schools in the British Isles, based his own Dialogus Franconis et Saxonis de octo partibus orationis on Donatus and Priscian, constructing a dialogue between a teenage Frankish student and a slightly older Saxon.42 Alcuin’s De Grammatica, which opens with the Disputatio de vera philosophia, a dialogue between student and master, includes his famous reference to the ‘seven columns’ of the house built by Wisdom, referring to the seven liberal arts associated clearly by Alcuin with salvation.43 Those who taught grammatica in England include somewhat mysterious figures such as Israel the Grammarian, who could have been from Ireland, Brittany, Cornwall, or Wales – Lapidge considers Brittany most likely – and worked in Trier and Rome as well as England, where he was supported by King Athelstan.44 The bilingualism of Latin scholars in the early Middle Ages, who spoke in vernacular languages, required a significant change from the Roman model of studying language. Furthermore, as Law notes, the study of grammatica extended beyond language itself to ‘the ever-controversial question of the nature of the relationship between language and thought;’ in particular, ‘the laws of language’ would be ‘compared with those of thought as codified in dialectic.’45 Research on the study of grammar 40 41 42 43

44 45

Law, The Insular Latin Grammarians, pp. xiii–xiv, 8. Ibid., pp. 18–24, 42–43, 48–49. Ibid., pp. 53–55, 101–103. Colin Chase, ‘Alcuin’s Grammar Verse: Poetry and Truth in Carolingian Pedagogy,’ Insular Latin Studies: Papers on Latin Texts and Manuscripts of the British Isles: 550–1066, ed. Michael W. Herren, pp. 135–52 (pp. 141–142). Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature Vol. 2, 900–1066, pp. 87, 92, 99, 103. Law, Grammar and Grammarians in the Early Middle Ages, pp. xi–xii.

54

The Artes Liberales in the Early Middle Ages reveals a great deal about the relationship between grammar and the other verbal arts, rhetoric and dialectic, in the early medieval period.46 Grammatical study was composed of ‘litteratio,’ basic literacy skills, followed by ‘litteratura,’ advanced literary study. While the three verbal arts of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric ‘constantly overlapped,’ according to Irvine, grammar and rhetoric were seen as most essential for textual interpretation and production.47 Augustine joins these two disciplines in De doctrina christiana, whereas he gives dialectic ‘only a partial treatment’ in De dialectica, which focuses largely on ‘signification.’48 In contrast, Alcuin combines the grammatical art with that of dialectic, although the two disciplines have different purposes.49 Alcuin further emphasized the textual basis of both grammar and rhetoric, describing grammar as ‘the discipline authorized to open the library bookcases,’ a sentiment echoed by Ælfric.50 While grammatica was fundamental for understanding sacred texts and conducting the ritual life of the Church, rhetorica was crucial for explicating the scriptures in preaching. Although rhetoric was often critiqued due to its emphasis on persuasion and eloquence, it was frequently used by preachers. Since Gneuss, Irvine, Knappe, Samantha Zacher, and others have thoroughly assessed these uses,51 they will be examined only briefly here. Distinguishing the Roman model of ‘classical’ rhetoric from a ‘“grammatical” tradition of rhetoric’ derived from Donatus, Gneuss emphasizes the importance of Donatus’s ‘tropes and figures of speech’ to the study of rhetoric in Anglo-Saxon England.52 In Knappe’s view, Anglo-Saxon scholars did not study classical rhetoric, whether for preaching or any other purpose, their only exposure to it coming through the study of grammatica and especially the ‘figures and tropes in … grammar books … [which] contributed to techniques of elocutio.’53 Janie Steen echoes Knappe’s view, noting that ‘there is no direct evidence that the

46 47 48 49 50 51

52 53

Ibid., pp. 19, 22, 25, 57, 75. Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture, pp. 2–3, 7–8. On Irvine’s analysis of glossing in early English manuscripts, see Stanton, The Culture of Translation, p. 11. Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture, pp. 33, 175. Ibid., pp. 321, 323. Ibid., pp. 327, 335. In addition to Gneuss’s ‘The Study of Language in Anglo-Saxon England,’ Irvine’s The Making of Textual Culture, and Knappe’s Traditionen der klassischen Rhetorik im angelsächsischen England, see Samantha Zacher, Preaching the Converted, especially Chapters 1-4. Gneuss, ‘The Study of Language in Anglo-Saxon England,’ pp. 28, 30–31. Gabriele Knappe, ‘The Rhetorical Aspect of Grammar Teaching in Anglo-Saxon England,’ Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric, 17.1 (1999), 1–34 (pp. 1–2, 6–7, 25). See also Gabriele Knappe, ‘Classical Rhetoric in Anglo-Saxon England,’ Anglo-Saxon England, 27 (1998), 5–30 (pp. 6, 13); and Knappe, Traditionen der klassischen Rhetorik im angelsächsischen England, pp. 469–477.

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Debating with Demons progymnasmata (the preliminary rhetorical exercises) were ever taught in the monasteries of Anglo-Saxon England.’54 Rather, grammar was the foundation of English monastic learning, seemingly with aspects of rhetoric, such as ‘elocutio, the embellishing figures of speech,’55 and dialectic incorporated for specific didactic and theological purposes. Early English writers’ interest in rhetoric, and especially its deployment in preaching, is evidenced through the preservation of several collections of pre-conquest homilies.56 Significant rhetorical sophistication is discernible in these collections, testifying to the diversity and complexity of the texts themselves and of English scholars’ ways of engaging their sources. The post-Reform homilies of Wulfstan and Ælfric, as R.D. Fulk and Christopher Cain note, demonstrate an increasing level of ‘intellectual rigor’ and careful orthodoxy in comparison to the earlier Vercelli and Blickling collections.57 Zacher has likewise examined the impact of the study of rhetoric on early English homiletics, noting homilists’ dependence on Bede’s De schematibus et tropis, based in turn on the Ars maior of Donatus.58 It is clear that grammar, and aspects of rhetorical method merged with it, were the liberal arts most frequently studied in early medieval England. The third verbal art of dialectic, however, was also of considerable interest to pre-conquest English scholars, especially in its necessity for learning to discern truth and to discover arguments for use in doctrinal debates. In comparison to the persuasive art of rhetoric, with its elaborate figures, dialectic required the give-and-take of two participants trained in the use of tools like the Categories, a system for classifying and organizing things in the world, and the Topics, which provided the foundation for inventio or discovering arguments to deploy in disputation.59 The persuasive art of rhetoric was complemented by the discipline of dialectic, associated with logic and enacted in disputation. Dialectic, however, has received minimal attention in research on early medieval 54 55 56 57 58

59

Steen, Verse and Virtuosity, pp. 9–10. Ibid., p. 10. R.D. Fulk and Christopher Cain, A History of Old English Literature, 2nd ed. (Malden, 2013), p. 72. Ibid., pp. 72, 77. Zacher, Preaching the Converted, pp. 182–183. Zacher further discusses James Waddell Tupper’s work on the links between early English poetry and homiletics; see pp. 183–184. On the rhetoric of the devil in Vercelli Homily X, discussed in the Introduction, see Zacher, ‘Sin, Syntax, and Synonyms,’ pp. 62–63, 72–75 and Tupper’s Tropes and Figures in Anglo-Saxon Prose (Baltimore, 1897). For an overview of the Topics, see Otto Bird, ‘The Tradition of the Logical Topics: Aristotle to Ockham,’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 23.3 (1962), 307–323 (pp. 311–312). On the distinction between rhetorical and dialectical topics, see Sally Raphael, ‘Rhetoric, Dialectic, and Syllogistic Argument: Aristotle’s Position in “Rhetoric” I–II,’ Phronesis, 19.2 (1973), 153–167 (pp. 154–157).

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The Artes Liberales in the Early Middle Ages English education. This essential discipline is also sometimes ignored in studies of the medieval liberal arts in general: while the introduction to one major anthology emphasizes grammatica and rhetorica as ‘language arts’ and later discusses the trivium, dialectic is mentioned only briefly.60 Because dialectical treatises dealt with the Categories and the ‘problem of Universals,’ or ‘the relationship between a class and its individual members,’ these texts were essential to the theory and practice of philosophy during the early Middle Ages.61 But as the art of argumentation, dialectic was also the discipline, even more than rhetoric, required to resist the sophistic teaching of demonic deceivers. Texts relating to these arts of rhetoric and dialectic, based on Aristotle’s writings and translated into Latin by Boethius, were crucial to theological debates in the Carolingian Empire and would be thoroughly integrated into the twelfth-century scholasticism of Anselm of Canterbury, Berengar of Tours, Peter Abelard, and others.62 English writers’ interest in dialectic is evidenced by the number of dialectic treatises extant in Anglo-Latin manuscripts, including Boethius’s writings on the Aristotelian Categories and the Topics. In the early Middle Ages, aside from Martianus Capella, Boethius provided the most available and accessible account of dialectical theory. He viewed dialectic as ‘a corollary of metaphysics,’ claiming that ‘the world has a certain nature’ through ‘which certain things are … connected.’ Knowledge of such connections also provides knowledge ‘that certain inferences among propositions preserve truth.’63 The Boethian theory of dialectical disputation therefore provides an important foundation for assessing early English debates about crucial questions of faith, knowledge, and being. In Book I of Boethius’s De topicis differentiis, he explains that in dialectical theory, propositio est oratio verum falsumve significans (‘a proposition … is an expression … signifying what is true or false’), whereas quaestio est in dubitationem ambiguitatemque adducta propositio (‘a question is a proposition brought into doubt and uncertainty’).64 Once a disputant has posed a quaestio, he will deploy argumentum … 60

61 62 63 64

See Rita Copeland and Ineke Sluiter’s introduction to Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric: Language Arts and Literary Theory, a.d. 300–1475, ed. Rita Copeland and Ineke Sluiter (Oxford, 2009), pp. 3–4, 6. For a more thorough discussion of the relationship between dialectic and rhetoric, see Rita Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 151–152. Marenbon, From the Circle of Alcuin, pp. 5–6, 139. For a comprehensive discussion, see Holopainen, Dialectic and Theology in the Eleventh Century, especially Chapters 1, 4, and 5. Eleonore Stump, Dialectic and Its Place in the Development of Medieval Logic (Ithaca, 1989), p. 2. De topicis differentiis, Patrologia Latina, Patrologiæ Cursus Completus, 2nd series, ed. Jacques Paul Migne (Paris, 1844–1855), 64, Col. 1173B–1222C (I.1174B); Boethius’s De topicis differentiis, ed. and trans. Eleonore Stump (Ithaca, 1978),

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Debating with Demons ratio rei dubiae faciens fidem (‘an argument … a reason (ratio) producing belief regarding a matter [that is] in doubt’).65 Such an argument is found in a ‘Topic,’ from topos, a ‘place’ in which one finds arguments, or, for Aristotle, the ‘grounds for argument.’66 According to Boethius’s De topicis differentiis, which adapts an Aristotelian model of dialectica, dialectic and rhetoric have different but related purposes. Dialectic interrogatione ac responsione constricta est (‘is restricted to question and answer’), while rhetorica vero rem propositam perpetua oratione decurrit (‘rhetoric … goes through the subject proposed in unbroken discourse’). A rhetorician quod haec persuadere judici (‘attempts to persuade a judge’), but a dialectician illa quod vult ab adversario extorquere conatur (‘attempts to wrest what [he] wants from the opponent’).67 And whereas persuasion is the goal of rhetoric, dialectical disputation aut enim veris ac necessariis argumentationibus … decurrit … aut apertissimi falsis, et sopistica, id est, cavillatoria perhibetur (‘progresses by means of true and necessary argumentations … or by means of argumentations that are very clearly false … sophistry or trickery).’68 In its ideal form, dialectic is the disciplina rationalis quaerendi, diffiniendi et disserendi, etiam et vera a falsis discorendi potens (‘the rational discipline of inquiry, definition, and examination [which] is able to distinguish truth from falsehood’).69 But it can also be deployed for more injurious ends. To engage in a dialectical dispute against an adversary, one must know how to ‘find’ arguments to deploy. Such arguments are discovered in a topos, literally a ‘place,’ which Boethius also describes as a maxima propositio … hoc enim ita notum est, ut extrinsecus probatione non egeat, et ipsum aliis possit esse probatio (a ‘maximal proposition … [which is] so known that it needs no proof from without and can itself be a proof for other things’). Such a proposition recte locus, id est argumenti sedes vocatur (‘is rightly called a Topic, that is, the foundation of an argument’), not necessarily appearing as part of an argument but nevertheless argumentationi vires

65 66 67 68

69

p. 30. See also Christos Evangeliou, ‘Aristotle’s Doctrine of Predicables and Porphyry’s Isagoge,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy, 23.1 (1985), 15–34 (p. 17). Boethius, De topicis differentiis, I.1174C; Boethius’s De topicis differentiis, trans. Stump, p. 30. Raphael, ‘Rhetoric, Dialectic and Syllogistic Argument,’ p. 166. Boethius, De topicis differentiis, IV.1206C–1206D. Boethius’s De topicis differentiis, trans. Stump, pp. 18, 79–80. Boethius, In Ciceronis Topica, Patrologia Latina, Patrologiæ Cursus Completus, 2nd series, ed. Jacques Paul Migne (Paris, 1844–1855), 64, Col. 1039D–1174A (1045B– 1045C). Translation in Boethius’s In Ciceronis Topica, ed. and trans. Eleonore Stump (Cornell, 1988), p. 25. See also Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages, p. 68. Alcuin, De dialectica, ch. 1, Patrologia Latina, Patrologiæ Cursus Completus, 2nd series, ed. Jacques Paul Migne (Paris, 1844–1855), 101, Col. 952–953 (952D–953A).

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The Artes Liberales in the Early Middle Ages ipsa maxima (‘[giving] force to the argumentation’).70 Such maximal propositions, for Boethius, included ‘from authority,’ ‘from final cause,’ and so on. In other words, in response to a quaestio, a disputant could search in a topos to find an argumentum suitable for responding to his or her opponent. Although little is known about the teaching of dialectic, described by Giles Constable as ‘the science of doubt,’71 it is the most appropriate verbal art for meeting the challenges of demonic debate, which depend so much on the pupil’s skill in distinguishing truth from lies. Dialectic, the art of ratio and argumentation, is ‘analogous’ to but different from the related arts of memory and rhetoric, which emphasizes persuasion.72 In explaining the distinction between dialectic and rhetoric, Boethius noted that a rhetorician expounds his subject in perpetua oratione (‘unbroken discourse’), and his eloquence is evaluated by a third party, i.e. not his adversario (‘opponent’). In contrast, dialectic requires an interchange between two disputants through interrogatione ac responsione (‘question and answer’), and the ab adversario enim responsio veluti quaedam sententia subtilitate . interrogationis elicitor (‘decision is elicited from the opponent by the cunning of the questioning’).73 Surviving a debate with a demon depends less on rhetorical than dialectical skill, that is, the ability to identify falsehoods and then summon arguments in response to demonic teachings in a direct face-to-face verbal encounter. The dangerous deceptive potential of dialectic was well-recognized in the early medieval period. While ‘written authority’ was considered trustworthy, as Irene van Renswoude has noted, ‘logical modes of reasoning, derived from (Aristotelian) dialectic, were increasingly held in suspicion’ despite their importance in theological and philosophical debate. Nevertheless, the works of both Augustine and Boethius demonstrate that ‘logical techniques served to clarify doctrinal issues and offered lines of dialectical argumentation to combat heresy.’74 On occasion, open debate through an actual interpersonal encounter before witnesses was necessary. Because of the disturbingly high onto-epistemological stakes of open debate, however, doctrinal disputes were often worked out in writing instead. And in early medieval pedagogical texts, they often found their way into scripted dialogues between teachers and students. The relationship between the written dialogue and dialectical disputation, distinct but related forms of argumentation, is an ongoing critical 70 71 72 73 74

Boethius, De topicis differentiis, II.1185C; Boethius’s De topicis differentiis, trans. Stump, p. 47. Giles Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1996), p. 130; see also Novikoff, The Medieval Culture of Disputation, p. 2. Boethius’s In Ciceronis Topica, trans. Stump, pp. 4–5. Boethius, De topicis differentiis, IV.1205C–1206C; Boethius’s De topicis differentiis, trans. Stump, pp. 79–80. Van Renswoude, ‘The Art of Disputation,’ pp. 39, 47.

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Debating with Demons question. The dialogue, as Dumitrescu has noted, is designed to suggest and even encourage resistance and ‘ambivalence toward authority’ through ‘a dialectical process of contestation and interpretation,’75 even if the dialogue is scripted, used ostensibly for grammatical teaching, or integrated into a poem. Novikoff calls ‘this fluidity between literary dialogue and public disputation … a perennial problem in the history of the genre.’76 Whether or not the debate is ‘real,’ that is, a live and dynamic disputation between verbal combatants, the ‘dialogue as a form of “verbalized action,”’77 in textual form, still has subversive potential. Any early medieval dialogue that touches on doctrinal matters generally proceeds by arguments ‘from final cause’ or ‘by authority,’ drawing most frequently on the authority of scripture or illustrative exempla.78 Seth Lerer has emphasized the importance of Augustine’s use of the dialogue in De magistro and the Soliloquia, both grounded in Cicero’s dialectical theory. Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations in particular emphasize the ‘tension between disputatio and oratio, or between dialogue and monologue,’ since a pupil can always opt out of or give up on the debate, yielding victory to his or her opponent.79 This problem is much in evidence in Old English poetry, in which demons’ pupils, from Adam to the saints, refuse demonic attempts to engage in debate, whereas others, like Eve, accept the invit­ ation. In the poems, this can result in a transition from dialectical into rhetorical methods: demonic attempts to debate pupils often veer into speech-making when pupils do not or cannot cooperate. This pattern is perhaps partly responsible for the tendency of modern scholars to emphasize rhetoric to the exclusion of dialectic. In Enders’s work, for example, much activity typically associated with dialectic, such as scholastic disputation, is repeatedly subsumed into practices like the quodlibet and other rhetorical performances.80 This emphasis somewhat pushes to the side the dialectical encounter, an interpersonal attempt at disputation rather than a formal speechmaking event. Dialectic, with its mutual give-and-take and its emphasis on truth, provides an essential foundation for the pedagogical dialogue and the literary debate, even if 75 76 77 78

79 80

Dumitrescu, The Experience of Education, p. 5. Novikoff, The Medieval Culture of Disputation, p. 18. Ibid., p. 16. Raymond P. Tripp, Jr. has emphasized the ‘dialectical structure’ of poetic dialogues, viewing them as ‘verbal [contentions]’ frequently based on ‘conversion through assertion … will and irrational conviction’ rather ‘than demonstration.’ See ‘The Dialectics of Debate and the Continuity of English Poetry,’ Massachusetts Studies in English, 7.1 (1978), 41–51 (pp. 41, 43). Seth Lerer, Boethius and Dialogue: Literary Method in the Consolation of Philosophy (Princeton, 1985), pp. 5, 33. Enders, Rhetoric and the Origins of Medieval Drama, pp. 69, 72–73, 89, 93, 114. On the quodlibet, see also Jody Enders, ‘The Theater of Scholastic Erudition,’ Comparative Drama, 27.3 (1993), 341–363 (pp. 341, 344–345).

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The Artes Liberales in the Early Middle Ages these scripted forms do not produce new developments in speculative philosophy. Poetic debates with demons frequently hinge on belief rather than logic per se, an emphasis Lerer ascribes to Cicero’s decision to base his dialectical method in the theory of Aristotle rather than that of Plato, emphasizing ‘beliefs and opinions’ rather than ‘ideals and absolutes.’81 Augustine likewise adopted the Ciceronian method. Lerer notes that in De magistro, in which the master Augustine and his son and student Adeodatus engage in debate, ‘two contradictory movements emerge: one which sees dialogue as a linear progress towards truth’ and another ‘which sees it as a circuitous set of restatements whose goal is unclear.’82 De magistro, while celebrating the inspiration of Christ as ‘the true, inner teacher,’ nevertheless asserts the impossibility of teaching as perfectly as Christ could, in part due to the human ‘limitations’ of the teacher.83 These problems are manifest even when the teacher is virtuous and well-­ intentioned. They magnify exponentially when the teacher is demonic, deceitful, and determined to destroy the epistemological and ontological integrity of the pupil.

Alcuin, dialectic, and English libraries In the early Middle Ages, the classical study of dialectic was reinvented by Alcuin.84 Compared to the persuasion of rhetoric, dialectic is a ‘toughminded discipline’ focusing on ‘rationally confirming the true good rather than persuasively refuting the false,’ and, for Alcuin in particular, providing a natural path from ‘intellectual revelation’ to ‘the higher revelation of faith.’85 Alcuin’s treatise De dialectica has been sometimes dismissed as ‘a mere “compendium,”’ a view disputed by Mark Damien Delp, who notes Alcuin’s adaptation of Boethius’s teaching on substantia, by way of the Institutiones of Cassiodorus, and the use of the syllogism to describe the existence of God.86 Alcuin’s definition of dialectic foregrounds its emphasis on methods of quærendi, diffiniendi et disserendi (‘inquiry, definition, and examination’) and its importance in developing the ability vera a falsis discernendi (‘to distinguish truth from falsehood’).87 Alcuin, whose 81 82 83 84 85

86 87

Lerer, Boethius and Dialogue, pp. 36–37. Ibid., pp. 36–37, 52. Ibid., p. 55. See also Augustine of Hippo, De magistro, 1.11.38. Marenbon, ‘Carolingian Thought,’ p. 175. Myra L. Uhlfelder, ‘The Role of the Liberal Arts in Boethius’ Consolatio,’ in Boethius and the Liberal Arts: A Collection of Essays, ed. Michael Masi (Berne, 1981), pp. 17–34 (pp. 20, 30). Mark Damien Delp, ‘Alcuin: Master and Practitioner of Dialectic,’ Proceedings of the PMR Conference, 16/17 (1992–1993), 91–103 (pp. 91, 93, 99n5). Alcuin, De dialectica, Col. 952–953.

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Debating with Demons treatise was extant in pre-conquest English libraries in multiple copies, saw dialectical skills as essential tools for posing the questions and finding the arguments that would allow one to distinguish between truth and lies, especially in theological matters. Dialectic could therefore help Christian scholars develop the virtue of discretio, or discernment, and the ability to argue against doctrinal challenges. The study of dialectic relied on a solid grounding in grammatica, since grammatical precision and a thorough understanding of syntactical features such as predication were essential to the responsible practice of dialectic. Law notes that ‘where the grammarian was concerned with correct speech, the dialectician was anxious to use it accurately – to formulate precise definitions and logical arguments,’ a process supported especially by the study of Priscian’s emphasis on substance, sound, and number.88 At continental monasteries such as St. Gall, known for its scholars’ expertise in dialectic, the parts of speech explained in Priscian were related to the categoriae of Aristotle,89 including substantia, which was essential to understanding theological doctrines like the Trinity and the Eucharist. Alcuin and his followers are credited with integrating dialectic and grammar, paving the way for the later philosophical and theological developments of the Scholastics. Although a manuscript of dialectical texts was in the possession of a member of Alcuin’s circle from 814, Law traces the ‘systematic’ study of dialectic in the Carolingian Empire to ca. 850.90 It is difficult to discern the extent of Alcuin’s influence on English education after his departure for the continent.91 Nevertheless, his role in

88

89

90

91

Law, Grammar and Grammarians in the Early Middle Ages, p. 138. See also Priscian’s Institutiones Grammaticae, ed. Martin Hertz, and Priscian’s related writings in Grammatici Latini, vol. 2 and 3, ed. Heinrich Keil (Leipzig, 1855-1859; repr. 1961, 1981). An important manuscript from St. Gall, Distributio omnium specierum nominum inter cathegorias Aristotilis, placed dialectic in ‘an epistemologically prior position’ to grammar, ‘[trying] to map’ Priscian’s noun classes specifically ‘onto the ten Aristotelian categories.’ This manuscript was edited by Paul Piper in Die Scriften Notkers und seiner Schule I: Schriften philosophischen Inhalts (Freiburg, 1882), pp. lxxv-lxxxix and more recently by James C. King and Petrus W. Tax in Die kleineren Schriften, Die Werke Notkers des Deutschen, vol. 7 (Tübingen, 1996), pp. 1-45. See Law, Grammar and Grammarians in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 139, 149, 275. Law, Grammar and Grammarians in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 145, 147, 160–161. This manuscript, Rome, Bibiliotheca Padri Maristi A.II.1, includes Alcuin’s De dialectica, the Categoriae Decem (a paraphrase of the Categories of Aristotle in Latin), the Isagoge of Porphyry, a commentary on the Aristotelian De Interpretatione by Boethius, and the Periermenias of Apuleius. See Marenbon, ‘Carolingian Thought,’ p. 175. On Alcuin’s probable impact on early English writers, see Stanton, The Culture of Translation, p. 148.

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The Artes Liberales in the Early Middle Ages the Carolingian educational reforms, his impact on continental monasteries, and their subsequent influence on English reformed houses suggest that his considerable interest in dialectic should be considered important background for the representation of debate in Old English poetry. Alcuin’s De dialectica is based primarily on the anonymous Categoriae Decem, which adapts the Categories of Aristotle, and Boethius’s De differentiis topicis.92 The study of Boethius’s logical writings by Alcuin and other Carolingian scholars altered their approach to learning and their educational methods, including their assessment of the relationship between theology and logic.93 Admittedly, dialectic forms a relatively small part of Alcuin’s scholarly output. Although he was educated at York,94 after his introduction to Charlemagne, Alcuin lived on the continent until his death in 804, except for his English travels in the mid-780s and early 790s. As teacher of eminent scholars, including Hrabanus Maurus, Alcuin wrote voluminously in diverse genres, also composing over two hundred letters ‘as the architect of the “Carolingian Renaissance.”’ In addition, Alcuin composed four authoritative texts on the liberal arts, including De dialectica, ‘the earliest medieval attempt to assimilate the principles of Aristotelian logic,’ as well as the theological treatises De trinitate, De anima ratione, and De uirtutibus et uitiis.95 Alcuin’s poem Versus de patribus, regibus et sanctis Euboricensis ecclesiae (‘On the Bishops, Kings, and Saints of York’) describes the curriculum he learned under Ælberht, Alcuin’s mentor at York, including ‘grammar, rhetoric, music, astronomy, computus and scripture.’96 Charlemagne’s Admonitio generalis (789 c.e.), strongly influenced by Alcuin, recommends training in reading, writing, and the study of scripture, encouraging the development of schools to prepare boys and young men for life in the clergy. With Charlemagne’s support, Alcuin regularized scriptural and liturgical texts, also composing exegetical commentaries, theological tracts, and poetry.97 92 93 94

95 96

97

Eva M.E. Rädler-Bohn, ‘Re-dating Alcuin’s De dialectica: or, Did Alcuin Teach at Lorsch?,’ Anglo-Saxon England, 45 (2016), 71–104 (pp. 81–82, 95–96). Margaret T. Gibson, ‘Boethius in the Carolingian Schools,’ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 32 (1982), 43–56 (pp. 45, 54). Like other schoolboys, Alcuin was subject to demonic visitations: see Vita Alcuini, ed. Wilhelm Arndt, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, 15 (Hanover, 1887), pp. 182–197, cited in Parsons, Punishment and Medieval Education, p. 108. Michael Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature Vol. 1, 600–899 (London, 1996), pp. 21–24. Michael Fox, ‘Alcuin as Exile and Educator: “uir undecumque doctissimus”,’ in Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, vol. 1, ed. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe and Andy Orchard (Toronto, 2005), pp. 215–235 (p. 216). Ibid., pp. 217–220.

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Debating with Demons For Alcuin, learning the artes liberales, including the verbal arts of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric, was the necessary precondition for studying and preaching about the scriptures. Ideally, a teacher, in Alcuin’s view, should encourage others to learn for the benefit of all.98 Alcuin’s Epistola de Litteris Colendis, which has been considered ‘the manifesto of the Carolingian renaissance,’ described ‘Christian wisdom’ as ‘a temple supported by seven columns … the seven liberal arts without which … the temple could not stand’ and which could foster salvation.99 For Alcuin and other Carolingian teachers like the Irish scholar John Scottus Eriugena, the verbal arts of ‘grammar and rhetoric’ were ‘joined to dialectic, the mother of the arts, and flow from it like the branches of a river.’100 Grammar provided the linguistic foundation for rhetoric and dialectic, which, as ‘columns’ in their own right, served an important role in supporting wisdom. Alcuin considered dialectic especially an important discipline for all people to study, particularly because of its potential uses in refuting heresy. In Alcuin’s dialogues, teachers and their pupils debate theological matters using the question-and-answer method of disputation. For example, in his Disputatio de vera philosophia, which opens De Grammatica, a student and his master discuss the definition of ‘true philosophy,’ associating the seven disciplines of the artes liberales, including dialectic, with the septem philosophiae gradus, the ‘seven steps’ ascending to the House of Wisdom in Proverbs 9:1. At Charlemagne’s court, Alcuin sought ‘“a new Athens,” a model city in which the liberal arts support Christian learning.’101 In these efforts, Alcuin sought to expand the learning of scripture and the liberal arts among all people, clerical and lay, male and female. In contrast to the views of some Carolingian ecclesiastical authorities who ‘[associated] … error and heresy with women,’102 Alcuin promoted the study of dialectic for the laity in general, considering learning the surest path to God. As a member of the Carolingian court, where the autonomy and learning of women were actively promoted by Charlemagne and more than one learned clergyman considered women ‘intellectual peers,’ Alcuin actively promoted women’s education, most famously in his letter to Gundrada, Charlemagne’s kinswoman.103

98 99 100 101

102 103

Ibid., pp. 221–223. John J. Contreni, ‘John Scottus, Martin Hiberniensis, the Liberal Arts, and Teaching,’ in Insular Latin Studies, ed. Herren, pp. 23–44 (p. 24). Ibid., pp. 26–27. Alberi, ‘“The Better Paths of Wisdom,”’ pp. 898, 901, 907. For Alcuin’s Disputatio de vera philosophia, see Patrologia Latina, Patrologiæ Cursus Completus, 2nd series, ed. Jacques Paul Migne (Paris, 1844–1855), 101, Col. 849A–854A. Scheck, Reform and Resistance, p. 17. Ibid., pp. 30, 39, 50–51.

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The Artes Liberales in the Early Middle Ages Writing to Gundrada in the midst of controversial theological debates at court, Alcuin associates dialectical training most strongly with prudentiam (‘discretion’ or ‘prudence’). He instructs Gundrada in dialectic by using its methods, posing interrogationes dialecticae disciplinae (‘questions of the discipline of dialectic’) to address the nuances of the doctrinal disputes going on at that time in the Carolingian court.104 The questions that Alcuin provides relate to the Adoptionist controversy, the debate over whether Christ was a true Son of the Father and whether Christ’s divine and human natures were separate from one another, making Christ ‘the “adopted” Son of God’ and ‘[only] “nominally” divine.’105 In the letter, Alcuin lists for Gundrada the relevant questions one could pose in a dispute against an opponent: Interrogandum est, si … si dicit … inferendum est, ‘it should be asked whether’ a proposition is true, and ‘if he says’ yes or no, ‘it should be inferred that …’ and so on.106 Using this syntactical structure consistently, Alcuin sets out the issues at hand, helping Gundrada anticipate them in live debate: whether Christ could be at once a true, not adopted, Son of God and the Virgin, or whether Christ’s status as ‘son of David’ precludes him from being the true Son of God.107 The representation of disputation in Alcuin’s letter to Gundrada is especially valuable for understanding how dialectic was deployed in debate at Charlemagne’s court, since Alcuin, at the time of writing, had very recently defeated Felix, Bishop of Urgel, in disputation to prove the ‘unity of [Christ’s] two natures.’108 In contrast to written dialogues, Alcuin’s instructions to Gundrada outline the deployment of specific questions and replies in practice, providing insight into how dialectical method might actually have been used by Alcuin himself. The stakes of Alcuin’s dispute with Felix were the highest possible, doctrinally speaking, with implications for defining both the Trinity and the Incarnation. In such debates, for Alcuin, all questions ultimately lead to the only answer, Christ himself, true God and true Man.109 Alcuin’s knowledge and deployment of dialectical methods signal his participation in an ongoing discussion of this crucial discipline throughout Europe during the eighth and ninth centuries. Alcuin is known to have 104

105 106 107 108

109

Alcuinus virginem quondam nobilem (Gundradam?) de dogmate contra adoptianos instruit, Epistolae 204, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 4, ed. Ernst Dümmler (Berlin, 1895; repr. Munich, 1974), pp. 337–340 (p. 338), lines 31–32. Douglas Dales, Alcuin: Theology and Thought (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 61, 65. Alcuinus virginem quondam nobilem (Gundradam?), Epistolae 204, p. 338, lines 34–35. Ibid., p. 338, lines 42–44 and p. 339, lines 38–41. For commentary on Alcuin’s letter, see van Renswoude, ‘The Art of Disputation,’ p. 49. Mary Alberi, ‘The “Mystery of the Incarnation” and Wisdom’s House (Prov. 9:1) in Alcuin’s Disputatio de vera philosophia,’ Journal of Theological Studies, 48.2 (1997), 505–516 (pp. 513–514). Van Renswoude, ‘The Art of Disputation,’ pp. 40, 48–49.

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Debating with Demons encountered it both in Italy and through his contacts with scholars from Spain, where ‘the practice of disputation … appears to have been a valued tradition,’ and where the Adoptionist controversy had originated.110 That Alcuin reportedly prepared with some trepidation for his public disputation against Felix in 799 c.e., arming himself for a live encounter with dialectical skills and arguments from authoritative texts, challenges Novikoff’s assertion that ‘scholastic disputation arose in the late eleventh century,’ having finally ‘escaped its literary origin.’111 A more cordial disputation about the Nicene Creed occurred between Charlemagne’s messengers and Pope Leo III some ten years later,112 demonstrating the range and authority of Alcuin’s influence. When practiced with an equally educated and sincere partner, disputation could lead to doctrinal consensus. Even in a more contentious pairing, the methods of dialectic could be deployed to bring a doctrinal dissenter into the fold by drawing him or her gradually back to the ‘truth’ of orthodoxy.113 Siobhan Nash-Marhsall comments on the Carolingian interest in logic, noting, however, that ‘Alcuin and his circle,’ though ‘enthusiastic about logic … often … overestimated their capacity to think logically … conflating grammatical, logical, and ontological distinctions’ which would ultimately be worked out by Anselm in the eleventh century.114 In the early Middle Ages, this conflation also occurred between grammar and rhetoric as well as between rhetoric and dialectic. It is therefore not surprising that English scholars should demonstrate interest in dialectic without significant expertise in or practice of its methods. Given the pervasive Carolingian influence on reformed monasticism in pre-conquest England, Alcuin’s use of dialectical methods of disputation are crucial background for examining debates of any kind, but especially those between vulnerable students and demonic deceivers. Alcuin deployed dialectical method primarily to dispute theological doctrine, most often relying on the authority of scripture for his arguments. Although Alcuin’s interest in dialectic and logic ‘[went] beyond the purposes of simplifying or clarifying,’ representing an ‘often original’ use of available dialectical theory,115 he is usually associated with theological rather than philosophical engagement in dialectical debate. However, a 110 111

112 113 114

115

Ibid., pp. 42, 44 and Dales, Alcuin: Theology and Thought, p. 59. Van Renswoude, ‘The Art of Disputation,’ pp. 43–44, and Novikoff, The Medieval Culture of Disputation, pp. 2–3, 26. Novikoff’s study includes no reference to Alcuin’s disputation with Felix. Van Renswoude, ‘The Art of Disputation,’ pp. 50–51. Ibid., p. 50. Siobhan Nash-Marshall, ‘Theology and Metaphysics,’ in A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, ed. Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr. and Philip Edward Phillips (Leiden, 2012), pp. 163–191 (pp. 183–184). Scheck, Reform and Resistance, p. 46.

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The Artes Liberales in the Early Middle Ages later Carolingian scholar, John Scottus Eriugena, used dialectical method to pursue new developments in speculative philosophy. An Irishman who served under Charles the Bald, Eriugena participated in doctrinal disputes over predestination with Gottschalk, among others. Heavily influenced by the Greek Fathers, Eriugena proceeded much further in philosophical inquiry than Alcuin.116 Like Alcuin, Eriugena, a teacher of all seven liberal arts at Laon, and other scholars relied heavily on Martianus Capella’s account of the disciplines, including dialectic. Eriugena, however, went further than others in developing his dialectical skills. During the predestination debate, Eriugena wrote De divina praedestinatione, among many other works, to dispute the claims of his opponents. In response to Eriugena’s carefully constructed arguments against predestination, Prudentius of Troyes accused Eriugena of following his artes liberales and Martianus in hunc labyrinthum (‘into a labyrinth’), paying more attention to the methods of these arts than to scripture.117 This suspicion of dialectic, seemingly, was not uncommon during the early medieval period. The liberal arts, however, particularly dialectic, are expertly deployed in Eriugena’s best-known work, the Periphyseon, in which two scholars, Alumnus and Nutritor, debate the divisione naturae, the nature of God, being, and ‘non-being.’ In the Periphyseon, Eriugena bases his discussion on not only Martianus Capella and the Categoriae decem but also the writings of Plato and Greek Fathers such as Gregory Nazianzen.118 In comparison to Alcuin’s emphasis on Wisdom’s house from Proverbs (9:1), Eriugena repeatedly celebrates ‘the image [in John 14:2] of one house and many mansions,’ signifying ‘one truth but many revelations and understanding [sic].’ In the Periphyseon, Eriugena describes God as lux mentium (‘the light of minds’), granting human beings the recta ratio (‘true reason’) to discern the truth through diverse means. For Eriugena, God is ‘the greatest reality,’ the ‘ousia which is infinite and One.’119 In his examination of God’s nature, Eriugena deploys the Categories, like Boethius before him, but draws significantly different conclusions.120 Thus Eriugena examines

116 117 118

119 120

Dermot Moran, The Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena: A Study of Idealism in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 4, 9, 20, 27–29, 52–53. Ibid., pp. 28–29, 39. Ibid., pp. 58–60, 64. On the Greek contribution to Eriugena’s philosophy, see John Scottus Eriugena, Periphyseon: On the Division of Nature, trans. Myra L. Uhlfelder and Jean A. Potter (Indianapolis, 1976), pp. xviii–xxi. For Eriugena’s use of the Categories in the Periphyseon, see Joannis Scoti Opera, ed. J.J. Floss, Patrologia Latina, Patrologiæ Cursus Completus, 2nd series, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne (Paris, 1853), 122, Book I. Moran, The Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena, pp. 71–73, 82. John J. O’Meara, Eriugena (Oxford, 1988), p. 85.

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Debating with Demons the underlying structures of all being, practicing an epistemology that both defines and intersects with ontology. It is possible that some English scholars, or at least their teachers who came from the continent, knew of Eriugena’s work. A selection of Book I of the Periphyseon, which prominently features Eriugena’s theological applications of the Categories, likely ‘was studied as a school-text at Corbie,’ where Bishop Æthelwold found the teachers he needed for his Benedictine monastic schools.121 Scholars trained in pre-conquest England, however, probably would not have known the Periphyseon firsthand. Of Eriugena’s works, only his Carmina is known to have been extant in a ninth-century manuscript from Saint-Bertin.122 Many of Alcuin’s writings, however, including De animae ratione and De dialectica, were held in English libraries.123 Through Charlemagne’s palace school at Aachen, Alcuin was also involved in educating teachers in the monastic and cathedral schools throughout the Carolingian Empire,124 where many English monastics were later trained in the tenth century. While English writers might have possessed minimal knowledge of the practice of dialectic, they knew something of the theory. That some English scholars were interested in the discipline is evidenced by their acquisition of not only Alcuin’s De dialectica but also his main source, the pseudo-Augustinian Categoriae Decem, as well as Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii and several works of Boethius. These included his commentaries on Porphyry’s Isagoge, Aristotle’s Categoriae, and Cicero’s Topica as well as a commentary on and translation of Aristotle’s Peri Hermeneias (On Interpretation). Boethius’s better-known De consolation philosophiae and the theological treatises of the Opuscula sacra also make use of dialectical tools such as the Categoriae. English scholars thus recognized the value of dialectical literature and were generally familiar with logical theory and its theological applications, represented broadly in the works of auctors such as Augustine, Alcuin, and others. Dialectical works were held in libraries throughout England, especially in reformed monasteries beginning with the tenth century.125 Earlier, in the eighth century, as Lapidge has shown, Alcuin had access to the logical

121

122

123 124 125

Marenbon, From the Circle of Alcuin, p. 101; Michael Lapidge, ‘Three Latin Poems from Æthelwold’s School at Winchester,’ Anglo-Saxon England, 1 (1972), 85–137 (p. 93). The Carmina survive in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 223, thought to be in England in the early tenth century. Gneuss and Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, p. 90. Ibid., pp. 88, 383, 537, 562, 682. Marenbon, From the Circle of Alcuin, pp. 30–32. On the dialectical literature extant in early medieval England, see Knappe, Traditionen der klassischen Rhetorik im angelsächsischen England, pp. 185–188.

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The Artes Liberales in the Early Middle Ages treatises of Boethius at York,126 and copies were later acquired from France in the ninth and tenth centuries. Alcuin’s writings remained available in the ninth century despite the interruptions of the Viking attacks, and Latin literacy was maintained during that time in western England.127 A commentary on Martianus was at Peterborough by the later tenth century, and Boethius’s De topicis differentiis may have been held there as well. Boethius’s translation of and commentary on Aristotle’s Categoriae, the commentary of Boethius on Peri Hermeneias, and Martianus’s De nuptiis were likely at Worcester by the tenth century. Leofric’s inventory from Exeter includes Boethius’s Latin translation of Porphyry’s Isagoge, possibly also his commentary on the same, and De Consolatione Philosophiae.128 Such evidence points to a recognition of dialectic’s importance, if not sustained or universal study of this discipline. Two surviving pre-conquest manuscripts in particular suggest a significant interest in dialectic among English scholars.129 Oxford, Merton College 309 includes only Cicero’s Topics and Boethius’s In Ciceronis Topica and De topicis differentiis (folios 114–201). Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 206, however, is a more extensive collection, incorporating Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis, the Categoriae Decem, Boethius’s translation of Porphyry’s Isagoge, Alcuin’s De dialectica, Augustine’s De dialectica, and theological applications of dialectical theory such as Boethius’s Opuscula Sacra and an excerpted version of Augustine’s De Trinitate.130 These are precisely the works which, according to Marenbon, most influenced John Scottus Eriugena, particularly in the Periphyseon.131 CCCC 206 therefore testifies to a decided interest in the theological application of dialectical method. Since neither CCCC 206 nor Merton College 309 include many glosses, however, it is difficult to know who read these books or what was done with them.132

126

127

128 129 130

131 132

Michael Lapidge, ‘Surviving Booklists from Anglo-Saxon England,’ in AngloSaxon Manuscripts: Basic Readings, ed. Mary P. Richards (New York, 1994), pp. 87–167 (pp. 105–112). Michael Lapidge, ‘The Present State of Anglo-Latin Studies,’ in Insular Latin Studies, ed. Herren, pp. 45–82 (p. 55); and Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library, pp. 230–231. Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library, pp. 136, 146, 142–143, 140. Lockett claims that these manuscripts indicate a ‘turn toward dialectic’ in reformed monastic schools. Anglo-Saxon Psychologies, pp. 434–435. Gneuss and Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp. 88, 515. See also ‘Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 206: Philosophical Works by Martianus Capella, Aristotle, Boethius and Others,’ Parker Library on the Web: Manuscripts in the Parker Library at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Stanford University, https:// parker.stanford.edu/parker/catalog/fv407hr1706, accessed 5 February 2019. John Marenbon, Aristotelian Logic, Platonism, and the Context of Early Medieval Philosophy in the West (Aldershot, 2000), pp. 117–119. On CCCC 206, see Mildred Budny, Insular, Anglo-Saxon, and Early Anglo-Norman

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Debating with Demons English libraries, therefore, did contain books on logic and dialectic, which were used by the preeminent scholars of early medieval England. According to Lapidge, Alcuin had inherited either Aristotle’s De interpretatione or the Categoriae from his teacher Ælberht at York before leaving for the continent. Aristotle’s Peri Hermeneias, also known as De interpretatione and translated by Boethius, was cited by Abbo of Fleury. Abbo also mentions Boethius’s Latin translation of the Isagoge, Porphyry’s introduction to Aristotle’s Categories (In Porphyrii Isagogen), and Boethius’s Opuscula Sacra, which included his De Trinitate; these texts, along with Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis, survive in CCCC 206.133 De nuptiis is also listed in the eleventh-century inventory from Worcester and was available to Bede, Lantfred of Winchester, Abbo, and Byrhtferth.134 Boethius’s De Trinitate and Augustine’s De Trinitate, both of which deploy dialectical methods in support of theological arguments about the Trinity, likewise survive in multiple manuscripts and were known to Bede, Alcuin, Ælfric, and Byrhtferth.135 The presence of these texts in English libraries, and their use by multiple scholars throughout the pre-conquest period, testify to the importance of dialectic and logic as disciplines underlying early English scholars’ understanding of argumentation and discernment.

Conclusion Dialectic, though not as influential as grammar in the early Middle Ages,136 eventually became an essential art of the trivium which, along with the quadrivium, had to be learned before students could responsibly interpret scripture.137 Pupils studied grammatica through literary forms that imitated dialectical argumentation, dialogues and colloquies which invited them to speak in the roles of disputants. Only fully trained scholars with advanced knowledge of scripture and theology, however, would be prepared to participate in the substantive disputation which required thorough training in dialectic method, including the skills of definition and invention necessary to sustain spontaneous argumentation. Because advanced teachers of these methods would have been relatively rare in pre-conquest England,138 some contact and familiarity with dialectical theory, rather than practical deployment of its methods in disputation, seems to have prevailed among early English scholars.

133 134 135 136 137 138

Manuscript Art at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: An Illustrated Catalogue, vol. 1 (Kalamazoo, 1997), p. 213. Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library, pp. 229–230, 244, 293–294. Ibid., pp. 140, 220, 240–241, 245, 272. Ibid., pp. 125, 200, 231–232, 253, 268. Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture, p. 1. Fox, ‘Alcuin as Exile and Educator,’ pp. 220–221. Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature Vol. 2, 900–1066, p. 4.

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The Artes Liberales in the Early Middle Ages Alcuin distinguished between the arts of dialectic and rhetoric, both of which, when considered in light of English poets’ frequent emphasis on demonic debate, seem ominous and potentially dangerous in comparison to grammar, although grammatical errors could certainly distort one’s understanding of scripture and doctrine. In De dialectica, Alcuin compares dialectic to a pugnus astrictus (‘clenched fist’) and rhetoric to in manu hominis … palma distenta (‘an extended palm in a human hand’). Whereas dialectic aims to grasp arguments through carefully constructed logical analysis, rhetoric, in its eloquence, lays them out for all to hear. Dialectic raros et studiosos requirit (‘seeks out the rare and the learned’) while rhetoric frequenter procedit in turbas (‘appears frequently in crowds’).139 But what if one learned in dialectic deceptively attempts to debate with an unlearned person? If this art is restricted to the ‘rare’ and ‘learned,’ residing within ‘a clenched fist,’ then how are unlearned pupils to defend themselves when approached by more knowledgeable adversaries? Seemingly, based on the available evidence, dialectical methods were not widely taught to students in early English monastic schools. Literary dialogues, however, provided strategies for self-defense through informal rather than formal logic, that is, through the identification of implicit rather than explicit arguments and their acceptance or rejection. With these strategies, an unlearned but prudent disputant could argue a defense against a deceptive adversary, even with the pressures of a face-to-face encounter demanding immediate reflection and response. Dialectic and rhetoric are both closely related to the methods deployed by the demons of Old English poetry. While these demons do not engage in formal disputes with their ‘pupils,’ neither do they proceed by ‘unbroken discourse.’ They are typically presented as engaging in verbal give-andtake with their opponents, whether the poet provides a verbatim account of the debate or not. And poetic demons certainly deploy false arguments in hopes of tricking their opponents into self-destruction. Their opponents must, therefore, develop something resembling the skills associated with dialectic to defend themselves from falsehood and discern the truth. The chapter that follows examines the representation of such verbal contentions in texts, especially the altercatio and the colloquy, associated with monastic schools. Early English versions of these texts were based on a range of sources and therefore do not necessarily provide an ‘accurate’ representation of monastic life in pre-conquest England, insofar as that is possible. But the colloquies did provide scripts for pupils’ grammatical study: English children would have spoken the words of these texts aloud within the sacred and ambiguous place of the monastic school, engaging

139

Alcuin, De dialectica, Col. 953A; see also Rädler-Bohn, ‘Re-dating Alcuin’s De dialectica,’ pp. 75–76.

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Debating with Demons in embodied pedagogical encounters with both fellow students and their masters. These encounters, though intended to provide these children with defenses against ignorance and doubt, nevertheless placed the students in situations of both epistemological and ontological danger from the hidden ‘demons’ in their midst.

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3 The Devil Within: Perils of Pedagogy in the Monastic School

Teaching is a holistic art, uniting the spirit and the intellect with the body and the place where it dwells. The disciplines most necessary to be taught and learned, those which enabled pupils to read, understand, and argue about scripture, were also ambiguous and potentially dangerous to both knowledge and being. Such onto-epistemological risks are incorporated into dialogues written for use in early English schools. These include not only three Anglo-Latin poems associated with the school of Bishop Æthelwold, produced in Winchester, the heart of monastic education during the tenth-century Benedictine Reform, but also the colloquies of Ælfric of Eynsham and his own pupil, Ælfric Bata.1 The altercatio and colloquium, dialogues which, when recited, invite schoolboys to articulate their positions as members of a privileged but nonetheless vulnerable population in the monastery, suggest that the monastic school should be viewed as a topos or locus, a ‘place’ where arguments may be found to assert the value of the monastery as an institution, its purposes, its contributions to ontological survival, and its concomitant dangers. These dialogic texts construct an early medieval view of teaching as a perilous enterprise, articulating the dangers of pedagogy and the constant possibility of demonic presence within the monastery itself. In the arguments of monastic writers, unsurprisingly, the monastery becomes the ontological prop of Christianity, providing the skills, know­ ledge, and discipline necessary for salvation and eternal life. The cloister, however, is not safe from the incursions of Satan – quite the opposite. As David Brakke has claimed, ‘the Christian monk was formed in part through imagining him in conflict with the demon.’2 The monastery, where geong (‘young’) scholars strive against the devil, occasionally identifying and combating diabolical behavior in their own midst, is a place with the 1

2

These poems are edited in Lapidge, ‘Three Latin Poems from Æthelwold’s School at Winchester.’ See also Ælfric’s Colloquy, ed. G.N. Garmonsway (New York, 1966) and Ælfric Bata’s Colloquies in Anglo-Saxon Conversations: The Colloquies of Ælfric Bata, ed. Scott Gwara, trans. David W. Porter (Woodbridge, 1997). David Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity (Cambridge, MA, 2006), p. 5.

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Debating with Demons highest possible onto-epistemological stakes. In reading scripture, monks and their pupils study and recite texts that bestow knowledge about existence itself, the mysteries of the universe and its creation. The labor of monks, their opus Dei, therefore aims to ensure survival of the most basic kind, a bulwark against annihilation. The altercatio and colloquium, which relate everyday problems of pupils in monastic schools, also convey essential insight into their authors’ views about the onto-epistemological transformations resulting from education, a dangerous activity which made pupils vulnerable even as it promised divine protection. Such transformation provides essential background to poetic accounts of teaching demons, who rely on such vulnerabilities for the efficacious deployment of their formidable verbal skills. Pre-conquest school texts, particularly the Æthelwoldian poems and the colloquies, testify to the ambiguity and instability of monastic teaching. As poetic accounts of demonic teaching demonstrate, the verbal arts in particular are prone to manipulation and misuse. While grammar is more straightforward, rhetoric and dialectic, the arts of persuasion and argumentation, can easily be abused and corrupted to teach evil lessons. If the pedagogical relationship is by its nature unstable, subject at all times to resistance from pupils or to magisterial deception, selfishness, ambition, error, or incompetence, then dialectic and rhetoric are especially dangerous ways to pursue and convey truth. Grammar, in comparison, though more overtly violent – remember Martianus Capella’s Grammatica and her knife – was more easily embraced and taught in schools. Alone, however, it could not provide sufficient persuasive methods for the early medieval monastic pedagogical project, which extended well beyond the walls of the cloister. Exploring the tensions which arise from the dangerous potential of the verbal arts requires an inquiry into pre-conquest English attitudes toward teaching in general and toward grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic in particular. It is also crucial to examine what English scholars knew of these disciplines through the books available in their libraries. These books included school-texts relating to poetics and grammar, the altercatio and the colloquy, which also demonstrate the interaction of the verbal arts and ‘demonic’ behavior in monastic schools. Such dialogues between masters and students articulate deep anxieties about the dangers of teaching and learning and, in particular, about the onto-epistemological threat of demonic presence within the monastery itself.

The verbal arts and the dangers of teaching in the early Middle Ages Monastic masters were forced to recognize that, in comparison to the divine pedagogy of Christ, the only perfect teacher, their efforts were bound to be inferior. In De Magistro, Augustine insists to Adeodatus that 74

Perils of Pedagogy in the Monastic School there is, in fact, no such thing as an earthly teacher, because only God in heaven is the true magister.3 Both Augustine and Gregory the Great claim that, if God is the internal teacher of any human being with rational capacities, then an earthly teacher is not strictly necessary, although the vulnerable should take the precaution of consulting a wise human master.4 Such teaching proceeds not through persuasion, which is unnecessary in such case, but through example, as Christ taught his own disciples.5 In this, Christ was emulated by the saints, including Benedict, who, according to Gregory, was unable to live in a manner inconsistent with his own instruction.6 The saints, exemplary in their wise and courageous conduct, provide the most obvious model for lay ‘teaching.’ In writing about the lives of the saints, Ælfric illustrates how they, including those who carry on apostolic and exegetical tradition, imitate the exemplary teaching of Christ.7 Such models provide the primary ‘lessons’ for lay people, since Christ and the saints ‘[teach] spiritual truths … and [exhort] others to good deeds by leading exemplary lives,’ as Robert K. Upchurch has noted.8 Lay people also learn ‘spiritual truths,’ however, from clerical preachers, who enjoy ‘privilege’ over ‘scriptural exegesis’ and carry on apostolic tradition and teaching, although even Ælfric admits the ‘fluid’ nature of sacred scripture.9 Reading and explicating scripture depend primarily on learning the discipline of grammatica. In conveying knowledge of the scripture to the laity, however, preachers deploy rhetorical skills that lend eloquence to preaching.10 And to defend against challengers, especially in doctrinal

3 4

5 6 7

8 9 10

Augustine of Hippo, De magistro, 13.46.20–25, 35–40; Augustine, Against the Academicians and The Teacher, trans. King, pp. 145–146. Augustine, De Magistro, 11.38.45–50; Augustine, Against the Academicians and The Teacher, trans. King, p. 139. See also Gregory the Great, Dialogues, tome II, ed. de Vogüé and Antin, I.1; Saint Gregory the Great: Dialogues, trans. Zimmerman, p. 8. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, tome II, ed. de Vogüé and Antin, I.9; Saint Gregory the Great: Dialogues, trans. Zimmerman, p. 37. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, tome II, ed. de Vogüé and Antin, II.36; Saint Gregory the Great: Dialogues, trans. Zimmerman, p. 107. Frederick M. Biggs, ‘Ælfric’s Andrew and the Apocrypha,’ Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 104.4 (2005), 473–494 (pp. 476, 487). In the Old English preface to the Catholic Homilies, Ælfric uses the verb tæcan to signify the exemplary instruction conveyed by Christ and the saints. See Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, The First Series: Text, ed. Peter Clemoes, Early English Text Society, s.s. 17 (Oxford, 1997), p. 176. Upchurch, ‘Homiletic Contexts for Ælfric’s Hagiography,’ p. 272. Ibid., p. 272 and Biggs, ‘Ælfric’s Andrew and the Apocalypse,’ pp. 481–482, 487. On the association of preaching with rhetoric and drama, see Jody Enders, ‘Visions with Voices: The Rhetoric of Memory and Music in Liturgical Drama,’ Comparative Drama, 24.1 (1990), 34–54 (p. 47).

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Debating with Demons matters, one needs dialectic, even if one’s arguments are based primarily on the authority of scripture or ‘from final cause,’ emphasizing God as the origin of all creation. Danger, however, lies in such disputation, as Martianus Capella’s Dialectica demonstrates with her intimidating sophistication and hidden serpent. Those who study scripture and teach it to others are, like anyone else, prey to weakness and error. Monastic teachers, therefore, are guaranteed to be flawed, to convey false teaching in spite of themselves. And false teaching leads to ‘false doctrine,’ heresy, and damnation.11 Stephen J. Harris emphasizes the extent to which ‘the progress of the people … depends upon the proper direction of clergy and teachers.’ Given this reality, ‘incorrect teaching’ could have a devastating ‘real-world effect.’12 Spreading well beyond the monastery, such error would constitute an epistemological and ontological crisis. For that reason, Ælfric claims, irresponsible teachers will suffer the worst punishment. In In Letania Maiore, Feria Tertia, from the second series of his Catholic Homilies, Ælfric teaches this lesson through the story of an angel and a demon fighting over a man’s soul.13 Þurh feower ðing, Ælfric says, losiað manna sawla. þæt is ðurh leahtras . and ðurh deofles tihtinge . and ðurh lareowa gymeleaste . and ðurh yfele gebysnunge . unrihtwisra heafodmanna (‘through four things men’s souls are lost: that is through sins and through the devil’s persuasion and through the neglect of teachers and through the evil example of unrighteous leaders’).14 While the devil is responsible for two of these ‘things,’ irresponsible human teachers are most to blame. Though their righteous and knowledgeable teaching could save souls, such teachers disregard the epistemological foundations of their authority for the sake of lesser concerns: ofer ðam lareowum is godes yrre swyðost astyred . for ðan ðe hi forgymeleasiað . þa godcundan bec. and ymbe ða woruldðing eallunge hogiað (‘over the teachers God’s anger is most greatly raised, because they abandon the sacred books, and care completely about worldly matters’).15 Those who possess knowledge also hold responsibility for imparting it to others, in keeping with their rank and education, for the salvation of souls.

11 12

13

14 15

Jager, The Tempter’s Voice, pp. 43–44. Stephen J. Harris, ‘The Liturgical Context of Ælfric’s Homilies,’ in The Old English Homily, ed. Kleist, pp. 143–169 (pp. 167, 150). On the relationship between secular and monastic clergy in early medieval England, see Gerald P. Dyson, Priests and Their Books in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 2019), pp. 7–11, 25–26. In Letania Maiore, Feria Tertia is included in Ælfric, Catholic Homilies: The Second Series: Text, ed. Malcolm Godden, Early English Text Society, o.s. 5 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 190–198. Ibid., p. 195, lines 180–183. Ibid., p. 195, lines 183–185.

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Perils of Pedagogy in the Monastic School According to Ælfric, in the task of teaching, all clergy and religious have their specific parts to play. Where instruction of the laity is concerned, biscopum and sacerdum gedafenað . þæt hi heora lare gymon. and ðam folce heora ðearfe secgan (‘it is suitable for bishops and priests that they care for their teaching, and tell what is needed to the people’).16 While secular clergy must make judgments about what lay people need to know, the duties of monks are different and less associated with lay people’s needs: mynstermannum gedafenað . þæt hi on stilnysse heora lif adreogan (‘it is suitable for monks that they pass their lives in stillness’).17 Ælfric, a mynster-mann himself, seems to be the exception to this rule, writing his exegetical commentaries for clergy and laity alike. Both exempla and lare (‘teaching’), Ælfric insists, must come from the scriptures, or teachers will lead their pupils to perdition.18 Conveying that scriptural knowledge, as well as explaining its meaning and persuading others to accept it, requires skills that move beyond grammar to the theory and practice of persuasion and argumentation. The need to use rhetoric and dialectic, however, made the clergy more, not less, susceptible to demonic threats.19 As Gregory demonstrates in his tale of Abbot Equitius and Basil, a ‘monk’ of his community, demons can dwell even in, and perhaps especially in, the monastery. They can lurk in something as seemingly innocuous as a head of lettuce in the monastery garden, ready to be consumed by vulnerable souls.20 Early English poetry therefore teaches its audiences to suspect skillful teachers, to exercise discernment in determining the motives of those who speak with cleverness and expertise. This poetic lesson suggests that the monastic school, then, can be viewed simultaneously as a help to salvation and a potential path to perdition. Texts produced in these schools support this claim. The Æthelwoldian poems, which belong to an Aldhelmian ‘hermeneutic tradition’ of Latin verse composed in England,21 construct narratives about the dangers of false argument and irresponsible teaching in the monastery. These texts lament the irresponsibility of inept teachers 16 17 18

19 20 21

Ibid., p. 195, lines 186–187. Ibid., p. 195, lines 187–188. Ælfric, The Old English Heptateuch and Ælfric’s Libellus de Veteri Testamento et Novo, vol. 1, ed. Richard Marsden, Early English Text Society, o.s. 330 (Oxford, 2008), p. 227, lines 825–830; Ælfric describes his own education in his preface to Genesis (pp. 3–4). See also Biggs, ‘Ælfric’s Andrew and the Apocrypha,’ p. 482, and Dyson, Priests and Their Books, pp. 62–64. On the ‘dangerous’ nature of teaching in general, see Dumitrescu, The Experience of Education, p. 16. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, tome II, ed. de Vogüé and Antin, I.4; St. Gregory the Great: Dialogues, trans. Zimmerman, pp. 16–18. Lapidge, ‘Three Latin Poems,’ pp. 85–86. The poems appear in Cambridge University Library MS Kk.5.34, 71r–80r.

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Debating with Demons who threaten the orderly environment essential for life in the cloister, which reaches its best-known form in the portrait of monastic stability represented in well-known Colloquy of Ælfric, student of Æthelwold. Ælfric’s own pupil, Ælfric Bata, however, wrote a lengthy and complex collection of colloquies which explore not only the problematic nature of pedagogy but also the omnipresence of diabolical behavior within the monastery itself. Ælfric Bata’s diverse assortment of school texts, especially examined in contrast to the highly disciplined portrait provided by his magister Ælfric, helps to illustrate the persistent danger of satanic forces within monastic life, articulated in scripted dialogue by schoolboys themselves. Demonic teachers in early English poetry use the verbal arts to instruct, but they do not teach these arts or their methods themselves, deploying them instead as subtle weapons against the vulnerable and untaught. Though the practice of the verbal arts within the monastery can prepare its members to protect themselves against demons, these arts, in their instability, potentially make the monks more vulnerable, not less, to demonic influence. The implicit questions and arguments raised in these school-texts use the tools of grammatical study, spoken in the voices of the geong pupils themselves, to question the very epistemological and ontological foundations of monastic life and education. Both the altercatio and colloquium are pervaded by the anxiety that the teaching demons of early English poetry could come alive in the form of monastic masters and pupils alike. To understand that anxiety, it is necessary to examine the state of monastic education in pre-conquest England and the books being studied in the schools, especially those relating to rhetorica and dialectica. Monastic pedagogy asserted God’s care for his ‘little ones’ in a fallen world that simultaneously threatened their annihilation and offered the redemption envied by their devilish adversaries. Demonic pedagogical encounters therefore contribute in important ways to the pursuit of salvation, an ongoing epistemological project with ontological stakes. But what did English pupils read, and how did they learn? How, if at all, did dialectic, the discipline that relies on discretio as well as verbal skill, factor into their education?

Early English schools and their books Unfortunately, scholarly knowledge of the early English monastic school is incomplete. The earliest schools in England were founded in Canterbury after Augustine came from Rome (ca. 597), emphasizing the study of scripture and liturgical practice in Latin. After approximately forty years, an East Anglian school appeared, with English bishops appointed 78

Perils of Pedagogy in the Monastic School soon after.22 In the 670s, under Theodore and Hadrian, the curriculum of Canterbury’s school incorporated, in both Latin and Greek, a diverse selection of scriptural texts, exegetical commentaries, and books related to the scientific disciplines as well as legal tracts.23 Through Hadrian and Theodore, Greek learning, including scriptural texts and the works of the Greek Fathers, became available at Canterbury, but exactly how these were studied is unknown; English pupils themselves may not have read ‘Greek books’ firsthand, instead hearing them read aloud by masters literate in Greek.24 In the late seventh and early eighth centuries, after Aldhelm composed De uirginitate for Barking Abbey, other writers worked in Mercia, including Felix, author of the Vita S. Guthlaci, and Tatwine, whose Ars Grammatica was followed by that of Boniface before his departure for Germany.25 In Northumbria, scholars at Whitby, trained by missionaries from Ireland, produced hagiographical texts, while at Wearmouth-Jarrow, Bede mastered the arts of ‘grammar, hagiography, natural science, computus, history, biblical exegesis, and poetry,’ producing three textbooks, De orthographia, De arte metrica, and De natura rerum, as well as a work on rhetoric, De schematibus et tropis, and voluminous scriptural commentaries.26 Bede also wrote numerous poems in Latin, saints’ lives, the Chronica maiora, and the Epistola ad Ecgberhtum, addressed to the teacher of Alcuin, as well as the Historia ecclesiastica.27 Following the Northumbrian ‘golden age,’ according to King Alfred’s account in the preface to the Old English version of Gregory’s Cura Pastoralis, Latin learning in England declined nearly to extinction due to the Viking attacks. But how to interpret Alfred’s statement remains a mystery, and it is not known how many Latin books actually survived during that period. Lapidge’s survey of extant books in pre-conquest England suggests that more texts were available to English scholars than Alfred described, especially in Worcester and even in York.28 Surviving manuscripts, however, as Lapidge notes, ‘[do] not ipso facto imply the existence of teachers to expound them or of scholars to read them,’ especially since ‘books intended for reading, studying and annotating were neglected while the de luxe manuscripts were being hidden away for safe-keeping.’29 Alfred, Lapidge concludes, made a necessary invest22 23

24 25 26 27 28 29

Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature Vol. 1, 600–899, p. 5. Ibid., pp. 5–7. On the contribution of Theodore and Hadrian to the ‘highly influential tradition of glosses’ during this early phase of English education, see Stanton, The Culture of Translation in Anglo-Saxon England, p. 23. Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature Vol. 1, 600–899, pp. 130, 133. Ibid., pp. 7, 9–11. Ibid., pp. 13–16. Ibid., pp. 17–20. Ibid., pp. 417, 424–425, 432. For the full survey of extant works, see pp. 410–417. Ibid., pp. 433, 438.

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Debating with Demons ment in Latin instruction.30 Godden, however, has questioned the scope of Alfred’s promotion of Latin learning for the clergy, noting that the translation of Latin books into the vernacular meant that many members of the clergy could access those books without knowing Latin. Godden concludes that Alfred encouraged the learning of Latin where ‘appropriate’ but focused on promoting ‘literacy in English.’31 Alfred did, however, import many continental manuscripts into Wessex.32 The Benedictine founders of the tenth-century monastic reform owed their education to continental monasteries: Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, studied at Ghent, and Oswald, Archbishop of York, was a pupil in Fleury, though Bishop Æthelwold was taught by Dunstan, learning grammar in Glastonbury. Eventually a master in his own right, Æthelwold became known for teaching the ‘standard curriculum texts’ at Winchester, where he instructed Ælfric.33 He also brought teachers to England from continental communities such as Fleury, Corbie, and Ghent.34 Oswald, whose Latin works, if any, do not survive, recruited Abbo of Fleury, who taught at Ramsey from 985 to 987 and wrote his Passio of St. Edmund and Quaestiones grammaticales.35 At Fleury, Abbo had studied dialectic, but his teaching in England emphasized the scientific disciplines.36 He also taught grammar and other subjects to Byrhtferth, who wrote works on computus, saints’ lives, and history.37 But these writers’ close ties to continental monasteries pose difficulties for drawing clear conclusions about Anglo-Latin textual culture after the time of Bede.38 Except for a few writings of Alcuin and some Mercian charters in Latin, ‘the record is virtually blank’ for the ninth century because of Viking attacks.39 Of the many Latin books produced in reformed monasteries during the tenth century, many have not yet been studied or edited, and others may owe more to monastic life on the continent than to English monasteries.40 Many manuscripts, however, were produced at the Old

30 31

32 33 34 35 36

37 38 39 40

Ibid., p. 439. Malcolm Godden, ‘King Alfred’s Preface and the Teaching of Latin in AngloSaxon England,’ The English Historical Review, 117.472 (2002), 596–604 (pp. 599, 604). See also Dyson, Priests and Their Books, pp. 57–59. Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature Vol. 1, 600–899, p. 25. Ibid., pp. 27–28, 30. See also Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture, p. 411. Lapidge, ‘Three Latin Poems,’ p. 93. Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature Vol. 1, 600–899, p. 31. Marco Mostert, The Political Theology of Abbo of Fleury: A Study of the Ideas about Society and Law of the Tenth-Century Monastic Reform Movement (Hilversum, 1987), pp. 31–32. Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature Vol. 1, 600–899, pp. 31–33. Lapidge, ‘The Present State of Anglo-Latin Studies,’ pp. 56–57. Ibid., pp. 54–55. Ibid., pp. 56–57.

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Perils of Pedagogy in the Monastic School Minster in Winchester, Christ Church Canterbury, and Ramsey due to the work of Abbo and Byrhtferth.41 Although little research has been done on works used in the Latin curriculum of English monastic schools,42 Lapidge, George Brown, and Irvine have contributed significantly to knowledge on the subject.43 According to Lapidge, boys in monastic schools would have begun their study with hymns and psalms so they could participate in the Office. From that point, they would have continued with grammatical study in Latin as well as metrics. Students then entered an intensive curriculum of Latin study, closely reading texts and writing in wax what their masters read aloud to them. Having spent a day memorizing the text and reciting it for the master, a student would clean off his tablet and begin again with a new passage.44 Following his study of Latin texts, a pupil could pursue the scientific disciplines of ‘arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and harmony [music],’ though it seems that relatively few pre-conquest English scholars did so, or enter the monastic life to continue the study of biblical texts and the works of the Church Fathers, including Augustine and Gregory the Great. Eventually, advanced scholars could write their own Latin works. With the exception of Irish monastics, English scholars were some of the most significant contributors to the corpus of Latin literature in Europe.45 Within the schools, pupils would read a diverse range of Latin works influenced by the classical and Irish curricula.46 Brown lists a number of texts used in early English schools, including psalms and psalm glosses;47 grammatical texts by Donatus, Boniface, and Tatwine, supplemented by works of Bede and Aldhelm;48 Ælfric’s Grammar, Glossary, and Colloquy; Juvencus’s Evangelia, a poetic version of the Gospel; the Distichs of Cato; the Epigrammata of Prosper of Aquitaine; Arator’s De actibus Apostolorum; Caelius Sedulius’s Carmen Paschale; Lactantius’s De ave Phoenice; and Prudentius’s Psychomachia.49 Eventually, the curriculum would also include Aldhelm’s Carmen de virginitate, Boethius’s De 41 42

43

44 45 46 47 48 49

Ibid., pp. 58–60. Michael Lapidge, ‘Versifying the Bible in the Middle Ages,’ in The Text in the Community: Essays on Medieval Works, Manuscripts, Authors, and Readers, ed. Jill Mann and Maura Nolan (Notre Dame, 2006), pp. 11–40 (p. 33). See Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature Vol. 1, 600–899 and Anglo-Latin Literature Vol. 2, 900–1066; Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture; and George Hardin Brown, ‘The Dynamics of Literacy in Anglo-Saxon England,’ in Textual and Material Culture in Anglo-Saxon England: Thomas Northcote Toller and the Toller Memorial Lectures, ed. Donald Scragg (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 183–212. Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature Vol. 1, 600–899, pp. 2–3. Ibid., p. 4. Brown, ‘The Dynamics of Literacy in Anglo-Saxon England,’ p. 186. Ibid., pp. 194, 197. Ibid., pp. 207, 209. Ibid., pp. 209–210.

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Debating with Demons consolatione Philosophiae, and Abbo’s Bella Parisiacae urbis (Book III).50 To these texts, Lapidge adds Alcimus Avitus of Vienne’s Poema de Mosaicae historiae gestis, a possible source for Genesis B; the Aeneid; Persius’s Satires; and the Pharsalia of Lucan.51 Irvine, who does not include Lactantius or Abbo, does provide a list of several other texts as likely sources for the study of grammatica.52 So English monastic schoolboys read mostly grammar, epigrams, and wisdom literature, as well as a variety of poetic and historical works. In studying these texts, the pupils depended more frequently on their wax tablets than on books, reciting before the master. Ælfric Bata implies that the boys spent significant time on their own, without the presence of the master, policing themselves to learn their lessons and thus avoid punishment. Such punishment was unquestionably violent, as Dumitrescu has shown.53 She cautions, however, against placing textual pedagogical violence in ‘neat equivalence’ to ‘its use in everyday life.’54 Christopher A. Jones likewise notes that, if Ælfric Bata’s portrait of monastic school life were realistic, his monastery would have engaged in shocking violations of the Rule and other monastic guidelines. According to Jones, ‘the scola included pueri aged seven to fifteen’ who then, ‘as iuvenes,’ could enter the novitiate, subject to ‘a balance of punishment (disciplina) and constant policing (custodia)’ intended ‘to transform oblates into elite monkpriests.’55 Thus the boys would not have been left alone or permitted to run errands or interact with monks other than the master, as Ælfric Bata’s colloquies suggest. Apparently, pupils in monastic schools would not have studied dialectic in any depth, although the student speakers in the Æthelwoldian poems seem to know something of dialectical theory. The English term corresponding to dialectica, flit, is mentioned briefly in the Old English version of the Distichs of Cato, a classic classroom text, which is comprised of fairly simple Latin precepts.56 The Latin version of the Distichs provides some instructions regarding respect for the learned, or those with suffi50 51 52 53

54 55 56

Ibid., p. 210. On Abbo’s text, see also Stanton, The Culture of Translation, pp. 29–30. Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature Vol. 1, 600–899, p. 4. Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture, p. 356. Irina A. Dumitrescu, ‘The Grammar of Pain in Ælfric Bata’s Colloquies,’ Forum for Modern Language Studies, 45.3 (2009), 239–253 (pp. 239–240). See also Dumitrescu, The Experience of Education, p. 87, and Parsons, Punishment and Medieval Education, pp. 32–33. Dumitrescu, The Experience of Education, p. 60. Christopher A. Jones, ‘The Irregular Life in Ælfric Bata’s Colloquies,’ Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 37 (2006), 241–260 (p. 243). The Latin text instructs only contra uerbosos noli contendere uerbis. The Distichs of Cato: A Famous Medieval Textbook, ed. Wayland Johnson Chase (Madison, 1922), p. 16, verse 10. For the Old English version, see ‘The Old English Dicts of Cato,’

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Perils of Pedagogy in the Monastic School cient knowledge to teach, and the need to use wisdom to avoid error. The text was translated into Old English and is extant in several manuscripts of the period.57 The Old English Dicts caution against flit, or dispute, with other men, admonishing also that young men should be taught cræftas, ‘skills,’ which bið bætera þonne æht (‘are better than property’) for both a man and his children.58 The anger of lords and teachers (lareow) is to be suffered; those with knowledge are obligated to teach the unlearned.59 It is difficult, however, to know how the Old English Dicts would have been used, since schoolboys would have studied the Latin version. Monastic ‘classbooks’ like Canterbury’s (Cambridge, University Library Gg.5.35) and that of Dunstan (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Auct.F.4.32), both of which were used in early English schools, also provide important information about the methodology deployed in monastic classrooms. Brown, following Gernot Wieland, claims that CUL MS Gg.5.35, which includes school texts, ‘was designed for use in the schoolroom, marked with indications for proper accent, metre, pronunciation, and interpretation.’60 It is not known, however, whether masters or students used these books. Lapidge asks, ‘did the master read from one book, and students follow his lesson in books of their own?’ As Lapidge notes, this is not likely; although students in the colloquies speak of having their own books and writing on papyrus, parchment, or wax tablets, each student probably did not have a full copy of the ‘set-texts.’61 The Latin glosses that provide essential information about the process of reading and interpreting these books have not yet been collated or studied thoroughly. Lapidge cautions that such ‘“[classbooks]” … may have been read in classrooms. But there is no proof that they were.’ Lapidge concludes that such books were probably used by monks rather than schoolboys.62 Although much about life in early English schools is still unknown, it is clear that the curriculum consisted primarily of proverbs, Latin poetry,

57 58 59 60

61 62

ed. R.S. Cox, Anglia, 90 (1972), 1–42 (p. 6, verse 5). On the relationship between the Distichs and Ælfric’s Colloquy, see O’Keeffe, Stealing Obedience, pp. 126–128. Only three of these manuscripts provide a possible source for the Old English Dicts. ‘The Old English Dicts of Cato,’ p. 3. Ibid., p. 7, verse 8. Ibid., pp. 11–12, verses 51, 56, 59. The Old English Dicts also includes several additions from the Old English Boethius; see p. 15. Brown, ‘The Dynamics of Literacy in Anglo-Saxon England,’ p. 210. See also Gernot R. Wieland, ‘The Glossed Manuscript: Classbook or Library Book?,’ Anglo-Saxon England, 14 (1985), 153–173; and Gneuss and Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, pp. 25–28. According to Gneuss and Lapidge, other texts in the manuscript include Hrabanus Maurus’s De laudibus Sanctae Crucis; Milo’s Carmen de sobrietate; hymns, some of which may have been written by Wulfstan Cantor; enigmata by Eusebius, Boniface, Tatwine, Aldhelm, Symposius, and Bede; Bede’s Versus de die iudicii; and excerpts from other texts. See p. 26. Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature Vol. 1, 600–899, pp. 455–457. Ibid., pp. 494–496, 498.

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Debating with Demons and especially grammatica, Latin language learning. For a learned teacher such as Alcuin, however, grammar alone was insufficient; all of the liberal arts, including dialectic, provided essential skills for understanding scripture, examining the nature of God, and finding one’s way to heaven. The interest of English scholars in dialectic, particularly in its theological applications, seems clear from the manuscript evidence discussed in Chapter 2. That evidence, however, does not suggest that the discipline was studied systematically in monastic schools, nor that masters with sufficient expertise were available to teach it. Nevertheless, awareness of and interest in dialectic, if not demonstrable skill in deploying its methods, provides important context for understanding the pursuit of the verbal arts in the schools as well as the argumentation practiced in the world outside the monastery. To English scholars, rhetoric and dialectic may have seemed mysterious, perhaps even suspicious and troubling, as they were to Prudentius of Troyes and others.63 Despite the importance and theological usefulness of these verbal arts, they were still potentially dangerous, unstable, and subject to manipulation and misuse.

Pedagogy in the English monastic schools: the altercatio and colloquium Although dialectical disputation was seemingly not actively practiced in early English schools, the grammatical dialogues used by pupils in the schools imitate such disputation in forms such as the altercatio and the colloquy. These texts, though they emphasize the learning of poetics and Latin, also performed crucial implicit ideological functions, providing both language lessons and cultural and theological instruction. Processes of knowing and being are thoroughly intertwined in monastic pedagogy: knowledge of scripture and the Latin language through which one accesses it are essential to salvation, with existential implications. But developing such knowledge is an unstable enterprise, fraught with uncertainty and prone to dysfunction, error, abuse, laziness, and exigencies of human behavior. Dumitrescu examines this problematic instability of early English pedagogical practice, emphasizing its ‘ruptures … paradoxes’ and ‘tensions.’ Pedagogical episodes in pre-conquest literature, Dumitrescu notes, are shaped around ‘the dialogue … a medium of education and a testing ground of wisdom and philosophy in antiquity’ which, in a monastic pedagogical context, ‘[implies] ambivalence toward authority…. [and] a dialectical process of contestation and interpretation … [which

63

Moran, The Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena, p. 39.

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Perils of Pedagogy in the Monastic School refuses] to present teachers as unassailable.’64 Indeed the altercatio and the colloquy do not even represent monastic life itself as ‘unassailable.’ It seems rather to be potentially the most disorderly and perilous sort of life, full of dangers and evils. When one is taught by a demonic magister, however, the dangers are significantly greater. Pedagogical dialogue with a demon requires the deployment of verbal skills that can mean the difference between salvation and damnation. In reading the colloquies, Dumitrescu recommends ‘taking the speeches of rogue figures seriously, be they devils or naughty boys, as they may serve as mouthpieces for unacceptable views.’65 Considering the ontological stakes of false teaching, however, Dumitrescu seems to understate the importance of such speeches, although she does acknowledge that ‘teaching redemption is dangerous to teacher and student alike.’66 Ælfric Bata’s colloquies in particular emphasize that demonic forces can be lurking within seemingly innocuous, or even holy, places and people, including the teachers and students within the monastery itself. The altercatio poems and colloquies, though they are often framed as contentious debates, are grounded in the study of grammatica and, in the case of the altercatio, Latin poetics. In pre-conquest England, grammar relates almost exclusively to Latin, with the exception of Ælfric’s Excerptiones de arte grammatica anglice, based primarily on Priscian and surviving in thirteen copies.67 Gneuss has emphasized the ‘paramount importance’ of Latin grammatical study within monastic life in England, though often English glosses helped to provide essential linguistic knowledge.68 Along with Ælfric’s grammar and glossary, the colloquies written to help monastic schoolboys develop their Latin skills provide not only language practice but also essential clues about life in the monastery and the practice of pedagogy in the monastic school. While Ælfric’s colloquy is highly moralistic and orderly, the colloquies written by his student, Ælfric Bata, provide a lively yet highly problematic view of the exigencies of monastic life. The same is true of the altercatio poems produced some years earlier in Æthelwold’s Winchester, although their purpose differs from that of the colloquies. In the spirituo-material practice of monastic pedagogy, within the sacred place of the monastery, the words of these texts, though they came from diverse sources, were seemingly voiced 64

65 66 67 68

Dumitrescu, The Experience of Education, pp. 13, 2, 4–5. Dumitrescu examines the representation of education in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, the Solomon and Saturn dialogues, Andreas, the Life of St. Mary of Egypt, and the Colloquies of Ælfric Bata. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 16. Law, Grammar and Grammarians in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 200, 203, 215. Gneuss, ‘The Study of Language in Anglo-Saxon England,’ pp. 12, 14, 18.

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Debating with Demons aloud by the pupils themselves and heard by others participating in the pedagogical encounter. Colloquies in particular are written in the form of dialogues, set texts which students recite to practice their Latin grammar. Thus such texts, like the altercatio, proceed through carefully constructed ‘questions and answers’ in ‘a mechanical concatenation of inquiry and response.’ Such texts have their origins in Cicero’s writings and patristic works, which used ‘quaestiones et responsiones’ to examine problems of logic, law, and faith.69 Early examples included Aristo of Pella’s second-century Altercatio Jasonis et Papisci and Evagrius’s fifth-century Altercatio Simonis Iudaei et Theophili Christiani, as well as the Altercatio Aecclesiae contra Synagogam and Quaestiones Veteris et Novi Testamenti by Pseudo-Augustine and De Veteri et Novo Testamento Quaestiones by Isidore.70 These texts are highly didactic, focusing on the interpretation of scripture. Although a related tradition existed in the Byzantine Empire, Western scholars like Alcuin were most familiar with the Altercatio Hadriani Augusti et Epicteti Philosophi, a question-and-answer dialogue between Epictetus and the Roman emperor Hadrian. Alcuin himself developed the genre of the pedagogical dialogue further with his treatises on dialectic and rhetoric: the Interrogationes et Responsiones in Genesin, the Disputatio Pippini cum Albino scholastico,71 the Disputatio de verum philosophia, and possibly the Disputatio Puerorum per Interrogationes et Responsiones.72 English examples of the pedagogical dialogue include the seventh-century Ioca Monachorum and Bede’s Cunabula Grammaticae Artis Donati, based on the Ars Minor.73 A British text of the tenth century, De raris fabulis, is the first recognized assembly of colloquies in the British Isles, glossed in both Welsh and Cornish and subsequently revised in De raris fabulis retractata. A very different sort of colloquy appeared in Colloquium hispericum after 1000.74

69

70

71

72

73 74

Altercatio Hadriani Augusti et Epicteti Philosophi, ed. Lloyd William Daly and Walther Suchier, Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, 24 (1939), pp. 11–12. See also Novikoff, The Medieval Culture of Disputation, pp. 14–15. Altercatio Hadriani Augusti et Epicteti Philosophi, pp. 27–28, 31. An edition of the Altercatio Aecclesie contra Synagogam by Bernhard Blumenkranz appears in Revue du Moyen Age Latin, 10 (1954), pp. 5–154. Altercatio Hadriani Augusti et Epicteti Philosophi, pp. 71, 33, 38, 59, 81, 84. To the list of Latin ‘prose riddle-dialogues,’ Lockett adds Adrian and Ritheus as well as the prose Solomon and Saturn, both in Old English; see Anglo-Saxon Psychologies, pp. 269, 271–272. See also Dumitrescu, The Experience of Education, p. 5. An edition of the Disputatio Puerorum per Interrogationes et Responsiones appears in The Disputatio Puerorum: A Ninth-Century Monastic Instructional Text, ed. Andrew Rabin and Liam Felsen (Turnhout, 2017). Altercatio Hadriani Augusti et Epicteti Philosophi, pp. 36, 41. See the introduction to Ælfric Bata’s colloquies in Anglo-Saxon Conversations, ed. Gwara, pp. 19, 23.

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Perils of Pedagogy in the Monastic School While reciting such colloquies in their grammar lessons, boys would speak in the voices of disputants, if not actually practicing the art of disputatio themselves. Of particular interest in the genre of the altercatio is a poetic trio composed, as Lapidge has argued, in the school of Æthelwold at Winchester: the Carmen de libero arbitrio, the Altercatio magistri et discipuli, and the Responsio discipuli, all included in Cambridge University Library MS Kk.5.34.75 In these Latin poems, produced in the paradigmatic school of the monastic reform, the pupils become teachers in their own turn, examining their master and challenging his skills in dialectic and rhetoric. The students berate the master in vivid terms as a hypocrite for beating them when they make errors in the verbal arts that he himself has not mastered. The Altercatio and the Responsio, though in dialogue form, construct an integrated narrative dominated by the pupils’ perspective, a tale of students struggling to learn despite the self-indulgent incompetence and arrogance of their teachers. The third poem in the Æthelwoldian collection, the Carmen de liberal arbitrio, though mild in tone compared to the Altercatio and Responsio, incorporates themes common in theological treatises that deploy dialectical methods. The text calls on the Trinity, natura triplex in usiade simpla (‘threefold nature in uniform substance’), to bestow wisdom and the discernment that can protect the will, the partes in geminas dirimit genuina potestas: / his reserat caelum, pandit et his herebum (‘the inborn power [which] divides [mankind] into two halves: to these it opens heaven, to others it throws open hell’).76 Acknowledging the auctorita of bishop and king, the Carmen implores the divine auctor to protect vulnerable souls from the dangers of exercising free will, to help them choose the narrow path when the rest of the world aims to lead them toward destruction. Learning the verbal arts, combined with wisdom and discretio, can help to augment that protection. But the path to hell, as the Carmen confesses, covers nearly the whole world, and most people travel that way: uix iter angustum raris comeantibus idem / signat, et is uitam ducit ad aetheriam; / alter adest spatio diffuses denique uasto: / omne uehit barathrum pene genus hominum (‘[God] scarcely draws the narrow path to the attention of those few who follow it and it leads to eternal life. The other is spread out over a wide space: it takes nearly the whole human race to hell’).77 Those who would be saved must find the ‘narrow path’ by looking in the proper place. But even when they do this, choosing the austerity and discipline of monastic life, salvation can still be elusive. False teaching is found everywhere, even in the heart of the monastery. And when pupils encounter it, whether 75 76 77

Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature Vol. 1, 600–899, p. 31 and Lapidge, ‘Three Latin Poems,’ pp. 85, 90, 94. Lapidge, ‘Three Latin Poems,’ pp. 126–127, 129, lines 25–26. Ibid., pp. 132, 135, lines 125–128.

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Debating with Demons they dispute with the devil or with their own master, the narrow, thorny path to heaven demands that they resist and respond with questions and arguments of their own. Such is the premise of the Altercatio magistri et discipuli and the Responsio disipuli, which appear before the Carmen in CUL MS Kk.5.34. Lapidge associates these debate poems with the ancient tradition of the flit, since they ‘[combine] the form of interchange between magister and discipulus found in the didactic dialogues with the violence of invective found in the vernacular flytings.’78 In the opening of the Altercatio, the discipulus criticizes the magister, seemingly a foreigner named Iorvert, for his foolishness and drunkenness. According to the pupil, the master is self-aggrandizing, boastful, and false in his self-estimation: summum profiterier audet / se fore philosophum cunctoque sophismate comptum, / dum minime sciat hoc quid philosophus sit (‘he dares to profess himself the greatest philosopher, accomplished in all learning, while at the same time he hardly knows what a philosopher is’).79 The master, according to his pupils, also celebrates his own terrible poetry, though the students themselves could compose better. Even worse, the master, lacking sufficient knowledge, misuses the art of dialectic, promoting his own reputation and conveying false arguments. According to the students, Iorvert abdicat et ueterum coluber documenta uirorum / scismate falsidico necnon et litigioso (‘renounces the teachings of the ancients in false and contentious argumentation’).80 This master is therefore a divisive figure, claiming to speak with the voice of heaven while instructing his pupils with false words. Those who teach error, the student insists, will suffer in hellfire. In misleading his pupils, Iorvert peruertens ‘iornum’ falso sintagmate uerum (‘[perverts] the truth with false teaching’) in his prauo scismate (‘depraved contentiousness’).81 In responding to these accusations, the master seeks to distract the students with an elaborate metaphor of a ship on stormy seas, suggesting that the pupil is beginning a journey he cannot hope to complete (lines 57–67). Thus Iorvert uses figurative language, a feature of rhetoric, to obscure his avoidance of the pupil’s criticism. Rejecting the master’s attempt at rhetorical diversion, the pupil instead challenges the master to reveal his knowledge of dialectic, the art of discernment and argumentation. Specifically, the pupil asks the master to explain genus and species, as well as the sint normae dialecticae (‘six

78 79 80 81

Ibid., pp. 98–99. According to Lapidge, such a combination is rare, surviving elsewhere in a limited number of texts such as the Hisperica Famina. Ibid., pp. 111–112, lines 26–29. Ibid., pp. 112–113, lines 39–40. Ibid., pp. 114–115, lines 52–53, 55.

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Perils of Pedagogy in the Monastic School dialectical norms’).82 This passage suggests that someone in Æthelwold’s Winchester, at least, was studying dialectical treatises, most likely the Categoriae Decem. When the master, ignorant of dialectic, is unable to respond to the pupil’s challenge, the pupil cries that the master’s knowledge is inadequate for the authority he claims: lempiris cruttonempiris et utique lillo (‘you’re an expert concealing his knowledge from experts, and assuredly an ass!’).83 The magister responds with the ordinary knowledge he does possess, reciting the days in the year and then threatening the student with hell if he does not cease his contentious behavior (lines 97–115). The pupil has the last word, however, encouraging the master to pursue salvation through Christ rather than speaking about what he does not know (lines 116–120). In this passage, it is significant that the master, though he is able to deploy elaborate rhetorical figures, possesses insufficient knowledge of dialectic to respond to the pupil’s challenge. That the pupil himself does claim knowledge of dialectic is also significant, suggesting some familiarity with this discipline in Æthelwold’s school. The Responsio discipuli, a companion piece to the Altercatio also addressed to Iorvert, likewise condemns the master for his ignorance and deceptive behavior, accusing him of exposing his pupils to evil. The student speaker claims that, while writing horrible poetry himself and pretending to be virtuous, the master criticizes the boys’ compositions (lines 8–11). The pupil claims that Iorvert is either stupid or out of his mind, since he cannot show the student his errors (lines 21–28). At the Judgment, the student adds, Iorvert will be condemned by Christ for his evil actions and false statements (lines 32–42). Iorvert should know that boys qui / dogmate docti / pontificali (‘who … are taught by the bishop’s teaching’),84 or Æthelwold’s teaching, could interpret poetry appropriately and write it skillfully. Therefore, the boy insists, Iorvert should stop speaking, cease his false statements, and foedus et almum / consolidemus, / ne patiamur / demonis atras / inde catenas (‘let us establish a gentle treaty, lest we thereafter undergo the black chains of the demon’).85 This threat of demonic punishment and influence is standard in such school-texts and in monastic literature in general.86 Although the master associates the pupils’ contentiousness with diabolical behavior, the pupils counterclaim that their dispute originated with the master’s own insecurity, his attempts to conceal his inadequacies by accusing the boys and belittling their work unjustly. Such dishonest conduct leads directly to hell for both the master and the boys, who 82 83 84 85 86

Ibid., pp. 116–117, lines 70–73. Ibid., pp. 118–119, line 96. Ibid., pp. 124–125, lines 59–61. Ibid., pp. 124, 126–127, lines 76–80. Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk, pp. 16–20.

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Debating with Demons become caught up in his belligerent behavior. The demon waits with its ‘black chains’ for all those who participate in such empty arguments, misusing the verbal arts to serve their own selfish needs and drawing attention away from God’s teachings. Against the threat of ignorance, the only defense is gratitude for great teachers such as Æthelwold and humility before God and others. False teachers, however, who manifestly lack knowledge, gratitude, and humility, pose both an epistemological and an ontological threat to their students. While the Altercatio and Responsio were intended primarily for exegetical, theological, and poetic instruction, the English colloquies were written for the specific purpose of teaching Latin, although they secondarily impute moral, theological, and social lessons. In Ælfric’s Colloquy on the Occupations, the schoolboys reciting the text are asked to speak in the voices of various craftspeople, assuming a privileged position in explaining the relative merits of each type of labor to their Latin master. In this text, knowing one’s work is fundamental to one’s being, making work an activity of onto-epistemological significance.87 The first speaker in Ælfric’s Colloquy, a monk, asks the text’s defining epistemological and ontological question: Quid sciunt isti tui socii, or, in Old English, Hwæt cunnon þas þine geferan? (‘what do these your companions know?’).88 As each boy is questioned and asked to explain the relative merits and risks of labor, a hierarchy of both work and virtue is established within the place of the monastic school. The monk explains the crafts of his geferan, his companions – ploughmen, shepherds, oxherds, hunters, fishermen, fowlers, merchants, shoemakers, salters, bakers, ironsmiths, goldsmiths, silversmiths, and carpenters – with those of greatest labor and least freedom earning praise for possessing the greatest virtue.89 In Ælfric’s Colloquy, the master’s attitude toward occupations tends in one direction: as the laborers’ distance from the monastery and the land increases, the master issues greater challenges due to the craftsmen’s expanding independence and their claims to reciprocal relationships and profits. But the boy speaking as consiliarus or geþeahtend (‘counselor’) 87

88

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John Ruffing notes that Ælfric’s text ‘[transforms] … the monastic motto “ora et labora” into another: “orare est laborare.”’ The monastic community is established as ‘the world’ itself, ‘the alpha and omega.’ ‘The Labor Structure of Ælfric’s Colloquy,’ in The Work of Work: Servitude, Slavery, and Labor in Medieval England, ed. Allen J. Frantzen and Douglas Moffat (Glasgow, 1994), pp. 55–70 (pp. 57–59). This text is taken from British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius A.iii, fols. 60b–64b. Ælfric’s Colloquy, pp. 18–49 (pp. 1, 18–19, line 17). Translations from Old English are my own. On Ælfric’s possible sources, see Earl A. Anderson, ‘Social Idealism in Ælfric’s Colloquy,’ in Old English Literature: Critical Essays, ed. R.M. Liuzza (New Haven, 2002), pp. 204–214 (pp. 205–206). Ælfric’s Colloquy, pp. 18–37 and Ruffing, ‘The Labor Structure of Ælfric’s Colloquy,’ pp. 61–62.

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Perils of Pedagogy in the Monastic School assigns the seruitium Dei or Godes þeowdom (‘service of God’) to the highest place, with farming as the most essential of the artes seculares, or woruldcræftas (‘secular crafts’) because it provides food.90 Finally, the counselor puts a stop to the discussion, describing it as a geflit: dissoluamus citius has contentiones, et sit pax et concordia inter uos, or uton towurpon hwætlicor þas geflitu, [and] sy sibb [and] geþwærnyss betweoh us (‘let us swiftly reconcile these disputes, and let there be peace and concord among us’). The master nevertheless maintains his special appreciation for the humble, poor, and obedient ploughman. Ultimately, the counselor says, siue sis sacerdos, siue monachus, seu laicus, seu miles, exerce temet ipsum in hoc, et esto quod es, or swa hwæðer þu sy, swa mæsseprest, swa munuc, swa ceorl, swa kempa, bega oþþe behwyf þe sylfne on þisum, [and] beo þæt þu eart (‘whosoever you may be, whether mass-priest, or monk, or peasant, or warrior, practice or instruct yourself in these [crafts], and be what you are’).91 These crafts, then, are onto-epistemological activities: to work at a craft, to know how to do such work, is to be the craft itself, the same for fisherman as for monks. While Ælfric of Eynsham’s orderly Colloquy has often been considered authoritative in its representation of English monastic school practice, it contrasts strongly with the emphasis of Ælfric Bata’s Colloquies, which vividly represent the potential danger and disorder inherent in pedagogy. Ælfric Bata’s texts, based on the Colloquia e Libro De Raris Fabulis Retractata, were ‘complementary to the grammatical works’ studied in the monastic schools.92 These colloquies are interesting in their representation of pedagogical practices, especially relating to the danger of false teaching, and in how the boys are, in their scripted recitations, actually required to accuse other boys of demonic behavior. These two emphases help to elucidate the dangers represented by demonic auctors both dwelling within the monastery and participating in the school’s grammatical study, the foundation of early English learning and education. The world of Ælfric Bata’s students is defined by the conflict of highly divergent narratives about monastic life which spectacularly collide within the enclosed and ostensibly disciplined space of the monastery.93 Ælfric 90 91

92

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Ælfric’s Colloquy, pp. 39–40, lines 224, 213, 217. Ibid., pp. 41–42, lines 234–235, 240–242. As Ruffing states, ‘monastic life’ is ‘both privileged to direct and draw on the other occupations, and yet also … [belongs] to them, as a real labor of its own.’ ‘The Labor Structure of Ælfric’s Colloquy,’ p. 66. David W. Porter, ‘The Latin Syllabus in the Monastic Schools,’ Neophilologus, 78.3 (1994), 463–482 (p. 464). Colloquia e Libro De Raris Fabulis Retractata is edited by W.H. Stevenson in Early Scholastic Colloquies (Oxford, 1929), pp. 21–26. See also David W. Porter, ‘Anglo-Saxon Colloquies: Ælfric, Ælfric Bata and De Raris Fabulis Retractata,’ Neophilologus, 81 (1997), 467–480 (pp. 467–470). Ælfric Bata’s text, Porter notes, integrates the ‘random scenes’ of the Retractata into ‘a coherent dramatic representation of human characters in monastic settings.’ ‘Anglo-Saxon Colloquies,’ p. 471.

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Debating with Demons Bata’s Colloquia, written in the early eleventh century and preserved in MS Oxford, St. John’s College 154, provide a very strong contrast to Ælfric’s text, representing the rivalries, arguments, name-calling, and general disorder of life in the monastic school.94 The boys in Ælfric Bata’s Colloquies certainly spend their time disputing, but not in the mutually enriching way that seeks to pursue truth. In comparison to his teacher’s moralistic and orderly colloquy, Ælfric Bata’s dialogues, written by a self-described brevissimus monachus (‘very short monk’), demonstrate a love for ‘humor delighting in the bizarre and fantastic.’95 David W. Porter comments on the ‘carnivalesque spirit’ and ‘spirit of play’ in these texts, as ‘students [play] the role of teacher.’96 Under the leadership of their master in the monastic school, the boys in Ælfric Bata’s account seem to spend significant time on their own, misbehaving frequently and negotiating conflicts with other boys. This, if accurate, Jones notes, would have been a ‘grotesque of the reformed ideal,’ contrary to the Rule and the Regularis Concordia.97 Bata’s text, if taken at face value, indicates a serious ‘disregard of custody’ regulations as well as stipulations about eating and drinking. Furthermore, Ælfric Bata’s accounts of violent ‘punishment,’ Jones adds, are extreme; in practice, these were limited to a few monasteries, such as Fleury.98 The boys’ recitations do, however, provide an account of spirituo-material life in a monastery, describing its daily routine: waking up in the morning and getting dressed (Colloquy 1), washing (Colloquy 2), going to church to sing the psalms (Colloquy 5), learning the days of the week and the ordinal numbers (Colloquy 22), listing vegetables (Colloquy 25), describing types of clothing (Colloquy 26), and other such routine tasks. Another interesting aspect of these colloquies, however, is their representation of teaching and learning and the association of those activities with truth and lies. Many of these colloquies abound with accusations of falsehood and assertions of truthfulness. Meditations on these subjects are embedded within schoolboy squabbles and everyday problems, such as the trauma of losing one’s book in Colloquy 3. In fear of being beaten, the book’s owner implores his peers to share their books with him.99 The loss of this book, however, leads another boy to accuse the first of being 94

95 96 97 98 99

On the manuscript context of Ælfric Bata’s Colloquies, see Anglo-Saxon Conversations, ed. Gwara, p. 1. Dumitrescu’s caution about accepting these accounts as realistic contrasts with Porter’s view; Jones comments on the difficulty of knowing ‘where the jokes end and trustworthy details begin.’ Dumitrescu, The Experience of Education, p. 60; Porter, ‘The Latin Syllabus,’ pp. 465–466; and Jones, ‘The Irregular Life,’ p. 241. Anglo-Saxon Conversations, p. 1. Porter, ‘The Latin Syllabus,’ pp. 479–480. Jones, ‘The Irregular Life,’ pp. 248, 243–244. Ibid., pp. 244, 246. On the role of violence in the Benedictine Rule, see Parsons, Punishment and Medieval Education, pp. 31–32. Anglo-Saxon Conversations, pp. 82–83.

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Perils of Pedagogy in the Monastic School an irresponsible student who cares nothing for learning: Certe nolo tibi commodare meum librum, nec curo si habeas uel non habeas tuum … nec uis nobiscum legere, nec sponte discere (‘I certainly won’t lend you my book, nor do I care whether you have yours or not … You don’t want to read with us, nor are you willing to learn’).100 Because of the first boy’s idiocy and falsehood, the second boy says, the master beats them all daily. Dico tibi, he says, quia mentiris. Et omnes nos idipsum possumus dicere contra te, eo quod mendax es, et semper mentiri uis quotiens of tuum aperis (‘you’re lying, I tell you. We can all say that very thing against you – that you’re a liar and that you’ll lie as often as you open your mouth’).101 This boy represents himself as an authoritative truth-teller, calling the other boys to witness: ipsi cuncti bene sciunt, quia ueridicus sum et quod in te non mentior omnino (‘everyone knows very well that I tell the truth and that I’m not lying at all about you’).102 Such passages, although seemingly intended to teach grammatical constructions such as superlatives, genitive plurals, and so on, also inscribe within each boy’s daily experience not just the many obstacles to learning but also the potential for deception within the monastery walls. Even seemingly minor disputes grow into significant arguments about truth and lies. The stakes here are high, since, though many seem to care little for learning, these boys are meant to become teachers themselves. In Colloquy 4, one boy implores his classmates to study their books well et aliquid intellegere in illis, ut alios rursum queatis et docere et morigerari (‘and understand something in them, in order to teach others again and be upright’).103 In the performance of the colloquy, however, such ideals are seemingly more often violated than upheld. In Colloquy 14, another boy is accused of being garrulous and gluttonous, indulging the demands of the body in ways that deny its integration with the soul, detracting from the learning of himself and others: neque discis, neque doces, et tamen omni die uis manducare et bibere nil agendo, quod ad utilitatem anime tue uel corpori[s] tui pertinet (‘you don’t learn or teach, and yet every day you want to eat and drink, doing nothing useful for the good of your mind or body’).104 Care for both the material and immaterial aspects of the self are indicated here, as is the material basis of learning itself, when the accused boy responds: Bene scio, quod non canto, nec lego, neque scribo, nec disco, neque doceo. Non habeo librum ad cantandum in eo neque ad legendum. Non habeo tabulam neque graphium neque artauum nec cultellum … Nullus artifex sine instrumentis bene potest operari (‘I know very well that I don’t sing, read, write, learn or 100 101 102 103 104

Ibid., pp. 82–84. Ibid., pp. 84–85. Ibid., pp. 84–85. Ibid., pp. 86–87. Ibid., pp. 112–113.

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Debating with Demons teach. I have no book for singing or reading. As for writing, I don’t have a wax tablet or a stylus or a penknife or a knife … No craftsman can work well without tools!’).105 Each boy is expected to be reader, writer, singer, pupil, and teacher in one, an artifex in the cræft of knowledge-making. But without equipment, the essential material objects with which learning is practiced, such knowledge cannot be developed. And the boys are meant to learn spiritual, intellectual, and material arts simultaneously. All students are called in Colloquy 15 to aliis docete quicquid boni scitis (‘teach whatever good thing you know to others’), and to discite semper (‘learn always’), because immo beatiores, qui sponte discunt, meditantur et docent et quę bona scrutantur custodiunt per gratiam Dei (‘truly, more blessed are those who willingly learn, study, and teach and who by the grace of God keep the fruit of their learning’).106 But learning is difficult, as Colloquies 16 and 17 emphasize, and one must first study grammar, helped by one’s ‘tools,’ to understand, learn, or teach doctrine and sacred mysteries.107 Teaching, even when it is responsibly conveyed, can also be rejected or ignored by recalcitrant students. Colloquy 25 includes a dispute among pupils, one of whom is accused of laziness and discord. He refuses to correct his behavior, rejecting the lessons of his fellow pupils and his master: nullatenus curo de tua edificatione (‘I don’t care a bit for your teaching’). His master responds with scolding, blaming him for not taking advantage of instruction: qualis magister docuit tibi tam insipienter loqui? Numquam ego te sic docui fari, nec nullus ex doctoribus nostris. Aut ubi fuisti doctus, ut tam magnus ebes esses? Non fuisti, ut estimo, in hoc monasterio instructus neque inbutus (‘what kind of teacher, taught you to speak so stupidly? I never taught you to speak like that, nor did any of our teachers. Where were you taught that you’re such a great dullard? I think you weren’t taught or instructed in this monastery’).108 So inadequate are the boy’s skills that the master wishes to disavow him entirely. Such ineptitude poses a very real danger: in failing to follow the teaching he receives, this dull boy might mislead others. In his warning, the master cites numerous passages from scripture emphasizing the need to pursue learning over material things such as gold, to humbly accept teaching rather than pridefully rejecting it.109 In speaking the parts of these personae, the boys in the schoolroom articulate not just their Latin grammar but also their own instabilities and failures as well as those of their masters.

105 106 107 108 109

Ibid., pp. 112–113. Ibid., pp. 116–117. Ibid., pp. 116–119. Ibid., pp. 142–143. Ibid., pp. 146–147.

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Perils of Pedagogy in the Monastic School Even more significant is Ælfric Bata’s emphasis on demonic behavior which, in the context of monastic life, is usually associated with discord, sloth, gossip, or other ways of causing disorder within the community. Colloquy 25 includes several demonic references, as a student accuses another of being lazy and worthless: quid cogitas, diabole et non homo? Filius es diaboli et non Dei … (‘what are you thinking about, you devil rather than a man? You’re a son of the devil and not of God …’). These accusations seemingly result from the ‘demonic’ pupil’s disruptive conduct: semper discordiam facis inter fratres nostros, et semen malum seminas inter socios tuos et inter nostros collegas (‘you’re always making trouble between our brothers; you sow bad seed between your fellows and our classmates’). Such activities are represented as the opera (‘works’) of the devil which oppose the monastic opus Dei, the work of God. When one student accuses another of idleness and unwillingness to study, his critique devolves quickly into scatological abuse with demonic associations: Vnus stercus es … Vnus diabulus es, et doemoniorum opera semper sequeris et exerces (‘you’re a turd! You’re a devil! You always follow and practice the works of demons’).110 Though this invective is cloaked within youthful name-calling, that the accused boy is said to not only imitate and obey demons but also implement their ‘works,’ demonstrates the unusual level of danger in such disorderly behavior. The boy accused of these discordant actions and poor judgment is also said to be a pupil of the devil. Satan, the boy’s accuser says, ‘teaches’ him to behave badly and argue with his fellows: numquam scis cessare a tuis actibus malis et a diabolicis operibus, quae ille tibi die noctuque male exortando docet. Scriptura namque dicit, ‘filius discordiae, filius diaboli’ (‘you never know when to stop your bad actions or the works the devil teaches you by encouraging you day and night. For scripture says: “The son of wrangling is the son of the devil”’).111 This accused boy, the semen demonis (‘seed of a demon’), is also blamed for misleading others. Learning from the devil compels him to corrupt his fellow students, who would otherwise live in peace: in malum hortando semper peruerse trahis et inuidiose in peruersa opera inuitas. Nullus enim doemon peior quam filius discordie uel susurro inter concordes et pacificos (‘you lead them into bad behavior and deceitfully invite them toward twisted deeds. No demon is worse than a son of discord or a murmurer among harmonious and peaceful people’).112 The boy’s diabol-

110

111 112

Ibid., pp. 136–139. This recognition of a demon among the pupils devolves eventually into multi-species scatological abuse: Tu sochors! Tu scibalum hedi! Tu scibalum ouis! Tu scibalum equi! Tu fimus bouis! Tu stercus porci! Tu hominis stercus! (‘You idiot! You goat shit! Sheep shit! Horse shit! You cow dung! You pig turd! You human turd!’). Ibid., pp. 136–137, 139. Ibid., pp. 138–139.

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Debating with Demons ical tendencies here seem to include persuasiveness and apparent success in ‘leading’ other boys, abilities frequently associated with the verbal arts of rhetoric and dialectic. Such demonic behavior also extends to dishonesty and the misuse of monastic property. When the master accuses some boys of stealing apples from the orchard in Colloquy 28, another pupil turns them in, earning demonic insults from his peers: mentiris … et falsum faris contra nos … filiole diaboli! Quis docet te sic fallaciter fari, nisi diabolus malignus? … nihil enim aliud es, nisi unus diabolus inter tuos socios (‘you’re lying and accusing us falsely … you devil’s brat. Who teaches you to speak falsely like this, if not the evil devil? … Among your classmates you’re nothing but a devil’).113 In this case, the reported demonic behavior involves deception, leading to a discussion of the pupil’s attempt to conceal evil and the lies he allegedly tells to prevent the truth from becoming known. In such cases, the truth becomes even more difficult to discern. Deception, however, can go both ways, and accusers can be lying hypocrites who serve the devil themselves. Later in the same colloquy, the accused boy laments his terrible lot, his loneliness and the pain inflicted by his fellows. It is the other boys, he says, who are deceivers: non quiescunt false testimonia contra me preparare et dicere. Loquuntur mihi in dolo uerbis pacficis et nequitiam occultant suam blandis sermonibus. Alius ore promunt, aliud corde uolutant (id est cogitant) (‘they never rest from concocting false testimony against me. As a ruse, they speak to me kindly, hiding their ill will with gentle words. Promising one thing with their mouths, they think something else in their hearts’).114 Bleeding and suffering, the boy begs for death, crying out in despair at this demonic deception from his fellow pupils. Accused of lying himself, he insists instead that he is the innocent victim of others’ misdeeds. Whether or not he is speaking truthfully, his accusers’ easy recourse to accusations of demonic behavior indicate its ubiquity as an underlying preoccupation of life in the monastery. If his accusers are lying about his guilt, however, and are actually guilty themselves, the dangers of demonic deception are doubled, since the accusers speak falsely in claiming that others tell falsehoods. The staging of such layered potential deceptions, through the boys’ recitation of the colloquy, becomes part of everyday monastic life, an element of the boys’ essential grammatical education. Colloquy 28 resolves this difficult episode by concluding with moral instruction from the master, who urges the boys to be Christ-like in their thoughts and conduct. The remedy for his suffering, the accused boy is told, is to cultivate harmony of soul, mind, and body: repelle a corde tuo

113 114

Ibid., pp. 164–165. Ibid., pp. 166, 168–169.

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Perils of Pedagogy in the Monastic School dolorem. Vince animi angustiam. Supera mentis dolorem. Cur tantum diffidis animo? (‘cast pain out of your heart. Overcome the anxiety of your soul and conquer the pain of your mind. Why do you lose faith in your spirit?’).115 Such harmony of the material and immaterial aspects of the person can assist the boy in fighting his impulse to lie, expressing repentance, and seeking forgiveness and mercy. In the exhortation that follows in Colloquy 29, the master implores the boys to attend to the needs of their souls, instructing them in the discipline of sollicitudo: Agnoscite et intelligite, quia non ideo christiani facti estis, ut de ista tantum modo uita solliciti sitis (‘You should strive to know and understand with total concentration of mind how and why you were made Christians’).116 To dwell in peace with one another, the boys must know where they stand, find their ‘place,’ and concentrate fully on what they learn. The only way to live without fear, the master teaches, is to develop the ideal qualities exemplified by Christ. If the boys cultivate virtue, they will be safe from demons: ille gladium ueniferum diaboli nullo modo pertimescit, qui taliter uiuit in christianitate sua (‘such a one who lives this way in Christian life in no wise fears the poisonous sword of the devil’).117 Living ‘like a Christian’ in this sense, as the master tells them, means shunning discord and behaving decorously. The master condemns a Christian who aut causas dicit et loquitur, aut lites uel rixas concitat (‘either makes accusations or stirs up quarrels and arguments’), and who drinks to excess so as surgit uelut freneticus et insanus bellare et diabolico more saltare, uerba turpia uel luxuriosa cantare (‘to get up fighting like an insane madman, jumping like a devil and singing shameful lecherous words’). Demons are here associated with all disorderly behavior, including bodily excess, quarreling about trivial matters, and teaching others how to indulge in such vices. The only way to avoid such teachers, the master says, is to follow the example of Christ, qui cunctis bona docet et ammonet (‘who teaches good and admonishes all’).118 The master’s positive instruction in following the path of virtue is continued in Ælfric Bata’s additional collection of more challenging colloquies, the Colloquia Difficiliora. In the fourth text of this collection, the master urges the boys to behave well, avoid idle jokes and speech, obey their master, and learn diligently, rejecting the devil’s teaching: floccipendite strophosum uitiorum incentorem, et ne floccipendatis commode uestri fornifori (‘hold the scheming instigator of your sins in small esteem, but don’t consider the

115 116 117 118

Ibid., pp. 170–171. Ibid., pp. 172–173. On sollicitudo as essential to monastic practice, see Carruthers, The Craft of Thought, pp. 99–100, 110–111. Ælfric Bata, Colloquies, pp. 172–173. Ibid., pp. 174–175.

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Debating with Demons good lessons of your teacher so!’).119 The boys are like bees spreading good news, the master says in Colloquia Difficiliora 7, and the school is their hive. Survival and salvation require stability, finding their place in order to learn: disce sollicite, ora frequenter, ambula reuerenter, ama Deum inhianter (‘learn carefully, pray often, walk reverently, love God diligently!’).120 In response, the pupils focus on the master’s teaching rather than their own internal interactions and conflicts, seeking a higher way. They beg the master for more of his instruction: instrue nos, corrige nos, aedifica nos. Tecum est ampla scientia et gnarus intellectus et prompta industria (‘teach us, correct us, improve us. You have great knowledge, astute intelligence, and ready discipline’). This knowledge is described in material terms familiar in the tradition of the lectio divina. The boys’ souls, they say, need to be fed: optamus quidem gustare de pane tuo et de ferculis plenę mensae tuę (‘we seek to taste of your bread and of the dishes of your laden table’).121 This meal also associates monastic learning with the Eucharist, in which Christ feeds and becomes one with all who receive him. Feeding on divine wisdom and living an orderly life, the master teaches, provide one with the weapons to defeat the devil and reject his instruction. Colloquia Difficilora 9, which celebrates the coming of spring, anticipates the victories of Easter and gains from them the strength to drive away demonic enemies. The speaker calls on typological symbols of Christ to oppose the devil’s servants: O aduersę partes diabolicę sodalitatis, si hic alicubi estis, ecce, uidetis in me Domini crucem. Fugite, ‘uicit,’ et ligauit uos in inferno, ‘leo de tribu Iuda et radix Dauid’ (‘O you opposing factions of the devil’s brotherhood, if you are here anywhere, look! You see the cross of the Lord in me. Flee! A lion of the tribe of Judah and the root of David have overcome you and bound you in hell’).122 In the monastery, to learn is to fight, to defend oneself against enemies who are hidden, sometimes in plain sight. Though the cloister is populated with many ‘sons of the devil,’ in the armarium (‘bookcases’) of the monastic library, reseruantur uranicae gaze (‘celestial treasures are stored’). To discover these treasures and learn their mysteries is also to eat. Nourishment is to be found in sacred books, eternal food that never decays: ibi quidem sunt preceptores et rabbites et sophistę. Ibi namque manna indeficiens manet. Ibi quippe disciplina est in cęlo semper permanens, quae iugiter uiret et pullulat (‘indeed, teachers, masters, and learned men are there. Manna which never fails is there. Yes, there is

119 120 121

122

Ibid., pp. 184–185. Ibid., pp. 186–187. Ibid., pp. 188–189. The motif of feasting on scripture is taken from Ezekiel 3:3 and Revelation 10:8–11, also appearing in the Old English Solomon and Saturn dialogues. See Jonathan Wilcox, ‘Eating Books: The Consumption of Learning in the Old English Poetic Solomon and Saturn,’ ANQ, 4.3 (1991), 115–118. Ælfric Bata, Colloquies, pp. 190–191.

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Perils of Pedagogy in the Monastic School learning which lasts forever in heaven, learning that is always fresh and fertile’).123 In this colloquy, learning is food sent from God, which reproduces itself as it is eaten and never runs out. This food grows in plenitude wherever it is sown, opposing the dark, discordant teachings of the devil. Taken together, the Æthelwoldian poems and the colloquia of Ælfric and Ælfric Bata convey important lessons beyond their ostensible emphasis on poetics and grammar. These texts encourage pupils to be alert to the demonic implications of incompetence and willful ignorance in both masters and students. Encouraged to emulate the example of Christ, the boys are further taught that discord, quarreling, and lying are works of the devil. Finally, the boys learn that such demonic works, though condemned, surround them at all times. In the sacred place of the monastery, where the boys learn the discipline of the body, strengthen the spirit, and cultivate the intellectual development of the mind, they must also find the counter-arguments to oppose the demonic teachers in their midst.

Conclusion In the Æthelwoldian poems and the colloquies, a genealogy of monastic teachers – Æthelwold, Ælfric, and Ælfric Bata – provides, if not an accurate portrait of monastic life, a set of compelling narratives about the ontological stakes of teaching, the dangers of false teaching, and the ubiquity of demonic behavior within the monastery itself. In comparison to the world outside the cloister, the monastery was engaged in managing ontology and teaching both monastics and lay people what they needed to know to protect their very being, to gain a home in heaven rather than in hell. Through the spirituo-material art of pedagogy, people gained the epistemological benefits that would allow them to survive ontologically. But falsehood lurked at every turn, whether because of laziness, ego, corruption, or diverse other causes. A monastic magister could easily be a demon in disguise, as could a student. This danger necessitates the cultivation of discretio and humility, the virtues that would help one to discern truth and reject falsehood. While the monastery is a sacred place where the service of God is practiced, the monastic topos is also a place wherein demons can dwell, threatening the opus Dei itself, both in prayer and in learning. The altercatio poems and the colloquies encourage a view of the monastery as not only a ‘real’ place, a home for real people in many communities in pre-conquest England, but also a topos in which arguments, both true and false, can be found and deployed to challenge the very premises at the heart of monas-

123

Ibid., pp. 190–191, 192–193.

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Debating with Demons tic life. Misunderstanding the significance of such a topos can be a costly error, as first discovered by Lucifer and his fallen angels. Approaching spiritually significant places through their desire for territory, Lucifer and his companions attempted to govern realms that could only be ruled by the creator, considering places within these realms as divisible and possessable by lesser beings. The demons’ fundamental misunderstanding of the ontology of such places, an irreversible epistemological error, contributes to the danger of their teachings. The challenges faced by monastic teachers and pupils constantly re-enact the origins of primal pedagogy: the debates of Eve and Adam with the serpent in the garden of Eden. But these are preceded and precipitated by a prior Fall, the expulsion of Lucifer and his angelic followers from heaven, vividly recounted in the poems of the Junius 11 manuscript. In these accounts, the angel of light teaches his companions through false narratives that lead them into damnation. To examine the dynamic interaction of voice, body, and place in this onto-epistemological transformation, the following chapter turns to early English accounts of the origins of Satan and his demons in Christ and Satan and the Old English Genesis poems.

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PART II THE DEMONIC MAGISTER IN EARLY ENGLISH POETRY

4 The Origin of the Teaching Demon: Lucifer as Magister

While monastic school-texts used in the study of the liberal arts articulate anxieties about demonic teaching in the monastery, Old English verse demonstrates how demonic pedagogy is deployed in poetic dialogue. This chapter opens Part II, which concentrates on representations of demonic teachers in early English poems about the Fall of the Angels, the Fall of Adam and Eve, and the lives of the saints. By examining the origin story of Satan and his demons, Christ and Satan and the Old English Genesis poems, preserved in Bodleian Library, MS Junius 11,1 explore the spirituo-material and onto-epistemological nature of demonic teaching in early English poetry as well as the implications of such teaching for the material transformation of both bodies and places. Such transformation first occurs in hell, to which the fallen angels and their magister, Lucifer, are condemned. In poetic scenes of pedagogy, like those in Christ and Satan and Genesis, demonic teachers practice not formal rhetoric and dialectic but an informal logic more appropriate for everyday interaction and,2 in particular, for the manipulation of the geong, unlearned, and unsuspecting. Poetic demons pose implicit questions to their pupils, using narrative arguments to teach false accounts of spirituo-material realities. When the demons’

1

2

On the cohesion of Junius 11, see Barbara Raw, ‘The Construction of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 11,’ in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: Basic Readings, ed. Mary P. Richards (New York, 1994), pp. 251–273 (p. 273); and J.R. Hall, ‘The Old English Epic of Redemption: The Theological Unity of MS Junius 11,’ Traditio, 32 (1976), 185–208, repr. The Poems of Junius 11: Basic Readings, ed. Richards, pp. 20–41 (pp. 21, 26). For a contrasting viewpoint on the inclusion of Christ and Satan in the manuscript, see P.J. Lucas, ‘On the Incomplete Ending of Daniel and the Addition of Christ and Satan to MS Junius 11,’ Anglia, 97 (1979), 46–59 (p. 52). See also Catherine E. Karkov, Text and Picture in Anglo-Saxon England, p. 19, and Jill M. Fitzgerald, ‘Measuring Hell by Hand: Rogation Rituals in Christ and Satan,’ Review of English Studies, 68 (2016), 1–22 (pp. 1–3). Thomas A. Bredehoft and Daniel Anlezark suggest that Christ and Satan was added to the manuscript later than Genesis; see Bredehoft, Authors, Audiences, and Old English Verse (Toronto, 2009), p. 142 and Anlezark, ‘Old English Biblical and Devotional Poetry,’ in A Companion to Medieval Poetry, ed. Corinne Saunders (Malden, 2010), pp. 101–124 (p. 117). Groarke, ‘Informal Logic.’

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Debating with Demons pupils accept these accounts, their ontology is altered through epistemic means, and they suffer through transformations that are at once spiritual, intellectual, and physical. Such transformative pedagogical encounters can be approached through a few simple questions: in a given text, what story is the demon telling, and how do his human listeners respond? Do the listeners accept the demon’s authority? If so, what do they think they know as a result of his teaching? What implicit question has been posed – that is, what has been placed in doubt? What demonic arguments foster those doubts? And how do the demons’ pupils respond to those arguments, as embodied and integrated creatures, both mortal and immortal, spirit fused with matter? These questions emerge within the broader context of Old English literature, in which demon-teachers perform diverse roles. The first demonic tales are told by Satan himself, whose magisterial status is explored in the Fall of the Angels narratives in Christ and Satan and Genesis,3 as Satan misleads his demons and then teaches them to deploy their own skills as pedagogues. Eve testifies to the persuasive force of demonic instruction during the Harrowing of Hell narrative from Christ and Satan, in which she describes the serpent in Eden as a ‘teacher’ who manipulates her and Adam with verbal skill, here elucidated as an informal logic that grows out of the more formal disciplines of the verbal arts. Satan persuades all of his pupils – his angelic followers, Eve, and Adam – to teach deceit in their turn, demonstrating the devastating and ongoing onto-epistemological effects of such embodied and emplaced pedagogy.

Demons in Old English literature In Old English poetic dialogues, demons strategically approach their ‘pupils’ in particular topoi or loci, places in which efficacious arguments can be found and deployed. Demons argue within these places, from Eden to the saint’s prison, to manipulate their pupils and sophistically pursue self-interested goals with ontological implications for the demons’ enemies, both supernatural and human. When demonic narratives are countered by the competing stories of their ‘pupils,’ however, their inter3

The Fall of the Angels is fundamentally linked to the Fall of Adam and Eve in the exegesis of Joannes Scottus Eriugena; see Susan Burchmore, ‘Traditional Exegesis and the Condition of Guilt in the Old English “Genesis B”,’ Traditio, 41 (1985), 117–144 (p. 139). As such, the angels’ fall is fundamental to the transformations addressed in Genesis B, an account of the Fall inserted into Genesis A from lines 235–851. Later in the manuscript, Christ and Satan combines accounts of the Fall of the Angels, the Temptation, and the Harrowing of Hell. The incorporation of these poems into the same manuscript was seemingly intentional, though their sources differ.

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The Origin of the Teaching Demon action becomes a narrative dispute over place, a process both enacted by and affecting the voice and the body. Significant places within these stories – heaven, hell, Eden, Calvary, saints’ shrines – are produced through this voiced, narrative process of pedagogy and the resistance it engenders, fundamentally altering the ontological status of the ensouled bodies occupying those places, whether human, non-human, or demonic. By narrating the origin of hell, the Junius 11 poems contribute to a narrative tradition of the Fall of the Angels tracing back to the Hebrew scriptures. References to the ‘giants’ and ‘sons of God’ in Genesis 6:1–4 are often associated with the Fall of the Angels, a tale dating to Jewish accounts in the centuries before the birth of Christ. In Jewish apocrypha, ‘these figures [of the fallen angels] constitute the persons to whom the ideas about the origin and nature of evil are traced.’4 These personae are vividly and elaborately developed in later Christian accounts. As Christoph Auffarth and Loren Stuckenbruck have noted, ‘“the fall of the angels” … was a flexible and versatile tradition,’ representing ‘the world [as] a place where a battle rages between good and evil’ and articulating a ‘solution … for the problem of evil,’ which is ‘attributed to rebellious angels.’ This tradition exonerates both God and humanity from the crime of initiating evil, also providing angelic defenders, interlocutors, and messengers such as Michael and Gabriel.5 The tradition is also flexible and malleable, adapted in every age according to diverse cultural norms and practices. In early English literature, Lucifer and his angels are frequently represented as a lord and his thanes, all damned by both the lord’s ofermod (‘arrogance’) and the misplaced loyalties of his warriors. After their fall, Satan becomes the feond, ‘enemy,’ of humankind, opposing God’s will and teaching his demons to do the same. Constructing distinctive accounts of the Fall of the Angels and the Fall of Adam and Eve, the Junius 11 poems reside at the center of a vibrant, unique literary tradition of demonology in early English literature and culture. The devil’s ontological significance has been addressed in what has become a standard survey of demonology during this period, Peter Dendle’s Satan Unbound: The Devil in Old English Narrative Literature. Dendle provides a broad account of the many roles played by the devil in Old English texts, describing ‘the devil [as] … an ontological symbol: his primary purpose is to challenge the saints in an ongoing debate that questions and strives to legitimize the justice of God’s rule by force.’6

4

5 6

Islamic sources also contribute to medieval European understandings of the angels’ fall. Christoph Auffarth and Loren T. Stuckenbruck, ‘Introduction,’ in The Fall of the Angels, ed. Christoph Auffarth and Loren T. Stuckenbruck (Leiden, 2004), pp. 1–10 (pp. 3, 5–6). Ibid., pp. 1–2. Peter Dendle, Satan Unbound: The Devil in Old English Narrative Literature

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Debating with Demons This statement, perhaps appropriate for some hagiographical texts, does not wholly account for Satan’s role in the Fall, which seems to go well beyond the symbolic in prose and verse accounts of Genesis and in other narratives as well. Dendle’s study emphasizes the multivalence of the devil’s representation in early English literature. Dendle supplies detailed close readings of diverse literary scenes, emphasizing the devil’s ‘fluidity,’ ‘elasticity,’ and ‘evolution’ as ‘a matrix of uncertainties and ambiguities.’7 In Old English texts, Satan is a ‘tempter,’ ‘saint-maker,’ ‘observer,’ and shapeshifter, simultaneously participating in human history and bound to hell, attacking both helpless victims and formidable saints such as Guthlac.8 Overall, Dendle notes, as ‘soldier, scop, trapper, farmer, knot-maker, bird, whale, and wolf, the forms of the devil permeate every region of the social and natural spheres.’9 The role of devils and demons as teachers is not addressed in Dendle’s study, although he does examine the incidence of the phrase deofles lare (‘devil’s lore’) in an appendix.10 Debating with Demons, therefore, especially in this second part, expands on the devil-as-magister motif in early English literature, moving from Jager’s emphasis on patristic exegesis to examine the specific spirituo-material and onto-epistemological functions of demonic teachers within narrative pedagogical encounters. Understanding the narrative function of demons requires engaging with texts on the literal and material as well as allegorical and symbolic levels. The ‘clean stylized devil’ of Old English poetry, according to Dendle’s more recent study, Demon Possession in Anglo-Saxon England, contrasts with ‘demons as disease agents’ or the ‘demons of the body’ in early medieval medicine.11 But poetic devils, one could argue, are not so ‘clean’ or ‘stylized’ after all. Nor are they fully distinct from the ‘real’ devils that plagued the material body. And since, as Dendle acknowledges, ‘demons were … believed to be real – often tangible’ yet indistinguishable from their function as ‘metaphor or abstract principle,’12 their representation is essential for understanding medieval ideas about pedagogy in its ‘real’ and material context. Indeed, Dendle notes, demons are often distinguished by ‘their obstinate physicality … Just as a demon could take physical form as a monster or animal, so too could it physically occupy a location.’13

7 8 9 10 11 12 13

(Toronto, 2001), p. 3. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid., pp. 19, 45, 57, 95, 104. Ibid., p. 115. Ibid., p. 123. Peter Dendle, Demonic Possession in Anglo-Saxon England (Kalamazoo, 2014), pp. xiii, xv. Ibid., p. 14. Ibid., p. 18. The ability of the devil to manipulate materiality through shapeshift-

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The Origin of the Teaching Demon Demons are therefore implicated in physical and spatial experience, the line between the spiritual and the material always indistinguishable. And, as Dendle abundantly demonstrates, demons were thought to affect the body and spirit simultaneously, enacting material change that could potentially transform the ontological status of human beings. The materiality of demons poses a special challenge for interpreting their significance in literature. For readers of literary texts, restoring the connection of materiality and spirituality with language and mind requires attention to literal references – people, things, places – as themselves, not exclusively as metaphorical or allegorical references to higher meanings. Lees has asserted the need to ‘[relocate] the literal within the spiritual,’ recognizing that ‘[metaphors] of incorporation,’ such as the idea of the Church as Christ’s body, actually ‘[are] no mere [metaphors]’ but indeed realities. If ‘the world of the spirit redefines that of the letter,’14 the letter, like the material world to which it often refers, remains a fundamental and necessary part of that reality. And matter, such as the earth from which Adam was made, is recognized in the early Middle Ages as wondrous and noble, part of divine creation, bearing significance always beyond the metaphorical. The hyper-allegorization and devaluation of the material in patristic theology has been thoroughly examined in the earlier scholarship on which this book builds, notably Jager’s The Tempter’s Voice (1993). Jager’s study addresses the tendency of writers such as Ambrose and Augustine to allegorize all texts, including scripture, even ‘transforming the Fall into the genesis of hermeneutics.’15 In other words, the Genesis story is turned to the purpose of interpretation, its material implications – illness, injury, death, and other realities of lived human experience – often de-­ emphasized as they are textualized. Such metaphorical readings, Jager notes, frequently fall into ‘problematic’ reasoning: ‘Scripture is said to recount a Fall, which in turn is held to explain the need for scripture … allegorical methods are used to explicate the hidden meaning of the Fall,

14 15

ing and other methods is discussed in Jeffrey Burton Russell’s three-volume study: Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity (Cornell, 1977); Satan: The Early Christian Tradition (Cornell, 1981); and Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages (Cornell, 1984). Russell traces the development of the devil in classical and early Hebrew texts through the Christian Testament, the early Church Fathers, the Alexandrians, and Augustine, as well as in Byzantine and Islamic texts and early medieval literature, drama, and witchcraft. Like Dendle, Russell pays minimal attention to the devil as a teacher. Elaine Pagels, in turn, surveys the representation of the devil in the canonical and gnostic gospels, addressing the devil’s ‘social history’ and his role as an enemy and adversary, but not as a teacher. See The Origin of Satan (New York, 1995), pp. xxii–xxiii. Lees, ‘Didacticism and the Christian Community,’ p. 252. Jager, The Tempter’s Voice, p. 82. On his discussion of Eden as ‘the Devil’s school,’ see p. 44.

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Debating with Demons which again is used to explain the need for allegory.’16 These methods find their source in Paul’s distinction between the ‘letter’ and ‘spirit’ of scripture (2 Corinthians 3:6), a formulation inherited from Roman law and frequently deployed in late antiquity and the Middle Ages to support anti-Judaic and misogynistic interpretations of biblical texts.17 However, as Forbes, following Lockett, has claimed, early English theology was not identical to ‘patristic’ theology, which could be fairly remote from the lived experience of the faithful.18 The hypertextual emphasis of patristic literature is both replicated in and countered by Old English vernacular literary texts. In Jager’s view, medieval ‘vernacular literature … did not just borrow but also challenged and sometimes even subverted … [the] basic terms and assumptions’ of patristic hermeneutics. And Old English literature, the first vernacular literary tradition to arise after the fall of Rome,19 reintegrated the letter and spirit, literal and figurative meaning. While both levels of meaning are necessary, to over-privilege figurative meaning is to ignore the force and necessity of the literal. Allegorical meanings are only made accessible and comprehensible through the power of the literal narrative – the story, its people, bodies, places, objects, and relationships – linking the ‘higher’ meanings of the tale fundamentally with materiality and embodied, emplaced experience. Old English vernacular literature represents the Fall as both spiritual and material, lived reality as well as text, in which knowledge and being are inextricably intertwined. This integration counters the patristic narrative which would transform the Fall into a text, when most medieval Christians would have experienced the Fall and its purported consequences as flesh-and-blood realities. The story of Fall and redemption, like all aspects of religion, was experienced as both literal and figurative, real-life ‘presence’ as well as ‘representation,’ in the words of Jonathan Z. Smith.20 The Fall, according to the story embraced by most medieval Christians, affected real bodies in real places, accounting for the conditions of everyday life, including labor, childbirth, famine, hunger, illness, war, and death. The remedies for these conditions – baptism, marriage, peacemaking, caring for the dead, blessing the harvest, consecrating and receiving the Eucharist – testify to the spirituo-material integration of pre16 17 18

19 20

Ibid., p. 97. Ibid., pp. 63, 71–72, 75–77. Forbes, Heaven and Earth in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 6, 3; and Lockett, AngloSaxon Psychologies, pp. 12–14. Scheck likewise emphasizes the ‘fluidity of Christian ideologies and what we call orthodoxy’ in the early medieval period. See Reform and Resistance, p. 9. Jager, The Tempter’s Voice, pp. 97–98, 145. Jonathan Z. Smith, Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion (Chicago, 2004), p. 363; see also Orsi, History and Presence, pp. 20–21, 38.

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The Origin of the Teaching Demon modern life.21 Such practices must be attended to if medieval materiality, including the embodied pedagogy of demons, is to be explored fully in its historical specificity. Fundamental to demonic pedagogy is the embodied and emplaced methodology demons use for presenting arguments to lure their pupils into sin. Demonic storytellers in early English verse do not work through the formal logic examined in Chapter 2, although the disciplines of rhetoric and dialectic are essential background for understanding the dangerous nature of demons’ verbal skills. Nor do poetic demons argue in ‘officially’ pedagogical contexts, like the monastic schools, although monasteries themselves seem pervaded with the fear that demons ‘teach’ within them. The demons of Old English poetry operate in subtler fashion, deploying their verbal skills through an informal logic that drives the stories they tell, which are frequently accepted by their pupils as authoritative, defining the significance of bodies and places. As a storyteller, a demon can thus become both auctor and magister. In other words, by deploying informal logic, the demon becomes the story’s author and originator, claims authority over the lesson taught through the story, and teaches his or her audience through the tale. Demonic pedagogical narratives incorporate implicit but fundamental questions, precursors to the formal quaestiones and syllogisms of dialectical disputation, about the nature of knowledge and being. In Old English poems, such questions emerge through informal logic such as that deployed in the flit, the verbal combat conventional in Germanic literature and featured in the confrontations of Beowulf and Unferth or Byrhtnoth and his Viking opponents in The Battle of Maldon.22 During a period when dialectic was seemingly not yet mastered or taught in England in a sustained way, literary dialogues and debates, emerging from the intersecting traditions of the poetic flit and the scholarly dispute, represent an important intermediate phase in the development of the formal verbal arts of dialectic and logic. Despite the admitted dangers of associating ‘literary dialogues’ with formal ‘disputation,’23 it is instructive to consider Old English poetic

21 22

23

Orsi argues that this integration persists for many people in twenty-first-century religiosity; see History and Presence, pp. 37–38. On the flit, see Carol J. Clover, ‘The Germanic Context of the Unferth Episode,’ Speculum, 55 (1980), 444–468 (pp. 444–445, 460–466); Ward Parks, Verbal Dueling in Heroic Narrative: The Homeric and Old English Traditions (Princeton, 1990), pp. 68–69, 74–76, and 102–103; and Christina M. Heckman, ‘Dialectic and Dispossession: Demonic Disputatio in the Old English Christ and Satan,’ in Transitional States: Change, Tradition, and Memory in Medieval Literature and Culture, ed. Graham Caie and Michael D.C. Drout (Tempe, 2018), pp. 213–234 (pp. 216–217). Novikoff, The Medieval Culture of Disputation, pp. 18–19.

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Debating with Demons dialogue, often specifically called flit by the poets themselves, as incorporating a kind of informal logic related to dialectic. Arguably the flit, as an indigenous poetic tradition, has more authority in early English culture than the imported art of dialectica. Indeed, some pre-conquest English writers associate these two terms: multiple glosses of Aldhelm’s De laude virginitatis interpret dialectica as flitcræft.24 While Old English poetic dialogues do not proceed according to the rules of formal disputation, their participants do, at least implicitly, pose questions and deploy arguments on matters pertaining to both epistemology and ontology, debating the sorts of knowledge that should be possessed and the consequences of such knowledge for human life and the human condition. ‘Informal logic,’ though it has gained significant attention in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, has actually been studied for millennia. It is grounded primarily in the teaching of ratio to students in response to the common need for ‘actual (“real-life,” “everyday”) arguments,’ with all ‘their native ambiguity, vagueness and incompleteness.’25 Up through the end of the medieval period, this informal logic differentiated ‘logica utens,’ a methodology for ‘everyday reasoning,’ from ‘logica docens,’ ‘a theory of formal proof.’26 In comparison to the formal dialectic and logic of the Categories, the Topics, propositions, syllogisms, and predicables, informal logic emphasizes the comprehension and deployment of ‘arguments as they occur in natural … discourse.’27 Informal logic combines aspects of ‘arguing as a vehicle for persuasion’ in rhetoric with the ‘epistemic merit’ of logic and the ‘exchange between two or more arguers’ in dialectic. In informal logic, ‘premises … may be implicit’ or ‘hidden,’ making frequent use of arguments ‘from authority’ or ‘by example.’ Additionally, informal logic can emphasize knowledge that is produced through the example of a ‘wise person,’ wherein the ‘epistemological criterion’ for argument is ‘the lived reality of someone judicious rather than a fixed formula.’28 In early medieval literature, such a role would be most appropriately filled by Christ or the saints as wise and exemplary figures. Arguments of this period, unsurprisingly, are most often based on the authority of scripture or the Church Fathers. Informal logic has further been associated with narrative, as demonstrated in the parables of Christ, the exempla of preachers, or fables

24 25

26 27 28

S.v. flitcræft, Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, accessed 5 February 2019. Groarke, ‘Informal Logic,’ and Ralph H. Johnson and J. Anthony Blair, The Rise of Informal Logic: Essays on Argumentation, Critical Thinking, Reasoning and Politics, ed. Joan Hoaglund (Newport News, 1996), pp. 3, 52. Lilian Bermejo-Luque, Giving Reasons: A Linguistic-Pragmatic Approach to Argumentation Theory (Dordrecht, 2011), p. 6. Groarke, ‘Informal Logic.’ Ibid.

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The Origin of the Teaching Demon ‘arguing’ through a tale to a formal moral conclusion.29 Walter R. Fisher claims that ‘narrative logic’ is the foundation of ‘human communication,’ which occurs primarily through story. Emerging from the ancient Greek separation of ‘logos and mythos,’ which ‘relegated’ literature ‘to a secondary … status’ in comparison to ‘philosophical … discourse,’ such narrative logic recognizes the capacity of all human beings to develop ratio and to tell stories that integrate implicit arguments. Fisher distinguishes the dialogue, whether literary or interpersonal, from both logic and dialectic, associating dialectic with ‘oppositional juxtaposition of ideas or forces moving toward truth or a perfected state of knowledge or being,’ and logic with ‘a systematic set of concepts, procedures, and criteria for determining the degree of truthfulness or certainty in human discourse.’ Informal logic, especially in the form of dialogue,30 integrates these aspects of rhetoric, dialectic and logic into narrative debate. A combination of informal and narrative logic would seem to be a fitting model for the dialogue and argumentation integrated into early English literary texts.31 Somewhere between the flit and the formal disputation, these literary dialogues depend on ratio of an everyday sort. The pupils taught by demons in such dialogues have little or no formal training in argumentation. They nevertheless demonstrate the ability to reason, to argue, and to use their rational capacities to discern truth. The deployment of these capacities can, on occasion, lead these pupils astray, as in the garden of Eden. Other pupils, however, as exemplary figures of wisdom, use their abilities to expose sophistic deception and to assert the truth, with or without formal training. The quaestiones these wise pupils pose, their arguments, and their underlying premises are often implicit. But attentive reading of literary dialogues can bring these ‘hidden’ arguments to the surface, making important contributions to a broader understanding of the syllogisms and propositions later deployed in the formal verbal arts. Through informal logic, demonic pedagogues make arguments intended to persuade geong and untrained pupils to accept deceptive narratives. Early English poetic texts provide multiple examples of such successful informal argumentation, which eventually leads to the Fall of Adam and Eve and continual demonic assaults on their descendants. Before ‘teaching’ Adam and Eve, however, Lucifer deployed informal logic against his own followers, leading to their expulsion from heaven and eternal punishment in hell. The following section therefore turns 29 30 31

Ibid. Walter R. Fisher, Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action (Columbia, 1987), pp. xi, 5–6, 25–27. Tripp places such dialogues within the larger category of ‘debate’ in ‘The Dialectics of Debate and the Continuity of English Poetry,’ p. 41.

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Debating with Demons to Lucifer’s teaching of his angelic thanes in Christ and Satan and the Genesis poems.

Teaching through narrative: The Fall of the Angels The Fall of the Angels, discussed only briefly in scripture in Christ’s reference to Satan ‘falling like lightning from heaven,’32 was a popular subject for early English poets, who represented Satan as a prideful warrior chieftain leading his comitatus into infernal condemnation.33 In Genesis A, the Fall of the Angels even precedes the Creation, an unusual detail; Adam and Eve are created to replace the fallen angels.34 Stories of this angelic Fall reveal the thorough integration of mind, spirit, and body in the angels, though their embodiment was a matter for debate. While many theologians acknowledged their corporeality, Gregory the Great’s Dialogues insist that the fallen angels are not embodied, also arguing that they could nevertheless be tormented by physical fire.35 The angels of Christ and Satan and the Genesis poems seem to be both embodied and, despite their status as supernatural beings, vulnerable to deception – faulty arguments, false propositions – and inclined to dissent from the creator.36 In the desire to possess territory and authority, Lucifer and his 32

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34

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Luke 10:18; see also 2 Peter 2:4. Patristic authors associated the Fall of the Angels with Isaiah 14:10–15 and Ezekiel 28:1–9; see Neil Forsyth, The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth (Princeton, 1987), pp. 134–135, 139–140. The Fall of the Angels also emerged in Jewish and Christian ‘apocalyptic traditions’ related to Genesis 6:1–4 and Revelation 12. Auffarth and Stuckenbruck, ‘Introduction,’ pp. 1, 3–5. Manish Sharma and Michael Fox emphasize the preference in Germanic warrior culture for the story of the Fall of the Angels. See their ‘Introduction,’ in Old English Literature and the Old Testament, ed. Sharma and Fox (Toronto, 2012), pp. 3–22 (pp. 8–9). The text of the Old English Genesis is taken from The Junius Manuscript, AngloSaxon Poetic Records, vol. 1, ed. George Philip Krapp (New York, 1931), pp. 1–87; here, see lines 92–102. Translations from Old English are my own. See also Forbes, Heaven and Earth in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 70–71. On Augustine’s and Bede’s teaching of the ‘doctrine of replacement,’ see Michelet, Creation, Migration, and Conquest, p. 61; Dorothy Haines, ‘Vacancies in Heaven: The Doctrine of Replacement and Genesis A,’ Notes and Queries, n.s. 44 (1997), 150–154 (p. 153); and Scott Thompson Smith, ‘Faith and Forfeiture in the Old English Genesis A,’ Modern Philology, 114.4 (2014), 593–615 (p. 603). Gregory the Great, Dialogues, tome III, ed. de Vogüé and Antin, IV.30.2; Saint Gregory the Great: Dialogues, trans. Zimmerman, p. 225. See also Lockett, AngloSaxon Psychologies, pp. 205, 298, 385. The relative dates of the Genesis poems and Christ and Satan, relevant for assessing their representations of the fallen angels, are disputed. In the layout of the manuscript, the Genesis poems are integrated with a common set of illuminations. In contrast, Christ and Satan appears later in the manuscript and is formatted differently; see Samantha Zacher, Rewriting the Old Testament

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The Origin of the Teaching Demon followers first deceive themselves, and, once fallen, mislead others, who willfully choose their own destruction. The first Fall, the foundation of Adam and Eve’s subsequent demise, fundamentally alters the rebellious angels’ ontological status, transforming them into demons, and reveals the epistemological means of their downfall: they claim to know, or think they know, things about their own capacities and powers that they actually do not know. In doubting God’s dominion and believing in their own, the demons assent to a false proposition about their own equality to God. They are mistaken, and they pay through their altered being, including bodily changes, and their imprisonment in a horrible place, the confines of hell. Such a place is not necessary until their Fall, which alters the very structure, organization, and ontology of creation. The communion of angels further fractures into perpetual warfare, with newly created humankind trapped in the middle.37 While both Christ and Satan and Genesis present the angels’ Fall as resulting from deceptive narratives, or stories incorporating false arguments that result in devastation, Christ and Satan specifically describes Satan as a deceptive teacher to his unfortunate thanes.38 The fallen angels’ references to hell and heaven emphasize the apparent materiality of both

37

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in Anglo-Saxon Verse: Become the Chosen People (London, 2013), pp. 6–7. Paul G. Remley notes the common claim that Genesis B was inserted ‘to patch up a textual loss incurred by a physical defect in an exemplar of Genesis A;’ Old English Biblical Verse: Studies in Genesis, Exodus, and Daniel (Cambridge, 1996), p. 96. On the Junius illustrations, see Barbara Raw, ‘The Probable Derivation of Most of the Illustrations in Junius 11 from an Illustrated Old Saxon Genesis,’ Anglo-Saxon England, 5 (1976), 133–148 (p. 133). Renée R. Trilling associates Junius 11 with oral performance and a lay audience in The Aesthetics of Nostalgia: Historical Representation in Old English Verse (Toronto, 2009), p. 74. On the Junius poems’ readership, see also Charles D. Wright, ‘Genesis A ad litteram,’ in Old English Literature and the Old Testament, ed. Sharma and Fox, pp. 121–171 (pp. 123–124). The Fall of the Angels resulted in the ‘confirmation’ of those who had not rebelled; see Charles D. Wright, ‘“Fægere þurh forðgesceaft”: The Confirmation of the Angels in Old English Literature,’ Medium Ævum, 86.1 (2017), 22–37 (pp. 23–24). Possible sources for Christ and Satan include the Book of Cerne; the Visio Pauli; Blickling Homily VII; the Vulgate Bible; the Gospel of Nicodemus; Questions of Bartholemew; Aldhelm’s De Laudibus Virginum and De Lucifero; and Origen’s commentary on Matthew. See Fulk and Cain, A History of Old English Literature, p. 118; Charles Sleeth, Studies in ‘Christ and Satan’ (Toronto, 1982), pp. 54–6, 59; Thomas D. Hill, ‘The Measure of Hell: Christ and Satan 695–722,’ Philological Quarterly, 60.3 (1981), 409–15 (p. 411); Robert Emmett Finnegan, ed., Christ and Satan: A Critical Edition (Waterloo, ON, 1977), p. 14; and James H. Morey, ‘Adam and Judas in the Old English Christ and Satan,’ Studies in Philology, 87.4 (1990), 397–409 (p. 397). A lay audience for the manuscript is suggested by Fulk and Cain, A History of Old English Literature, p. 119, and Anlezark, ‘Old English Biblical and Devotional Poetry,’ p. 103. Scholars have disputed the unifying principle of both Genesis and Christ and Satan, but particularly the latter: see

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Debating with Demons places: they have physical characteristics that can be touched, seen, and traveled through. Within the confined and miserable space of hell, the demons’ dispute foregrounds Satan’s misunderstanding of how to relate to materiality.39 He thinks heaven is territory to be possessed rather than a delightful place to share; he further imagines that he can control it. And he teaches this lesson to his demons, as they lament: þu us gelærdæst ðurh lyge ðinne / þæt we helende heran ne scealdon / Ðuhte þe anum þæt ðu ahtest alles gewald (‘you taught us through your lies that we should not follow the Savior … it seemed to you alone that you possessed dominion over all,’ lines 53–55).40 In his self-serving reply, Satan claims that his oferhyd (‘arrogance,’ line 113a) originated in the adulation of his thanes. He would not have misled them if they had not flattered and followed him. In a later passage, Satan reflects on what he taught his fellow angels, embroiling them in an unwinnable dispute over heaven. He discusses the celestial realm as if it were territory that could be possessed or divided by anyone other than God (lines 246b–252a, 254–256a): Ongan ic þa steppan forð ana wið englum, and to him eallum spræc: ‘Ic can eow læran langsumne ræd, gif ge willað minre mihte gelefan. Uta oferhycgan helm þone micclan, weroda waldend, agan us þis wuldres leoht, eall to æhte …’ Ða gewearð usic þæt we woldon swa drihten adrifan of þam deoran ham, cyning of cestre. (I began then to step forth alone among the angels, and spoke to them all: ‘I can teach you lasting counsel if you believe in my power. Let us despise the great protector, ruler of hosts, and obtain for ourselves this light of glory, all as a possession …’ Then it came to us that we wished so to drive the Lord from the dear home, the king from the castle.)

Satan describes God’s domain as a place, a ham (‘home’) or ceaster (‘fortress’ or ‘city’) that can be controlled and possessed by non-divine beings. To accept Satan’s premise, the other angels must accept his flawed propo-

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40

Finnegan, Christ and Satan, p. 12 and Merrell Dare Clubb, Christ and Satan: An Old English Poem (New Haven, 1925), p. lvi. On the influence of the ‘“plaints of Satan” tradition’ on the poet, see Katherine R. Norcross, ‘Counter-Empathy and Elegiac Critique in the Old English Christ and Satan,’ Philological Quarterly, 96.2 (2017), 143–170 (pp. 143, 148, 152). All references to Christ and Satan are taken from The Junius Manuscript, ed. Krapp, pp. 133–160. Translations from Old English are my own. On the teaching devil’s association with dominion and territory, see Heckman, ‘Dialectic and Dispossession,’ pp. 224–225.

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The Origin of the Teaching Demon sition, that is, his claim that his power is equal to God’s. In his arrogance, Satan is confused not only about authority but also about the very nature of the place he wishes to possess. In his delusion, he even wonders if God will restore the demons’ eðel (‘homeland,’ line 278a) to them, so they can govern it once again.41 He does not understand that they had not possessed it before. It was a gift freely given, meant to be shared rather than divided and dominated. Satan further wishes not to be geong (‘young’) or subject to God’s dominion; he wishes to be authoritative and powerful in his own right. Such dominion, however, cannot be seized or acquired for oneself. The demons’ reward, as Satan laments, is a decidedly material, miserable, horrible place. In Christ and Satan, while hell is a conventional fiery pit, the poet emphasizes especially its restriction and confinement, its physical limits. Satan says, Ic eom limwæstmum þæt ic gelutian ne mæg / on þyssum sidan sele (‘I am so large of limb that I cannot lie in this narrow hall,’ lines 129–130a). Hell is too small. It is also too hot, too cold, and too loud (lines 131–134a). Satan’s overweening pride, his oferhygd, literally his excessive ‘mind’ or ‘thought’ (line 69a), has earned him and his demons sensory suffering and misery for eternity. Thus the senses and the mind, the material and the immaterial, are merged in both the fallen angels’ offense and their punishment. Furthermore, the demons themselves, Satan says, are materially changed: Ealle we syndon ungelice / þonne þe we iu (‘we are all different than we were before,’ lines 149–150a), wounded and burning. Their hands, eyes, and ears can no longer reach heaven (lines 168–171). Their only sensory experience, as the poem’s account of the Temptation makes clear,42 is limited to the confines of hell. The Christ and Satan poet represents hell as overtly spatial, physical, and material, requiring the bodily engagement and possession that the demons thought they could exert over heaven. During the poem’s account of Satan’s Temptation of Christ in the desert, as punishment for his presumption in offering kingdoms and dominions to God himself, Satan is condemned to measure hell with his hands, to fully comprehend the sensory, kinetic, and spatial limits of his new home. As meotod (‘measurer,’ line 8a),43 Christ commands Satan to cer ðe on bæcling! (‘turn back!’ line 697b), and wite þu eac, awyrgda, hu wid and sid / helheoðo dreorig, and mid hondum amet. / Grip wið þæs grundes (‘know also, wretch, how wide and 41 42

43

On Satan’s use of agan, gewald, and other terms relating to ‘possession’ and ‘dominion,’ see Michelet, Creation, Migration, and Conquest, pp. 67, 69–70. On the Temptation in Christ and Satan, see Phyllis Portnoy, ‘Remnant and Ritual: The Place of Daniel and Christ and Satan in the Junius Epic,’ English Studies, 75 (1994), 408–22 (p. 412). See Constance Harsh, ‘Christ and Satan: The Measured Power of Christ,’ Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 90.3–4 (1989), 243–253; Hill, ‘The Measure of Hell’; and Michelet, Creation, Migration, and Conquest, p. 63.

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Debating with Demons broad the dreary vault of hell is, and measure [it] with your hands. Grope against the ground,’ lines 698–700a). Satan must measure hell from top to bottom, Christ says (line 702). He must touch it, make contact with it in his body. Through this sensory and kinetic experience, Satan will know (wast þu, line 704a), in his body and senses as well as in his mind, how he has offended God. Satan’s penalty renders epistemology simultaneously spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and physical. Christ even imposes a time limit, two hours (line 708), for Satan to measure his merced hus (‘marked’ or ‘bounded house,’ line 709a). By measuring with his own hands, Satan learns the boundaries of his new existence,44 experiencing them materially in the flesh. As Satan taught his minions to seize an eard, a homeland, through false and faulty reasoning, he now must ‘learn’ their new home in a limited, physical way, holding it in his own hands. Satan must do this, it seems, because he did not learn the truth in his mind: he believed in a flawed proposition and taught it to others, leading them to hell. He says, Ne mæg ic þæt gehicgan hu ic in ðæm becwom / in þis neowle genip (‘I cannot think how I came into it, into this deep darkness,’ lines 178–179a). If Satan still does not understand, the poet says, others must do so. In this way, the poet emphasizes, Satan is useful to bysne (‘as an example,’ line 195a) for those who would wish to avoid his fate.45 Those aspiring to heaven must shun frecne geþohtas (‘dangerous thoughts,’ line 283b) and seek knowledge of God: deman we on eorðan, ærror lifigend, / onlucan mid listum locen waldendes, / ongeotan gastlice! (‘let us consider those who lived before on earth, let us unlock with skill the enclosure of the ruler; let us understand it spiritually!,’ lines 298–300a).46 This is inventio, the discovery of the arguments that will produce right belief rather than the flawed propositions of the devil. Understanding is locked in a locen, an enclosed place. Skill can release it, but only with the exercise of wise and sound reasoning, the ratio God implants in the mind. If the demons suffer now from their own deop gehygd (‘deep thought,’ lines 343b), which has led them to damnation, then more vulnerable souls must learn their wisdom from God instead – nis nænig swa snotor ne swa cræftig / ne þæs swa gleaw (‘there is no one so wise nor so skillful nor so discerning,’

44

45 46

On connections between Satan’s ‘measuring’ and Gregory’s Moralia in Job, see Ruth Wehlau, ‘The Power of Knowledge and the Location of the Reader in Christ and Satan,’ in The Poems of Junius 11, pp. 287–301 (p. 292). See also Michelet, Creation, Migration, and Conquest, pp. 58–59. On the symbolic significance of hands throughout the manuscript, see Karkov, Text and Picture in Anglo-Saxon England, p. 49. On Satan as an exemplum, see Norcross, ‘Counter-Empathy and Elegiac Critique,’ p. 151. On the poet’s use of gast and references to spiritual forces, see Robert Getz, ‘“Guardians of Souls” or “Host(s) of Spirits”? (Genesis A 12a and 41a),’ Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 112.2 (2013), 141–153 (pp. 143–144).

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The Origin of the Teaching Demon lines 348–349a) – and consider carefully the necessity of their obedience (lines 594b–595). If, like Satan, human souls forget to follow Christ, they will not be recognized at the Judgment: Christ will say Nu ic eow ne con (‘I do not know you now,’ line 627b). The flawed propositions of Satan in Christ and Satan represent more than a metaphor for heresy.47 Gregory the Great, like other theologians, insisted that hell is a real place. Preachers told the faithful repeatedly, in vivid terms, about hell’s eternally painful reality. And the Æthelwoldian Carmen de libero arbitrio, discussed in Chapter 3, claimed that people go to hell constantly because they believe in flawed propositions about the nature of God and their own ontological status and abilities.48 In contemplating doubts, posing the inevitable quaestiones of human life, and accepting faulty arguments, people bring themselves to eternal suffering. Unlocking God’s wisdom, discovering or ‘inventing’ it in its hidden place, can produce an opposite salvific result. The fallen angels, however, seek dominion and the conquest of territory rather than an understanding of God’s locen. Like Christ and Satan, Genesis A and B represent the Fall of the Angels as a collective effort, driven again by arrogance (oferhygd, lines 22b, 29a) and the angels’ desire to divide and possess heaven.49 The plot of the Genesis poem begins in the deceitful þæs engles mod (‘mind of the angel,’ line 29b), Lucifer, whose association with light pervades his teaching of Eve later in Genesis B. In response to the angels’ rebellion, the creator’s mind turns with fury against them – he is yrre on mod (‘angry in mind,’ lines 63a, 342a) – and he casts them into hell. God creates the earth after this point (lines 92ff.), and, in both Genesis A and B, he makes Adam and Eve as a replacement for the treacherous fallen angels (lines 395–397a). This detail elevates Adam and Eve’s status, making their eventual fall all the more devastating. Filled with rage and envy of the favor God shows Adam and Eve, the Satan of Genesis B, which is inserted into Genesis A between lines 235 and 851, addresses the creation of Adam and Eve as a problem of the mind. The Genesis poet emphasizes the formidable mental powers of the angels, from whom God expected obedience forþon he him gewit forgeaf (‘because 47 48 49

Jager, The Tempter’s Voice, pp. 24–25. Lapidge, ‘Three Latin Poems,’ pp. 127–129. According to Zacher, Genesis A is based closely on Genesis 1–20, whereas Genesis B is based only minimally on the biblical text of Genesis; see Rewriting the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon Verse, p. 6. See also Remley, Old English Biblical Verse, p. 151. On the relationship between Genesis A and its Latin source, see Paul Battles, ‘Genesis A and the Anglo-Saxon “Migration Myth”,’ Anglo-Saxon England, 29 (2000), 43–66 (p. 45). W.B. Lockwood postulates Celtic influence on Genesis A in ‘Oeng, Scūrboga and the Provenance of Genesis A,’ Notes and Queries, 55.1 (2008), 2–3. Heide Estes dates Genesis A to the early eleventh century in ‘Abraham and the Northmen in Genesis A: Alfredian Translation and Ninth-Century Politics,’ Medievalia et Humanistica, 33 (2007), 1–13 (p. 2).

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Debating with Demons he gave them intellect,’ line 250b). But Lucifer’s mental gifts instead lead to his rebellion: ne mæhte he æt his hige findan / þæt he gode wolde geongerdome, / þeodne þeowian (‘he could not find in his mind that he would wish to serve God, the lord, in servitude,’ lines 266b–268a). This term hyge, as Harbus has noted, suggests a ‘place of thought or intention.’50 Lucifer seeks the desire to serve within that ‘place’ in his mind, but such desire cannot be found. He considers his power and cræft (line 269a) superior to God’s. He does not want to be in geongordom, a term that can refer to discipleship but literally means ‘youth,’ inexperience and lower rank. In this state, Lucifer is unwilling to continue: ne wille ic leng his geongra wurþan (‘I do not wish to be his younger [one] any longer,’ line 291b).51 Elan Justice Pavlinich has described Satan’s attitude as ‘puerile self-awareness, grounded in embodiment,’ accompanied with a desire ‘to spatially orient himself’ so that he can feel superior to God.52 But Adam and Eve are later described as geong also. The term seems to indicate inexperience and therefore vulnerability, in Lucifer’s case to his own delusions, his fundamental misunderstanding of his own nature and the nature of God’s heavenly domain. In Genesis B, because of Lucifer’s overestimation of his own intellect and skill, he and his minions, like the world around them, are cast down, ontologically and materially changed. Hyra woruld was gehwyrfed, the poet says (‘their world was transformed,’ line 318b). When Lucifer accepts his own flawed argument, hine his hyge forspeon (‘his thought seduced him,’ line 350b) and weoll him on innan / hyge ymb his heortan (‘surged about his heart within him,’ lines 353b–354a). This hyge, this ‘place’ in his mind, enters into his heart, welling up in it, torturing him both within and without: hat wæs him utan / wraðlic wite (‘heat was a bitter torment outside him,’ lines 354b–355a).53 His suffering is mental, emotional, and bodily, limiting him to a confined and miserable place (line 356) which afflicts his senses: Ic a ne geseah / laðran landscipe (‘I have never seen a more evil region,’ lines 375b–376a). His mind has shackled him, and the place where he now dwells is a torment. His thoughts, his flawed reasoning, are now visible to God: ic wat he minne hige cuðe (‘I know that he knows my thought,’ line 385b). The creator can see the empty place within Satan’s mind, the place where the desire to serve as a geong one can no longer be 50 51

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Harbus, The Life of the Mind, p. 47. In A.N. Doane’s interpretation, this passage indicates Satan’s desire ‘to replace the hierarchical system of governance by vassalage … with the older idea of the “free” comitatus.’ See The Saxon Genesis: An Edition of the West Saxon Genesis B and the Old Saxon Vatican Genesis (Madison, 1991), p. 123. Elan Justice Pavlinich, ‘Satan Surfacing: (Predetermined) Individuality in the Old English Genesis B,’ Interdisciplinary Humanities, 30.1 (2013), 88–100 (pp. 90–91). On the poet’s use of the ‘hydraulic model,’ see Lockett, Anglo-Saxon Psychologies, p. 70.

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The Origin of the Teaching Demon found. Lucifer, the angel of light, is both exposed and constrained, bound in hell, while Adam, þe wæs of eorðan geworht (‘who was made of earth,’ line 365b), of base matter, is free and living in Paradise. As Genesis B’s Satan turned his brilliant mind to rebellion before, he now plots Adam’s downfall (line 397b), seeking instead to turn God’s mind, influencing him to reject Adam and Eve. Addressing his demons, Satan contemplates how we mihtiges godes mod onwæcen (‘we may weaken the mind of mighty God,’ line 403a). Though the mod is always ‘fluid’ and undefinable,54 Satan here presumes that he can know God’s fathomless and unlimited mod. Turning God’s mod will recompense Satan for the pain in his own, since the knowledge that Adam and Eve are beloved of God me is on minum mode swa sar, / on minum hyge hreoweð (‘is so painful in my mind, grieves [me] in my thought,’ lines 425b–426a). The hyge, the place in Satan’s mind, instead of holding the desire to serve, now contains only bitterness. His mental pain is seemingly inseparable from his bodily suffering and confinement in the fires of hell; his anger and grief manifest as simultaneously emotional, intellectual, and physical sensations. The answer to Satan’s torment, he believes, is to ‘teach’ Adam and Eve to turn away from God. To soothe his tortured mind, Satan consults with his demons, asking them to find a way to drive Adam and Eve into disobedience. If any demon can do this, Satan says, þæt hie word godes / lare forlæten, sona hie him þe laðran beoð (‘so that they [Adam and Eve] forsake the word of God, [his] teaching, immediately they will be more hateful to him,’ lines 428b–429). To counter divine teaching, a demonic pedagogue must descend to Eden to instruct Adam and Eve. One demon puts on his armor and secret helmet (hæleð-helm, line 444a), ready to descend to Eden with fæcne hyge (‘deceitful thought,’ line 443b). This demon bears deception within his mind. His aim, the poet says, is dearnunga drihtnes geongran, / … / forlædan and forlæran, þæt hie wurdon lað gode (‘to mislead and deceitfully teach the Lord’s young [ones] … so that they became hateful to God,’ lines 450, 452). Having abandoned God’s service, the demon seeks to persuade Adam and Eve into doing the same. He flies to middle-earth þurh feondes cræft (‘with the skill of the enemy,’ line 453b), ready to exercise his persuasive skills on God’s unsuspecting geong ones. The Fall of Adam and Eve is sought in vengeance for the angels’ own Fall, their pedagogical powers now deployed for the nefarious purpose of Adam and Eve’s onto-epistemological transformation.

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Harbus, The Life of the Mind, pp. 37–38.

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Debating with Demons

Mater materia: the voice of Eve in Christ and Satan In explaining the origins of the demonic pedagogue who teaches Adam and Eve in Eden, both Genesis B and Christ and Satan establish Eve as a figure of particular auctorita. Though the serpent initially approaches Adam in Eden, Eve is the demon’s first pupil, demonstrating a higher aptitude for learning than her partner. It is instructive to consider Eve’s status as a student before fully examining her role in the Fall, in part because the Junius poets’ representation of her is unique and not wholly negative. As the primary pupil of the serpent in Eden and the mother of all the living, Eve possesses unique and hard-won experiential wisdom. In Christ and Satan, she also bears primary responsibility for explaining, in hindsight, how she and Adam granted authority to the demon’s teaching. During the Harrowing, Eve thus gives voice to her own auctorita, asserted in part through her self-identification as a pupil.55 As the mater in materia, the spirituo-material generatrix and protector of her kin, Eve cannot ascend to heaven until she speaks and tells her story after Christ’s triumphant entrance into hell. While Christ let þa up faran eadige sawle, / Adames cyn (‘allowed the blessed souls, the kin of Adam, to travel up,’ lines 405–406a), the Christ and Satan poet says that Eve ne moste… þa gyt / wlitan in wuldre ær heo wordum cwæð (‘was not allowed then yet to gaze on glory before she spoke [these] words,’ lines 406b–407).56 This suggests Eve’s specific responsibility, greater than that of other souls, but it also emphasizes the necessity and importance of her voice. In calling out to Christ with a plea for rescue, Eve deploys informal logic, representing the demon in Eden as the diabolical magister of her and Adam, pupils who were led astray (lines 411a, 412b–416a): Gelærde unc se atola …

þæt wit blæd ahton, haligne ham, heofon to gewalde. Þa wit ðæs awærgdan wordum gelyfdon, namon mid handum on þam halgan treo beorhte blæda.

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Robert Emmett Finnegan comments on the poet’s unique emphasis on Eve in ‘Christ as Narrator in the Old English Christ and Satan,’ English Studies, 75.1 (1994), 2–16 (p. 5). See also Thomas D. Hill, ‘Pilate’s Visionary Wife and the Innocence of Eve: An Old Saxon Source for the Old English Genesis B,’ Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 101.2 (2002), 170–184 (pp. 170–171), and Buchelt, ‘All About Eve,’ p. 143. On the association of Eve with language in this scene, see Buchelt, ‘All About Eve,’ p. 152.

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The Origin of the Teaching Demon (The horrible one taught us … that we two would possess glory, a holy home, heaven as a dominion. Then we two believed the words of the cursed [one], seized with hands the bright fruit on the holy tree.)

Eve’s phrasing here anticipates the punishment of the fallen Lucifer, who is condemned by Christ later in the poem to measure the confines of hell mid hondum (line 699b). Eve describes how she and Adam, having accepted the demon’s arguments about the gewalde that they could possess, fell into a delusion similar to that of the rebellious angels. Eve now pleads for rescue not only on behalf of herself and Adam, but also on behalf of their descendants, Eve’s mægðe (‘kin,’ line 423b), to whom Christ belongs through his mother: þu fram minre dohtor, drihten, onwoce / in middangeard mannum to helpe (‘from my daughter, Lord, you were born into middle-earth as a help for men,’ lines 437–438). Eve here bestows the status of mater on the Virgin as her spirituo-material heir. Having confessed her error as a student and pleaded for rescue, Eve further acknowledges God’s status as creator and ordfruma ealra gesceafta (‘origin of all created things,’ line 440). Since Christ’s death has atoned for the sins of his mægð, and Eve has now told her story, she is permitted to enter with their kin into the heavenly kingdom.57 Eve’s conduct in the Harrowing of Christ and Satan, which establishes her status as a deceived pupil, has been interpreted as the struggle of a reader to remember and comprehend God’s word. In this scene, Lisabeth C. Buchelt claims, Eve ‘provides a model for proper lectio divina by employing the techniques of memoria and inventio.’ In Eden, Buchelt argues, Eve could not orient her memory or find her ‘place’ within her mind. By the time of the Harrowing, however, ‘Eve overcomes her own curiositas – her chaotic wandering around the memory rooms of possible outcomes suggested by the tempter … by correctly recognizing the Word for what He is.’58 By curiositas, Buchelt refers to what Carruthers calls ‘the great vice of memoria’: instead of establishing clear background knowledge and organizing it appropriately, a person prone to curiositas experiences mental ‘“crowding” … and also randomness, having backgrounds without any order and thus without any “routes” (a problem that will inevitably lead to “error,” wandering about).’ In Eden, Eve lacks the mental order to ‘travel’ safely in her debate with the demon. According to Carruthers, such ‘“error” is … first a matter of pathways and networks … before it is a matter of “falsity” or “obliteration,” matters of epistemology and ontology.’59 In other words, Eve falls into confusion, her pathways

57 58 59

On the association of this passage with exile, homeland, and possession, see Heckman, ‘Dialectic and Dispossession,’ p. 226. Buchelt, ‘All About Eve,’ pp. 154–155. Carruthers, ‘Reading with Attitude,’ pp. 10–11.

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Debating with Demons and networks blocked or obscured, but she intends no evil and so does not deserve to be forever damned. Though Eve’s knowledge is not adequate to resist the demon’s teaching in Eden, she is not utterly destroyed, eventually traveling to a new home in heaven. Although Buchelt claims that Eve’s struggles relate to reading in the Harrowing scene, she is not a reader. Rather, she is a pupil engaged in an embodied, compelling encounter with a deceptive and highly skilled teacher. This is more a matter of dialectic than rhetoric, more a matter of spoken argumentation than reading on Eve’s part. The Junius poets’ recognition of Eve’s voice, speaking as both a deceived pupil and a representative of her kin, directly challenges Pauline and patristic approaches to the Fall which insisted on women’s silence. As Jager has noted, such challenges are common enough in many non-Latin literary traditions.60 In an Old English poetic idiom, for example, women such as Beowulf’s Wealhtheow speak with authority. While such powerful speech is often considered ‘a metaphor’ for a particular ‘narrative approach’ or ‘agency,’61 this explanation cannot account fully for stories of the Fall. Any voice, including that of a woman, is inseparable from the body, as William Layher argues: the voice ‘is an acoustic event that is birthed in the body yet emanates from it; it travels through space yet remains insubstantial,’ heard by others in ‘sonic community.’62 In Christ and Satan, Eve’s voice contributes to the spirituo-material transformation of hell itself, as Christ bursts open its doors and takes his people home in triumph. Eve, as an authoritative speaker, undermines Satan’s delusions about his dominion in that place. When others hear Eve, they acknowledge her voice, since ‘at its most basic level … the act of listening “is accepting presence.”’ As Layher notes, Aristotle considered the soul (Greek pneuma) ‘the agent of the voice’ because ‘it … [carries] … the breath of spirit.’63 So Eve’s soul speaks out, disrupting a ‘dominant paradigm’ whereby ‘agency to speak’ is opposed to ‘prohibitions against speech.’64 By representing Eve’s speech, the poet of Christ and Satan undermines a thoroughly patristic interpretation of the Harrowing. During this momentous event, Eve’s voice, condemned for misleading Adam in Eden, participates in their salvation and that of their kin. In speaking out about the demon’s flawed teaching, revealing the faulty reasoning behind it and acknowledging heaven as a free gift rather than a territory to be possessed, Eve testifies to the truth and is admitted to the heavenly home.

60 61 62 63 64

Jager, The Tempter’s Voice, pp. 97–98. William Layher, Queenship and Voice in Medieval Northern Europe (New York, 2010), p. 6. Ibid., pp. 29–30. Ibid., pp. 32, 36, 42. Layher cites Aristotle’s De Anima. Ibid., p. 48; see also Jager, The Tempter’s Voice, pp. 100, 102.

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The Origin of the Teaching Demon Eve’s story during the Harrowing remedies the devastating effects of her voice in Eden, manifested through her dialogue with her demonic teacher, an encounter which imitates the prior exemplar of the angels’ Fall. This also depended on storytelling, as Satan and his minions constructed conflicting narratives to explain their demise and plot their revenge. Their narratives integrate doubts and arguments about God’s dominion in heaven and on earth. Although Adam and Eve initially accept those narratives, their suffering in a fallen world and their time in hell experientially ‘teach’ them the truth, as Eve explains, resulting in their onto-epistemological transformation as they ascend to heaven. The methodology of demonic teaching, in both Christ and Satan and the Genesis poems, parodies the teaching of Christ through parables. The demon’s pedagogy in Eden, which he learns from his master, manipulates the integrated intellectual, sensory, and emotional powers of Adam and Eve, leading to changes in significant places and objects, notably the eating of the fatal fruit. These changes, though the demon himself does not control them, seem to support his deceptive arguments. When the fruit is eaten, resulting in a spirituo-material transformation with both epistemological and ontological significance in which materiality itself is changed and destabilized, the demon succeeds in his mission, having persuaded Adam and Eve to separate themselves from God. The demon learns deception, and develops the compulsion to deceive, from his master during their own Fall. These dynamics of the angels’ Fall are therefore essential background for understanding the spirituo-material and onto-epistemological significance of the Fall of Adam and Eve, to be examined in the following chapter.

Conclusion In Christ and Satan and the Old English Genesis, Satan’s Fall results in part from his misunderstanding of both his own nature and his ‘place.’ This misunderstanding causes Satan and his angelic pupils to undergo transformations that are simultaneously spiritual, intellectual, bodily, and spatial. Having greedily sought to control the heavenly realm that God shared freely with them, the fallen angels find themselves forced to dwell in a new and miserable ‘home.’ Bright and beautiful before their Fall, they are physically changed after it, dark and living among flames. Their brilliance and enlightenment thus become blindness of the mod, emptiness in the hyge, pride, and confusion. The fallen angels’ spiritual bond with God is sundered, and they seek only to corrupt God’s other creations, misleading them through persuasive pedagogy. The sin taught by the serpent to Adam and Eve is both physical and spiritual, and so must the remedy be. Christ himself makes this point 123

Debating with Demons vividly in Christ and Satan’s account of the Harrowing. After Adam and Eve ate the fruit, he says, only he could save them, descending in the flesh through a woman (lines 489–491, 493–494). He suffered as they did in life. Because Adam and Eve ate from the tree, which changed them and all other beings and places, Christ, þurh his gastes mægen (‘through the power of his spirit,’ line 548b), shed his blood on the tree and died bodily for them, until a geong one cut him down (lines 507–509). His people were all geong, including his closest disciples, who struggled to serve him and believe in his Resurrection (lines 519–539). When Christ bringan wolde / haligne gast to heofonrice (‘[wishes] to bring his holy spirit to the heaven-kingdom,’ lines 560b–561), he ascends bodily, soul united with materiality. Soon after, he sends his gastes gife (‘the gift of his spirit,’ line 571a) to his apostles, his gingran (line 571b), who gather countless other souls to preach the good news. At the Judgment, all souls will be divided (lines 608–609), even as they unite with their bodies once again. This is the logical fulfillment of God’s plan, the great revelation of truth which opposes the fallen angels’ deceptions. The narratives of the Fall of the Angels in Christ and Satan and the Old English Genesis lay the groundwork for the onto-epistemological transformation which comes with the serpent’s instruction of Adam and Eve in Genesis B. They reach out with their hands and eat the fruit, as Eve confesses in Christ and Satan, because they accept the false teaching of the serpent. Their Fall necessitates that their descendants do otherwise, cultivating the discretio that will protect them from the pedagogy of the devil. Eve testifies to this need in Christ and Satan because, while Adam declares himself unable and unwilling to engage in the verbal arts with the serpent in Genesis B, Eve is more amenable. Newly created, she is uninitiated into the verbal arts and has never learned the discipline of discretio or discernment. Taking advantage of her innocence, the demon who visits Eden tells her a story and supports it with evidence she considers compelling. His story promises a new epistemology, a new way of knowing, a claim he confirms by pretending to manipulate her senses, the bodily means through which she gains knowledge. This pedagogical encounter, the subject of the following chapter, occurs in the primordial place, the garden eternally lost in an ontological change which fundamentally transforms the material and spiritual conditions of human existence.

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5 Demonic Teaching and the Fall in the Old English Genesis

As the Junius 11 poems recount the Genesis story, it revolves around the primal use of the verbal arts to deceive. In these texts’ distinctive account of the origins of the world, its creation, and the making of human beings, the verbal arts are introduced through their misuse, resulting in the direst possible epistemological and ontological consequences. While many critical analyses of these poems focus on rhetoric and reading, the encounter of Adam and Eve with their demonic tempter actually emphasizes neither of these activities so strongly as it foregrounds the dialogue, the face-toface debate over epistemology on whose outcome human ontology itself depends. The informal logic of the Old English Genesis therefore places the dialectical art, with its emphasis on distinguishing between truth and lies, at the center of the pedagogical encounter. In Genesis B,1 Eden itself becomes a topos, the primordial ‘place’ in which Adam and Eve must find arguments to refute or resist the serpent who ‘teaches’ them, an endeavor in which they are ultimately unsuccessful. Though Adam’s voice has traditionally been considered more significant, the voices of Eve and Satan’s demonic messenger in Eden come to the foreground when demonic pedagogy is placed at the center of 1

Genesis B, inserted between lines 235–851 of Genesis in The Junius Manuscript, ed. Krapp, relies mostly on a poetic source in Old Saxon; see Zacher, Rewriting the Old Testament, p. 6. Doane produced an edition of the Old English Genesis B and the Old Saxon text (from Palatinus Latinus 1447) with accompanying critical apparatus; see The Saxon Genesis, pp. 207–252. On the relationship between Genesis B and its Old Saxon source, see Patricia Bethel, ‘Notes on the Incidence and Type of Anacrusis in Genesis B: Some Similarities to and Differences from Anacrusis Elsewhere in Old English and in Old Saxon,’ Parergon, 2 (1984), 1–24 (pp. 3–5); Mize, Traditional Subjectivities, pp. 81–84; and René Derolez, ‘Genesis: Old Saxon and Old English,’ English Studies, 5 (1995), 409–423 (pp. 412–413). The definitive date of Genesis B’s Old Saxon source, around 850, suggests a later date for Genesis B; see Michael Fox, ‘Feðerhama and hæleðhelm: The Equipment of Devils,’ Florilegium, 26 (2009), 131–157 (pp. 131–132). Lapidge suggests Alcimus Avitus of Vienne’s Poema de Mosaicae historiae gestis as a possible source for Genesis B; see Anglo-Latin Literature Vol. 1, 600–899 (London, 1996), p. 4 and Mize, Traditional Subjectivities, p. 35. Irmengard Rauch argues that the translator of Genesis B was English: see ‘The Old English Genesis B Poet: Bilingual or Interlingual?,’ American Journal of Germanic Linguistics and Literatures, 5.2 (1993), 163–184 (p. 182).

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Debating with Demons the poem. The demon and his pupil, Eve, who teaches Adam following her own instruction, voice narratives that amount to a dispute over the events of the Fall, events in which both human and non-human agents – the trees, the fruit, Eden itself – participate to change the ontology of humanity and to transform Eden into a significant ‘place’ through both its loss and the eternal spiritual, physical, and mental longings that loss inspires. The material and immaterial changes resulting from the Fall emerge directly from the informal logic of the debate of the demon, Eve, and Adam. By approaching first Adam and then Eve, the demon instigates a dispute about their own human nature and their affiliation with God. The demonic magister poses quaestiones, raising a res dubia (‘a thing in doubt’) that demands arguments in response. Adam and Eve, however, unlearned in the arts of argumentation, are ultimately unable to defend themselves, accepting the demon’s teachings as truths. The Genesis poet emphasizes the demon’s intellectual appeals to Eve’s mind, the epistemological means to enact ontological change. Eve and then Adam choose the demon’s account over God’s, accepting the demon as magister and auctor. These demonic narratives, having been accepted as authoritative by Adam and Eve, induce spirituo-material actions which give rise to the poem’s ontological crisis, the exile of Adam and Eve and their descendants from Eden. In contrast to creation, which involves ‘transformation and expansion’ through God’s control of the ‘natural world,’2 the Fall enacts transformation of a different kind, incorporating not only expulsion, suffering, and ultimate death but also a terrifying expansion of the spaces in which life must be lived. The crisis of the Fall, however, raises more questions than it answers. Why and how does Eve accept the demon’s teaching, according to the poet of Genesis B? And why and how does Adam accept her account? Much depends on the state of their minds when they hear the tale: according to the poet, they are geong, new creations, with little experience to guide them beyond the authoritative commands of God. The Genesis poets therefore foreground the importance of discretio as a response to demonic teaching. To resist a demon’s narrative, pupils must be able to evaluate the res dubia, the quaestio, and the demon’s argumentum, ‘inventing’ counter-arguments to respond effectively. Adam and Eve are seemingly unable to do so, accepting the demon’s diverse faulty propositions. Their descendants, however, will have to do otherwise, learning from their first parents’ misfortunate exemplum.

2

Michelet, Creation, Migration, and Conquest, p. 39 and Jennifer Neville, Representations of the Natural World in Old English Poetry (Cambridge, 1999), p. 142.

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Demonic Teaching and the Fall in the Old English Genesis

Teaching through narrative: the Fall of Adam and Eve The encounter of Adam and Eve with the serpent, set against the background of dialectical theory, raises several questions related to ongoing disputes over ‘the relationship between divine grace and human agency’ pursued by Pelagius, his Semi-Pelagian successors, and eventually Carolingian theologians such as Gottschalk,3 whom John Scottus Eriugena had opposed in the predestination debate. Augustine of Hippo’s writings on human agency, especially De correptione et gratia and De gratia et libero arbitrio, argued that Adam had free will and was also ‘assisted by grace’ in pursuing ‘the good,’ grace which he rejected, resulting in a ‘surpassing fault’ that affected him, Eve, and all of their descendants. Like the fallen angels, Adam ‘possessed the grace to remain in the good if he willed to do so, but he did not so will.’4 The question is why Adam chose evil over good. In part, according to the English poet of Genesis B, Adam did so because evil was ‘taught’ to him and Eve in an especially persuasive form. This in turn raises the following questions: when Adam and Eve were presented with arguments for evil and against the good, what inventory of arguments did they possess to resist that evil, beyond straightforward obedience to God? If Genesis B’s Adam and Eve are in the only place, daily experiencing the beatific vision, how would they then be able to find a ‘place’ for themselves, establishing a firm foundation for their arguments? If they have not yet eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, how would they possess the knowledge necessary to resist the sophistic arguments that lead to evil? In other words, what kind of epistemology, as distinct from grace or will, is possible for them without eating? According to Augustine, ‘knowledge [of the law] by itself is insufficient for avoidance of sin.’ It must be supported by ‘grace,’ which ‘prepares the will for good.’ But ultimately, because Adam and Eve accepted false teaching, ‘good will … [failed].’5 Augustine instructed that ‘the empowerment of the will … has come through Christ,’6 but what of those who did not yet know Christ? According to the Genesis B poet, Adam and Eve, though they thought they were pursuing good, were actually deceived. In an as-yet-unfallen world, however, what powers of discretio, the discernment that would allow them to avoid evil, could they have possessed?

3 4 5 6

Rebecca Harden Weaver, Divine Grace and Human Agency: A Study of the SemiPelagian Controversy (Macon, 1996), p. ix. Ibid., pp. 24–26. Ibid., p. 20. Ibid., p. 21.

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Debating with Demons The Genesis poets provide a unique reply to these questions. In comparison to its Old Saxon source, according to A.N. Doane, Genesis B is far more ‘idiosyncratic [and achieves] a wholly new synthesis’ of narratives about the Fall,7 representing a distinctively early medieval English view of the event.8 As argued in Chapter 4, the Junius 11 poems focus strongly on the experience of Eve and her onto-epistemological role in sacred and human history. In Genesis B, as a result of the demon’s teaching,9 that is, the ‘story’ he tells her, what Eve knows or thinks she knows, conveyed in her own narrative to Adam, has ontological significance for both of them, their descendants, and the place they inhabit – or eventually cease to inhabit. Eve’s integrated sensory, intellectual, and spiritual experience, conveyed in her narrative, leads to transformative spirituo-material acts as she disobeys God’s command and eats the fruit from the forbidden tree, which materially changes the bodies, minds, and souls of Adam and Eve as well as the places where they dwell. These bodies and places are real, not simply discursive or allegorical. Eve’s story, like that of the teaching demon, produces real material and ontological effects. Patristic interpretations of the Fall, which Jager calls the ‘oldest … myth,’ represent the Fall itself as a text, promoting a verbal understanding of knowledge. This is especially true of Augustine and Ambrose.10 In De Genesi contra Manichaeos (2.14), Augustine questions whether Eden actually existed and, if it did exist, denies that Satan ever entered Eden corporeally at all.11 If the Word were to be made flesh, however, his flesh-and-blood ancestors had to come from somewhere, from actual human bodies in an actual place. A real woman gave birth to Christ, a

7

8

9

10 11

Doane, The Saxon Genesis, p. 94. On the relationship between the Old English Genesis poem and its Latin biblical source, which was itself ambiguous and ‘complex,’ see A.N. Doane’s Genesis A: A New Edition, revised ed. (Tempe, 2013), p. 77. As Scott Thompson Smith has noted, ‘scholars have productively read the Junius 11 poems as a compiled sequence;’ see ‘Faith and Forfeiture in the Old English Genesis A,’ p. 594. On the Junius 11 Genesis as ‘one continuous text’ and the narrative unity of all the poems in the manuscript with Eve ‘at the center,’ see Buchelt, ‘All About Eve,’ pp. 140–141. Jager, The Tempter’s Voice, pp. 18, 24, 42. Jager emphasizes that the representation of the demon as a teacher in Genesis B is influenced by Book I of the Poematum de spiritalis historiae gestis written by the Gaulish bishop Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus (450–518); see pp. 41–42. Satan’s use of language has sometimes been associated with armed conflict rather than pedagogy: see Eric Jager, ‘A Miles Diaboli in the Old English Genesis B,’ English Language Notes, 27.3 (1990), 1–5 (pp. 1–2), and Larry N. McKill, ‘Patterns of the Fall: Adam and Eve in the Old English Genesis A,’ Florilegium, 14 (1995–1996), 25–41 (p. 32). See also Clover, ‘The Germanic Context of the Unferþ Episode,’ pp. 444–445, 460–466. Jager, The Tempter’s Voice, pp. 305, 31–38. Forsyth, The Old Enemy, p. 423. For an overview of allegorical interpretations of the Genesis poems, see Doane, The Saxon Genesis, pp. 112–114.

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Demonic Teaching and the Fall in the Old English Genesis descendant of Adam and Eve, the mater of materia. Christ belonged to and dwelled among their kin, living in an ensouled and emplaced body.12 In emphasizing this incarnational mystery, ‘vernacular literature’ tends to disrupt patristic interpretations, as Jager has noted.13 This is especially the case in the Junius 11 poems, with their strong emphasis on Eve and her authoritative voice. Due to a lacuna in the Junius manuscript, it is impossible to know the full extent of God’s teaching to Adam and Eve in the garden. Later details at line 527ff. suggest that God warned them about the possibility of deceitful temptation. Having never experienced evil, however, what could Adam and Eve actually understand about the consequences of their actions? What would be the level of their discretio, their ability to discern good from evil? The stories told in these poems, ontologically significant tales about the permanent transformation of the cosmos and all the creatures within it, depend very much on the skill of the tale-teller and the discernment of the listener, especially since Eve, after learning one story from the demon, turns it into a new narrative she ‘teaches’ to Adam. Eve’s complex and singular voice as both pupil and pedagogue in Junius 11’s poetic accounts of the Fall is significant, given patristic teachings about women’s speech. Paul and other epistle writers famously forbade women to speak, especially with the authority of teachers in instructing men, because Eve, not Adam, fell prey to the deceptions of the serpent (1 Timothy 2.12–14).14 Guided by Paul’s authority, as well as by opposition to the Gnostics’ attempts to disrupt gender hierarchies, Augustine reasserted this prohibition, interpreting the teaching demon as a figure for ‘false preachers’ who taught heresy to the Church, represented allegorically by Eve. Jager considers this a caution against the ‘danger of autonomous eloquence or persuasion … of rhetorical art when divorced from truth or wisdom.’15 Since this art is deployed in dialogue, however, dialectical art is perhaps more relevant here than rhetoric. The anonymous English poets of the Junius accounts certainly make it clear that more than persuasion is at stake. The souls of Eve and Adam are transformed through the integrated operation of the mind, body, spirit, and senses. The first man and women, these primal pupils, deploy ratio as well as affect, thought as well as feeling. They are young and naïve,

12

13 14

15

Mize has commented on early English poets’ tendency to integrate thought and emotion, associating them also with the physical senses and the surrounding environment. Traditional Subjectivities, pp. 6–7. Jager, The Tempter’s Voice, pp. 97–98. On the ‘mainline Christian reading of the Genesis story,’ including Eve’s ‘intellectual incapacity and inherent seductiveness,’ see Scheck, Reform and Resistance, p. 2. Jager, The Tempter’s Voice, pp. 25–26, 100, 102.

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Debating with Demons unguarded against evil. And they attempt to dispute with one much more experienced and skillful than they. The demon’s influence on Adam and Eve in Genesis B represents a parody of rightful pedagogy. Satan’s messenger deploys an informal logic based on dialectical and rhetorical methods to ‘teach’ God’s geong ones.16 This teaching not only leads to their separation from God but also does so through the hyge or mod, intellect and reason, as well as the senses. By exercising his skills in the verbal arts, in the presence of Adam and Eve and in the primal ‘place’ of Eden, the demon takes an epistemological approach to altering human ontology, providing arguments to convince Adam and Eve that they can know things they cannot know. The demon places their knowledge of themselves and God in question, introducing false premises and teaching Adam and Eve to accept them. When Adam resists, unable to understand the demon’s statements, the serpent focuses on Eve instead, manipulating her through narrative so that she can tell her own story to Adam and teach him in her turn. Their Fall is also enacted, however, by physical means: in eating the fruit of the forbidden tree, they experience a destructive ontological transformation with both material and spiritual dimensions. The Genesis poet represents this transformation as a stark choice for Adam and Eve. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in scripture becomes two trees in Genesis B, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Death.17 The poet describes the Tree of Life as wlitig and scene (‘beautiful and bright,’ line 467b); its fruit promises eternal life, protection from illness and old age (lines 469–473). The deaðes beam, the ‘tree of death’ (line 478b), is eallunga sweart, / dim and þystre … / se bær bitres fela (‘completely black, dim and dark … it bore many bitter [things],’ lines 477–479a). Whoever tastes its fruit must witan / … æghwilc yfles and godes / gewand on þisse worulde, sceolde on wite a / mid swate and mid sorgum siððan libban (‘know … whatever of evil or good turns in this world, must forever live likewise in torment with sweat and with sorrow,’ lines 479b–482). As Satan’s teaching serpent winds around the Tree of Death (lines 491–492),18 good and evil 16

17

18

John F. Vickrey interprets this term as ‘servants’ in Genesis B and the Comedic Imperative (Bethlehem, 2015), p. 128. Ehrhart translates it as ‘disciples’ in ‘Tempter as Teacher,’ pp. 435–437. Jodi Grimes describes this representation of the two trees as ‘unique among extant Anglo-Saxon manuscripts,’ tracing the Tree of Death motif to rabbinical literature, including the Zohar and the Midrash Konen. ‘Tree(s) of Knowledge in the Junius Manuscript,’ Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 112.3 (2013), 311–339 (pp. 313). On the basis of Junius 11’s illustrations and a possible connection to the Adversus haereses of Irenaeus of Lyon, Anlezark argues that the demon appears to Adam and Eve in angelic form, interpreting the poet’s description of the demon as on wyrmes lic (lines 491, 590) as ‘anomalous;’ ‘The Old English Genesis B and Irenaeus of Lyon,’ Medium Ævum, 86.1 (2017), 2–21 (pp. 1–2, 11–12, 8). One

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Demonic Teaching and the Fall in the Old English Genesis wind through the world where humans dwell. A lacuna in the manuscript occurs at the beginning of Genesis B, so God’s full teaching to Adam and Eve about these two trees no longer survives. All that remains is God’s command to forlætað þone ænne beam, / wariað inc wið þone wæstm (‘forsake the one tree, guard yourselves against the fruit,’ lines 235b–236a). When the demon arrives in Eden, however, Adam and Eve, designated by God to gingran self (‘as his own young [ones],’ line 458b), are standing between the two trees, planted by God þæt þær yldo bearn moste on ceosan / godes and yfeles … / welan and wawan (‘so that there the children of [old ones] could choose from good or evil … weal or woe,’ lines 464–465a, 466a). The poet presents the fruit not in terms of a prohibition, but a clear choice between two options, one of which is bitter in flavor and dark and unappealing in appearance. This alone would seem to be enough to keep Adam and Eve from eating the fruit of the Tree of Death. Although Adam and Eve have heard God’s commands, however, they have no other elders to guide them. They are geong and inexperienced, unprepared for anything beyond obedience. When the skillfully deceptive demon arrives, he tells his tale to Adam first, showcasing the verbal art not just of rhetoric, as Jager has claimed,19 but also that of dialectic, the art of disputation. Although Adam is not skilled in this art of debate, he does know God’s commands. The demon approaches him and encourages him to eat the fruit, promising him that, if Adam does so, þin abal and cræft / and þin modsefa mara wurde, / and þin lichoma leohtra micle (‘your strength and skill and your mind-spirit will become greater, and your body much more radiant,’ lines 500b–502).20 In other words, the physical act of eating will transform both Adam’s mind and body.21 The serpent, claiming to be a fellow gingran of God (‘younger one,’ line 515b), further claims that God has sent him to listas læran (‘teach skills,’ line 517a) to Adam. In making this promise, the demon places the capacities of Adam’s body, mind, and spirit into question.

19

20 21

reason for this interpretation is the illustrations in Junius 11, which represent the demon as both a serpent and an angel. On the illustrations as ‘a form of translation,’ see Karkov, Text and Picture in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 36, 69. See also Burchmore, ‘Traditional Exegesis and the Condition of Guilt,’ pp. 120, 142–143. Eric Jager, ‘Tempter as Rhetoric Teacher: The Fall of Language in the Old English Genesis B,’ in The Poems of MS Junius 11, ed. Liuzza, pp. 99–118 (pp. 99, 104–105). Lalla Abdalla likewise emphasizes the influence of rhetoric on Satan’s temptation in ‘The Dialectical Adversary: The Satanic Character and Imagery in Anglo-Saxon Poetry’, Ph.D. diss., McGill University (1989), pp. 18–21. On the demon’s tempting of Adam, see Michelet, Creation, Migration, and Conquest, pp. 70–71. Jager notes that the ‘Tempter’s fictions,’ which Jager associates with ‘oral tradition,’ transform ‘signs … into seductively corporeal things.’ The Tempter’s Voice, pp. 166, 172, 175.

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Debating with Demons Adam, a selfsceafte guma (‘self-shaping man,’ line 523a) with no father or mother, does not have the training to summon counter-arguments, aside from his obedience to God’s commands. He knows only that God me warnian het / þæt ic on þone deaðes beam bedroren ne wurde (‘commanded me to be on guard so that I would not be deceived about the tree of death,’ lines 527b–528). Adam recognizes that his knowledge is limited and that his powers of discernment are not strong. He is also aware of the possibility of deception: concerning the serpent, Adam admits that nat þeah þu mid ligenum fare / þurh dyrne geþanc (‘I do not know whether you come with lies through secret thought,’ lines 531b–532a). While Adam does not know the serpent’s intentions, he seemingly comprehends the possibility of deception and secrecy. Adam further finds the words and methods of the serpent impenetrable: ic þinra bysna ne mæg, / worda ne wisna wuht oncnawan, / siðes ne sagona (‘I cannot recognize at all your examples, your words or wisdom, your journey or your sayings,’ lines 533b–535a). Adam cannot work through the demon’s argument, because he seemingly cannot even comprehend his statements. In fact, Adam does not accept any part of the demon’s account, recognizing his own lack of verbal skill and discretio, which Dendle defines as ‘the ability to distinguish good spirits from evil … to know one’s own heart – to bring everything to the surface, scrutinize it, classify it, and evaluate it.’22 Unable to process what the demon says, Adam seemingly cannot even reach the point of classification and evaluation. Without the experience of evil, Adam lacks full discernment. But he knows that God has commanded him to obey, to læstan his lare (‘follow his teaching,’ line 538a). Also, he says to the serpent, þu gelic ne bist / ænegum his engla þe ic ær geseah (‘you are not like any of his angels that I have seen before,’ lines 538b–539). Although Adam relies more on his senses, prior experience, and obedience than on the exercise of his intellect, his resistance keeps him safe for the moment.23 Adam’s deliberations in this passage have generated much critical debate. Susannah B. Mintz describes Adam’s reply to the demon as indicating Adam’s ‘fixed rhetorical and logical style,’ showing that he is ‘locked in’ to the language he uses.24 In Alain Renoir’s interpretation, Adam is ‘puzzled by a situation which taxes the limits of his comprehension,’ unable even ‘to listen.’25 Adam is certainly puzzled, responding 22 23 24 25

Dendle, Satan Unbound, p. 27. On Ælfric’s discussion of obedience and the Fall, see O’Keeffe, Stealing Obedience, pp. 28–29. Susannah B. Mintz, ‘Words Devilish and Divine: Eve as Speaker in Genesis B,’ Neophilologus, 81 (1997), 609–623 (p. 611). Alain Renoir, ‘Eve’s IQ Rating: Two Sexist Views of Genesis B,’ in New Readings on Women in Old English Literature, ed. Helen Damico and Alexandra Hennessey Olsen (Bloomington, 1990), pp. 262–272 (p. 265). In contrast, Eva Oppermann

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Demonic Teaching and the Fall in the Old English Genesis with confusion and the thorough obedience that will temporarily aid him in escaping that confusion. God made him, Adam says, and has given him everything, þeah he his gingran ne sende (‘yet he did not send his younger [one],’ line 546b) before. This new messenger, in other words, does not correspond with Adam’s previous experience of God, who communicates with Adam directly. Adam senses danger, refuses the serpent’s instruction, and tells him to go away (lines 542b–543a). The first man is not hungry for the learning offered by the serpent. He does not understand what the serpent says, and he shuns him. In Genesis B, Adam and Eve both directly receive God’s instruction to stay away from the tree.26 Though God’s geong ones know his teaching, they do not seem to understand it fully. They do not fully grasp why God taught them such a lesson, because they do not yet know what death is or comprehend its consequences. Neither of them possesses an adequate background for the pathways down which arguments to refute the demon can travel. Adam does not recognize the demon or understand his requests. This lack of familiarity is sufficient for Adam to refuse the demon’s overtures, and Adam’s resistance makes him temporarily less vulnerable to false teaching. Eve’s desire to learn, in contrast, usually a desirable and necessary quality in a pupil, makes her far more vulnerable to the demon’s deceptions. The serpent’s story to Eve begins with threats of the anger of God, mihtig on mode (‘mighty in mind,’ line 559b). In contrast to the heightened capacities of mind and body that the serpent promised to Adam, he tempts Eve repeatedly with enlightenment of vision: wurðað þin eagan swa leoht / þæt þu meaht swa wide ofer woruld ealle / geseon (‘your eyes will become so enlightened that you will be able to see widely throughout the world,’ lines 564b–566a).27 If she obeys the serpent and fulfills God’s command, providing Adam with compelling bisne (‘examples,’ line 571a) and urging him þæt he þine lare læste (‘so that he fulfills your teaching,’ line 576a), Adam will cease his resistance and join her in gebod godes / lare læstes (‘[fulfilling] the command of God, his instruction,’ lines 571b–572a). The serpent’s attack on Eve, in comparison to his approach to Adam, is two-pronged: first, the demon appeals to her senses, and then he flatters her with praise for her intellectual ability to use the verbal arts in debate

26 27

claims that Adam’s ‘resistance’ and ‘obedience’ result from God’s ‘prohibition’ itself, ‘which … was meant to both widen man’s experience of life and initiate a relationship with God.’ See ‘Not so “Good for Food”: Temptation and Abjection in “Genesis B” and C.S. Lewis’ Perelandra,’ Inklings: Jahrbuch fūr Literatur und Æsthetik, 33 (2015), 167–178 (p. 174–175). Cole, ‘Jewish Apocrypha and Christian Epistemologies of the Fall,’ p. 173. On the demon’s tempting of Eve, see Michelet, Creation, Migration, and Conquest, pp. 70–71. Vickrey sees the serpent as an ‘allegorical’ figure of ‘suggestio’ in Genesis B and the Comedic Imperative, p. 105.

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Debating with Demons with Adam. The demon’s skills are both argumentative and persuasive, involving methods of informal logic associated with both rhetoric and dialectic.28 The serpent’s argument to Eve, however, incorporates a false premise: he implicitly claims that she is not already enlightened, that she cannot see widely. In convincing her of the truth of this premise, the demon seeks to induce her to eat the fruit, which, he claims, will brighten her eyes and broaden her vision. It has already been made clear, however, that God interacts with both Adam and Eve directly in the garden. In other words, Eve already possesses what her post-lapsarian descendants perpetually long for: the direct experience of God and an immortal life in his presence. According to Gregory the Great, before the Fall, Adam spoke regularly with the Creator in the garden, seeing God and the angels in his enlightenment.29 The Genesis poet extends this direct contact and beatific vision to Eve as well: she does not require further enlightenment, because she already possesses all she could ever want or need. Eve, however, accepts the demon’s flawed premise about her limited vision, even though her own experience belies his statement. She also accepts that she and Adam require an intermediary with God, despite their direct experience of his presence. In doubting what she herself knows to be true, what her own experience tells her about her own capacity for vision, Eve accepts a falsehood. Unfortunately, she has training in none of the cunning wordplay the serpent uses. She cannot discern his irony when he says ne eom ic deofle gelic (‘I am not like a devil,’ line 587b). This is perversely true: he is not like a devil, he is a devil. The demon convinces Eve to doubt not God but herself, her own abilities. And she is too accepting of the demon’s authority to doubt his premise instead. While the verbal arts are unknown to human beings in their pre-lapsarian state – they are seemingly not part of God’s teaching – these arts are known to demons and seemingly are invented by them, their arguments discovered within the topos of Eden itself. These stories of the Fall feature debate, persuasion, and disputation as the arts of demons, who use them to convey flawed and self-serving arguments. These arts, however, affect Eve more than Adam. The serpent is subtle and clever in approaching Eve mid ligenum and mid listum (‘with lies and with skills,’ line 588). As Renoir notes, the demon frightens Eve initially with a threat, so that she does not ask who he is; the demon further deploys both logic and rhetoric in persuading her to accept his teaching. Renoir recognizes that the 28

29

On the serpent’s use of rhetoric and his ‘corruption of discourse,’ see Jager, ‘Tempter as Rhetoric Teacher,’ p. 113, and Harbus, Cognitive Approaches to Old English Poetry, p. 90. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, tome III, ed. de Vogüé and Antin, IV.1.1; Saint Gregory the Great: Dialogues, trans. Zimmerman, p. 189.

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Demonic Teaching and the Fall in the Old English Genesis ‘logic of [the serpent’s] argument demands … disregarding [God’s] initial ban,’ but, since ‘divine counterorders’ are common in scripture, Eve’s is a ‘logical action,’ demonstrating that, in contrast to Adam, ‘she [is] intelligent enough to follow a logical argument.’30 In the terms used by Carruthers and Buchelt, however, Eve falls into curiositas, allowing her mind to become ‘crowded,’ wanting to know more, and wandering from the path she should be following. Scheck claims that Eve demonstrates ‘her inability to make truly important decisions,’ ‘her lack of resolve,’ and ‘her lack of knowledge, her inability to read at more than a literal level.’31 It seems a mistake, however, to consider Eve in terms of ‘lack.’ It is precisely when she considers herself this way, as lacking vision, forgetting or diminishing the capacities she already possesses, that the serpent succeeds in influencing her. She does have abilities, vision, and direct contact with God. When the serpent convinces her that she does not, and she believes him, then she falls. Furthermore, Eve is not a reader, literal or otherwise, since there are no texts yet to read, no scriptures to interpret. She cannot rely on texts as sources of truth, receiving it only from teachers. Truth, however, can be elusive, as Scheck claims, since Eve ‘does not know how to interrogate the messenger in order to determine the truth, as Adam does.’32 Adam, however, does not exactly ‘interrogate’ the serpent. Rather, Adam refuses the serpent’s request because he cannot understand the serpent’s words, and his encounter with the serpent has no precedent in his experience. Unable to glean knowledge from the demon’s ‘teaching,’ Adam simply reverts to God’s teaching, which he already knows.33 Scheck comes closer to the mark when she notes that ‘Eve … thinks too much … the desire to know makes her dangerous,’34 as well as, ironically, an ideal pupil. Eve, unlike Adam, understands and accepts the demon’s res dubia, doubting her own vision as a result of his seemingly authoritative arguments. In contending with the demon, Eve is overwhelmed by multiple propositions. She engages with them as Adam does not, endangering herself and, finally, him and their descendants as well. Her submission is ultimately described as both physical and intellectual. Eventually hire on innan ongan / weallan wyrmes geþeaht (‘the serpent’s thought began to well up within her,’ lines 589b–590a) so that heo hire mod ongan / lætan æfter þam larum (‘she began to surrender her mind to [his] teaching,’ lines 591b–592a). This process echoes Satan’s own fall earlier in the poem, when he was seduced by his own thoughts and they weoll (‘welled up’) in his 30 31 32 33 34

Renoir, ‘Eve’s IQ Rating,’ pp. 265–266, 268–269. Scheck, Reform and Resistance, p. 115. Ibid., p. 115. See Cole, ‘Jewish Apocrypha and Christian Epistemologies of the Fall,’ p. 173. Scheck, Reform and Resistance, p. 116.

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Debating with Demons heart (lines 353b–354a). The poet claims that this happens to Eve because hæfde hire wacran hige / metod gemearcod (‘the creator had designed a weaker mind for her,’ lines 590b–591a). If Eve’s acceptance of the demon’s teaching does not constitute a movement of ratio, however, then neither does Adam’s response. Both Eve and Adam seem inexperienced in the skillful exercise of ratio. While Eve’s response may be excessively credulous, Adam’s is more cautious than skillful. He cannot understand the demon’s words at all. Eve can, but she accepts them at face value, with devastating consequences. Critics have thoroughly debated the poet’s statement about Eve’s ‘weaker mind.’ In Renoir’s view, the poet’s statement about Eve means that her mind is weaker compared to that of the demon, not that of Adam.35 Katherine DeVane Brown claims that Eve’s ‘weak’ mind should be evaluated in comparison to ‘the devil’s nearly divine intelligence earlier in the poem.’ Brown cites a homily by Wulfstan, De fide catholica, to demonstrate that ‘wac geðanc cannot be interpreted as a specifically female shortcoming,’ describing instead any Christian who lacks an understanding of God. As Brown notes, the demon places Eve’s ‘relationship with God’ in question, and she falls into doubt.36 Eve’s mind seems to be operating in ways that Adam’s is not, and her fall does not seem to be due to vanity, weakness, or any of the other explanations ubiquitous in the more misogynistic strains of patristic tradition. Thomas D. Hill has noted that Eve’s longing for the beatific vision would typically be praiseworthy.37 But again, Eve already has direct experience of God: what other ‘beatific vision’ would she require? The serpent convinces her that her vision is darkened and limited, and she has nothing to which she can compare it. She accepts a flawed premise about her own nature and ability. Her mind is only weaker in that she believed the demon’s lie about her supposed weakness, while Adam simply ignored demonic words he could not understand. Both the Greek diabolos and Hebrew śṭn, as Neil Forsyth has noted, indicate an ‘“opponent” – someone or something in the way, a stumbling block … a trap laid for an enemy.’38 Here the demon places the desire for knowledge as a ‘stumbling block’ in Eve’s way. Because she greatly desires knowledge in ways that Adam seemingly does not, she is too willing to believe in the doubts introduced by the demon. Those doubts allow him access to her senses, suggesting a link between the body and the

35

36 37 38

Renoir, ‘Eve’s IQ Rating,’ p. 269. On the poet’s statements about Eve’s ‘weak’ mind as applicable to both men and women, see Katherine DeVane Brown, ‘Antifeminism or Exegesis?: Reinterpreting Eve’s wacgeþoht in Genesis B,’ Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 115.2 (2016), 141–166 (pp. 141, 166). Brown, ‘Antifeminism or Exegesis?,’ pp. 145, 149–150. Hill, ‘Pilate’s Visionary Wife and the Innocence of Eve,’ pp. 171. Forsyth, The Old Enemy, pp. 4, 113, 267.

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Demonic Teaching and the Fall in the Old English Genesis soul which, considering its devastating implications for Eve, Adam, their progeny, and all of creation, seems to be immensely powerful. The poet comments on Eve’s unfathomable vulnerability, her lack of protection, which she shares with her yet unborn descendants. Þæt is micel wundor (‘it is a great wonder,’ line 595b), the poet says, þæt hit ece god æfre wolde / þeoden þolian, þæt wurde þegn swa monig / forlædd be þam lygenum þe for þam larum com (‘that God, the eternal prince, would ever suffer that so many [thanes] should be led astray by the lies which came because of [the serpent’s] teaching,’ lines 596–598). The serpent’s attack on Eve is significantly stronger, ‘more subtle and indirect,’ than that on Adam.39 Eve’s understanding of the demon’s words, the comprehension every student of grammar aspires to, makes her far more vulnerable than Adam, who cannot process the demon’s teachings. And she eats.

Onto-epistemological transformations: the consequences of the Fall In the Genesis poet’s account, the Fall is simultaneously spiritual, intellectual, and material, involving spiritus, ratio, and eating. The apple is far more than a metaphor. When Eve eats the fruit (line 599a), it materially changes her and allows the serpent access to her soul, perception, and intellect.40 When the thought of the demon ‘wells up’ inside Eve at line 590,41 she undergoes a complex but temporary spirituo-material change (lines 600b–605a):42 Þa meahte heo wide geseon þurh þæs laðan læn þe hie mid ligenum beswac, dearnenga bedrog, þe hire for his dædum com, þæt hire þuhte hwitre heofon and eorðe, and eall þeos woruld wlitigre, and geweorc godes micel and mihtig … (Then she could see widely through the gift of the hateful one who deceived her with lies, secretly seduced [her], who led her with his deeds, so that heaven and earth seemed brighter to her, and all this world more beautiful, and the work of God great and mighty …)

39 40

41 42

Burchmore, ‘Traditional Exegesis and the Condition of Guilt,’ p. 129. On the ‘poison’ of the fruit, see Jager, The Tempter’s Voice, p. 39; see also Grimes, ‘Tree(s) of Knowledge,’ p. 316 and, on the association of the fruit with the body of Eve in the Junius 11 illustrations, p. 332. On this passage, see Brown, ‘Antifeminism or Exegesis?,’ pp. 150–151. Hill claims that Eve is justified in believing in the vision, since she has received evidence of its veracity; see ‘Pilate’s Visionary Wife and the Innocence of Eve,’ p. 172.

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Debating with Demons The term læn in line 601a literally means a ‘loan,’ something provisional that must be repaid. The serpent, though he can temporarily deceive her, lacks the capacity to give a gift fully. The phrase hire þuhte, ‘it seemed to her,’ is likewise significant: though God’s creation seems lighter and brighter to her, it is not so. God’s works are just as bright and beautiful as they have always been. The serpent’s deception of Eve’s mind and her senses, through which God’s creation appears lighter and brighter to her, seem to provide evidence of his earlier claims. Her perception is briefly influenced by the serpent. The poet notes that heo hit þurh monnes geþeaht / ne sceawode; ac se sceaða georne / swicode ymb þa sawle (‘she did not behold it through human thought – but the wretch eagerly deceived [her] within her soul,’ lines 605b–607a). The serpent targets a specific sense, that of sight, to manipulate Eve’s vulnerability. But nalles he hie freme lærde (‘he did not teach her any beneficial thing,’ line 610b). The vision he gives her changes everything, he says: þe is ungelic / wlite and wæstmas, siððan þu … / læstes mine lare (‘for you appearances and forms are different, since you followed my teaching,’ lines 612b–614a). However, the demon lies: nothing is actually different for Eve, since she has seen God and his angels regularly as an inhabitant of Paradise. As Andrew Cole has noted, only Eve, not Adam, is offered ‘proof’ of the demon’s claims, ‘the proof that the demon needs to persuade Eve of his veracity and the proof that Adam needs to believe her and the demon.’ Ironically, according to Cole, the demon shows Adam and Eve a vision of the truth, not an illusion. For them, the beatific vision is a daily reality, ‘unmediated experience … not representation but presentation.’ Their direct experience is Paradise, contact with God and the angels. Therefore, as Burchmore notes, the vision cannot be sensory delusion on Eve’s part.43 She has enlightened vision, but the demon convinces her that she did not possess it before and that he himself has bestowed it on her. The vision, which is the truth, convinces Eve, and eventually Adam, that the demon’s other teachings are also true. And this irrefutable proof of the demon’s argument convinces Eve. She does not possess the discretio to discern that what he shows her is not proof that he himself provides, but an everyday condition of her existence. She does not need this vision the serpent promises, because she already possesses it. Dazzled by the vision’s beauty, however, and convinced by his lie, she forgets what she already knows. In the ‘places’ in her mind, allowing the apparent ‘truth’ of the demon’s falsehood to obscure the truth of her experience, her daily beatific vision, she cannot find arguments to refute him. 43

Cole, ‘Jewish Apocrypha and Christian Epistemologies of the Fall,’ pp. 175, 180, 182, 165. See also Burchmore, ‘Traditional Exegesis and the Condition of Guilt,’ pp. 119–120.

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Demonic Teaching and the Fall in the Old English Genesis And the demon promises Eve that her gift can be shared with Adam if she tells him about her new skills and he þurh cuscne siodo / læst mina lara (‘follows my [the demon’s] teaching in a virtuous manner,’ lines 618b–619a). Thus the serpent also manipulates Eve’s emotions, aiming at multiple attributes of her soul, and encourages her to consider herself the teacher of Adam. Because she yielded to the serpent’s deception, the poet notes, swa hire eaforan sculon æfter lybban (‘so must her offspring live forever after,’ line 623), suggesting that not Adam’s but Eve’s action materially changed the ontological status of their progeny. When Eve approaches Adam with the fruit to tell him the story of her supposedly newfound visionary knowledge, the poet comments on the fact that she is deceived, not deceiving. Convinced that her vision was limited, she accepted the demon’s ‘vision’ as proof, confirming his veracity in her mind. She goes to Adam þurh holdne hyge, nyste þæt þær hearma swa fela / … fylgean sceolde / … þæs heo on mod genam / þæt heo þæs laðan bodan larum hyrde (‘with loyal mind; she did not know that so many injuries must follow … she accepted in mind what she heard in the teaching of the hateful messenger,’ lines 708b–709, 710b–711). Eve falls not because of what she sees but because of what the serpent teaches her she sees. Eve’s mind is changed, however, as are her senses, not because of the serpent’s læn but because she has eaten the apple. She tells Adam the bitter fruit is sweet (line 655b) and pleads with him to consume it,44 since the demon can intercede with God on their behalf (line 665–666a). She believes such intercession is necessary (line 664b), even though she can see God and his angels from where she stands (lines 666b–671b). Who, she asks, meahte me swelc gewit gifan, / gif hit gegnunga god ne onsende? (‘could have given me such intellect, if God had not sent it directly?’ lines 671b–672).45 The demon, however, has not ‘given’ her anything beyond a brief ‘loan,’ a delusion of heightened sensory perception. She believes that the fruit has also been sent directly (gegnunga) from God (line 683a). If it had been so, however, God would have come himself, as he did before. The demon now seems to have convinced her that, in addition to having limited vision, she and Adam are distant from God and in need of an intermediary. Once again, she believes the lies the demon tells her about herself, her capacities, and her affiliation with God. Only in a fallen world is mediated experience necessary, with access to the divine pursued through interlocutors such as translators and teachers. Though Eve does not need such mediation before the Fall, she becomes convinced that it is required. But one must know which teachers to trust, 44 45

On Eve’s delusion about the bitter fruit, see Jager, ‘Tempter as Rhetoric Teacher,’ p. 113. On the association of Eve’s intellect with light in accordance with the ‘hydraulic model,’ see Lockett, Anglo-Saxon Psychologies, p. 71.

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Debating with Demons and Eve’s trust in the demon is mistaken. His proof, however, remains: Eve does not lose her vision, which she would have had even without the demon’s intervention, so she does not realize his falsity. She therefore argues with Adam all day, once the serpent forlærde mid ligenwordum / to þam unræde idese sciene (‘had deceitfully taught the shining noblewoman with lying words as evil counsel,’ lines 699–700). The serpent continues to persuade them both, forlæran and forlædan (‘to teach deceitfully and mislead [them],’ line 692a).46 Finally, þegne ongan / his hige hweorfan (‘the thane [Adam] began to change his mind,’ lines 705b–706a). With little detail provided by the poet, Adam’s mind changes, and his heorte ongann / wendan to hire willan (‘heart began to turn to her will,’ 716b–717a). Thus the Fall of Adam and Eve involves the deceitful teaching of the entire soul as Ælfric represents it: emotion, reason, intellect, and the senses. Much critical discussion has been given to the Genesis B poet’s association of ‘Eve [with] sensus (the senses) and Adam [with] ratio (reason).’47 John F. Vickrey supports this allegorical configuration, a typical patristic interpretation.48 Scheck likewise subscribes to this view, arguing that Genesis B re-inscribes ‘the misogynist perception of the inherently weak, false, intellectually challenged female’ who causes the downfall of the ‘male subject.’ In simpler terms, ‘Eve … demonstrates what happens when women do have a voice and men listen.’49 Charles W. Wright questions the view of Eve as weak, sensory, and emotional, however, asserting that both Eve and Adam are associated with ‘Reason.’50 Mintz likewise questions any stark opposition of Adam and Eve, recognizing the ambiguity in the poet’s language and an ‘anxiety about, even a questioning of, epistemological limits’ in the poem.51 Reading the poem through John Scottus Eriugena’s Periphyseon, Burchmore acknowledges the relationship between reason and the senses, noting that sensory perceptions can distort ratio.52 In Gillian Overing’s view, a ‘dual hermeneutic’ is necessary for reading this part of the poem, combining a ‘negative … [androcentric]’ view and a more ‘positive hermeneutic’ which allows a reading of Eve as a ‘separate female self.’ It is impossible, Overing claims, to resolve the issue through a ‘pro-Eve’ or ‘anti-Eve’ critical perspective.53 46

47 48 49 50 51 52 53

Jane Chance considers Eve’s function in this scene as ‘peacemaking,’ attempting to resolve Adam’s conflict with the serpent. See Woman as Hero in Old English Literature (Syracuse, 1986), p. 74. Brown, ‘Antifeminism or Exegesis?,’ pp. 144, 161. Vickrey, Genesis B and the Comedic Imperative, pp. 47, 83. See also Burchmore, ‘Traditional Exegesis and the Condition of Guilt,’ pp. 118, 122–123, 126. This ‘male subject’ is identified with ‘the ideal model of the generic (male) Christian self.’ Scheck, Reform and Resistance, pp. 25, 97. Wright, ‘Genesis B ad litteram,’ pp. 129–130. Mintz, ‘Words Devilish and Divine,’ pp. 611–612. Burchmore, ‘Traditional Exegesis and the Condition of Guilt,’ p. 127. Gillian Overing, ‘On Reading Eve: Genesis B and the Readers’ Desire,’ Speaking

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Demonic Teaching and the Fall in the Old English Genesis This opposition indeed seems not to account for the complex effects of the demon’s teaching in the poem. According to Ælfric’s view of the soul, discussed in Chapter 1, the presumed divide between ratio and sensus did not exist. They were both aspects of the mystical soul. The opposition itself is therefore false, in keeping with the poet’s representation of both Eve’s and Adam’s initial responses to the demon’s teaching. Adam cannot employ ratio, in part because he cannot even understand the demon’s words; his problem seems more closely related to language than to reason. Eve, in contrast, is vulnerable because she can employ ratio, engaging with the questions and arguments raised by the demon. Her error is not in engaging in debate, but in trusting the demon’s authority more than her own experience and her closeness to God. Although her vision is not confused, limited or flawed, the demon has convinced her that it is. In disputing the issue with Adam, she again claims that the demon’s teaching comes gegnunga (‘directly’) from God (lines 672a, 683a). Trusting the demon, she cannot see that her argument is illogical: if the teaching had come directly from God, why would he not have told them himself, as he had always done? Like Adam, she is a geong one, not versed in the methods of logic or dialectic, not able to discern that what she says is illogical. The problem, according to the Genesis poem’s rendering of the Fall, is not that Eve trusts her senses: it is that she does not trust them, that she forgets her former abilities and becomes convinced that the enhanced vision the serpent loans her is something new, something she has never seen before. In fact, she has seen God face to face, spoken to him, and heard his commands firsthand. Although neither Eve nor Adam possess significant verbal skills, Eve engages in learning actively, doing what all monastic teachers wanted their students to do. But her teacher deceives her, something no geong and dutiful pupil would expect. Genesis B thus tells not only the story of the Fall, but also the story of the origins of the verbal arts, the dangerous contrast between complete obedience and participation in debate and argument, a process potentially tending toward both truth and deception. The Fall, later called the felix culpa (‘happy fault’) in the Easter exultet, is double-sided as well: though it caused the loss of Paradise and plunged humankind into inevitable illness and death, it also brought about the epistemological and ontological conditions necessary for scripture to be written and Christ to be born. Without the Fall, there would be no need for reading or explicating scripture. Christ would not have come, would not have been incarnated in a human body, died, and risen again. Eve’s acceptance of the serpent’s teaching Two Languages: Traditional Disciplines and Contemporary Theory in Medieval Studies, ed. Allen J. Frantzen (Albany, 1991), pp. 35–63 (pp. 37–38, 41). See also Harbus, Cognitive Approaches to Old English Poetry, p. 90.

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Debating with Demons brought about not only the Fall but also the foundations of Christian life itself: the Incarnation of Christ, received bodily in the Eucharist, and his death and resurrection, the godspel (‘good news’) of scripture. While Eve’s responsibility for the original sin, parallel to but distinct from Adam’s, is clear in the poem, the degree of her responsibility is less clear, especially given the poet’s frequent attempts to qualify her guilt. In the critical debate over how to interpret those qualifications, Eduard Sievers and W.P. Ker seek to de-emphasize Eve’s culpability; Rosemary Woolf, Doane, and Vickrey seek to assert it; and Finnegan and P.S. Langeslag promote a restrained, nuanced view of her role in the Fall.54 None of these critics, however, mention that, within the narrative, Eve is a student. Overing argues that Eve should be viewed as a ‘reading interpreting subject.’55 Again, however, Eve is not reading. She is listening carefully, attending and thinking and engaging, like any model student. But she listens to the wrong teacher and believes what he tells her about herself and her God, even though her experience should tell her otherwise. Eve does not expect deception from a teacher. There is no reason why she should. Like Adam, before Eve eats the fruit, she knows nothing of good or evil. She has not yet developed argumentative skills or discretio, and, like many students, she does not yet recognize how unskilled she is or understand her own nature thoroughly in comparison to other beings. Eve’s error, commonplace in the fallen world, is unfortunately the costliest error in the history of humankind, as she realizes after the Fall. She knows what she has done, as the Eve of Christ and Satan boldly declares to Christ during the Harrowing. The demon teaches them. They believe him. Then they eat the fruit. Their error, as the poets of the Junius accounts present it, is in acknowledging the demon as magister when they already had an ideal teacher in God. They accept flawed arguments, a complex series of claims that seek to mislead them about their own capacities and their experience of the divine. They err in believing the demon’s ‘proof’ when what he shows Eve had already been bestowed on them by God himself. When they internalize the demon’s teaching, they – Eve first, and 54

55

Eduard Sievers, Der Heliand und die angelsächsiche Genesis (Halle, 1875), p. 22; W.P. Ker, The Dark Ages (London, 1955), p. 259; Rosemary Woolf, ‘The Fall of Man in Genesis B and the Mystère d’Adam,’ Studies in Old English Literature in Honor of Arthur G. Brodeur, ed. Stanley B. Greenfield (Eugene, 1963), pp. 187–199 (pp. 190–193); Doane, The Saxon Genesis, pp. 143–144; John F. Vickrey, ‘The Vision of Eve in Genesis B,’ Speculum, 44 (1969), 86–102 (pp. 86–87); Robert Emmett Finnegan, ‘Eve and “Vincible Ignorance” in Genesis B,’ Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 18 (1976), 329–339 (pp. 329–330); and P.S. Langeslag, ‘Doctrine and Paradigm: Two Functions of the Innovations in Genesis B,’ Studia Neophilogica, 79.2 (2007), 113–118 (p. 116). Langeslag argues for a sympathetic view of Eve in light of the demon’s ‘subtlety’ in tempting her, also providing a useful overview of the critical debate on pp. 113–114. Overing, ‘On Reading Eve,’ p. 44.

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Demonic Teaching and the Fall in the Old English Genesis then Adam – commit the spirituo-material act at the center of the Fall, eating the apple that grips their hearts, changing the ontological status of the world and everything in it. As the mother of all, the mater of materia, Eve accepts the demon’s teaching on behalf of her descendants with ontological and epistemological consequences for their bodies, minds, and souls.56 When she and Adam eat the fruit, they also eat death, sin, hell, and murder (lines 717b–723a). As the fruit transforms Eve, when hit him on innan com, hran æt heortan (‘it [enters] into [Adam], it [touches] him in the heart,’ lines 723b–724a). This reaches Satan’s heart as well: after Adam eats, the serpent exults, crying out in delight to his master in hell (lines 726b–750), mæg þin mod wesan / bliðe on breostum (‘your mind can be happy in your breast,’ lines 750a–751a) at Adam and Eve’s Fall.57 According to Overing, in Eve, the ‘boundaries’ separating ‘inner from outer, subject from object, eating from speaking, are dissolved.’ This is part and parcel of the pedagogical encounter, the ‘unfolding recognition of the physical conditions of subjectivity’: ‘after imbibing the apple, she becomes it.’58 Arguably, however, such boundaries are never actually in place: the apple has the capacity to change Adam and Eve before they eat it, before they fall. The apple is there, in a real and material way. Its presence on the tree is a manifestation of knowledge, whether they consume it or not. Hence its power. The demon convinces both Adam and Eve, but especially Eve, to perceive a lack in themselves and a distance between them and God. That makes them feel vulnerable, in need of something to compensate for that lack, that distance. So they eat. The fruit’s power is manifest as well in the altered material conditions of Adam and Eve. As the light fades from Eve’s eyes (lines 772b), she and Adam find themselves immediately at odds with their material environment, requiring clothing, shelter, and labor to protect them from hunger, heat, cold, and weather (lines 783b–787a, 805–814a).59 As Jennifer Neville has noted, Adam and Eve here become aware of the dangers of ‘the forces of the natural world,’ recognizing that ‘nature’s power … is … humanity’s powerlessness.’60 These things would not be necessary, the poet says, gif hie wolden lare godes / forweard fremman (‘if they had wished to carry out God’s teaching earlier,’ lines 787b–788a). Once Adam and Eve accept an inferior teacher and eat, their physical transformation, and that of the 56 57

58 59 60

On the ontological transformation resulting from the Fall, see Cole, ‘Jewish Apocrypha and Christian Epistemologies of the Fall,’ pp. 161, 184–186. On the ‘semantic ambivalence of breost’ and early English poets’ use of the term to signify both physical and mental states, see Mize, Traditional Subjectivities, p. 131. Overing, ‘On Reading Eve,’ pp. 57–58. Mize, Traditional Subjectivities, pp. 84–88. Neville, Representations of the Natural World in Old English Poetry, pp. 52, 21.

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Debating with Demons world around them, is inevitable. Adam echoes the poet’s sentiment, but he directs it at Eve: þu me forlæred hæfst / on mines herran hete (‘you have deceitfully taught me into my lord’s hate,’ lines 818b–819a). Eve’s reply demonstrates the complexity and multifaceted nature of the soul. Adam is thinking with the intellect, she says, but she feels her error in the seat of her emotions: hit þe … wyrs ne mæg / on þinum hyge hreowan þonne hit me æt heortan deð (‘it cannot distress you more in your mind than it does to me in my heart,’ lines 825b–826). Adam’s ‘heart,’ however, had turned to Eve when he fell (716b–717a), and the poet exonerated her from willful deception. Without intending to deceive, Eve has unwittingly become a teacher of untruths, carrying forward the demon’s sophistic teachings. Adam and Eve are also physically damaged and constrained by their Fall.61 At line 851, as the poem transitions back to Genesis A, God confronts Adam about these events. When God asks Adam why he is hiding, Adam acknowledges the wound to his soul: scyldfull mine sceaðen is me sare, / frecne on ferhðe (‘my guilty [spirit] is painfully injured in me, in danger to my spirit,’ lines 869–870a).62 His spiritual injuries are accompanied by bodily vulnerability to the elements and emotional suffering through fears for his and Eve’s survival in a world that is now hostile and dangerous. In his anger at their sin, God curses the serpent and rebukes Eve, with a striking reversal of the Genesis B poet’s sympathetic attitude toward her:63 she shall be under geweald (‘rule’) of wæpnedmen (‘men,’ lines 919b–920a), hearde genearwad (‘tightly confined,’ line 921a), and she must deaðes bidan (‘wait for death,’ line 922b) and labor in childbearing þurh wop and heaf (‘in weeping and lamentation,’ line 923a). Adam, for his part, must on wræc hweorfan (‘wander in exile,’ line 928b) and work the earth for food. Eventually, þe to heortan hearde gripeð / adl unliðe þe þu on æple ær / selfa forswulge (‘the cruel illness that you yourself swallowed in the apple before [will] grip you harshly in the heart,’ lines 936a–938a), and then Adam will die.64 He and Eve ate death, in other words, and eventually it will take them both. At that point, God says, þe is gedal witod / lices and sawle (‘the separation of body and soul is ordained for you,’ 61

62

63

64

Beginning at line 790, Genesis B is based on an Old Saxon source, a poem of 337 lines surviving in Vatican MS Palatinus Latinus 1447, beginning at folio 1r. Doane associates the manuscript with ninth-century Mainz in The Saxon Genesis, pp. 9, 57, 232. The regret of Genesis B’s Adam and Eve leads Alexander J. Sager to interpret the poem ‘as a penitential text;’ see ‘After the Apple: Repentance in Genesis B and its Continental Context,’ Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 112.3 (2013), 292–310 (pp. 293, 299). See also Trilling, The Aesthetics of Nostalgia, p. 94. Peter J. Lucas, ‘Loyalty and Obedience in the Old English Genesis and the Interpolation of Genesis B into Genesis A,’ Neophilologus, 76 (1992), 121–135 (pp. 122). According to Grimes, God distances himself from the apple in this passage; see ‘Tree(s) of Knowledge,’ p. 325.

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Demonic Teaching and the Fall in the Old English Genesis lines 930b–931a). Adam’s body will return to the dust from which it was made, to remain separate until it eventually rejoins the soul. This sundering of the body and soul is temporary, not total, lasting until the Judgment. When Adam and Eve are driven from Paradise, however, they must live on nearore life (‘in a more confined life,’ line 944b). Seemingly, however, a link between body and soul remains after physical death, as suggested in the story of Cain and Abel, the first sons of Adam and Eve. When Cain, their firstborn, kills his brother Abel, God says, his blod to me / cleopað and cigeð (‘his blood calls and cries out to me,’ lines 1012b–1013a). Abel’s blood speaks for itself, and the earth ‘drinks’ the evidence of the crime: cwealmdreore swealh / þæs middangeard, monnes swate (‘this middle-earth swallowed the killing-blood, the blood of a man,’ lines 985b–986). In the manuscript illustration in Junius 11, this blood is represented as Abel himself rising up bodily from the ground to accuse his brother.65 Because of the murder, God says, the earth will no longer provide crops for Cain (lines 1016b–1018a). In the Old English account, a horrible tree grows up instead from Abel’s blood, heavy with loathsome fruit, reaching its branches out to sow discord among the descendants of Adam and Eve (lines 987–995a).66 In this passage, the blood, the earth, and the tree have agency of their own, but that agency has been transformed by the Fall. While the fusion of the spiritual and material remains, it is characterized by strife rather than the harmony of creation.

Discretio and the Fall In the Genesis poems’ succession of pedagogical tales – from Lucifer to his angels, the demon to Adam, the demon to Eve, and Eve to Adam – the Fall is manifested as an ongoing debate based on flawed arguments. Adam and Eve trust the wrong teacher, who deceives them about their own capacities and their affiliation with God. The Fall is also the exercise of embodied and ensouled voices within a particular place, despite patristic attempts to allegorize it completely, transforming its literal meanings into abstraction.67 The story of the Fall, and the stories embedded within it, represent spirituo-material acts with epistemological and ontological consequences 65 66

67

Karkov, Text and Picture in Anglo-Saxon England, p. 81, plate XXII. Grimes interprets this tree as an ‘allegorical’ figure for ‘the spread of evil beyond Eden,’ in ‘Tree(s) of Knowledge,’ p. 326. According to Charles D. Wright, this reference to Abel’s blood sustaining the ‘organic growth’ of evil is ‘striking and unusual.’ See ‘The Blood of Abel and the Branches of Sin: Genesis A, Maxims I and Aldhelm’s Carmen de uirginitate,’ Anglo-Saxon England, 25 (1996), 7–19 (pp. 14, 10). This is especially the case with Augustine: see Forsyth, The Old Enemy, pp. 421–422.

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Debating with Demons involving the intellect, the will, and the senses. In medieval monasteries, this fusion was recognized through the practice of ruminatio during lectio divina at mealtimes: in the synergy of mind, intellect, and spirit, the soul is fed along with the body.68 Memoria and reading in general, as Carruthers emphasizes, depend on a ‘locational structure,’ a ‘memory-store’ from which one can ‘invent’ arguments.69 One’s mental ‘inventory’ is built through ‘rote’ learning, memorizing material and ‘practicing over and over like a wheel.’ Error is likewise ‘locational’: to avoid curiositas, or ‘disorder,’ one must ‘[have] status, a place to stand, and … be stabilis.’70 The question remains, however: what capacity do Adam and Eve have to ‘stand,’ or even to establish adequate ‘backgrounds’ at all? Before the serpent approaches Adam and Eve, they know only what God has told them. They possess nothing beyond an abstract understanding of the consequences of their actions. They do not know what death is; they do not know what evil is, although God seemingly warned them against it. They have not learned by rote. Their only inventory is the instruction of God himself, the perfect magister with, however, limited opportunity before the demon’s approach to teach his newly formed geong ones. Summoning up arguments through inventio is not a skill Adam and Eve possess. Adam defends himself through overt refusal; he will not listen, and he drives the demon away. Though Eve might be considered a more willing student, this places her in greater danger. As a geong one with limited experience, she has also a limited background and few ‘routes’ to follow. Standing in Eden itself, the place, the only place she has ever experienced, she recognizes neither the need for any other place nor the need for status or stability. To borrow Carruthers’s phrasing, Eve ‘[becomes] so charmed by the play of … mental images that [she loses her] “place” and cannot remember what path [she was] supposed to mark.’71 She also cannot remember who she is: beloved of God, formed by his own hands, with the light of Paradise in her eyes. Accepting the demon’s flawed arguments, Eve experiments with her mental architecture in ways Adam does not dare to. And she accepts the demon’s lesson. Eventually, Adam does the same. The question of ‘who’s to blame?’ that has preoccupied modern scholars, therefore, simply does not matter. Adam and Eve give two different responses that both lead to the same end, and both fall in part because of their undeveloped skills in

68 69

70 71

Jager, The Tempter’s Voice, p. 154. See also Robertson, Lectio Divina, pp. xiv–xv, 93. Carruthers, ‘Reading with Attitude,’ pp. 8–9. This is true of both rhetoric and dialectic, although Carruthers only discusses rhetoric. See also Buchelt, ‘All About Eve,’ p. 155. Carruthers, ‘Reading with Attitude,’ pp. 7, 10–11. Ibid., pp. 17–18.

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Demonic Teaching and the Fall in the Old English Genesis the verbal arts. Ultimately, Adam’s obedient refusal does not protect him. It simply is not enough, and the poet does not reveal what, in the end, turns Adam, beyond stating that Eve’s teaching ‘turned his heart.’ Genesis B’s story of the Fall, and the tales embedded within it, represent this originary event not as fixed or static but as a series of complex negotiations, debates in which arguments about the human condition are articulated, questioned, or resisted. The competing narratives of the demon and Eve, expressed through the pedagogical encounter, constitute a struggle to define Eden as the original topos, the ‘place’ in which arguments can be found for the ontological state of the material universe and all creatures within it, including human beings. The stories the demon and Eve tell constitute arguments to this effect, but, rooted in the demons’ lies, these arguments are sophistic and false with significant spirituo-material consequences. Understanding the dynamics of these arguments, therefore, is fundamental to recognizing the onto-epistemological significance of the Fall. The agency of Adam and Eve within the story of the Fall is driven partly by the process of discretio, or discernment. The fruit can and will change them, exerting its own agency, but they must choose to eat it. In reading or hearing this story that sought to explain the origins of all people, what would early medieval audiences have understood about the discernment that could have prevented the Fall? Anthony D. Rich defines discretio as ‘judging or making a distinction or, negatively, being indiscriminate.’72 New Testament texts emphasizing discernment include Romans, Hebrews, and 1 Corinthians, where it is represented as the confrontation of doubt and the ability to distinguish, ‘to express choice between alternatives.’73 According to John Cassian (ca. 360–435 c.e.), developing discretio is one of the first tasks of a monk, who is ‘required to exercise discipline, determination and attention to detail,’ also ‘[discerning] the value and purpose of practical disciplines’ and balancing solitary meditation with communal life.74 Discretio, as Cassian describes it, is a gift from God, ‘the highest spiritual faculty’ in monastic life which ‘enables the monk to watch over his thoughts, to determine their nature and origin, and to choose which to accept and reject.’75 Discretio requires knowledge, but also the recognition 72

73 74 75

Anthony D. Rich, Discernment in the Desert Fathers: Διάκρισις in the Life and Thought of Early Egyptian Monasticism (Milton Keynes, 2007), p. 1. In the Old Testament, Διάκρισις is emphasized in Job, Exodus, Kings 1, Chronicles 1, Joel, and Ezekiel; see pp. 2–3. Ibid., pp. 6–7, 9, 11. Ibid., pp. 80–82. Ibid., pp. 84–85, 97, 99. Rich cites Books VI–VII of John Cassian, Conferences, ed. Eugène Pichery, Sources Chrétiennes, 42, 54, 64 (Paris, 1955–1959), translated by Boniface Ramsey in John Cassian: The Conferences (New York, 1997); and Book VIII of John Cassian’s De institutiones, Institutions cènobitiques, ed. and

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Debating with Demons that one lacks knowledge through a ‘disciplined self-examination that results in an accurate self-assessment of capability and vulnerability.’76 Such a self-examination must be learned and cultivated through prayer, discipline, meditation, and study. Adam and Eve, however, have little experience, no instruction or practice in discernment, and few defenses beyond simple obedience to the Creator in choosing the fruit of one tree over another.77 So how should discretio be practiced by the untaught? According to Rich, a monk could exercise discretio not by addressing problems alone in isolation but rather in company, with the spiritual guidance of one’s mentors as well as prayer and scriptural study.78 Although Adam and Eve have no scripture to follow, they do have an elder in God, who would guide them if they were to ask. But they do not. Eve, at least, believes the demon’s claims about her limited vision and her distance from God. In this, she assumes a humbler status than she deserves, an ironic result, since humility and obedience are likewise essential to discretio, as is deference to authority and caution in case of attacks from demonic forces.79 Novices in particular are expected to defer to their elders rather than trusting their own discretio; if the novices think they are being deceived by Satan, they are required to confess it to their elders and accept the guidance and teaching of those wiser and more experienced than they.80 Adam’s behavior in Genesis B somewhat fits the model for discretio: he follows only the teachings of God, refusing to listen to the blandishments of the serpent. He rejects the serpent’s words, however, partly because he cannot understand them. Eve, in turn, accepts the serpent as an authority figure and a teacher without consulting her first teacher, God himself, even though he is so near that she can see him enthroned during her encounter with the serpent. In accepting the demon’s narrative, Eve also accepts him as a magister, granting him authority as her teacher. Through Eve’s arguments and the motions of Adam’s heart, the demon becomes Adam’s teacher as well and, by extension, the teacher of all Adam and Eve’s future descendants, who suffer the consequences for their parents’ acceptance of his sophistry.

76 77 78 79 80

trans. Jean-Claude Guy, Sources Chrétiennes, 19 (Paris, 1965), translated into English by Boniface Ramsey in John Cassian: The Institutes (New York, 2000). Ibid., pp. 100–101. Jager, The Tempter’s Voice, p. 34. Rich, Discernment in the Desert Fathers, pp. 102–103. Ibid., pp. 110, 112, 114. Ibid., pp. 115–116, 119.

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Demonic Teaching and the Fall in the Old English Genesis

Conclusion The Genesis poem’s demonic magister finds his arguments in Eden itself, the primal place, the original topos, at once abstract and ‘real,’ remaining after the Fall only in memory and yearning. Following the exile of Adam and Eve, Eden becomes the longed-for locus of creation’s original condition, before God’s teaching authority was challenged by demonic tales. However, Eden is only truly present, and understood, when it is lost.81 It is both a topos and a real place where real bodies, both human and nonhuman, endured real changes that affected Adam and Eve’s progeny, the entire world, and everything in it forever after. And the Fall occurs not only because of false teaching or misplaced trust or disobedience but also because of eating.82 The Fall, in these poetic accounts, happens both because Adam and Eve consent with the will and because they eat the food. The fruit enters into their hearts, changing them and the world around them. The spirituo-material effects of the fruit do not seem to be mere metaphor, any more than the remedies for the Fall, the Incarnation or the Eucharist, would be considered metaphor in the early Middle Ages or beyond. Spirituo-material integration is necessary for redemption, since, according to MacKendrick, ‘it is in and as bodies … that we retain the memories both of divisive distraction and of salvific possibilities.’83 Furthermore, as Overing has noted, real people eat ‘real apples.’84 When Adam and Eve eat the fruit in an Old English text, therefore, its readers or hearers share in the conjoining of spirit and mind with matter. Eating the fruit also leads human beings to recognize the need to exercise discretio. To survive the deceptive pedagogy of the devil, one must know which teachers to trust, when to shut down the desire to learn, and when to cultivate it. Doubt, as discussed in Gregory’s Dialogues, results from human beings’ fallen condition,85 but it also protects them against deception. Adam and Eve acknowledge the serpent as auctor when they should not,86 accepting his account of reality. Without the discretio to distinguish between good and evil, since ‘rote obedience’ is all

81 82 83 84

85 86

Cole, ‘Jewish Apocrypha and Christian Epistemologies of the Fall,’ pp. 178, 181. On the relationship of the body, eating, and language in the poem, see Overing, ‘On Reading Eve,’ p. 39. MacKendrick, Fragmentation and Memory, p. 49. In pre-conquest England, in addition to their symbolic significance, apples were used in cooking and in making medicines. Gillian R. Overing, ‘Of Apples, Eve, and Genesis B: Contemporary Theory and Old English Practice,’ ANQ, n.s. 3 (1990), 87–90 (pp. 88–89). Cole, ‘Jewish Apocrypha and Christian Epistemologies of the Fall,’ p. 180. Burchmore addresses this issue of ‘misplaced authority’ in ‘Traditional Exegesis and the Condition of Guilt,’ p. 137.

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Debating with Demons they know, they do not realize the gravity of the penalty.87 They accept the demon’s narrative in part because he provides proof, and seemingly God’s account of the fruit does not – until they eat it. Even after the Fall, however, God’s account is not proven true immediately or as Adam and Eve expected.88 God tells them they will die if they eat the fruit, which is true, but this mortality is not immediate. Eve does not drop dead following her first bite, nor does Adam. Although God means that their onto-epistemological status, and that of their descendants, would be fundamentally altered, that is seemingly not what they understand from his teaching. A more compelling story, one with immediate visible proof that they recognize as true, comes along, and they accept the authority of the one who tells it because of that proof. As soon as they hear a second story, an alternative to the one God tells them, a crisis of authority ensues. The presence of the demon’s alternative narrative, conveyed through clever verbal art, is enough. So what is to be done to remedy Adam and Eve’s Fall? Christ must come, suffering and dying to save Adam and Eve and all other human beings, Christ’s own kin, from death. Adam and Eve and their descendants must find new places, struggling for status and stabilis and even life itself. They see the need for such knowledge now, as brother kills brother and the peoples of the earth descend into violence. In this new disordered, dangerous world, the heirs of Adam and Eve must find ways to defend themselves from demonic arguments as the first parents could not. Reading scripture, the lectio divina practiced by monks and schoolboys, is one way. With significant training in grammar, one can learn scripture by rote, digest it, find one’s place, and give one’s focused attention to understanding God’s word. This activity, however, is not open to all. If one cannot read, what can one do? The saints show the way. They often demonstrate mental acuity, but mental structures alone do not protect one from demons; with their skills, demons can easily find ways into the mind. What matters is the strength of the mental structure, so there are no ways in. And that strength comes from the thorough integration of the mind with the soul, spirit, and body. Resolve, determination, and courage supply what reading and ratio alone do not. The lives of the martyrs, as they resist tyrants’ demands to abandon the worship of Christ, emphasize the formation of discretio, courageous witness through defiant speech, and proof of the saints’ commitment to the truth through their spirituo-material suffering. 87

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Cole, ‘Jewish Apocrypha and Christian Epistemologies of the Fall,’ p. 181. This is taken up in Augustine’s De civitate Dei, 14.11, 433; see Burchmore, ‘Traditional Exegesis and the Condition of Guilt,’ p. 134. Alcuin addresses this in his Interrogationes 67–68; see Burchmore, ‘Traditional Exegesis and the Condition of Guilt,’ pp. 135–136.

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Demonic Teaching and the Fall in the Old English Genesis Stories about the saints testify to the fusion of the spiritual and material realms through the power of relics and the miraculous. The following chapter therefore turns to Cynewulf’s Juliana, a somewhat prototypical virgin-martyr legend that nevertheless provides a complex meditation on pedagogy, discretio, and the onto-epistemological implications of the link between spirituality and materiality.

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6 Demonic Teaching and Saintly Discretio in Cynewulf’s Juliana

In contrast to the Eve of the Junius 11 poems, female saints are ‘fortunate’ enough to be born into a fallen world, with the self-protective suspicions that come with discretio and the inclination to resist both questionable authority and deception. Although virgin martyr legends can seem formulaic, they nevertheless serve a crucial function as narratives in which women respond with unequivocal denial to an implicit but fundamental quaestio: ‘do earthly authorities have dominion over young women’s minds?’ In posing this quaestio at all, these hagiographical texts imply that the power of these earthly authorities, which can include families, kings, emperors, and even ecclesiastical leaders, is in doubt. Furthermore, in these stories, another quaestio emerges: ‘does dominion over the body also indicate control of the mind?’ The standard answer is again, of course, in the negative, fearlessly asserted by the martyrs in the midst of their suffering. In Cynewulf’s Juliana, however, the saint reconfigures the quaestio itself, proposing instead a thorough integration of the body, mind, and soul that thwarts the premise of her tormentors’ arguments about their authority. Juliana’s strength arises from this integration both before and after death, supported by Christianity’s radical redefinition of the status of ‘the dead,’ their remains, and the places in which those remains dwelled as living relics. Juliana’s story also demonstrates the importance of the saint’s participation in the informal logic of debate, particularly her ability to evaluate arguments, resist faulty premises, and narratively propose new implicit premises that transform the power structure of the world in which she and her followers dwell.1 In Cynewulf’s poem, Juliana, a fourth-century saint from Nicomedia in present-day Turkey, defies the Roman governor Eleseus and rejects both his proposal of marriage and his devotion to the Empire’s gods. The father of Juliana, Africanus, fails to persuade her into obedience and beats her, finally turning her over to Eleseus to be tortured. After repeatedly and publicly rejecting Eleseus, Juliana is thrown into 1

Juliana, according to Harbus, demonstrates Anglo-Saxon poets’ emphasis on the ‘active role of the mind in spiritual warfare,’ as well as the ‘prime importance [of] the mastery of verbal rhetoric as a defensive strategy of saintly behaviour.’ The Life of the Mind in Old English Poetry, pp. 90–91.

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Demonic Teaching and Saintly Discretio in Cynewulf’s Juliana prison, where a demon visits her, attempting to ‘teach’ her into yielding and worshipping Roman deities. Instructed by a voice from heaven, Juliana forces the demon to confess his pedagogical methods and his many crimes against God and his servants. Having defeated the demon and forced him to reveal his secrets, Juliana returns to her torment and is ultimately beheaded at the city’s boundary, becoming a teacher in her own right through the final lesson she bestows on her followers. After her death, her disciples bring her remains into the city for burial, establishing a new home for her relics. In Cynewulf’s text, the demonic ability to intrude into Eve’s soul in Eden is countered by the discretio of Juliana, who triumphs in dispute, presenting compelling arguments worthy of belief, a teacher to her followers and to any who subsequently read her narrative and internalize its implicit arguments. Juliana’s wisdom and strength arise from the integration of her mind, soul, and body, a fusion which, as in most saints’ lives, persists beyond earthly death. Such persistence becomes possible through not only the circumstances of Juliana’s martyrdom but also the emergence of the cult of saints in late antiquity and particularly the status of relics within that cult. Though the saint maintains a spirituo-material presence through her earthly remains, her story also incorporates her active presence as pupil and teacher, as she deploys methods of informal logic in dispute with Eleseus and Africanus, who attempts to ‘teach’ her to yield to earthly authority. In Juliana’s confrontation with the demon, she defeats him in debate, assumes control of the pedagogical encounter, and becomes a teacher in her own right. Her death and the new ‘life’ of her relics supply the proof of the arguments she deploys in her role as the poem’s final magister.

Juliana and Materia: The Cult of the Saints The material reality of Juliana’s remains, as well as the ongoing life in her relics, supply proof for the reliability of her narrative. In a hagiographical field dominated by texts, one can forget that saints were real people as well as literary constructions. Juliana walked, talked, breathed, suffered, and died, like any other human being. Her remains, which were eventually interred at Cumae in southern Italy,2 testify to that fact. She was once alive and still is, for those who believe in the sanctity of her relics. Although textual accounts can obscure the material reality of a saint’s life, the embodied art of demonic teaching through narrative, and the saintly 2

On the popularity of ‘south Italian saints’ venerated in Anglo-Saxon England, see David Rollason, Saints and Relics in Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1989), pp. 68–69.

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Debating with Demons counter-narratives through which the demon’s arguments are defeated, remind the poem’s audience of that material reality once again. In Juliana, Cynewulf’s use of terms dealing with the mind and the senses recall Ælfric’s diverse elements of the soul, the spirituo-material fusion that coincides with the onto-epistemological transformation of the world. In Juliana, through the saint’s own narrative, the body of a criminal becomes the body of a saint, instruments of torture become contact relics, and the body of a condemned, beheaded woman becomes the living embodiment of sanctity. Ultimately, Juliana’s relics transform both the place where she died and the city where her relics lie, testifying to the truth of her instruction in their ongoing vitality.3 Like all saints, Juliana teaches the faithful through example, embodying the ‘wise person’ who demonstrates the truth through virtue, courage, and prudence as well as authoritative speech. Cynewulf’s poetic rendering of Juliana’s story, incorporated into the Exeter Book (Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501), emphasizes pedagogy far more strongly than its Latin source, which was closely related to the version in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 10861.4 The poem is also unique as ‘the one true verse specimen’ of Old English ‘vernacular verse hagiography,’ with a particular emphasis on the saint’s ‘psychological stamina … mental resolution and constancy.’5 Juliana’s ‘stamina,’ however, goes far beyond 3

4

5

The present resting place of Juliana’s relics is not clearly known. A ‘fragment of [her] head’ was moved from the Abbey of San Domenico to a convent in Perugia in the fourteenth century. Just after the middle of the nineteenth century, the relic and its reliquary were sent to Santa Maria de Monteluce, a church also in Perugia. In the 1930s, the head-reliquary reportedly belonged to a Parisian collector, but no mention is made of the relic itself. The reliquary was eventually purchased in 1960 by the Cloisters Museum in New York City. Thomas P.F. Hoving, ‘The Face of St. Juliana: The Transformation of a Fourteenth-Century Reliquary,’ The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, 21.5 (1963), 173–181 (pp. 173, 175–176). This text, the Passio S. Iulianae, closely related to the Cynewulf’s source, has been edited by Michael Lapidge in ‘Cynewulf and the Passio S. Iulianae,’ in Unlocking the Wordhoard: Anglo-Saxon Studies in Memory of Edward B. Irving, Jr., ed. Mark C. Amodio and Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe (Toronto, 2003), pp. 147–71 (pp. 147, 166n). See also ‘Iuliana, Virgo Nicomediensis et Martyr,’ Acta Sanctorum: The Full Text Database (Ann Arbor, 1999–2015), II.10, 6, http://acta. chadwyck.co.uk/, accessed 9 February 2019. Harbus, The Life of the Mind in Old English Poetry, pp. 88–89. The Exeter Book was one of almost seventy books in the inventory of Leofric. Robert M. Butler postulates that Dunstan was abbot when the Exeter Book was compiled; the community at Glastonbury, which possessed a manuscript including Juliana’s Latin passio (British Library, Harley MS 3020), celebrated her feast day on 16 February. ‘Glastonbury and the Early History of the Exeter Book,’ in Old English Literature in Its Manuscript Context, ed. Joyce Tally Lionarons (Morgantown, 2004), pp. 173–215 (pp. 175, 196, 200). On the date of Cynewulf’s text, see R.D. Fulk, ‘Cynewulf: Canon, Dialect, Date,’ in The Cynewulf Reader, ed. Robert Bjork (New York, 2001), pp. 3–21 (pp. 16–18); Patrick Conner, ‘On

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Demonic Teaching and Saintly Discretio in Cynewulf’s Juliana the ‘psychological,’ demonstrating the integration of her mind, body, soul, and spirit within the places transformed by her spirituo-material exemplum. Juliana’s relationship to the Roman city, the place of her passion, teaching, and death, is fundamental to Cynewulf’s account. Nicomedia, ruled by the governor Eleseus and powerful families like that of Juliana’s father, becomes the topos in which the saint and her opponents find arguments about Juliana’s sanctity, her rights, and her capacities as a Roman subject and daughter. The city thus also becomes the place in which she rejects her opponents’ narratives, articulates her own counter-narrative claiming a new significance for her life, and completes her ‘conquest’ of the city through her disciples’ burial of her relics. Her shrine becomes the city’s new center, wresting it from the control of Roman authorities and claiming it for Christ’s followers instead. The presence of the saint’s relics thus turns the city inside out, transforming its power structure and indeed the relationship between life and death. Her teaching paves the way for that transformation, as she instructs Christians in how to defend their minds and souls from the faulty arguments of their opponents. Juliana’s embodied resistance to her adversaries concludes with the investment of her remains with authority: her relics testify to the efficacy of her own teaching, conveyed through the magisterial status she assumes after rejecting the demon’s deceptive pedagogy. Juliana’s authority as magister testifies to the specific power of saintly narratives, the stories told by those with the courage and discretio to refuse demonic arguments and to articulate compelling counter-narratives, implicitly constructing new premises and providing new claims more worthy of belief. These narratives are embodied not only when the saints give them voice but also when material proof is provided through saintly suffering, as well as in the books which bear the saints’ stories into the future. In martyrs’ legends, the saints’ convictions, the truth of their narratives, is written in the flesh, so to speak, manifested through material encounters that are simultaneously physical, spiritual, and mental for saints and witnesses alike. The cult of saints is founded on this integration, providing a bridge between the ‘material and immaterial world.’ In the saints’ ongoing presence through physical remains and objects as well as the locations where they dwelled,6 the saints themselves become ‘places,’ blessed topoi in which arguments and proofs can be found to demonstrate God’s

6

Dating Cynewulf,’ in The Cynewulf Reader, ed. Bjork, pp. 23–56 (pp. 46–47); and Lenore Abraham, ‘Cynewulf’s Recharacterization of the Vita Sanctae Julianae and the Tenth Century Benedictine Revival in England,’ American Benedictine Review, 62.1 (2011), 67–83 (p. 68). James Howard-Johnston, ‘Introduction,’ in The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity

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Debating with Demons ongoing presence on earth. Christ, ironically, is the only exception: he was assumed bodily into heaven, leaving no earthly remains behind, in order to open the spiritual eyes of his followers. According to Gregory’s Dialogi, Christ left his apostles at the time of his Ascension so that they would depend less on his physical presence and instead learn to love him in spirit.7 Gregory’s teaching indicates that potentially, the relics of the saints can actually limit the spiritual capacities of the faithful, encouraging an overdependence on the material remains of the saint, the ‘place’ where his or her sanctity is thought to dwell. The places of the saints, however, can also be elusive. It is challenging to glimpse them, as James Howard-Johnston notes, since hagiographical accounts ‘may provide at most a highly refracted and limited vista’ of the saint’s physical and cultural environment.8 Beyond the textual accounts of their lives and deaths, however, the saints remained on earth, if not in the flesh, then in bone and in sacred and often miraculous presence. As such, according to Paul Antony Hayward, the saints served as ‘human mediators,’ ensuring some level ‘of personal intimacy with the divine.’ Even the martyrs were ‘approachable,’ providing ‘a tie of shared experience with Jesus,’ and serving as ‘kinsmen … dear friends, or … preferred patrons.’9 One might also add students and teachers. Rejecting the faulty arguments of their opponents, the saints conveyed true teaching to their own disciples with their voices but also through their relics. These became topoi in themselves, places for finding arguments to respond to each res dubia and quaestio, refuting faulty premises and proposing new arguments in turn. The quaestio addressed in Juliana, as in most virgin-martyr legends, is gendered: do a Roman governor and a Roman father possess authority over a young woman, including the ability to turn her mind with their teachings? Juliana answers emphatically in the negative, her relics testifying to her new saintly argument: this young woman, at least, defies their authority and rejects their teaching. Since Juliana becomes a saintly exemplar through her defiance, other young women may do the same, resisting paternal and political authority to do their own will. A second quaestio

7 8 9

and the Middle Ages: Essays on the Contribution of Peter Brown, ed. James HowardJohnston and Paul Antony Hayward (Oxford, 1999), pp. 1–24 (pp. 2–3). Gregory the Great, Dialogues, tome II, ed. de Vogüé and Antin, II.37; Saint Gregory the Great: Dialogues, pp. 109–110. Howard-Johnston, ‘Introduction,’ p. 15. Paul Antony Hayward, ‘Demystifying the Role of Sanctity in Western Christendom,’ in The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. Howard-Johnston and Hayward, pp. 115–142 (p. 116). Ian N. Wood notes the special contributions of Gregory the Great and Bede to this history, with English saints placed right at the center of ‘the Gregorian ideology of mission.’ See ‘The Missionary Life,’ in The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. Howard-Johnston and Hayward, pp. 167–183 (p. 182).

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Demonic Teaching and Saintly Discretio in Cynewulf’s Juliana also emerges: does tormenting and killing a young woman amount to the defeat of her will? And again Juliana answers ‘no,’ the presence of her relics testifying instead to her determination, her success in resisting those who would coerce her, and the authority of her own teaching. Her body lies in a tomb because she would not yield. But in this world of saintly materiality, killing is not the end. Her relics repeatedly tell her story, testifying to all who visit them or hear about them. As saints, the youthful female martyrs hold special status, despite the frequently formulaic plots of their stories, in a world dominated by saints often distinguished by their rank and earthly power. A female saint’s tomb could become a new geographical center in a world that considered young women weak and obedient, in a city that formerly prohibited even the presence of the dead. And for the early medieval English audience of Cynewulf’s poem, it would have been possible to contemplate, as Sheck has noted, ‘egalitarian ideals … relating to intellect, education, wisdom, and salvation,’ propounded by learned teachers who ‘[refused] unilaterally to accept and promote antifeminist dogma.’ Scheck counts Alcuin among these teachers, noting his contribution to ‘[cultivating] a space in which strong, autonomous female subjects may continue to evolve.’10 In his writings, Scheck notes, Alcuin generally avoids ‘the gendering of body and soul,’ i.e. the association of the ‘imago Dei’ with masculinity, or the ‘[linking of] sexual temptation to gender,’ associating virginity instead with ‘forcefulness and autonomy.’11 Far from embodying what Scheck calls Augustine of Hippo’s teaching of ‘woman as supplement,’12 Juliana refuses the roles of daughter and wife, or at least stipulates the conditions under which she would be willing to inhabit those roles. While Juliana does become ‘impenetrable, invulnerable, [and] inviolate’ in Cynewulf’s account, she does not, like other female saints such as Euphrosyne and Eugenia, ‘[become] … male-like.’13 As a figure of discernment and strength, she resists obedience to established authority and, in the words of J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, becomes a ‘formidable female instrument for plumbing the unseen.’14 By the poem’s end, she likewise establishes herself as a ‘[teacher] of the faith,’15 supplanting her own deceptive teachers, her father and the demon who visits her prison cell, with their false premises and deceptive arguments. Rather than obeying Paul’s invocation to remain silent, Cynewulf’s Juliana follows Alcuin’s

10 11 12 13 14 15

Scheck, Reform and Resistance, p. 23. Ibid., pp. 48–49, 3–4. Ibid., p. 6. Ibid., p. 8. J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Frankish Church (Oxford, 1983), p. 404, cited in Scheck, Reform and Resistance, p. 10. Scheck, Reform and Resistance, p. 14.

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Debating with Demons instruction, based on 2 Timothy 4:2, to noli propter hominis terrorem tacere; sed propter Dei amorem loquere, argue, increpa, obsecra (‘not be silent for fear of some person; but for the love of God speak, assert, protest, pray’).16 Juliana does all this and more, asserting her courage with voice, mind, and body before, during, and after her martyrdom. As a young woman, a daughter and a subject opposing the authorities of both the familial and political sources of her identity, Juliana provides a model for other dissenting young women. In the preface to his revision of The Cult of Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity, Peter Brown notes the importance of saintly examples for ordinary people, including the ‘men and women … pilgrims and the poor’ at the center of medi­ eval religious life. Understanding this life, he emphasizes, requires the consideration of ‘conflict … exclusion, and … unbelief’ rather than the assumption of consensus.17 And it requires acknowledging the radical contributions of female saints and patrons to transforming the late antique and early medieval culture and landscape. A saint like Juliana, a young woman with discretio, courage, and conviction, could literally reshape the world. Saints like Juliana, as topoi, provided places in which medieval men and women could explore lived religious experience in all its complexity. Both Juliana’s place of execution, on the boundary of Nicomedia, and her place of burial within the city itself demonstrate what Brown describes as ‘an invisible frontier … a “liminal” state’ in which shrines could become refuges for women, the poor, and the dispossessed. Women of means could also attain higher status as donors or patronesses,18 as did Januaria, the woman who aimed to bring Juliana’s remains to Rome, though harsh weather caused her to be reburied at Cumae, a city of Campania, instead.19 Through the saints, Augustine argued, ordinary Christians could embrace a life of kinship in service to God. Because the saints were viewed as ‘the elect,’ however, there existed a danger that their tombs would be considered fundamentally different from those of ordinary people. It was crucial that ordinary tombs should be identified with those of the saints,20 through whose example lay people were taught. The spirit of the saint remains in his or her relics, as well as in the place where he or she dwells. Relics thus could continually remind the faithful 16

17 18 19 20

Ibid., pp. 61, 186n. Alcuin’s instruction appears in his letter to Æðilthyde, Alcuinus Aedilthydae abbatissae, quondam reginae, matri Aethelredi regis Northanhumbrorum, de muneribus missis gratias agit, Epistolae 79, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 4, ed. Ernst Dūmmler (Berlin, 1985; repr. Munich, 1974), pp. 120–122 (p. 121), lines 5–6. Brown, The Cult of Saints, pp. xxiii, xxv. Ibid., pp. 42, 44, 46–47. Lapidge, ‘Cynewulf and the Passio S. Iulianae,’ p. 148. Brown, The Cult of Saints, pp. 71, 73, 77.

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Demonic Teaching and Saintly Discretio in Cynewulf’s Juliana that, like the saints, they too could defy secular and familial authority, responding ‘no’ to the quaestio of whether false teachers should hold dominion over them. Due to the presence of the saints, their shrines, and indeed their relics themselves, become topoi for new arguments, potentially countering those articulated by more traditional authorities. Both arguments and proofs can be found in these topoi, demonstrating through devotion and miracles that death is not truly death, and the end is not truly the end. Relics are at once both ‘alive’ and ‘stubbornly material.’ But even Augustine of Hippo was at a loss to understand their power.21 In their materiality, relics intersect with a pedagogy that poses new quaestiones about the nature of life and death, the soul and the body. Relics provide arguments for the truth that the saints died for and continue to live for. The power of relics, however, goes well beyond their status as places. Since ‘the sufferings of the martyrs were miracles in themselves,’ relics also became evidence of the miraculous, their separation from the rest of the body rendering them independent of space and time. These relics and the shrines where they dwelled carried ‘potent memories of a process by which a body shattered by drawn-out pain had once been enabled by God’s power to retain its integrity.’22 Juliana’s remains, then, render her story timeless and demonstrate her kinship with the living and their ordinary dead, her body a place of holiness and community. The relic itself is defiance, ‘[carrying] with it the dark shadows of its origin.’ Relics thus testify to the saints’ ‘praesentia … and their ideal power, their potentia.’23 This potentia could be directed against any earthly authority at any time, demonstrating the fundamental instability and ambiguity of authority itself. To use Pile’s words, the saints could ‘rat run through the labyrinths of powers’24 – any and all powers – with often unanticipated results, and they could do so in perpetuity. Potentially, however, the authority of the saints themselves could be questioned. The wisest of them recognized this danger and cultivated the virtue of humility to complement their potentia. The powers of the saints could also spread well beyond their own relics or shrines, and not only in places where the saint had appeared in life. Saints’ shrines frequently became the places of other burials, as living 21

22 23 24

Gregory Schopen, ‘Relic,’ in Critical Terms for Religious Studies, ed. Mark C. Taylor (Chicago, 1998), pp. 256–268 (pp. 259–260, 263). Schopen refers to Augustine’s De cura pro mortuis gerenda, ed. Joseph Zycha, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 41 (Vienna, 1900), pp. 621–659 and translated by John A. Lacy in The Care to Be Taken for the Dead, The Fathers of the Church, vol. 27, ed. Roy J. Deferrari (New York, 1955). See also MacKendrick, Fragmentation and Memory, p. 112. Brown, The Cult of Saints, pp. 79–80. Ibid., pp. 101, 107. Pile, ‘Introduction,’ in Geographies of Resistance, ed. Pile and Keith, p. 15.

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Debating with Demons descendants aimed to bury their loved ones’ remains in the proximity of the saint, that is, in an especially sacred place. The saints’ relics, it is thought, convey life on other remains interred around them. If that is the case, then such burials provide ‘a materially constructed, articulated, and assured permanent state of, if not “salvation,” then heaven or paradise.’25 The Eden lost through the serpent’s teaching of Adam and Eve could be restored, at least in part, by the exemplary pedagogy of the saints, still present in their relics as holy ‘places.’ In Juliana’s case, those places are defined both by her defiance of false teachers and by her own teachings about how to defend oneself from deception.

The narrative argumentum in Juliana Nearly one third of Cynewulf’s poem, from lines 1–224,26 consists of an ongoing debate between Juliana and her human opponents, her suitor Eleseus and her father Africanus. Though conveyed in narrative form, this section of the poem provides an ongoing series of ‘things in doubt’ posed as questions, arguments responding to those questions, and new propositions emerging from them. By embedding this debate within a narrative framework, Cynewulf makes visible a series of escalating propositions ending with Juliana’s torment and the ‘discovery’ of arguments within her body itself, as the ‘place’ in which claims are evaluated and proven true or false. The ongoing dispute between the saint and her adversaries, as Cynewulf presents it, is embodied and voiced, using informal logic that integrates both dialectical and rhetorical methods to support arguments, whether ‘right’ or fallacious, with compelling proof. In the initial triangular cycle of argumentation among Juliana, Eleseus, and Africanus, the questions debated, or the ‘things in doubt,’ are the following: do a governor and father hold dominion over a young woman? Can she be forced through violence to marry against her will? And finally, is she free to choose her own fate, regardless of the actions of her opponents? The implicit replies of Eleseus and Africanus to these questions presume the weakness, pliability, and obedience of young women. Filled with desire for Juliana (fyrwet, line 27b),27 Eleseus seeks to possess her as his bride, his yearning for marriage described in terms of property: þære 25 26

27

Schopen, ‘Relic,’ p. 266. In addition to the poem’s 731 lines, a passage is missing from the dispute of Juliana with her father and suitor. Allen J. Frantzen, ‘Drama and Dialogue in Old English Poetry: The Scene of Cynewulf’s Juliana,’ Theatre Survey, 48.1 (2007), 99–119 (p. 110). Cynewulf’s Juliana appears in The Exeter Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, vol. 3, ed. George Philip Krapp and Elliot Van Kirk Dobbie (New York, 1961), pp. 113–133. Translations from Old English are my own.

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Demonic Teaching and Saintly Discretio in Cynewulf’s Juliana wifgifta, / goldspedig guma, georn on mode (‘the man rich in gold was eager in mind for the woman-gift,’ lines 38b–39). Fundamental to Eleseus’s marriage plan is the containment of Juliana within places under his control, þæt him mon fromlicast fæmnan gegyrede, / bryd to bolde (‘so that the woman would be prepared for him, the bride for the castle,’ lines 40–41a). Eleseus presumes that Juliana is a gift, a static thing, which will obey him and remain wherever he chooses to place her. Africanus cooperates with Eleseus’s desire, following his own wishes and assuming that Juliana’s are irrelevant: ða wæs sio fæmne mid hyre fæder willan / welegum biweddad (‘then the woman was betrothed to the wealthy [one], according to her father’s will,’ lines 32–33a). In this betrothal, Juliana is positioned like countless other young women throughout the world, given and received in matrimony by male authority figures. In response to the first question within this dispute, ‘do a governor and father hold dominion over a young woman?’ Eleseus and Africanus answer ‘yes.’ But Juliana emphatically answers ‘no,’ a response for which both of her opponents are unprepared. Her father wyrd ne ful cuþe, / freondrædenne hu heo from hogde, / geong on gæste (‘did not fully know her fate, how averse she was to marital friendship, young in spirit,’ lines 33b–35a). These words geong on gæste are significant. She is geong, like Genesis B’s Adam and Eve, but she is not naïve, and the spirit is with her. Her youth and status as a disciple strengthen her to resist the wills of those who would seek to ‘teach’ her into accepting their direction for her life, which would include abandoning Christ. Juliana, opposing them, defines her own wyrd. Furthermore, Juliana has her own story to tell, using a voice that she insists must be heard. Bearing Christ’s holy tree in gæste (‘in spirit,’ line 28b), she has decided to preserve her virginity fore Cristes lufan (‘because of the love of Christ,’ line 31a). Preferring Christ to Eleseus’s wealth (lines 35b–37), she þæs beornes lufan / fæste wiðhogde (‘firmly rejected the love of the man,’ lines 41b–42a) and þæt eal forseah (‘despised all that,’ line 44b), declaring her refusal acwæð on wera mengu (‘in the assembly of men,’ line 45). She not only speaks her mind, but also rejects Eleseus openly, transforming his private disappointment into public shame and shifting the premises of their debate.28 Having established that Eleseus and her father do not control her fate, Juliana poses new implicit questions that they have not yet asked: can a young woman choose her own fate in marriage, also maintaining her commitment to the one God? On wera mengu (‘In the multitude of men,’ line 45b), Juliana suggests these questions, raising the stakes of the dispute: gif 28

On the rhetorical devices integrated into Juliana’s speeches, see Joseph D. Wine, ‘Juliana and the Figures of Rhetoric,’ Papers on Language and Literature, 28.1 (1992), 3–18 (pp. 8–9).

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Debating with Demons þu soðne god / lufast ond gelyfest (‘if you love and believe in the true God,’ lines 47b–48a), she tells Eleseus, ic beo gearo sona / unwaclice willan þines (‘I will immediately and steadfastly do your will,’ lines 49b–50a).29 While Juliana is not completely averse to becoming a wife and giving up her virginity, she does insist on setting the terms for the marriage. Furthermore, Juliana introduces an additional implicit quaestio, ‘can a young woman be forced through violence to marry against her will?’ If Eleseus continues to sacrifice to idols, she says, næfre þu þæs swiðlic sar gegearwast / þurh hæstne nið heardra wita, / þæt þu mec onwende worda þissa (‘you will never, through violent strife, prepare such severe suffering of harsh punishment that you will turn me from these words,’ lines 55–57). The threat of such punishment, however, has never yet been raised by Eleseus or Africanus. Juliana introduces the question of violent coercion herself, proposing it as a response to her insistence that Eleseus worship the Christian God. Her new quaestio therefore represents Eleseus as one insecure in his own authority and that of his gods, one who would have to torment an unwilling woman to make her his wife and honor his Roman deities. The anger of Eleseus and Africanus at Juliana’s behavior seems to demonstrate the truth of her arguments: because she does not fear her opponents, she can indeed decide her fate for herself, and seemingly she can do so very publicly. Her declarations, in raising new questions and placing political and familial authority in doubt, demand a response from her adversaries. They must answer ‘no’ to the question of whether she can decide on her own fate in marriage. And if they do not answer ‘yes’ to her implicit question about whether she can be forced to do so through violence, they will appear weak, defeated in debate and overpowered by a young woman. Furthermore, Juliana has raised the question of allegiance to her God and rejection of the gods of Eleseus, demonstrating her power both to shame her suitor publicly and to redefine what constitutes pietas in the city governed by Eleuseus and his Roman divinities. She has thus succeeded in placing the honor of Eleseus in doubt: Eleseus tells Africanus, me þin dohtor hafað / geywed orwyrðu … / me þa fraceðu sind / on modsefan mæste weorce (‘your daughter has revealed [my] shame … To me these insults are the greatest distress in mind,’ lines 68b–69a, 71b–72). And Juliana’s insults are uttered publicly, so that heo mec swa torne tæle gerahte / fore þissum folce (‘she has so grievously disgraced me before these people,’ lines 73–74a). Juliana’s voicing of her own will, previously ignored by the authority figures who presume to decide and speak for her, now materially damages the reputation of her suitor. Her father acknowledges 29

This appears also in the Passio S. Iulianae: si credideris Deo meo et adoraueris patrem et filium et sanctum spiritum, accipiam te maritum. See Lapidge, ‘Cynewulf and the Passio S. Iulianae,’ p. 157.

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Demonic Teaching and Saintly Discretio in Cynewulf’s Juliana Eleseus’s shame, vowing to on spild giefe, / þeoden mæra, þe to gewealde. / Dem þu hi to deaþe, gif þe gedafen þince (‘give [her] into ruin, famous lord, into your power; condemn her to death, if you think it suitable,’ lines 85b–87). Africanus’s references to Eleseus as a þeoden with gewealde are especially ironic here, since Eleseus’s authority has already been so easily threatened by a young woman’s challenge, voiced in public. When Africanus returns to Juliana to continue the debate, his first words to his daughter recall the enlightenment of Eve’s mind in Genesis B, the light she forgets that she possesses. In appealing to Juliana, Africanus addresses her as dohtor min seo dyreste / ond seo sweteste in sefan minum, / … minra eagna leoht (‘my daughter, the dearest and the sweetest in my mind / … light of my eyes,’ lines 93–94, 95b).30 He sees her in his own mind, her light in his own eyes. He does not see the light in her. The serpent in Eden convinced Eve that her eyes were darkened and limited. Eve’s acceptance of his claim made the difference between life and death, Paradise and exile, for her and Adam and all their descendants. Though her daughter Juliana is suffused with light and courage, Africanus sees only the reflection of her light in himself. He implicitly answers ‘no’ to her question of whether a young woman can decide her own fate: she has gone against the witena dom (‘judgment of the wise,’ line 98a) and wiðsæcest þu to swiþe sylfre rædes / þinum brydguman, se is betra þonne þu (‘[refused] too quickly, according to your own counsel, your bridegroom, who is better than you,’ lines 99–100). Blind to the true light in Juliana, he sees only that she has followed her own will rather than that of those conventionally considered wiser than she. Juliana again asserts the integrity of her own ræd (‘counsel’), however, insisting that Eleseus must acknowledge the Christian God if he wishes to marry her (lines 108–116). She doubly rejects the judgment of the ‘wise,’ again shifting the premises of the debate. Africanus refuses her argument for self-determination, ordering her to cease her folly (unræd, literally ‘no-counsel,’ line 120a) and stating that while he lives, she will marry Eleseus, or þu ungeara … / deaþe sweltest (‘you will soon suffer death,’ lines 124a, 125b). His argument implies, of course, that she should fear pain and death, the sign of their power over her. She once again answers ‘no’ to his argument, however, rejecting his premises: næfre ic me ondræde domas þine, / ne me weorce sind witebrogan (‘I will never fear your judgments, nor are sufferings a tormenting dread to me,’ lines 134–135). She recognizes neither Africanus nor Eleseus as wise or authoritative, insisting on following her own counsel with no fear of their power whatsoever. In asserting her own arguments and rejecting those of her father,31 she also insists on 30 31

This passage also appears in the Passio: Filia mea dulcissima … lux meorum oculorum. Ibid., p. 157. An analysis of Juliana’s combative speech is included in Alexandra Hennessey

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Debating with Demons the truth-force of her statements: ic þe to soðe secgan wille, / bi me lifgendre nelle ic lyge fremman (‘I wish to tell you the truth; as long as I am living, I will not tell a lie,’ lines 132–133). Willing to defend that truth with her body, she will not accept the faulty claims of Africanus, the propositions that he assumes to be right but that she rejects in favor of her own true premises: she can define her own fate, her will is her own, and she need not respect the judgment of those who claim authority over her. In comparison to the rage and escalating desperation of her opponents, Juliana’s convictions remain stable, her manner firm, while she skillfully adjusts the premises of their dispute.32 A further premise espoused by Africanus and Eleseus is that violence can turn Juliana’s will and force her, in her suffering, to accept ‘rightful’ authority. Enraged by the power of her voice, Africanus has Juliana beaten (lines 142–143) and orders her to onwend þec in gewitte (‘change your mind,’ line 144a). Juliana, however, is not moved by their brutality. Having insisted on the truth of her arguments and defended her claims with her body, she shifts the debate again, now addressing Africanus as a teacher who wishes to deceive her.33 She thereby transforms his role from father to false magister: næfre þu gelærest þæt ic leasingum, / dumbum ond deafum deofolgieldum / … / gaful onhate (‘you will never teach [me] to offer tribute to lies, to dumb and deaf devil-images,’ lines 149–150, 151b). The Latin passio includes no reference to teaching here, mentioning only Juliana’s refusal of idol-worship: Non credo, non adoro, non sacrifico idolis surdis et mutis (‘I will not believe, nor adore, nor sacrifice to silent and mute idols …’).34 Instead of changing her own mind as Africanus commands, Juliana transfers the frame of reference from the family to a pedagogical relationship, recasting her father’s auctorita and representing his actions as abusive of his teaching authority. Underlying this representation is another new quaestio, ‘should a master teach the truth or not?’ Since the obvious answer is an unequivocal ‘yes,’ this question helps to establish a foundation for Juliana’s later pedagogical encounters with the demon in her prison.

32 33

34

Olsen, ‘Cynewulf’s Autonomous Women: A Reconsideration of Elene and Juliana,’ in New Readings on Women in Old English Literature, ed. Damico and Olsen, pp. 222–32 (p. 227). On Juliana’s mental acuity and steadfastness, see Harbus, The Life of the Mind in Old English Poetry, p. 93. In this passage, the Latin source author uses dico but incorporates no references to pedagogy. See Lapidge, ‘Cynewulf and the Passio S. Iulianae,’ p. 157. See also Christina M. Heckman, ‘Demonic Pedagogy and the Teaching Saint: Voice, Body, and Place in Cynewulf’s Juliana,’ Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, 54.2 (2018), 28–63 (pp. 43–44). Lapidge, ‘Cynewulf and the Passio S. Iulianae,’ p. 157.

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Demonic Teaching and Saintly Discretio in Cynewulf’s Juliana Having rejected her father’s false teaching, Juliana returns to Eleseus’s hall as a disputant to condemn his tyranny. At this point, the implicit question seems to be, ‘can a young woman’s conscience be forced through torment?’ And Juliana again unequivocally answers in the negative. She continues to refuse the power of Eleseus over her, insisting on her own will: næfre þu geþreatast þinum beotum, / ne wita þæs fela wraðra gegearwast / … buton þu forlæte þa leasinga, / weohweorðinga (‘never will you force [me] with your boasts, / or the many cruel torments you prepare [for me], unless you forsake lies and idol-worship,’ lines 176–177, 179–180a). Eleseus laughs at her (line 189a), threatens her, and asks that she læt þa sace restan (‘let the dispute rest,’ line 200b) between herself and his gods. Cynewulf here uses the noun sac rather than the more common flit. Juliana, however, will not submit to his will: Ic to dryhtne min / mod staþelige … / soð cyning (‘I fix my mind on the Lord / … the true king,’ lines 221b–222a, 224b). In dismissing Eleseus’s argument that she should submit, Juliana once again humiliates the tyrant: Ða þam folctogan fracuðlic þuhte / þæt he ne meahte mod oncyrran, / fæmnan foreþonc (‘then it seemed shameful to the chieftain that he could not change [her] mind, the prudence of the woman,’ lines 225–227a). Consistently, when her opponents assume the weakness of her mind and body, Juliana demonstrates the weakness and error of their premises instead. In contrast to Eve, who allowed the serpent into her mind, the mind of Juliana, strengthened by discretio and the power of her conviction, will not be moved by the flawed arguments of her adversaries. Giving up on words, having been bested repeatedly by Juliana in their debate, Eleseus resorts exclusively to violence, having her hung by the hair and beaten for several hours (lines 227b–230) before she is thrown into prison. Juliana’s bodily suffering,35 far from demonstrating Eleseus’s power over her, rather illustrates his defeat, his inability to respond to her dialectical skill, and his ultimate desperation. Her imprisonment, instead of weakening her, suspends her torment and separates her from her first two adversaries, Africanus and Eleseus. This strengthens her for the subtler demands of her third disputation, as she prepares her mind to identify the faulty premises behind her demonic opponent’s arguments.

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Shari Horner associates Juliana’s story and her bodily suffering with nuns’ experiences of the ‘enclosures of cloister and body,’ as well as frequent ‘threats’ to their chastity. See The Discourse of Enclosure: Representing Women in Old English Literature (Albany, 2001), pp. 103–105. Juliana’s situation in her public defiant speech and dialectical maneuvering, however, is quite distinct from that of nuns. She is betrothed, not threatened with rape, and she willingly offers her virginity to Eleseus provided he converts to Christianity; see Cynewulf, Juliana, lines 47–50.

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Pedagogy and the spirituo-materiality of martyrdom In comparison to Eleseus and Africanus, the demon who visits Juliana’s prison cell is a crafty and deceptive disputant, skilled in using the verbal arts to manipulate his ‘pupils.’ Like Juliana’s human nemeses, the demon attempts to construct a narrative about her, incorporating implicit premises in an attempt to control and frighten her. But unlike Eleseus and Africanus, the demon is ultimately forced into telling his own story, revealing the methods behind his teaching. Juliana’s discretio and strength of mind, though she is geong, make her a formidable foe, undermining the demon’s ability to teach her and, once her story is told, the other souls whom he hopes to manipulate in the future. In her steadfastness, furthermore, Juliana possesses the ability to restrain the demon physically, though she herself is imprisoned. The power of her mind and that of her divine teacher imbue her with the ability to manipulate bodies and places and alter their significance. In the demon, however, Juliana faces a formidable opponent. When he enters Juliana’s cell, though he possesses a fair angelic appearance, Cynewulf represents him as ondwis (‘expertly skillful,’ line 244a) and gleaw (‘shrewd,’ line 245a), attributes that do not appear in the Latin Passio.36 Upon seeing her, the demon tells her to relieve her own suffering by worshipping Eleseus’s gods, or her suitor will kill her (lines 249–256). The demon’s premise here, already demonstrated as faulty in Juliana’s case, is that she should be afraid of torment and death. When Juliana asks hwonan his cyme wære (‘from whence he came,’ line 259), he replies that God has sent him as his þegn to defend her (lines 262a, 265b–266). Juliana knows instinctively that his implicit quaestio is flawed; his arguments are not in keeping with God’s demand for inexorable, dangerous truth, however painful and potentially deadly it may be. Upon hearing the demon’s claims, Juliana is afraid: ða wæs seo fæmne for þam færspelle / egsan geaclad (‘then the woman was filled with fear because of the dreadful tidings,’ lines 267–268a). Contrary to the demon’s premise, she fears not torment but the fact that he is sent from God with a message that seems contrary to the premises of the arguments that she has accepted as true. Thus the demon’s cræft in verbal deception is immediately apparent to her, although she does not yet know who he is.37

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Lapidge, ‘Cynewulf and the Passio S. Iulianae,’ p. 159; see also Heckman, ‘Demonic Pedagogy and the Teaching Saint,’ pp. 45–46. On the demon’s verbal skill, see Robert Bjork, The Old English Verse Saints’ Lives: A Study in Direct Discourse and the Iconography of Style (Toronto, 1985), pp. 55, 58; and Heckman, ‘Demonic Pedagogy and the Teaching Saint,’ pp. 45–46. This

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Demonic Teaching and Saintly Discretio in Cynewulf’s Juliana Unlike Eve, Juliana trusts in her own abilities and will not be taken in. She does not accept the demon as authoritative, instead appealing directly to God þæt þu me ne læte of lofe hweorfan / þinre eadgife, swa me þes ar bodað / frecne færspel þe me fore stondeð (‘that you not allow me to turn from the praise of your gift of blessedness, as this messenger who stands before me tells me dangerous tidings,’ lines 275–277). Juliana knows the ‘angel’ has come to lure her away from God with faulty arguments. She therefore draws on her close relationship with God, in contrast to Eve, who accepted the serpent’s claims about her own capacities without seeking guidance from her divine magister. Juliana implores that God me gecyðe … / … hwæt þes þegn sy, / … þe mec læreð from þe (‘make known to me … / … what this thane may be, / … who teaches me away from you,’ lines 279a, 280b, 281b).38 Juliana recognizes the demon’s teaching role, which, since teachers should speak the truth, makes the possibility of his deception all the more disturbing. Juliana’s powers of discernment, already proven in her disputes with Eleseus and Africanus, tell her that this teacher in her prison is false. In response to her plea for knowledge, God does not directly reveal the demon’s identity, but he does answer: a voice from heaven tells her to forfoh þone frætgan ond fæste geheald, / oþþæt he his siðfæt secge mid ryhte, / … hwæt his æþelu syn (‘seize the perverse one and hold him fast, until he tells [you] his journey with a reckoning … [and] what his nature may be,’ lines 284–285, 286b). Though much of the demon’s reply is unknown due to a lacuna in the manuscript, the narrative resumes during the demon’s lengthy description of the many crimes he committed while ‘teaching’ human beings to sin. In this pedagogical scene, rejecting false arguments and shifting their implicit premises no longer constitute Juliana’s modus operandi. Rather, she asks the demon overt informational questions: ‘where do you come from?’ (lines 258–259), ‘who sent you?’ (lines 317–318), ‘how do you cause human beings to sin?’ (lines 347–350a), ‘what evil deeds have you committed?’ (lines 418–428). All of these questions share the underlying premise that the demon was sent for a purpose, to influence the human will to sin, as Africanus and Eleseus sought to influence Juliana’s. Unable to exert his own will, however, the demon seems compelled to answer Juliana’s questions.39

38

39

is also mentioned in Frantzen, ‘History and Conversion in Cynewulf’s Juliana,’ unpublished (2013), pp. 16–17 (cited with permission). On Juliana’s discretio in this scene, see Dendle, Satan Unbound, pp. 29–30. In the Latin Passio, Juliana describes the demon’s actions using the verb persuadeo; see Lapidge, ‘Cynewulf and the Passio S. Iulianae,’ p. 159. On the demon’s ironic and unexpected truthfulness, see Heckman, ‘Demonic Pedagogy and the Teaching Saint,’ pp. 47–48. In the Latin source, Juliana beats the demon, but a lacuna in the Exeter Book makes it impossible to know the

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Debating with Demons What follows is no longer debate but a long explanation of the demon’s pedagogical methods unique to Cynewulf’s account.40 Juliana’s demon, in revealing his methodology to her, undermines his own capacity to draw souls to damnation, also supplying the saint with the means to help those souls resist or oppose his temptations. Through his teaching, the demon says, he has already done tremendous damage. He claims to have instigated the deaths of Christ (lines 289–293a), John the Baptist (lines 293b–294a), Peter, and Paul (lines 302–304a). He states explicitly that he gelærde / Simon searoþoncum þæt he sacan ongon / wiþ þa gecorenan Cristes þegnas (‘taught Simon with cunning so that he began to dispute with the chosen thanes of Christ,’ lines 297b–299). Here the demon refers to the Samaritan magician of Acts 8: 9–25, who pretended to possess divine power but later accepted baptism and followed the teaching of the disciple Philip. The demon further claims that Pilate crucified Christ minum larum (‘through my teachings,’ lines 306b), and that the demon Egias eac gelærde / þæt he unsnytrum Andreas het / ahon haligne on heanne beam (‘also taught Aegius so that he foolishly commanded to crucify holy Andrew on a high beam,’ lines 307–309). Cynewulf’s emphasis on teaching is not included in his Latin source, in which the demon repeats the phrase ego sum qui feci (‘I am he who made …’) to describe his role in his victims’ misfortunes. The Latin Passio’s demon is not a teacher in this passage, though he does later ask Juliana who taught her (quis te docui). Her reply, of course, is Deus meus Iesus Christus docui me (‘my Lord Jesus Christ taught me’).41 In Cynewulf’s text, however, Juliana’s emphasis is not on overtly crediting Christ with true teaching but rather on exposing and rejecting the demon’s false teaching. Too many past victims, it becomes clear, have failed to resist the demon’s deceptive pedagogy. But seemingly, once Juliana forces him to confess his methods, he can no longer attempt to teach her. He has, he claims, no freedom at any time. In response to Juliana’s question, hwa þec sende to me (‘who sent you to me?’ line 318b), the demon bemoans his fate as a prisoner of Satan (lines 323a, 324a). He is constantly tortured in hell, and

40

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content of Cynewulf’s account here. Bjork and Frantzen both consider the demon to be hypocritical; see Bjork, The Old English Verse Saints’ Lives, p. 58 and Frantzen, ‘Drama and Dialogue,’ p. 113. The association of the demon’s confession with penance is discussed in Frantzen, ‘History and Conversion,’ pp. 13–16 and ‘Drama and Dialogue,’ pp. 110–111. In contrast to Cynewulf’s account, the demon in the Latin Passio explains who he is, not how he teaches. See Lapidge, ‘Cynewulf and the Passio S. Iulianae,’ p. 160. The demon’s ‘confession’ to Juliana contrasts with a council of demons mentioned in Gregory’s Dialogi, as the demons confess to Satan on the evil they have done. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, tome II, ed. de Vogüé and Antin, III.7; Saint Gregory the Great: Dialogues, trans. Zimmerman, p. 121. On the confessional mode in the poem, see Frantzen, ‘Drama and Dialogue,’ p. 113. Lapidge, ‘Cynewulf and the Passio S. Iulianae,’ pp. 153, 160, 162.

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Demonic Teaching and Saintly Discretio in Cynewulf’s Juliana even when he is allowed to leave, he suffers terrible torment gif soðfæstra / þurh myrrelsan mod ne oðcyrreð, / haligra hyge (‘if the mind of the truthfast, the thought of holy ones, is not turned through stumbling-blocks,’ lines 337b–339a). This reference recalls the misfortune of Satan’s victims in Vercelli Homily X, discussed in the Introduction, who forget God’s soðfæst teaching, as well as the weaknesses of Eve, exploited by the serpent as he induces her to question her own abilities and affiliation with God. Juliana’s demon aims to place such stumbling-blocks in the way of any man with ferð staðelian / to godes willan (‘a mind established in God’s will,’ lines 364b–365a), seeking through the man’s modlufan (‘mind-love,’ line 370a) to persuade him to larum hyreð (‘hear [my] teaching,’ line 372b). In leading the man to sin, the demon aims for the heart, the affections, as the serpent did with Eve. The man cannot be staþolfæst (line 374b), ‘[on a] firm foundation’ anymore, and he larum wile / þurh modes myne minum hyran / synne fremman (‘wishes to hear [my] teaching through purpose of mind to commit sin,’ lines 378b–380a). Thus the demon’s teaching deceives not only eminent people, emperors and biblical figures, but also ordinary people seeking to do right. And the teaching seems to come in an immediate encounter, through the ears: the demon’s lessons are ‘heard’ rather than read. As the demon explains to Juliana, the human mind is an unstable structure, easily invaded. It is subject to curiositas, constantly seeking stability in a topos, a place in which to stand.42 Juliana’s demon deploys the image of a place, a fortress vulnerable to attack, to represent the human mind.43 While those fæste on feðan (‘fast in spirit,’ line 389a) possess stronger defenses, others’ minimal self-protection provides ample possibility for invasion: ic beo gearo sona, / þæt ic ingehygd eal geondwlite / hu gefæstnad sy ferð innanweard, / wiðsteall geworht (‘I will be ready immediately, so that I examine the mind completely, how steadfast the inward mind may be, the defense made,’ lines 398b–401a).44 What is innanweard provides the defense: resisting the ‘teaching’ of the demon depends not only on strengthening entrances to the mind but fortifying what is within. A weakened inward mind can also diminish the outer defenses. When the opportunity arises to exploit a vulnerability in the mind’s fortress, the demon says, Ic þæs wealles geat / ontyne þurh teonan; bið se torr þyrel, / 42 43 44

Carruthers, ‘Reading with Attitude,’ pp. 10–11, 13. On the teaching of demons, see Jager’s comments on Genesis B in ‘Tempter as Rhetoric Teacher,’ pp. 111–113. According to James F. Doubleday, this emphasis on besieging the mind, here and in Vainglory, another poem in the Exeter Book, differs from what Mize calls the ‘soul-as-fortress motif’ used by Gregory the Great. See Doubleday’s ‘The Allegory of the Soul as Fortress in Old English Poetry,’ Anglia, 88 (1970), 503–508 (pp. 503–504), and Britt Mize, ‘The Representation of the Mind as an Enclosure in Old English Poetry,’ Anglo-Saxon England, 35 (2006), 57–90 (p. 81).

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Debating with Demons ingong geopenad (‘I open the gate of the wall through malice; the tower is pierced, an entrance opened,’ 401b–403a). The Latin Passio does not include this metaphor.45 Cynewulf’s demon, however, represents the mind as an edifice whose steadfastness provides a defense against invasion from outside. If the mind wavers in its conviction, it becomes vulnerable to attack: this again recalls Eve’s acceptance of the serpent’s faulty premises, which allow him into her mind so that his thoughts can ‘well up’ inside her. Once inside the edifice of the weakened mind, Juliana’s demon says, he can do his evil pedagogical work: Ic beo lareow georn / þæt he monþeawum minum lifge / acyrred cuðlice from Cristes æ (‘I will be an eager teacher, so that he lives according to my habits, certainly turned away from Christ’s law,’ lines 409b–411). Thus the tower of the mind is breached and invaded, as the demon enters in. Harbus calls such activity the ‘squandering [of] the mind,’ the ‘psychomachic metaphor of a soul besieged by arrows’ (lines 403a–409a), an imitation of Satan’s ruination and ‘[changing of] of the demon’s own mind’ (lines 325–328a).46 This passage, however, goes beyond metaphor. The demon has invaded Juliana’s prison, and she has shut him out of her mind, just as she has dominated him physically. Such immediate spirituo-material encounters, which usually allow a teaching demon to do his work, exploiting weaknesses of spirit, mind, and body, here doom him to failure instead. Juliana is unusually successful in resisting the demon, he says, since her steadfast rejection of her opponent’s faulty premises and ‘teachings’ have made it impossible for the demon to invade her mind. In keeping her mind locked away from him, ironically, she makes him a prisoner all over again: þu gedyrstig þurh deop gehygd / wurde þus wigþrist ofer eall wifa cyn, / þæt þu mec þus fæste fetrum gebunde (‘you, daring, through [your] stern spirit, thus became bold in battle over all womankind, so that you bound me fast in fetters,’ lines 431–433). In her wisdom and discretion, the demon says, Juliana resists his teaching in a way that Adam and Eve could not: ic ealdor oðþrong, / ond hy gelærde þæt hi lufan dryhtnes, / ece eadgiefe anforleton, / beorhtne boldwelan, þæt him bæm geearð / yrmþu to ealdre (‘I deprived [Adam and Eve] of life, and I taught them so that they surrendered the love of the Lord, the eternal gift of prosperity, bright paradise, so that misery came to them forever,’ lines 500b–504a). Although Juliana is 45 46

Lapidge, ‘Cynewulf and the Passio S. Iulianae,’ p. 161. The Latin source text uses facio to describe the demon’s deeds, including little pedagogical language. Juliana induces the demon to ‘[reveal] his own mind’ as the ‘only character who understands the truth about her.’ Harbus further notes that only the demon ‘recognises the quality of Juliana’s mind’ at line 553a, with Eleseus as her foil in his rage and ‘passions;’ he and Africanus both fall into ‘mind-based rage’ at Juliana’s resistance. See The Life of the Mind in Old English Poetry, pp. 95, 97, 93–94.

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Demonic Teaching and Saintly Discretio in Cynewulf’s Juliana their daughter and heir to their original sin, she possesses the strength of mind to resist the demon’s teaching, fortifying the structure of her mind, that same ‘place’ in which she has discovered the arguments with which to dispute her opponents. As a narrative, the demon’s confession of his pedagogical methods contrasts strongly with the first story he tells Juliana, which assumes her fear of torment and death. Once this premise is defeated through her bold response and her trust in God, he has no premises left, no arguments to make. When she demonstrates her ability to resist his verbal manipulations, his practice of the verbal arts instead gives way to an insider’s description of his methods. He tells a perversely true story about how he defeats the defenses of the vulnerable, invading the ‘towers of their minds.’ He therefore simultaneously reveals a way to protect those towers, strengthening them against future demonic invasion. Epistemologically fortified with newfound knowledge of the demon’s pedagogical methods, Juliana returns to her tormentors strengthened in soul, mind, and body. Having defeated the demon, Juliana is called back to face her other opponents, Eleseus and Africanus, and once again to reveal the flaws in their premises. In this part of the narrative, Eleseus assumes the premise that causing the body to suffer will also cause the will to weaken and change. In response, Juliana demonstrates that the strong will can rather uphold and strengthen the suffering body. A corollary to this argument is that the will is not slave to the body, nor vice versa; rather, the will is partner to the body in a mutually sustaining relationship for one whose mind is strong and who rejects fear. In his past efforts to ‘teach,’ the demon has opposed Juliana’s premise by drawing seemingly strong-minded people into violence. Before the saint is taken from her prison cell, dragging the lamenting demon with her (lines 534b–535), he reveals his role in the violent torment of humankind: he blinds some of his victims, crushes the feet of others, engulfs them in flames, makes them bleed, drowns them in the sea, or hangs them on crosses (lines 468b-483a). Others he incites to do bloody violence against one another ‘through my teachings’ (larum, line 483b). By invading the mind and soul, the demon can harm and kill the body, predicating his claim in part on the fusion of the spiritual, mental, and material within human beings. But he is ultimately mistaken about the relationship among these components of human nature. They are co-emergent and interdependent, not enslaved to one another. Juliana’s strength of mind and will help to strengthen her in body as well, giving her courage in her suffering. Although she is physically tormented, the stability of her mind and soul fortify her body to overwhelm her suffering in Cynewulf’s account. When Juliana exits her prison, Eleseus, having earlier been defeated by her in debate, nevertheless clings to the disproven premise that torment will change her mind, humble her, and stifle the power of the saintly 171

Debating with Demons voice that shamed him before her encounter with the demon. While a lacuna obscures the details of her passion in Cynewulf’s text, multiple other sources recount that she was tortured on the wheel, boiled in a pot, and burnt by flames.47 The tormented saint’s body thus aligns with the body of the book itself, torn and brutalized, its unknown parts lost to history.48 In telling the story of Juliana’s spirituo-material sufferings, the book makes it impossible to ignore the reality of her torment, the brutality which produces her pain, and the violence committed against her. Juliana’s enemies are nevertheless constantly frustrated in their attempts to harm her body, influence her mind, and turn her will. Her sufferings are thwarted somewhat by the miraculous transformation of the uncooperative tools used to torture her. Because of their participation in her suffering, they immediately become contact relics, altering in their very materiality and refusing to harm her. When Eleseus orders his men to fill a pot with molten lead, throwing Juliana into it (lines 582–584), they cannot carry out his command. Although the fire will not light, the lead nevertheless explodes from the pot, killing seventy-five minions of Eleseus instead of harming Juliana (lines 582–592a), who remains onsund (‘whole,’ line 593a). Enraged swa wilde deor (‘like a wild beast,’ line 597b), Eleseus ultimately orders his men to behead her þurh sweordbite (‘through the sword’s bite,’ line 603b). It seems ironic that, having been tormented in every other way imaginable, Juliana is ultimately to be executed in the ‘noblest’ way, with the sword reserved for Roman citizens, including Paul. This weapon, though it eventually performs its task, nevertheless instantaneously becomes an object suffused with Juliana’s sacred power, material proof of the truth of her arguments, insistently spoken against those who claimed greater authority than she. At Juliana’s martyrdom, not only the instruments of her death but also the place where it occurs are transformed as her sanctity, guaranteed by her presence, begins to act upon them. To meet her death, Juliana is brought to the edge of the city, the boundaries of Eleseus’s now dubious authority. She is gelæded londmearce neah / ond to þære stowe þær hi stearcferþe / þurh cumbolhete cwellan þohtun (‘led near the boundary and to the place where they thought to kill the stern-minded one through warlike hate,’ lines 635–637). While Eleseus’s men bring Juliana to this stow on the premise that she will be defeated through death, their belief is once again shown to be illusory. At this ‘place’ in the borderland, Juliana ultimately triumphs

47

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See the account of Juliana’s passion from Bede’s Martyrology in Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology, ed. Thomas Head (New York, 2001), pp. 181–182; ‘Iuliana, Virgo Nicomediensis et Martyr,’ Acta Sanctorum, II.10, 6; and Lapidge, ‘Cynewulf and the Passio S. Iulianae,’ pp. 162–163. Juliana does not appear in the Old English Martyrology. I am grateful to Blaire Zeiders for this insight.

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Demonic Teaching and Saintly Discretio in Cynewulf’s Juliana over her enemies, choosing the place of her death for her emergence as a teacher in her own right. Juliana’s pedagogy is conveyed through her example as well as her words. Voice and body, integrated with spirit and mind, manifest her final teaching. Her lesson, taught to the ‘pupils’ present at her martyrdom, refers to Matthew 7. In contrast to the demon’s representation of the human mind as a vulnerable tower, subject to deceptive attack, Juliana describes the mind as a strong home, a ‘house on a rock,’ built on solid foundations and fortified through steadfastness.49 Her instruction, unlike the demon’s, is based in love and the desire to protect her followers as ongon heo þa læran ond to lofe trymman / folc of firenum ond him frofre gehet, / weg to wuldre (‘she began to teach them and to exhort with love the people from sins and commanded them with consolation, the way to glory,’ lines 638–640a).50 Juliana conveys the lesson that, though the human mind may be vulnerable, it can be defended through strength, attention, serenity, and discernment (lines 647–661a): Forþon ic, leof weorud, læran wille, æfremmende, þæt ge eower hus gefæstnige, þy læs hit ferblædum windas towearpan. Weal sceal þy trumra strong wiþstondan storma scurum, leahtra gehygdum. Ge mid lufan sibbe, leohte geleafan, to þam lifgendan stane stiðhydge staþol fæstniað, soðe treowe ond sibbe mid eow healdað æt heortan, halge rune þurh modes myne. Þonne eow miltse giefeð fæder ælmihtig, þær ge frofre agun æt mægna gode, mæste þearfe æfter sorgstafum … (Therefore I, beloved people, wish to teach [you], perfect in the law, that you make your house fast, lest it break into pieces from a sudden blast of wind. Your strong wall of security must withstand a tempest of storms, thoughts of sin. With the peace of love, with the light of faith, fasten your foundation, resolute, to the living rock, to the true tree, and hold peace among you in [your] hearts, the holy mystery through purpose of mind. Then the almighty father will give mercy to you. There you will possess consolation from mighty God, in greatest need after afflictions.)51 49 50 51

On Juliana as a preacher, see Joseph Wittig, ‘Figural Narrative in Cynewulf’s Juliana,’ in The Cynewulf Reader, ed. Bjork, pp. 147–169 (pp. 160–161). The Passio does not emphasize consolation; see Lapidge, ‘Cynewulf and the Passio S. Iulianae,’ pp. 164–165. The Passio uses dicere instead of specifically pedagogical language; see ibid., pp. 164–165. See also Shari Horner, ‘Spiritual Truth and Sexual Violence: The

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Debating with Demons In Juliana’s teaching, there is no need to ‘wander,’ seeking a stable place for the memory.52 Rather, Juliana instructs the people to build a new house, reinforcing it to provide ongoing protection for those who follow God’s teachings and hers. Juliana continues to teach after her bodily death through narratives about her exemplary behavior and her relics. Having conveyed her final instruction in one place, Juliana is soon transported to another, a shrine within the newly sanctified city where her relics will reside. She has been beheaded, violently killed by the sword, and is dead in an earthly sense. But her followers, for the sake of their own ontological survival as Christians, cannot accept this, instead celebrating her ongoing life. In this, she is ungelice (‘different,’ line 688b) from Eleseus, who is lost in a shipwreck (lines 671b–682) and descends to þam þystram ham, … / þam neolan scræfe (‘the dark home … / the dark cave’ of hell, lines 683b–684b). While Eleseus is lost in obscurity, forgotten and unmourned, Juliana and her followers figuratively ‘conquer’ his city, her relics becoming a new center for the Christians within the walls. Her followers reverently bring lofsongum lic haligre / micle mægne to moldgræfe (‘the body of the saint … with songs of praise, in great power to the grave,’ lines 689–690). And that grave is inside the city (burgum in innan, line 691), significantly transforming its landscape and its life. The practice of burying the Christian dead within the city was revolutionary in the late Roman period. These ‘common dead,’ normally relegated to burial grounds beyond the walls of the city, disrupted the ‘absolute’ division ‘of the living from the dead.’ The saints were ‘not dead at all,’ according to Jill Harries, and neither were their bodies.53 It became commonplace to celebrate the ‘birth’ of the saint into eternity on the day of earthly death by feasting near his or her burial place, integrating the feeding of body and spirit.54 When Juliana is brought inside the city, then, she enters as a living entity, her remains fertile and productive in both a spiritual and material sense. Saints’ cults such as Juliana’s could remake the world of the early Middle Ages. In late antiquity, Brown argues, the ‘cult of saints’ presented a ‘Christian challenge to the cosmos’ in celebrating the ‘tombs of the dead,’ where the divine could ‘mingle with the decayed bodies of mere humans.’ Through this mingling, the saints became ‘deeply immanent presences’ that could restore the bodies of common people as well.55 As places of

52 53

54 55

Old English Juliana, Anglo-Saxon Nuns, and the Discourse of Female Monastic Enclosure,’ Signs, 19.3 (1994), 658–675 (p. 673). Carruthers, ‘Reading with Attitude,’ pp. 10–11. Jill Harries, ‘Death and the Dead in the Late Roman West,’ in Death in Towns: Urban Responses to the Dying and the Dead, 100–1600, ed. Steven Bassett (Leicester, 1992), pp. 56–67 (pp. 56–57, 59). Rollason, Saints and Relics in Anglo-Saxon England, p. 5. Brown, The Cult of Saints, pp. xxix–xxx.

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Demonic Teaching and Saintly Discretio in Cynewulf’s Juliana sanctity, then, the saints participated in and demonstrated the seamless link between materiality and spirituality. No longer were the material remains ‘discarded’ when the soul united with divinity.56 Rather, these remains were essential, rendering ‘the saints … more broken than most and more whole … more full, more vital,’ their relics ‘vivid and paradoxical reminders of the sacred in the flesh, its literalized openness to a God whose flesh is likewise, exemplarily, torn.’57 Through such reminders, the integration of the soul and body were asserted and continually celebrated in accordance with the liturgical calendar, embedding the saints’ ongoing life firmly within both place and time. Immediately following a saint’s death, his or her shrine became known as ‘“the place”: loca sanctorum,’ signaling a new ‘“presence” of the saints.’58 Juliana therefore becomes present in a new way after her death. Though executed at the city’s borders, through her relics and her cult, she renders such boundaries meaningless, turning them inside out. As a sanctified place and therefore one of new significance, Juliana’s city also becomes newly ‘legitimate,’ the saint’s protection fostering its ‘stability’ and ‘defense.’59 As a shield against enemies, the remains of Juliana, her living ‘body,’ as Bynum claims, were really alive: ‘medieval cult objects … were not like life; they … lived … [and] their life or agency lay not in their naturalism or similitude [to human agents] but in their materiality.’60 Juliana’s body can be divided and yet remain whole, spreading her narrative, with its implicit and revolutionary arguments, throughout the world. Juliana’s relics were translated from Turkey to Italy through the patronage of Januaria, a woman who aimed to honor the saint with a tomb in a Roman church, although inclement weather resulted in her burial near Naples instead.61 Thus the devotion of the living aims to strengthen and promote the saint’s ongoing life. In reference to saints’ relics, Clare A. Lees and Gillian R. Overing comment on ‘the convoluted passage of female body into static icon,’ acknowledging that ‘a relic [can be] a metaphor … a thing … and … a body.’62 Whatever it may be, however, a relic can never be ‘static,’ as Bynum’s analysis shows. Although Lees and Overing describe the relic as ‘the metaphor for the dead body [which] haunts 56 57 58 59 60

61 62

Ibid., pp. 1–2. MacKendrick, Fragmentation and Memory, p. 130. Brown, The Cult of Saints, pp. 11–12. David Rollason, The Power of Place: Rulers and Their Palaces, Landscapes, Cities, and Holy Places (Princeton, 2016), pp. 5, 250. Bynum, Christian Materiality, p. 282. See also Renée R. Trilling, ‘Heavenly Bodies: Paradoxes of Female Martyrdom in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints,’ in Writing Women Saints in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Paul Szarmach (Toronto, 2013), pp. 249–273 (pp. 250–252). Lapidge, ‘Cynewulf and the Passio S. Iulianae,’ p. 148. Clare A. Lees and Gillian R. Overing, Double Agents: Women and Clerical Culture in Anglo-Saxon England (Philadelphia, 2001), p. 167.

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Debating with Demons the living body,’63 a relic can also never be only a metaphor, a device insufficient to explain the function and ongoing life of the relic in its ‘thingness,’ whether a material object or a living ‘place’ regularly interacting with those who visit it. A saint’s power, furthermore, does not lie exclusively in his or her relics; it can be manifest in even greater ways in places distant from the saint’s remains. In Gregory’s Dialogi, when Peter asks his teacher how such things happen, Gregory replies that the saints’ miraculous deeds occur in distant places to answer the doubts of those with little faith.64 Miracles, like the relics of the saints, provide arguments and proofs to counter the res dubia, the quaestio which demands a new saintly premise in response.

Conclusion Having defeated the faulty premises of her teachers, Juliana, in her turn, instructs her people to defend themselves by claiming places for their own, effecting material, spiritual, and mental transformations through steadfast minds and courageous bodily witness. The topos in Juliana migrates from the saint’s mind to the place of her execution and teaching, shifting again to her relics after earthly death. This emerging chain of topoi provides multiple places in which Juliana’s followers can discover arguments to counter the questions and doubts of the saint’s detractors. In the informal logic of her debates with Africanus and the demon, Juliana both exercises an exemplary level of discretio and displays the ability to distinguish between truth and lies that characterizes the dialectical method. She discovers new premises in the ‘places’ of her mind and will, the fortress that her enemies cannot invade. Juliana thus masters the art of debating with demons in ways that her first mother, Eve, could not. After Juliana’s earthly death, in the heart of the Roman city, further arguments can be discovered in her relics, which, in their praesentia and potentia,65 help to remedy the consumption of the fatal fruit consumed in Eden. Saintly exempla, though certainly not Juliana’s, are sometimes engulfed and stymied by the overwhelming spirituo-material potential of the relic, a powerful topos in which arguments for truth can be discovered. In another hagiographical poem, Cynewulf’s Elene, the two combative saints of the poem, Elene (Helen) and Judas Cyriacus, must both give way to the ineffable ‘absent presence’66 of the True Cross, lost at Calvary and desired 63 64 65 66

Ibid., p. 169. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, tome II, ed. de Vogüé and Antin, II.38; Saint Gregory the Great: Dialogues, trans. Zimmerman, p. 109. Brown, The Cult of Saints, p. 107. Enders, The Medieval Theater of Cruelty, pp. 71–72.

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Demonic Teaching and Saintly Discretio in Cynewulf’s Juliana by the powers of Empire. In Cynewulf’s account, the True Cross actually enables all knowledge, all learning, which must remain furtive and secret until the relic is ‘invented.’ Elene, far from merely providing a narrative of a saint or saints, instead tells the story of a relic, in all its excessive and unruly materiality. The following chapter, therefore, examines the disruptive and generative force of Christ’s primary relic in Cynewulf’s Elene.

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7 Inventing Materia: The True Cross and Saintly Disputation in Cynewulf’s Elene

In Cynewulf’s Juliana, the saint demonstrates her ability to adjust her opponents’ premises and pose new questions, establishing alternate forms of reasoning that recast the relationship of the spiritual, mental, and material. While Juliana focuses closely on the saint herself, Cynewulf’s Elene places the relic of the True Cross at the center of Christian life and learning, representing sainthood as a highly contested and disputed category circulating around Christ’s most famous, absent, and longed-for relic. The True Cross eludes even the poem’s saints, the imperial queen Elene (Helen) and the learned convert-Jew Judas Cyriacus who, according to Cynewulf’s account, was ‘taught’ along with his Jewish brethren to conceal the True Cross by Satan himself. The inventio of the True Cross coincides with the saintly struggle to pose questions and arguments that lead to knowledge among the many other distracting, indeed detracting, demands of the Christian imperial project. In the poem, intellectual and spiritual processes coincide with materiality: the relic is inseparable from the dialectical and logical activities that surround it and which, eventually, it enables. The quaestiones posed in Elene, however, especially those asked or implied by the queen herself, do not always tend toward truth or discovery. In the poem, multiple argumentative narratives lead toward, or more frequently away, from the inventio of the True Cross, as both materia and topos. The containment and limiting of the True Cross at the poem’s end testify to its terrifying plenitude and ultimately uncontrollable power. In Cynewulf’s account, the True Cross emerges gradually into presence. Its miraculous appearance in Constantine’s dream leads to Elene’s journey to Jerusalem and her councils with the wise men of the Jews, ostensibly to discover the True Cross’s hiding place. Their debates induce Judas Cyriacus to conceal his own story of the True Cross, leading to his torment at Elene’s command. Finally, at the prayer of Judas, who defeats the devil in a dispute and rejects his demonic ‘teaching,’ the True Cross reveals itself through a miracle manifested in physical form. By the poem’s end, Judas and Elene are both designated as teachers, reconciled by the True Cross’s presence to forego their former animosity and cooperate in the imperial epistemological project. 178

The True Cross and Saintly Disputation in Cynewulf’s Elene As one of Christ’s few surviving relics, the True Cross has extraordinary status in its materiality, stimulating special concerns from early English writers about its overwhelming spirituo-material power. The True Cross becomes the focus of competing narratives in Cynewulf’s disputes between Elene and the Jewish wise men in the poem. These debates, as their participants seek to assert the dominance of Judaism or Christianity, often actually distract Elene from her stated goal of finding the True Cross. The path to the relic emerges instead through Judas Cyriacus’s own narrative of the True Cross and, after his torment at Elene’s command, the ‘pilgrimage’ he undertakes to Calvary, where the True Cross finally reveals itself. That the True Cross is swiftly possessed and enclosed by the newly Christian Empire demonstrates both its power and the fragility of imperial and ecclesiastical authority.

The True Cross as materia Elsewhere, I have argued that the True Cross in Cynewulf’s Elene is itself ‘a figure for the crux of the argument for the truth of Christianity,’ its ‘hiding place’ on Calvary the topos or locus in which such arguments can be found.1 This claim, made some years ago, participates in the ‘linguistic turn’ quite as effectively as other critical analyses produced during the 1990s and early 2000s. Irvine, for example, considers the True Cross a key ‘trope’ and an ‘aenigma,’ which Isidore of Seville defines as ‘an obscure question which is difficult to understand unless it is revealed.’ In Irvine’s analysis, which focuses on the verbal art of grammatica, Cynewulf’s text emphasizes the ‘discovery of the meaning of the Cross’ more strongly than the inventio of the True Cross itself; the cross becomes a ‘sign,’ an ‘emblem of the activity of interpretation,’ a ‘metaphor.’2 Such textual approaches, my own included, can obscure the radical and world-changing effects of the True Cross as a thing, as materiality in itself. While Calvary may be a dialectical and rhetorical topos, the New Testament counterpart to the topos of Eden in Genesis, Calvary is also a ‘real’ place that would eventually be disputed among Jewish, Christian, and Muslim ‘People of the Book.’3 The True Cross itself may be a ‘crux,’4 an argumentum, the answer 1

2 3

4

Christina M. Heckman, ‘Things in Doubt: Inventio, Dialectic, and Jewish Secrets in Cynewulf’s Elene,’ Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 108.4 (2009), 449–480 (pp. 450, 455–456). Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture, pp. 438, 440, 443–444. This designation appears in the Qur’an, 4:153, 5:15, 5:77. See The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr (New York, 2015). See also Leonard Swidler, Khalid Duran, and Reuven Firestone, Trialogue: Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Dialogue (New London, 2007), p. 39, and F.E. Peters, The Monotheists: Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Conflict and Competition, Volume II: The Words and Will of God (Princeton, 2003), pp. 3–4, 35, 377. Irving, The Making of Textual Culture, p. 444.

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Debating with Demons to every question about Christ’s suffering and death. It is also an object, however, a real thing in the world, and eventually a collection of things, of fragments spread all over Western civilization by the end of the Middle Ages. The True Cross was the most precious relic in Christendom, sacred in its multiplicity, material in its ‘thing-ness.’ Its story, therefore, always and everywhere overwhelms the textual. Within the narrative world of Cynewulf’s poem, the True Cross is a missing object, its hiding place a lost topos, and, at the poem’s beginning, its story has not been told. Seemingly, nobody knows who can tell it, and few even know that the True Cross exists. The teachings related to it, including those of Satan himself, the poem’s demonic magister, are far in the past, nearly lost to memory. They re-emerge very slowly throughout the poem, with Satan appearing only near the poem’s end, when the True Cross is found. Although the True Cross has been described as an ‘exegetical key,’5 it is also the key to other kinds of knowledge, particularly in the ‘teaching’ of the relic’s story. In Cynewulf’s account, only when the relic appears can any productive pedagogical activity take place. And its invention, which sets off an epistemological and ontological transformation in Christianity itself, takes place over time, occurring not only through Christ’s suffering and death but also through the True Cross’s recognition by believers, the stories told about it, and the teaching conveyed through those stories. At the poem’s beginning, only rumors and secret tales are known about the True Cross. Its full emergence into being depends partly on Judas Cyriacus and his own spirituo-material transformation, but mostly on the potentially dangerous materiality of the True Cross itself. The relic’s materiality coincides and intersects with the necessary and unstable processes of knowing and debating its significance. Since the True Cross enables all questions and all arguments, its absence is the problem at the heart of Elene. As will be shown, however, finding the True Cross is actually not Elene’s primary goal. The story of her quest to Jerusalem and the legend of the Inventio crucis, the finding of the True Cross, are preceded in Cynewulf’s text by the tale of Constantine’s dream, the Hoptasia.6 After a brief account of the emperor’s dream vision, most of the poem focuses on the attempts of his mother to wrest the story of the True Cross from the Jewish wise men of Jerusalem. Although Elene is quite forceful in her arguments, deriding and threatening the wise men, she ironically asks few questions in their disputations. This suggests that

5 6

Ibid., p. 444. According to Harbus, Elene goes beyond hagiographical norms because it includes both the story of the Inventio crucis and ‘a miracle of Judas Cyriacus.’ The Life of the Mind in Old English Poetry, p. 88.

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The True Cross and Saintly Disputation in Cynewulf’s Elene she seeks dominion and authority more than the hidden knowledge that only Judas Cyriacus can provide. Since Judas Cyriacus and Elene provide uncertain and conflicting models of sainthood,7 the poem does not have a traditional hagiographical center or narrative pattern. One saint, Elene, torments another; and her fellow saint, nemesis, and victim, Judas Cyriacus, is exceedingly reluctant to become a Christian, let alone a champion of Christ. Amid their disputes, the absent True Cross itself is at the center of the poem, the invisible and lost materia in which can be found arguments about Christianity’s onto-epistemological significance. Without the True Cross, Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection are hardly known at all. Epistemological and ontological development are both stalled, seemingly dependent on the story that only Judas Cyriacus can tell.8 When Judas Cyriacus agrees to ‘invent’ the True Cross, however, the relic bursts out of its hiding place in boundless materiality, ironically emphasizing that, though Judas himself is one of the poem’s larsmiðas (‘lore-smiths,’ line 203b), he actually cannot reveal the True Cross on his own. The larsmið can use ‘tools,’ even the True Cross itself, to shape knowledge, potentially forming it into a weapon and ironically revealing its arbitrary nature.9 Elene’s larsmiðas are diverse, including Jews, Christians, Romans, Judas, Elene, Satan, and even Cynewulf himself. Through such ‘smithing,’ however, all epistemological processes are brought into question. The True Cross, the poem’s ‘absent presence,’10 becomes the missing material center of inquiries and arguments that go to the heart of both Judaism and Christianity, especially the argument about the True Cross’s own power and its role in Christian onto-epistemological transformation. But what is the True Cross, as materia? In the Etymologies, Isidore of Seville defines materia or ‘matter’ as lignum, ‘wood’ or ‘timber,’ ‘the primary material of things,’ ‘unformed substance,’ and the source of ‘the visible elements (elementum).’ It is the ‘mother’ (mater) of all things.11 The True Cross, therefore, is both the mother of all things, primal materia, and 7

8 9

10 11

On ‘the ambiguity’ of the saints, see Rollason, Saints and Relics in Anglo-Saxon England, p. 3 and Clare A. Lees, ‘At a Crossroads: Old English and Feminist Criticism,’ in Reading Old English Texts, ed. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 146–169 (pp. 159–160). See also Christina M. Heckman, ‘The Hunger of Judas: Teaching and Materiality in Cynewulf’s Elene,’ Medieval Perspectives, 33 (2018), 1–18 (pp. 1–2). On the Jews as the ‘epistemological limit’ of Christianity, see Heckman, ‘Things in Doubt,’ p. 449. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer from Medieval Perspectives for this insight. This is the only instance of larsmið in the Old English corpus; see the Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, accessed 5 February 2019. Enders, The Medieval Theater of Cruelty, p. 76. Isidore, Etymologiae, ed. Lindsay, XIII.xiii.1, XIX.xix.3; The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. Barney, Lewis, Beach, and Berghof, pp. 272, 382.

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Debating with Demons the primary relic of Christ, the material witness, along with Mary, the mother of Jesus, to the death of the incarnate God-Man, a relationship also noted in The Dream of the Rood (lines 92–94).12 In Elene, however, the True Cross is missing. Thus all things have lost their ‘mother’ and are estranged from their origins. They do not know where they come from or where they are going to. All people and all things are orphaned, ignorant of their own stories, separated from the very materia that makes them who and what they are. This goes beyond language, metaphor, or text. The True Cross is fundamentally an onto-epistemological object: in itself, in its substance, it is a crucial aspect of being and knowing. Without it, those processes seem to be impossible. Questions can be asked, arguments can be made, but they go nowhere until the True Cross is found. As materia, the True Cross testifies to the power of what Orsi calls the ‘literalness of … real presence.’13 Discovered before 337 c.e., the True Cross had become the center of its own cult by about 380 c.e., venerated especially in Jerusalem on Good Friday. Egeria, a female pilgrim who authored the Itinerarium Peregrinatio or Itinerarium Egeriae, an account of her travels in the Holy Land in the late fourth century, mentions the honoring of the cross at Golgotha, where Constantine built a monumental church. According to Egeria, even at this early date the cross featured prominently in processions, prayers, and liturgies, including those celebrated on May 3, the feast of the Inventio crucis.14 By the early Middle Ages, the presence of the True Cross and other relics had reached all corners of medieval life, including ‘public rituals and private devotions … the shrines, objects, practices, prayers, and stories of the cult of saints … church architecture … the bodies of men and women … their desires and disciplines … the marking of time’s passing … the days of the month … [and] the rhythms of agricultural work.’15 In its ‘literalness,’ such presence shares in the mysteries of the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the Trinity, and the Eucharist, the center of Christian life. In Elene, however, the True Cross is mostly unknown and lost, a void in the center of Christian experience. Cynewulf’s poem tells the story of the True Cross emerging from ‘absence, [which] may be imposed and enforced by authorities and powers … that are made anxious by pres12 13 14

15

The Dream of the Rood, The Vercelli Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, vol. 2, ed. George Philip Krapp (New York, 1932), pp. 61–65. Orsi, History and Presence, p. 21. For Egeria’s Latin text, see Itinerarium Partes Prima et Secunda, ed. Wilhelm Heraeus (Heidelberg, 1908), XXIV–XXV. A modern English translation is available in The Pilgrimage of Etheria, trans. M.L. McClure and Charles Lett Feltoe (London, 1919), pp. 75–76. See also Louis van Tongeren, Exaltation of the Cross: Toward the Origins of the Feast of the Cross and the Meaning of the Cross in Early Medieval Liturgy (Leuven, 2000), pp. 2, 4, 22–23. Orsi, History and Presence, pp. 21–22.

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The True Cross and Saintly Disputation in Cynewulf’s Elene ence.’16 As it comes into presence, the True Cross fulfills ‘an enduring and intense longing.’17 But in its uncontrollable and bursting materiality, it likewise inspires new anxieties, new impositions of absence within the Christian Empire. While the True Cross emerges as what Haraway has described as ‘a topos, a place,’ it also becomes ‘a trópos, a trope … [a] figure, construction, artifact, movement, displacement.’18 As both materia and symbol, the True Cross, an object both natural and constructed, defies simple classification. Haraway claims, ‘we turn to nature as if to the earth, to the tree of life … to … [the] work of world building – telling stories.’19 But relics, especially the True Cross, have ways of telling their own stories and undermining other stories told about them. Such tales often proceed by indirection and confusion more than by discovery or clear ‘truth.’ In its status as materia, the True Cross manifests what Bennett calls ‘ThingPower, the curious ability … to animate, to act, to produce effects dramatic and subtle.’20 Along with animated human bodies, relics are ‘wonderfully vibrant, dangerously vibrant, matter,’ participating in the ‘shared materiality of all things.’21 In addition to being acted upon, they act, and sometimes in very unexpected ways, despite the attempts of larsmiðas to control them. While one might consider the True Cross, in its ineffable materiality, the key to Christian epistemology in the poem, arguably Judas Cyriacus, the most knowledgeable Jewish larsmið, is also central to this project. With his Hebrew prayer at Calvary, the True Cross finally reveals its hiding place and eventually, through a life-giving miracle, its own identity. As a healing relic, the True Cross becomes what Cynthia Hahn describes as a ‘doubly sacred … conduit of miraculous power’ which eventually becomes both ‘fully visible’ and ‘hidden from view.’ As a ‘wondrous strange’ object, the True Cross becomes associated with the ‘virtus’ and ‘power’ of Christ himself, providing both ‘memoria and … indexical proof’ of the transformed significance of both life and death in the Crucifixion and Resurrection.22 So potent is the True Cross’s presence that one pilgrim at Calvary reportedly ate a fragment of the True Cross, hoping to partake in its burgeoning life. Relics, as materia, also stimulate the senses, participating in the ‘performative shaping of the human body’ through which pilgrims could ‘explore … holy sites somatically as well as imaginatively’ and participate in sensory encounters that were ‘integrated by the

16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Ibid., p. 8 Ibid., p. 43. Haraway, ‘Otherworldly Conversations, Terran Topics, Local Terms,’ p. 159. Ibid., p. 159. Bennett, Vibrant Matter, p. 6. Ibid., pp. 12–13. Hahn, Strange Beauty, pp. 3, 6–9, 16.

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Debating with Demons memory’ as ‘imitatio Christi.’ Relics were thought to shed light and even speak with voices, stimulating pilgrims to speak in turn.23 As the primary means of Christ’s sacrifice, the True Cross held pre­ eminence among all other relics. It testified to Christ’s transformation of death, his overturning of earthly mortality, the flesh rising to eternity. The presence of the True Cross likewise helps to remedy the problem of ‘how to cope with the catastrophic loss of the divine presence and how to perceive a continuing and transfigured presence.’ Because of the True Cross’s physical contact with Christ and its saturation with his blood,24 the faithful, when in proximity to the True Cross or a fragment thereof, could encounter Christ doubly, through both his relics and the Eucharist. By offering his body and blood on the altar, Christians could become one with Christ again through a miraculous memorial to the Incarnation, enacted repeatedly in the Mass all across Christendom. The True Cross, in its presence and even in its absence, shared in that spirituo-material mystery. This mysterious power of the True Cross, however, perplexed one of its most authoritative pre-conquest English commentators, Ælfric of Eynsham. In his homily on the Exaltatio crucis, included in his Lives of Saints (ca. 996–997), Ælfric expresses a concern about English Christians’ interest in relics, emphasizing that the True Cross itself is not as important as the ideas it represents: heo is wide todæled . mid gelomlicum ofcyrfum to lande gehwilcum . ac seo gastlice getacnung is mid gode æfre a unbrosingendlic . þeah þe se beam beo to-coruen (‘[the True Cross] is widely scattered in numerous sections to every land. But the spiritual significance is with God eternally incorruptible, though the beam be cut into pieces’).25 Ælfric here seeks to de-materialize the True Cross, exploring its metaphorical meanings instead. In the homily, Ælfric tells the story of the heathen king Cosdrue, who, after the discovery of the True Cross, invades Jerusalem and steals the relic from its place of honor, bringing it home with him. In his overweening pride, Cosdrue raises up the True Cross in his throne-chamber, to geferan on his fracodnysse (‘as a companion in his obscenity’). In other words, Cosdrue pretends the True Cross is his friend. For his pride, he is killed by the Christian emperor Heraclius, who is himself humbled when he tries to march into Jerusalem as a victorious conqueror, carrying the recovered True Cross proudly before him. The city walls close against him and an angel appears to reprimand him for his arrogance and imperial

23 24 25

Ibid., pp. 18, 28–29. Hahn analyzes the association of the True Cross with memory in the poems of Paulinus of Nola. Ibid., pp. 45, 52, 75. Ælfric, homily on the Exaltatio crucis, Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, vol. 2, ed. Walter W. Skeat, Early English Text Society, o.s. 94 (Oxford, 1881–1890; repr. 1966), pp. 144–159 (p. 152), lines 143–146.

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The True Cross and Saintly Disputation in Cynewulf’s Elene pageantry. Only when Heraclius enters in humility, barefoot like Christ walking to Calvary, is the emperor permitted to enter.26 Ælfric both rebukes Heraclius’s triumphant claims on the relic and condemns Cosdrue’s idolatrous befriending of the True Cross, although Cosdrue is put to death while Heraclius repents and survives. Neither idolatry nor prideful possession, Ælfric suggests, is an acceptable attitude toward the True Cross, which, in his view, points toward Christ’s sacrifice rather than toward itself. Though any cross serves as a reminder of Christ’s death and Resurrection, such a cross is merely an anlicnys, a ‘likeness.’ And even Christ’s own True Cross was made of wood, mortal materia, and on holte weoxe (‘grew in the forest’).27 The overwhelming power of the True Cross, and Christians’ preoccupation with it, actually seem to disturb Ælfric, who emphasizes its abstract meanings rather than its ‘thing-ness.’28 For most of Elene, however, the True Cross remains defiantly material and elusive. In discussing the True Cross, debating it incessantly and telling stories about it, the speakers in Elene actually talk around it: they concentrate more on one another, on their rivalries and ignorance and resistance, than on the relic itself. Even in its preeminent position as the central ‘absent presence’ in the poem, the True Cross remains a cipher to those who cannot yet acknowledge or perceive its powerful materiality, its being apart from them. As they desire to possess it, or to prevent others from possessing it, the True Cross conceals itself, not emerging until Judas utters his Hebrew prayer, acknowledging that the power to reveal the relic belongs to God and to the True Cross itself, though Judas had struggled to conceal its story before. At Calvary, Judas’s suffering body, itself a ‘place’ of contested sanctity, literally travels to the hiding place of the True Cross and, as bodies, he and the relic itself, in their mystical affinity, testify to the burgeoning power of materiality, its ability to conceal and reveal itself, to tell its own story over and against the accounts of human larsmiðas.

Secret stories: pedagogy and narrative in Elene The teachings of the demonic larsmið, Satan himself, are cloaked in mystery and silence in Elene.29 Satan’s onto-epistemological role is fundamental 26 27 28

29

Ibid., pp. 144–146, 148–150, line 43. Ælfric, homily on the Inventio crucis, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The Second Series Text, ed. Godden, pp. 174–176 (pp. 175–176). On the liturgical contexts of the Inventio crucis legend, see Thomas D. Hill, ‘Time, Liturgy, and History in the Old English Elene,’ Imagining the Jew in AngloSaxon Literature and Culture, ed. Samantha Zacher (Toronto, 2016), pp. 156–166 (pp. 161–162). All references to Cynewulf’s Elene are taken from The Vercelli Book, AngloSaxon Poetic Records, vol. 2, ed. George Philip Krapp (New York, 1932), pp.

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Debating with Demons but hidden, unknown to the Christians in the poem until Constantine’s dream is investigated. Cynewulf presents Satan as the hidden teacher of the Jews, who, according to the secret Christians of Rome, serve the devil by concealing the story and the location of the True Cross so that Christ’s death and Resurrection will not become known. In her analysis of Elene, Kathy Lavezzo constructs a binary distinction between Jews, associated with the ‘carnal,’ and Christians in the poem.30 While Christians, especially Elene herself, engage in ‘materialism,’ especially in their ‘messy and necessary entanglement’ with ‘pagan … and Jewish materialisms,’31 the terms ‘carnal’ and ‘materialism’ are never defined in Lavezzo’s study. Her arguments seem to align with those of Frank Kermode, who associates the ‘spiritual’ with ‘a mystery … understood only by insiders,’ as demon-

30

31

66–102. All translations from Old English are my own. On the poem’s significance within the context of Cynewulf’s other writings, see Conner, ‘On Dating Cynewulf,’ pp. 46–47; P.O.E. Gradon, Cynewulf’s Elene (Exeter, 1977), p. 23; and Fulk, ‘Cynewulf: Canon, Dialect, and Date,’ pp. 4, 18. Cynewulf’s sources included the Inventio sanctae crucis in Acta Sanctorum, Acta Apocrypha [Quiriaci] Pars I, ed. Godefridus Henschen and Daniel Papebroch (Antwerp, 1680) and Sanctuarium seu Vitae Sanctorum, ed. Bonino Mombritius, 2nd ed. (Hildesheim, 1978), I, 376–379. For the Syriac source of the Latin text, see Jan Willem Drijvers, Helene Augusta: The Mother of Constantine the Great and the Legend of Her Finding of the True Cross (Leiden, 1992), pp. 165–171. For analyses of the sources of Elene, see Mary-Catherine Bodden, The Old English Finding of the True Cross (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 28–30; Gradon, Cynewulf’s Elene, pp. 15–22; Gordon Whatley, ‘The Figure of Constantine the Great in Cynewulf’s “Elene,”’ Traditio, 37 (1981), 161–202 (p. 161n.2); Susan Rosser, ‘The Sources of Elene (Cameron C.A. 26),’ Fontes Anglo-Saxonici: World Wide Web Register, http://fontes.english. ox.ac.uk, accessed 17 Jan. 2018; Samantha Zacher, ‘Cynewulf at the Interface of Literacy and Orality: The Evidence of the Puns in Elene,’ Oral Tradition, 17 (2002), 346–387 (p. 346n.2); and Robert DiNapoli, ‘Poesis and Authority: Traces of an Anglo-Saxon Agon in Cynewulf’s Elene,’ Neophilologus, 82 (1998), 619–630 (pp. 620–621). Kathy Lavezzo, The Accommodated Jew: English Antisemitism from Bede to Milton (Ithaca, 2016), pp. 20, 24, 27. Lavezzo’s wide-ranging study summarizes and expands on the work already done by Lisa Lampert, Gender and Jewish Difference from Paul to Shakespeare (Philadelphia, 2004), pp. 1–2; Andrew Scheil, Footsteps of Israel: Understanding Jews in Anglo-Saxon England (Ann Arbor, 2004), pp. 3–6; Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley, 1999), pp. 2–4; Steven F. Kruger, The Spectral Jew: Conversion and Embodiment in Medieval Europe (Minneapolis, 2006), pp. xxiii–xxvi, 1–6; Theodore L. Steinberg, Jews and Judaism in the Middle Ages (Westport, 2008), pp. 118–121; Anthony Bale, Feeling Persecuted: Christians, Jews, and Images of Violence in the Middle Ages (London, 2010), pp. 11–12, 26–28; Kristine T. Utterback’s and Merrall Llewelyn Price’s introduction to Jews in Medieval Christendom: ‘Slay Them Not,’ ed. Kristine T. Utterback and Merrall Llewelyn Price (Leiden, 2013), pp. 1–5; and Samantha Zacher’s introduction to Imagining the Jew in Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture, ed. Zacher, pp. 3–24 (pp. 3–6). For a relevant selection of texts, see Christian Attitudes toward the Jews in the Middle Ages: A Casebook, ed. Michael Frasetto (New York, 2007). Lavezzo, The Accommodated Jew, pp. 30, 61.

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The True Cross and Saintly Disputation in Cynewulf’s Elene strated in the parables of Jesus, and the ‘carnal’ with the ‘most obvious’ and literal readings available to ‘outsiders.’32 As this configuration manifests in Elene, Christians would be on the ‘inside’ and Jews on the ‘outside.’ The complexity in Elene of materia and Jewishness, however, particularly as represented through Judas Cyriacus, requires a more nuanced view of materialism, Christianity, and Judaism than Lavezzo’s ‘carnality’ allows. In this poem, and in medieval culture in general, the carnal cannot be separated from the spiritual, and the Jewish cannot be fully separated from the Christian, or the ‘pagan,’ for that matter.33 These interlinking categories are all implicated in the onto-epistemology that coalesces in the True Cross itself, as Cynewulf represents it. The poem’s Christians cannot be Christians without Jews, and the True Cross’s hiddenness demonstrates the Christian reliance on traditional Jewish knowledge, however deeply it may have been buried during the centuries following the Roman siege of Jerusalem and the Jewish diaspora.34 The overwhelming materiality of the True Cross, this thing which so strongly demonstrates onto-epistemological integration in the poem, requires the dismantling of any strict separation between Jew and Christian, Synagogue and Church, spirituality and materiality (or ‘carnality,’ or ‘materialism’).35 The True Cross, as materia, is unstable, ever-changing, possessing agency of its own, hiding from those who most wish to find it and emerging only for those who have always aimed to conceal it. In the poem’s ostensible efforts to manifest the triumph of the Church over the Synagogue, the True Cross nevertheless operates on its own terms. The Christians who ‘bury’ the True Cross within a precious reliquary at the poem’s end, taking possession of it and attempting to control its burgeoning powers and the narratives about them, seek an imperial dominion which, as Christ and Satan and Juliana also demonstrate, only tends to undermine itself in the end. At the beginning of Elene, the True Cross is buried and unknown, an epistemological absence. No one asks questions or makes arguments about the relic or indeed about Christianity itself, because no one seems to know anything about it at all. The story of the True Cross is untold, a mystery buried in the past, since the Christians of Rome have not been able to spread the good news throughout the Empire. A question about the True Cross only arises through Constantine’s miraculous dream in Cynewulf’s 32 33 34 35

Frank Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative (Cambridge, MA, 1979), pp. 2, 18, 10. On the relationships among Christians, Jews, and pagans in the poem, see Lavezzo, The Accommodated Jew, p. 29. Heckman, ‘The Hunger of Judas,’ pp. 7–8. For a traditional allegorical reading of this division between Christians and Jews, see Catherine Regan, ‘Evangelicalism as the Informing Principle of Cynewulf’s Elene,’ Traditio, 29 (1973), 27–52 (pp. 43–44).

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Debating with Demons account of the Hoptasia. Facing a desperate battle against the Huns, he sees the cross in his vision,36 as a heavenly messenger instructs him to seek the heavens for a sigores tacen (‘sign of victory,’ line 85a). Constantine sees a wliti wuldres treo … / golde geglenged (‘beautiful tree of glory … adorned with gold,’ lines 89a, 90a) and is told mid þys beacne ðu / … feond oferswiðeð (‘with this sign you … will overwhelm the enemy,’ lines 92b, 93b).37 The emperor defeats the Huns with the sign on his battle-standard (lines 99–147), though he does not know what the emblem is.38 Constantine’s victory, however, interpreted as proof of the sign’s power, leads the emperor to pose the quaestio of its origins. Assembling the wisestan / … þa þe snyttro cræft / þurh fyrngewrito gefrigen hæfdon (‘the wisest men … those who had learned the skills of wisdom through ancient writings,’ lines 153b, 154b–155), Constantine finally inquires whether anyone in the assembly him to soðe secggan meahte, / galdrum cyðan, hwæt se god wære, / … ‘þe þis his beacen wæs’ (‘could tell him in truth, proclaim with speeches, what the God was … “whose sign this was,”’ lines 160–161, 162b). At first, no one answers him. The story is buried deeply in the past: hio him ondsware ænige ne meahton / agifan togenes, ne ful geare cuðon / sweotole gesecggan be þam sigebeacne (‘none of them could give him an answer in reply, nor could they fully know plainly how to speak about the victory-sign,’ lines 166–168). After time has passed, finally þa þa wisestan wordum cwædon /… þæt hit heofoncyninges / tacen wære, and þæs tweo nære (‘the wisest men said in words … that it was the sign of the heaven-king, and of this there was no doubt,’ lines 169, 170b–171). Apparently, however, there was doubt; otherwise they would have answered him immediately. Even this first telling of the True Cross’s story is hesitant, unclear, hidden until the wise men finally speak. These wise men, members of Rome’s hidden Christian community, possess knowledge provided through the catechumenate. Instructed by Sylvester (lines 190–191a), the Pope who followed Peter, they were þa þurh fulwihte / lærde wæron (‘taught through baptism,’ lines 172b–173a). Having learned through this spirituo-material transformation, the wise

36

37

38

For an analysis of the Hoptasia in Elene, see Cynthia Wittman Zollinger, ‘Cynewulf’s Elene and the Patterns of the Past,’ Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 103 (2004), 180–196 (pp. 182–183). Britt Mize comments on this passage in ‘The Mental Container and the Cross of Christ: Revelation and Community in The Dream of the Rood,’ Studies in Philology, 107 (2010), 131–178. On Constantine’s heavenly visitor, see Jill M. Fitzgerald, ‘Angelus Pacis: A Liturgical Model for the Masculine “Fæle Friðowebba” in Cynewulf’s Elene,’ Medium Ævum, 83.2 (2014), 189–209 (pp. 189–191). On Constantine’s victory, see Nicholas Howe, ‘Rome: Capital of Anglo-Saxon England,’ Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 34.1 (2004), 147–172 (pp. 162–163).

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The True Cross and Saintly Disputation in Cynewulf’s Elene men or larsmiðas convey their own knowledge to Constantine about the Jews and their ‘teacher’ (lines 202b–211): Þa se æðeling fand, leodgebyrga, þurh larsmiðas, guðheard, garþrist, on godes bocum hwær ahangen wæs heriges beorhtme on rode treo rodora waldend æfstum þurh inwit, swa se ealda feond forlærde ligesearwum, leode fortyhte, Iudea cyn, þæt hie god sylfne ahengon, herga fruman. Þæs hie in hynðum sculon to widan feore wergðu dreogan! (Then the prince, the protector, bold and daring in battle, discovered through lore-smiths, in the books of God, where the ruler of the heavens was hung on the rood-tree amid the noise of the crowd, with malice through deceit, as the old enemy seduced the people, falsely taught [them] through lying tricks, the kindred of the Jews, so that they hung God himself, the creator of the multitude. Because of this they must wander far and wide, miserable in affliction, for eternity!)

According to Cynewulf, Satan deceitfully teaches the Jews, misleading them and lying to them, a detail not included at this point in Cynewulf’s source.39 Satan’s specific pedagogical methods are unknown, but the poet’s phrasing indicates that the devil’s teaching resulted in the crucifixion of Christ, as was the case in Juliana. By implication, that teaching would also extend to Jewish attempts to conceal the significance of the event and, in particular, the hiding place of Christ’s primary relic. In contrast, the larsmiðas teach Constantine from the scripture, thereby laying claim to truth. As smiðas, however, they can also form and shape knowledge to meet needs other than revealing the truth. The poet’s use of larsmiðas to reveal Satan’s misleading teaching puts Christian teaching in question as well, foregrounding the potential for knowledge to be used to promote ideological and imperial goals. Those goals are pursued in part by Elene herself, who seeks the location of the True Cross in her desire to glorify Christ, serve her son, and disseminate Christian hegemony throughout the Empire. To further her aims, she desires to know about the hiding place of the True Cross, but she also seeks to construct a narrative about its significance and the Empire’s role in ‘inventing’ and exalting it. Her narrative, like those in Cynewulf’s Juliana, poses questions and arguments to support her representation of

39

Inventio sanctae crucis, Acta Apocrypha [Quiriaci] Pars I, Acta Sanctorum, Mai I, Col. 445E.2.

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Debating with Demons both the Empire and the Jewish community of Jerusalem, sometimes, ironically, at the expense of discovering the True Cross itself. Elene arrives with an armed troop of men, girded for battle (lines 261–271a),40 prefiguring the verbal combat in which she means to engage the Jews. She summons three thousand wise men to lare (‘for teaching,’ line 286a), that is, to a disputation in which questions will be examined and arguments made. To debate with her, she requests þa ðe deoplicost dryhtnes geryno / þurh righte æ reccan cuðon…. / … þa ðe Moyses æ / reccan cuðon (‘those who could instruct most deeply in the mysteries of the Lord through right law … those who could interpret the law of Moses,’ lines 280–281, 283b–284a). Elene’s selection of the wisest men suggests that she wishes to benefit from their teaching, their deep knowledge. But it also incorporates an implicit quaestio: do these wise men actually know God’s mysteries? In requesting the wise men’s presence, Elene also places their epistemological importance in doubt. To Elene, introducing a res dubia as she instigates a dispute seems more important than the quaestio she supposedly came to Jerusalem to ask: ‘where is the True Cross hidden?’ And, in examining this first assembly of wise men, Elene asks no direct questions. Rather, she tells a story about the Jews’ conduct during the time of Christ. In studying the witgena wordgeryno / on godes bocum (‘secret sayings of the prophets in the books of God,’ lines 289–290a), she says, she has discovered that the Jews snyttro unwislice, / … wiðweorpan (‘unwisely threw wisdom away,’ lines 293–294a) when they rejected Christ, who healed the infirm, cast out devils, and raised the dead (lines 294b–312). The Jews are now mod-blinde (line 306a), she says, ‘mind-blind’ to truth and living in error. By placing the knowledge of the Jewish wise men in doubt and instead constructing her own narrative about their wisdom, she has actually prevented herself from finding out what she believes they know. Having berated them, she sends them away to snyttro geþencaþ, / weras wisfæste, wordes cræftige, / þa ðe eowre æ / on ferhðsefan firmest hæbben (‘consider with wisdom, wise men, skilled in words, those who have your law … most firmly in spirit,’ lines 313b–315a, 316). The wise men depart, dismayed and with nothing to say to her, without any wisestan word-geryno (‘wisest secret sayings,’ line 323) to offer. Seemingly, they do not know this story she tells.41 In temporarily confirming her argument about the Jews’ lack of knowledge, however,

40 41

On Elene’s ‘heroic presence,’ see Howe, ‘Rome: Capital of Anglo-Saxon England,’ pp. 164–165. For discussions of the Jews’ knowledge (or lack thereof) of Christ’s death on the cross, see Lavezzo, The Acommodated Jew, pp. 34–35 and Stacy S. Klein, Ruling Women: Queenship and Gender in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Notre Dame, 2006), pp. 62–63.

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The True Cross and Saintly Disputation in Cynewulf’s Elene Elene has made it impossible for them to answer the question she has supposedly traveled so far to ask. During Elene’s second round of disputation with one thousand wise men, she again asks them no questions, instead responding to an implied quaestio by asserting an argumentum about Christian scholars’ authority. In doing so, Elene ironically positions such authority, including her own, as a res dubia. If her knowledge and that of Christian larsmiðas were not in doubt, she would neither have to insist on that expertise so vehemently nor indeed suggest the question at all. In continuing her narrative about the divine teachings that the Jews rejected long ago, she herself claims auctoritas, ordering them to gehyrað, hige-gleawe, halige rune, / word ond wisdom (‘hear, prudent in mind, the holy mystery, word and wisdom,’ lines 333–334a). She then proceeds to ‘preach’ to them, discussing scripture as Cynewulf’s Juliana does, though in more detail: Elene cites Moses (lines 337b–338), David (line 342), and Isaiah, the deophycggende (‘deep-thinking [one],’ lines 350–352a). Moses told the Jews, she says, to obey God and lare læstan (‘follow [his] teaching,’ line 368a). They have not done so, and she sends them away again to find men with sidne sefan (‘broad understanding,’ line 376a) to respond to her. Repeatedly, Elene dismisses these assemblies of wise men without actually conducting her inquiry; the Jewish wise men do not speak through the entire assembly. Their only role is to listen and obey. In the poem’s informal logic, this debate helps Elene not to learn new knowledge but rather to persuade the Jewish wise men to accept her narrative. She is dealing with them as a rhetorician, not a dialectician. She does not pose questions and obtain answers, seeking only to construct her own narrative argumentum in their hearing, though they have never posed the quaestio to which her argument responds. And though she claims to be seeking the True Cross, its truth continually becomes more elusive. Only in Elene’s third assembly, with five hundred wise men, does she give them an opportunity to reply to her arguments. This select group includes only those ðe leornungcræft / þurh modgemynd mæste hæfdon, / on sefan snyttro (‘who had the most learning-skill through mind-thought, wisdom in mind,’ lines 380b–382a). But their profound learning, in Elene’s eyes, only makes them more blameworthy. For her, their auctorita is even more doubtful than that of the wise men in the earlier assemblies. Elene claims that they have gewritu herwdon, / fædera lare (‘blasphemed the scripture, the teaching of [your] fathers,’ lines 387b–388a) in ignoring Christ’s birth. The Jews have been taught by Satan to forget, Elene says, rather than obeying their fathers’ commands to remember. They have forgotten the event of the Crucifixion, the True Cross, and even the place where Christ was raised upon it. But this very place, in the heart of the Jews’ ancestral homeland, is the topos where Elene aims to discover both the True Cross and the arguments it enables. The informal logic she deploys 191

Debating with Demons in this third dispute, however, places all knowledge in doubt, questioning the epistemological foundations of both Jewish and Christian larsmiðas. The truth about the True Cross moves further and further away, pushed aside by a dispute about auctorita itself. In approaching her quest for the True Cross by undermining all learned authority, Jewish and Christian, Elene drives all knowledge of the True Cross underground, causing it to be hidden even more deeply. When she sends the wise men away again, asking for those snyttro … / mægn ond mod-cræft mæste hæbben (‘who have the greatest wisdom … strength and mind-craft,’ lines 407b–408), she simultaneously expresses her doubt that any Jewish wise man knows anything at all. As the men confer among themselves, however, puzzling over her conduct, Judas Cyriacus, the wisest of them, reveals that he, in fact, does know the True Cross’s story. Although Judas teaches his own people through his narrative, he never reveals the tale to Elene herself. Judas is known to be gidda gearosnotor … / wordes cræftig (‘altogether wise in songs, skillful with words,’ lines 418a, 419a). In other words, he is a master storyteller, and seemingly a judicious one. In concealing the True Cross, he ironically also protects it from imperial co-option, exploitation, and identification with the political structures that will govern Christendom for centuries to come. In concealing his tale from Elene, Judas protects it from a disputant who has herself placed the epistemological foundations of the True Cross in doubt. Judas’s true narrative abilities consequently remain hidden from Elene, even after the True Cross is ‘invented.’ Within the poem, Judas’s story to his fellow Jewish wise men therefore remains internal to their community. The Christians in Jerusalem, including Elene, remain consistently more ignorant than the city’s Jews, who benefit from Judas’s narrative teaching. The queen, Judas says, seeks the tale of Christ, who suffered innocently, whom þurh hete hengon on heanne beam / in fyrndagum fæderas usse (‘our fathers, in former days, hung on the high beam through hatred,’ lines 424–425). This story, Judas argues, can never be revealed: the Jewish wise men, as leaders of their people, must fæstlice ferhð staðelien, / þæt we ðæs morðres meldan ne weorðen / hwær þæt halige trio beheled wurde (‘fix [our] minds resolutely / so that we do not become informers [about] where the holy tree was buried,’ lines 427–429). They cannot make this place known, Judas says, þy læs toworpen sien / frod fyrngewritu ond þa fæderlican / lare forleten (‘lest the wise ancient writings be destroyed and the fatherly teachings abandoned,’ lines 430b–432a). To preserve their ancestors’ knowledge, they must not teach in their own right, keeping silent about the cross’s story. This policy has been so successfully followed in the past, seemingly, that none of the other wise men know the tale until Judas narrates it to them. This story was taught to Judas by his fathers, who instructed him to tell it in his turn, a command he has not obeyed in his desire to protect 192

The True Cross and Saintly Disputation in Cynewulf’s Elene his people.42 His grandfather, Zacheus, taught Judas’s father, Simon, that should he gehyre ymb þæt halige treo / frode frignan (‘hear wise [ones] inquire about the holy tree,’ lines 442–443a) or should anyone geflitu ræran / be ðam sigebeame on þam soðcyning / ahangen wæs (‘raise a dispute about the victory-tree on which the truth-king was hung,’ lines 443b–444), he should immediately acknowledge the dom and dryhtscipe (‘judgment’ and ‘lordship,’ lines 450b, 451) of those who follow the king. Zacheus and Simon, in using the term geflit, anticipate disagreement and contention over the True Cross. When Judas asks Simon how such a thing could have happened, how wise men could have put Christ to death (lines 458–460), his father explains the conspiracy through which Jesus was condemned (lines 468–471a). So Judas, in refusing to tell the True Cross’s story, is not following his own father’s and grandfather’s wishes, because to do so would fundamentally alter his people’s epistemology and thus their ontology: they would have to admit that they have not known themselves since Christ’s death, that they have hidden from knowledge so thoroughly that most have forgotten it. They would thus be forced into a completely different state of being, as Simon insisted should happen. Although Lavezzo views Judas’s attitude in this scene as ‘stony,’43 signaling his ‘hard-heartedness,’ his account of his father Simon’s narration suggests that more complexity lies within Judas, who is, after all, the primary hagiographical figure in Cynewulf’s Latin source text, the Acta Cyriaci. In fact, Judas is not the only saint in his family. According to Cynewulf’s account, he is the brother of Stephen the protomartyr, who, their father says, was ontologically changed through the fulwihtes bæð (‘bath of baptism,’ line 490b). Immediately after his initiation, for lufan dryhtnes / Stephanus wæs stanum worpod (‘for love of the Lord, Stephen was cast down with stones,’ lines 491b–492). Thus the body of Stephen, Judas’s closest kin, becomes a sacred ‘place’ in itself, a site of holiness, where spiritual power will never completely abandon the mortal flesh. As Stephen’s brother, Judas shares in his sanctity, even when he refuses to tell his story. And Stephen’s death was instigated, Simon says, by Saul, another future saint and martyr. Stephen, though blameless, was killed Sawles larum / … swa he þurh feondscipe / to cwale monige Cristes folces / demde to deaþe (‘through Saul’s teaching … as he through enmity had condemned many of Christ’s people to death [and] slaughter,’ lines 497b, 498b–500a). Saul’s name in the poem, Sawl, is identical to the Old English word for ‘soul,’ suggesting the soul’s fundamental instability, changeability, and potential redemption. If Saul’s soul can be healed, if his deeds cannot be relegated to utterly condemnable hard-heartedness, then neither can Judas’s.

42 43

On Judas’s patrimony, see Lavezzo, The Accommodated Jew, pp 35–36. Ibid., p. 34.

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Debating with Demons Judas’s story of Simon’s instruction is a story of pedagogy, which Judas, in concealing the tale of the True Cross, has protected from inquiry. Keeping the secret, ironically, has protected the True Cross from those who would bring it into question. Thus Judas inhabits the paradoxical position of an unwilling magister who protects his knowledge from doubt by keeping it hidden and simultaneously making it known, if only to a select few. In his role as teacher, Judas is associated with Saul, a future magister who first persecuted Judas’s saintly brother. Saul, Judas’s father says, conveyed larum to do evil, later repenting and receiving God’s mercy (line 501a). Saul then became folca to frofre (‘a consolation to the people,’ line 502a), turning to righteousness and remaining a teacher: there was no ælærendra oðer betera / under swegles hleo … / …. / þeah he Stephanus stanum hehte / abreotan on beorge, broðor þinne (‘other better teacher of the law under the refuge of the sky … though he ordered Stephen, your brother, destroyed with stones on the mountain,’ lines 506–507a, 509–510). Judas’s father believed, along with his own father Zacheus, that Christ died for humanity’s sins (lines 517–521). In the locus of Stephen’s martyred body, the arguments against Saul’s own persecutory claims were discovered. The premises of those arguments then shifted to assert the truth that Stephen, like the transformed Paul, proved with his life and blood. In Judas’s account, Simon ‘teaches’ him to respect the arguments for which Stephen died. Judas is instructed to tread carefully with followers of Christ if ever he should encounter them: ic þe lære þurh leoðorune, / … þæt ðu hospcwide, / æfst ne eofulsæc æfre ne fremme, / grimne geagncwide, wið godes bearne (‘I teach you through verse-counsel … that you never say insults, evil sayings, or a grim response against God’s son,’ lines 522, 523b–525). Judas’s way of carrying out this instruction, seemingly, is to provide no reply at all, remaining silent about Christ’s story. He tells it to the Jews, however, as a fundamental teaching from his fathers: Ðus mec fæder min on fyrndagum / … wordum lærde, / septe soðcwidum’ (‘thus my father taught me with words, instructed with true sayings, in former days,’ lines 528, 529b–530a). Now it is for the assembly of wise men to decide, Judas says, how much of this story to reveal to Elene: they must decide on sefan … / nu ge fyrhðsefan / ond modgeþanc minne cunnon (‘in spirit … now that you know my soul-spirit and mind-thought,’ lines 532a, 534b–535). Judas’s fyrhðsefa (‘spirit’) and modgeþanc (‘thought’) here cannot be separated from his martyred brother’s body, that sacred ‘place’ which Judas can never escape, even if he succeeds in concealing the True Cross’s location. The other wise men, to whom Judas’s story was formerly unknown, yield to Judas’s wisdom, expecting direct quaestiones from Elene in the next round of disputation. They tell Judas to use his own judgment gif ðu frugnen sie / … sceal ondwyrde agifan (‘if you be questioned … [or] must give an answer,’ lines 542b, 545). Although Elene has posed no questions to the wise men up to this point, instead placing both Jewish and Christian 194

The True Cross and Saintly Disputation in Cynewulf’s Elene learning in doubt, the men anticipate that her tactics will change. When Elene’s messenger finally calls them back, requesting their modes snyttro (‘wisdom of mind,’ line 554b), she does begin fricggan fyrhðwerige ymb fyrngewritu (‘to ask the weary-hearted [ones] about ancient writings,’ line 560). But they refuse to answer her: heo wæron stearce, stane heardran (‘they were unyielding, harder than stone,’ line 565), the closest comparison being the stones used to kill Stephen. Cynewulf, however, also describes the Jewish wise men as fæste on fyrhðe (‘firm in mind,’ line 570a), a usually positive attribute such as Cynewulf uses elsewhere to describe Juliana and other steadfast saints. The wise men seek to avoid a dispute with Elene, since they noldon þæt geryne rihte cyðan, / ne hire andsware ænige secgan (‘did not wish to rightly tell that secret, nor tell her any answers,’ lines 566–567). She accuses them of telling lies (lines 575–576, 580–584a). But they have not lied. They simply have not answered her questions. Nonetheless, she threatens them with death by fire (lines 578–579). The implicit quaestio in Elene’s threat is whether she, as an emissary of the Empire, has the power to kill them. Though the answer is ‘yes,’ that fact does not make the Jewish wise men any more willing to respond. Instead, they offer Judas to her as one word-cræftes wis (‘wise in wordskill,’ line 592a) and therefore more likely to provide evasively clever replies to her questions. Thus the invention of the True Cross depends on Judas’s secret knowledge and narrative skill.

Inventing the True Cross: saint and relic as topoi When Judas is finally in Elene’s hands, she does not ask him about the True Cross, instead threatening him as she did the other wise men.44 She declares that he must choose life or death (lines 605–608). Again, the implicit quaestio at stake is the power of the Empire and Elene herself over the Jews, and the True Cross is pushed aside. Judas deflects her stark and threatening offer, however, answering her with a rhetorical question about why a man in the wilderness, seeing a vision of stone and bread, would choose the stone over the bread, refusing food and choosing hunger (lines 611–618). This, a reference to the Temptation of Christ in Luke 4:3 and Matthew 7:9, suggests that Judas might be critiquing the acquisitive nature of Elene’s desire to find the True Cross. During the Temptation, Jesus refuses Satan’s invitation to turn stones into bread, that is, to enact a material transformation on demand, emphasizing instead that life comes from God’s word. Elene, Judas’s reply suggests, might be excessively focused on the True Cross itself, the object, rather than the spiritual signif44

On this ‘agon’ between Judas and Elene, see DiNapoli, ‘Poesis and Authority,’ pp. 619, 626; see also Lees, ‘At a Crossroads,’ pp. 160–163.

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Debating with Demons icance inextricably linked to the relic’s materiality. Whatever Judas might mean in alluding to this Gospel passage, his question is not the reply Elene wants. When she demands to know the hiding place of the cross (lines 623b–626), Judas responds not with an answer but with another question: Hu mæg ic þæt findan? (‘How can I find it?,’ line 632a). Too much time has passed, Judas says, and Ic ne can þæt ic nat / findan on fyrhðe (‘I cannot find in spirit what I do not know,’ lines 640b–641a). Judas represents her request as epistemologically impossible to satisfy, but he does not lie. Knowing the story of the True Cross, the story Judas’s father told him, does not seem to include knowledge of the relic’s exact location. When Judas claims not to know that place, he appears to be telling the truth. Elene, however, asks how the Jews can have forgotten the Crucifixion when they record everything in writing (lines 643–654). When Judas next denies knowing the story of the tree – þis næfre / þurh æniges mannes muð gehyrdon / hæleðum cyðan butan her nu ða (‘we have never heard this made known to heroes through any man’s mouth except here and now,’ lines 659b–661) – he does lie. Elene notes that he just told the story to his own people (lines 665–666); seemingly, she has an informer among the Jews. But she still never hears the story of the Crucifixion from Judas himself. He claims that he invented the story in his dread: Iudas hire ongen þingode, cwæð þæt he þæt on gehðu gespræce / ond on tweon swiðost (‘Judas argued against her, said that he spoke in anxiety and in greatest doubt,’ lines 667–668a). Deploying his dialectical skills against Elene, Judas tells the truth about his own fear but conceals the truth about his tale. Elene, of course, is not satisfied, ordering him to disclose hwær seo stow sie / Caluarie (‘where the place of Calvary might be,’ lines 675b–676a). In reply, Judas says Ic þa stowe ne can, / ne þæs wanges wiht ne þa wisan cann (‘I do not know the place, nor anything about the land, nor the way,’ lines 683b–684a). Judas’s denial is, in fact, somewhat true: he does not know the exact location of the cross’s hiding place, as Cynewulf later reveals (lines 720–723). Elene nevertheless threatens Judas with starvation, imprisoning him without food (lines 693–696a). Her torment of Judas recalls the earlier parable of the bread and the stone: if Judas will not relate the word of God, telling the story of the ‘Bread of Life’ himself, then he will receive only stone to eat. On the queen’s orders, he is pushed in drygne seað (‘into a dry pit,’ line 693a) for seven nights, under hearmlocan (‘in a pain-locker,’ line 695a) or prison, hungre geþreatod, / clommum beclungen (‘afflicted by hunger, enclosed in bonds,’ lines 695b–696a).45 By sowing doubts about both Jewish and Christian knowledge, Elene has actually prevented the 45

Cynewulf emphasizes Judas’s suffering more strongly than the Latin source author: see Daniel Thomas, ‘Literal and Spiritual Depths: Re-Thinking the drygne seað of Elene,’ Quaestio: Selected Proceedings of the Cambridge Colloquium in Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic, 10 (2009), 27–44 (pp. 28–29).

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The True Cross and Saintly Disputation in Cynewulf’s Elene finding of the True Cross. And by starving Judas and making him suffer, she immediately transforms him into a martyr, a status she herself cannot claim. She says Judas will remain there butan þu forlæte þa leasunga / ond me sweotollice soð gecyðe (‘unless you abandon your deceit and plainly tell me the truth,’ lines 689–690).46 Like Eleseus in Juliana, Elene assumes that bodily suffering will turn the will of Cyriacus. In this case, Judas’s will to protect the story of the True Cross stands in tension with Elene’s pious imperial ambitions and the irrepressible materiality of the True Cross itself. If the relic wants to be revealed, Elene’s implicit argument about violence turning the will of Judas will seem to be proved right. If not, Judas will die of starvation. Judas’s suffering is a slow and passive form of torture which deprives the body of its sustenance, forcing material weakness to reduce the strength of the mind (line 698b). While Juliana was not diminished by her torment, Judas is weakened by his starvation, sarum besylced … / meðe ond meteleas (‘exhausted by suffering, weary and without food,’ lines 697a, 698a). Sar can relate to suffering of both body and mind, ranging from sorrow to physical wounds.47 Judas seems to be afflicted by both mental and physical torment, or an integration of the two, but he yields primarily because of his hungor, a term which can signify both spiritual and physical deprivation.48 He begs Elene þæt ge me of ðyssum earfeðum up forlæten, / heanne fram hungres geniðlan. Ic þæt halige treo / lustum cyðe, nu ic hit leng ne mæg / helan for hungre (‘that you release me from this suffering, abject because of the fierceness of [my] hunger. I will gladly reveal the holy tree, now that I can no longer conceal it because of hunger,’ lines 700–703a). The term geniðle (‘fierceness’) in this passage is significant: it can refer to the ferocity of a feeling, but it also can mean ‘hate’ or ‘enmity.’49 Judas’s hunger here almost seems to take on a life of its own, attacking him with hatred, becoming nearly sentient. In his case, the inseparability of his body, mind, and spirit simply intensifies their mutual hunger. Through his torment, Judas’s body becomes a ‘place’ of the sacred, like that of his brother Stephen. Judas, however, suffers for a different reason than Stephen, and his torment is imposed by a Christian, Elene herself. In Judas’s body, the site of suffering, Elene aims ‘to discover a hidden truth,’ engaging in torture, a practice known to be of limited effectiveness in producing

46 47 48

49

On the connection between this pit and the grave, see Lavezzo, The Accommodated Jew, p. 34. S.v. sar in An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, ed. Bosworth and Toller. S.v. hungor, The Dictionary of Old English: A to I, accessed 9 February 2019. On hunger as a form of torture, see Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Oxford, 1985), p. 166. S.v. geniþle, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, ed. Bosworth and Toller.

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Debating with Demons truth. According to Enders, ‘any truth “discovered” and conveyed by the unreliable method of torture remained elusive … [the torturers] beat one “truth” out of the body … as they beat another into it, while still another Christian truth emerges.’50 And indeed Judas’s torment does not actually reveal the truth Elene pursues. It simply induces him to seek the release that will eventually make it possible for him to approach the True Cross’s hiding place. Elene and her thanes aim to starve ‘the truth’ of the True Cross out of Judas, also starving into him the ‘truth’ of an imperial power that his tormentors hope will eventually operate through Christian symbols and structures. Elene and her troop, however, do not control the other ‘Christian truth’ that Judas invents, and the torments to which they subject him are actually no guarantee of veracity. As I have argued elsewhere, Elene’s use of torture to ‘convert’ Judas, sometimes represented in scholarship as justified,51 is not adequately explained by scholarly claims that she represents a sternbut-loving mother or a mentor to a new catechumen.52 Lavezzo associates Elene with ‘Christian materialisms,’ noting that the queen seems to be ‘fascinated by and even envious of … a privileged Jewish materialism.’53 ‘Materiality,’ however, is a more appropriate term for what interests Elene, and its powers seem to elude her, much as she desires to possess them. Judas, in fact, though he does not know the exact hiding place of the True Cross, trusts that it will reveal itself. He therefore understands the spirituo-material significance of the True Cross as Elene does not.

50 51 52

53

Enders, The Medieval Theater of Cruelty, pp. 53, 61. She uses this phrasing to describe Christ’s torment. Heckman, ‘Things in Doubt,’ pp. 469–472 and ‘The Hunger of Judas,’ pp. 9–10. On the view of Elene as a mother, see Klein, Ruling Women, p. 59 and ‘Centralizing Feminism in Anglo-Saxon Literary Studies: Elene, Motherhood, and History,’ in Readings in Medieval Texts: Interpreting Old and Middle English Literature, ed. David F. Johnson and Elaine Treharne (Oxford, 2005), pp. 149–165 (p. 151); Joyce Tally Lionarons, ‘Cultural Syncretism and the Construction of Gender in Cynewulf’s Elene,’ Exemplaria, 10 (1998), 51–68 (p. 55); and Lavezzo, The Accommodated Jew, p. 61. On the view of Judas’s torment as a form of the catechumenate, see Regan, ‘Evangelicalism,’ p. 44. María Beatriz Hernández Pérez likewise views his hunger as redemptive in ‘Elene as an Agent of Torture: An Anglo-Saxon Depiction of Sanctity,’ in Insights and Bearings: Festschrift for Dr. Juan Sebastían Amador Bedford, ed. Manuel Brito, Matilde Martín Gonzalez, Juan Ignacio Oliva, and Dulce Rodríguez González (Tenerife, 2007), pp. 221–232 (p. 230). For further commentary on Elene’s role and the significance of Judas’s suffering, see Lionarons, ‘Cultural Syncretism,’ p. 63; Lees, ‘Didacticism and the Christian Community,’ p. 161; DiNapoli, ‘Poesis and Authority,’ pp. 619–620; John P. Hermann, Allegories of War: Language and Violence in Old English Poetry (Ann Arbor, 1989), p. 106; and Rosemary Woolf, ‘Saints’ Lives,’ in Continuations and Beginnings: Studies in Old English Literature, ed. E.G. Stanley (London, 1966), pp. 37–66 (pp. 46–47). Lavezzo, The Accommodated Jew, p. 30.

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The True Cross and Saintly Disputation in Cynewulf’s Elene Judas’s ongoing refusal of sainthood, which persists until he yields to his hunger, inhibits Elene’s own aspirations to sanctity: she desires to be the mater of the True Cross’s materia, the patroness and servant who brings it into being. Only the True Cross, however, can be mater in that sense, overwhelming Elene’s claim. The queen also wishes to protect her son and promote his interests through the retrieval of Christ’s relics, but to do so, she needs Judas to ‘invent’ their hiding place. If memory is ‘the violence of epistemology,’ ‘the birthplace of both violence and empathy,’54 Judas’s body is here the topos in which violence becomes ‘creational, persuasive, salubrious, curative, civilizing, edifying, [and] instructive.’55 Elene and Judas are thoroughly interdependent, two sides of the same ambiguously saintly coin. As the keeper of cultural memory, Judas brings the voices of the dead, including Zacheus, Simon, and Stephen, back to life. And that which is absent – the True Cross, even the body of Christ himself, through the Eucharist which Judas himself will later consecrate – is revived and returned to vibrant vitality. This occurs not through Judas’s hunger, but through his journey to Calvary and his prayer in that place, a pilgrimage in which the topos of the saint’s own body merges with the topos in which Christ was crucified. Elene believes that through his suffering, Judas can ‘invent’ the True Cross itself, Christ’s relic returning to being through the torment of Judas’s body. Before this, the True Cross was a piece of wood lying under the ground, a mere tool used to execute a criminal. People knew of it, but it could not complete its ontological transformation into a relic without being recognized, brought into being through its ‘invention.’ Elene, however, cannot invent the True Cross, and, ironically, neither can Judas. It invents itself, in its own time. During Judas’s pilgrimage to Calvary, the True Cross completes its transformation into a relic, the relic, the fundamental materia from which all other relics, through the imitatio Christi, come into being. When Judas finally prays for the invention of the True Cross, it becomes clear that he truly is inventing; he does not know exactly where it is. Together, Judas and Elene, along with her thanes, stopon þa to þære stowe stiðhycgende (‘stepped then to the place, with stern purpose,’ line 716) where Christ was crucified. When they arrive, however, Judas, nyste / hungre gehyned, hwær sio halige rod, / þurh feondes searu foldan getyned (‘afflicted by hunger, did not know where the holy cross, through the design of the enemy, [was] enclosed in the earth,’ lines 719b–721). Ironically, Elene’s torment of Judas, which has weakened him, now seems to hinder him in achieving the purpose upon which she has insisted, and

54 55

Enders, The Medieval Theater of Cruelty, p. 64. Ibid., p. 67.

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Debating with Demons for which, in fact, she tortured him in the first place. In his weakness, Judas prays in Hebrew, using his voice and the language of his fathers to associate Christ’s relics more strongly with Jewish heritage than with that of imperial Christians.56 Judas’s Hebrew prayer meditates on the ineffable and inextricable bond between materiality and spirituality. He appeals to God as creator of the world, who amæte mundum þinum / ealne ymbhwyrft ond uprador (‘measured with your hands the entire world and the firmament,’ lines 729–730). This passage recalls Christ’s punishment of Lucifer in Christ and Satan, as the fallen angel measures the boundaries of his infernal realm mid hondum (line 699b), and Eve and Adam reaching for the fatal fruit mid handum before their own Fall (line 415a).57 With his own hands, God made the universe, including the angels, Judas says, who can geond lyft farað (‘travel through the air,’ line 733a), while ne mæg þær manna gecynd / of eorðwegum up geferan / in lichoman (‘mankind cannot travel up from the earth-ways in the body,’ lines 734b–736a). Some angels stay in heaven with God, and others, the seraphim, guard the tree of life in Eden (lines 753b–757a), the primordial ‘place’ and original home of materia. After the fallen angels were cast down into hell (lines 762b–771), Christ was born as a human child, healing the sick and performing miracles (lines 773–782), tending to the mortal and material body that he himself willingly accepted. Judas asks God, as maker of such wondrous creation, to reveal the True Cross’s hiding place: ic þe … / … biddan wille / þæt me þæt goldhord, gasta scyppend, / geopenie (‘I wish to ask you, creator of spirits, that you open the goldhoard to me,’ lines 788a, 789b–761). As the devil of Vercelli Homily X lured souls into his hordcofa, his secret chamber, Judas seeks entrance into the hidden place that conceals Christ’s primary relic. Finding this treasure-chest, Judas says, which contains Christ’s own materia fused with spiritus, will fæstlicor ferhð staðelige (‘more firmly fix my spirit,’ line 796) on Christ and the hope of redemption. In posing this quaestio to God, Judas both raises a res dubia and pleads for the argumentum to appear, for the proof to manifest that will truly confirm his newfound belief. The True Cross, in its own time, does reveal itself. When steam rises to mark the place, the topos where the True Cross lies, Judas’s aræred wearð / … breostsefa (‘breast-spirit was raised up,’ lines 803b–804a). As God earlier raised the firmament and measured it ‘with his hands’ (lines 729–730), Judas now raises up his spirit and mid bæm handum, / eadig ond

56

57

Damian Fleming questions an ‘anti-Jewish reading of [the] poem,’ claiming rather that it demonstrates Cynewulf’s ‘keen interest in the Hebrew language, together with a certain amount of sympathy for the Jewish characters.’ ‘Rex regum et cyninga cyning: “Speaking Hebrew” in Cynewulf’s Elene,’ in Old English Literature and the Old Testament, ed. Sharma and Fox, pp. 229–252 (p. 250). Christ and Satan, The Junius Manuscript, ed. Krapp.

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The True Cross and Saintly Disputation in Cynewulf’s Elene ægleaw, upweard plegade (‘with both hands, happy and skilled in the law, played upward,’ lines 804b–805). This association of Judas’s hands with his learned skill foregrounds his role as a larsmið, although he now shapes knowledge to serve Christian needs rather than to protect Jewish heritage. The gesture of his body coincides both with God’s own measuring hands and with the movement of Judas’s spirit, his breostsefa, as he bodily imitates the gestures of divine creation. Judas asks forgiveness for persisting in his heardum hige (‘hard mind,’ line 808a), thanking God for revealing the divine mysteries to him, nu ic wat þæt ðu eart / gecyðed ond acenned (‘now that I know what you are, revealed and brought forth,’ lines 814b–815a). Acennan is the term also used to describe childbirth: Christ’s revelation at Calvary is inseparable from his incarnation in a human body, one that would eventually suffer as Judas’s has suffered at Elene’s command. Judas asks to live ultimately in heaven with Stephen, his brother, whose story is known through the scriptures (lines 821–826). With body and voice, Judas ‘invents’ his own place in the True Cross’s story, digging down to find three crosses, buried there by the Jews because they leahtra fruman larum … hyrdon (‘heard the teachings of the inventor of sins,’ line 838). Satan is thus represented as an ‘inventor’ himself, whose ‘discovery’ of sin has now been opposed by Judas’s Hebrew prayer and his two hands. When Judas sees the True Cross in the earth, his mental, spiritual, and physical transformation is complete as his modgemynd myclum geblissod, / hige onhyrded, þurh þæt halige treo, / inbryrded breostsefa (‘mind greatly exulted, his thought strengthened, his breast-spirit animated, through the holy tree,’ lines 839–841a). He is transformed in modgemynd, hige, and breostsefa: feeling alive again in his ‘breast-spirit,’ he has acknowledged his own disavowed memories, which have again filled the seemingly empty place in his mind. As God measured the universe, and as Judas praised God with his hands, the saint also mid handum … / wuldres wynbeam … ahof / of foldgræfe (‘with his hands … raised the joy-tree of glory from the earthen-grave,’ lines 842b–844a). Thus physical hands are simultaneously associated with divine creation, the skill of the larsmið, and the raising up of the materia of Christ, an action that coincides with mental, physical, and spiritual transformation. To reveal the True Cross among the three, Judas’s spirituo-material faculties are again at work: on modsefan miclum geblissod, deophycgende (‘exulted in mind,’ ‘deeply thinking,’ lines 875, 881a), he orders a dead man to be laid before each cross. When placed at the foot of the True Cross, the dead man arises gaste gegearwod, geador bu samod / lic ond sawl (‘provided with spirit, body and soul both together,’ lines 888–889a). The True Cross, as miraculous materia, integrates spirit, soul, and body. Epistemology becomes ontology: knowing the True Cross, ‘inventing’ it, changes the very being of those who possess such knowledge. 201

Debating with Demons In response to this onto-epistemological and spirituo-material integration, Satan himself rises up at the scene to debate with Judas. Like Christ before him, Judas has forced the loss of Satan’s ræd under roderum (‘counsel under the stars,’ lines 918a), reclaiming dominion for God in raising the True Cross. Satan will have his revenge, putting another teacher in place to carry his lessons forward: ic awecce wið ðe / oðerne cyning, se ehteð þin, / ond he forlæteð lare þine / ond manþeawum minum folgaþ (‘I will raise up another king against you, who will persecute you, and he will forsake your teaching and follow my practices,’ lines 926b–929). Judas counters with a reproach against Satan, filled with fyrhat lufu, / weallende gewitt þurh wigan snyttro (‘fire-hot love, surging intelligence through the hero’s wisdom,’ lines 936b–937). As Satan’s thought welled up in his own mind and that of Eve in Genesis B, Judas’s intellect and love for God now surge through him to oppose Satan’s false teaching. The devil’s reward for his deception will be the torments of hell, vivid in their materiality (lines 948–950a). At the passage’s conclusion, Cynewulf repeats an earlier line, noting Elene’s joy when she hears hu se feond ond se freond geflitu rærdon (‘how the enemy and the friend raised up a dispute,’ line 953). Judas’s verbal gifts are now used in a flit against Satan as the wise man deploys learned methods of argumentation and truth-seeking to counter Satan’s claims and present new arguments. The fate of the True Cross at this point is fundamental to the significance of all relics: they are both accessible and hidden, open to all and restricted to the privileged few. Elene seizes the True Cross, covers it in gold and silver, and hides it away in a silver casket (lines 1022–1026), where it stays protected, that æðelum anbræce (‘noble material,’ line 1028a). Anbrece signifies ‘material, wood, timber,’58 literally materia, the prime matter of the universe as well as the physical wood of the cross. Although its ‘vibrant materiality’ has altered both the nature of knowledge and the state of the world,59 that matter is swiftly contained by Elene and the Romans, locked up and covered over. Its dangerous presence threatens to burst its bonds, multiplying its formidable powers and overwhelming those who wish to control it. Orsi notes that an encounter with the supernatural results in an ‘unlocked environment,’ resistant to containment.60 The reliquary, however, is specifically designed to contain the sacred, shaping its signification and directing its ineffable and disturbing power. ‘Reliquaries,’ according to Hahn, ‘[attempt] to carefully condition and circumscribe the approach of the believer to the holy…. [teaching] the viewer what a relic

58 59 60

S.v. anbroce in An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, ed. Bosworth and Toller. This word is not listed in The Dictionary of Old English: A to I. See Bennett, Vibrant Matter, p. viii. Orsi, History and Presence, p. 67.

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The True Cross and Saintly Disputation in Cynewulf’s Elene is and how to interact with it.’61 As the patroness behind the True Cross’s reliquary, Elene participates in this teaching function. She also becomes associated with the Virgin Mary, a ‘model of female agency in the sacralization and control of power,’ provider of the ‘crux gemmata, made of gold and ornamented with gems,’ and founder of the feast day of the Inventio crucis.62 The reliquary provided by Elene ‘[works] against the power of a particular presence,’ causing the relic itself to be ‘both accessible and securely shut tight.’63 Thus the unstable powers of materia are limited, the True Cross’s formerly irrepressible materiality contained and made safe in a newly consecrated place where the relics of God himself can be controlled and restricted by the powers of Empire.64 According to Egeria’s Itinerarium, on Good Friday, the True Cross would be removed from its casket, along with the titulus, the inscription ordered by Pilate, and shown to the people. It was carefully guarded by deacons and the bishop, Egeria says, due to the attempt of one pilgrim to bite off and abscond with a piece of the cross.65 The power of the relic, in other words, must be accessible to the people, but not too accessible, lest it be utterly consumed. The carefully contained and directed powers of the True Cross are associated in Cynewulf’s account with the production of teachers for the new Christian Empire. At the poem’s end, Judas Cyriacus is baptized and ordained a bishop, supported by Elene’s patronage and church-building as he returns to the holy ‘place’ of Calvary to ‘invent’ the nails which pierced Christ’s hands and feet (lines 1043–1062, 1105–1119). This second miracle associated with Judas brings about the spontaneous conversion of the Jews of Jerusalem (lines 1120–1124). Elene is also described as a teacher at this point, encouraging the people to attend to Judas’s instruction: she ongan læran leofra heap / … / ond þæs latteowes larum hyrdon (‘began to teach the assembly of the beloved … to listen to the teachings of their leader,’ (lines 1204b–1205a, 1209), Judas, renamed ‘Cyriacus.’66 The True Cross’s discovery and re-burial within its precious reliquary supports the teaching of the imperial Church’s larsmiðas, who wish to shape and delimit the knowledge the True Cross enables. In controlling and enclosing the relic to contain its disturbing potentiality, Elene and

61 62 63 64 65 66

Hahn, Strange Beauty, p. 8. Ibid., pp. 76, 79. Ibid., p. 110. On the status of Christ’s relics in the fourth century, see Rollason, The Power of Place, pp. 243–244. Egeria, Itinerarium Peregrinatio, ed. Heraeus, XXXVII.1–3; The Pilgrimage of Etheria, trans. McClure and Feltoe, p. 75. Howe claims that this ‘act of instruction … [transforms] a literal object [the True Cross] into a figurative sign.’ ‘Rome: Capital of Anglo-Saxon England,’ pp. 165–166.

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Debating with Demons Cyriacus now cooperate to channel its mysterious powers in developing new epistemological foundations for Roman Christianity.

Conclusion The function of the larsmiðas in Elene is to restrict and control the sacred, in all its danger and its implications for spirituo-material integration. The miracle that identifies the True Cross is a case in point: apparently, this relic, this particular piece of materia, possesses the greatest power of all, fulfilling one of the ultimate human longings, to raise the dead as Christ did during his earthly life. The ‘raising’ of the True Cross, however, also raises a question: if the True Cross can return the dead to life, why not bring every deceased person before it to be resurrected? In fulfilling a fundamental human fantasy, the True Cross also introduces the macabre spectre of thousands of corpses exhumed, laid before it in hopes of another miracle. In the Roman world, this would constitute an unthinkable nightmare, the bodies of the dead rising up to corrupt the place in which the True Cross lay, a grotesque prefiguring of the resurrection of the body at the Judgment. Elene’s miracle of the True Cross therefore demonstrates not only the relic’s power but also the logical, practical, and necessary limitations placed upon that power. The True Cross’s miracle testifies to the danger and risk of the sacred, as well as the concomitant need to control access to sacred materia in its ineffable, excessive, and inexplicable force. In Cynewulf’s poem, behind the True Cross’s ‘invention’ lies a debate that proceeds by undermining existing forms of epistemology, both Jewish and Christian, so that they can be reshaped in the hands of Roman Christian larsmiða, a group into which Cyriacus, though a Jew by birth, is partly absorbed through his conversion and ordination. The first teacher in this ongoing debate is Christ himself, who taught through narrative in parables and by example in his death and Resurrection, emulated by martyrs such as Judas’s brother Stephen. But Satan, the secret Christians of Rome, Zacheus, Simon, Judas himself, and eventually Elene also ‘teach’ in this debate, which continues in a new form once the frightening, miraculous materia of the True Cross is contained and enclosed in its reliquary. That containment, as Ælfric’s Exaltatio homily emphasizes, does not necessarily make the True Cross ‘safe,’ especially once it is divided and sent all over Christendom. In its many new homes, the countless places where its sanctity resides in disruptive and unstable potential, the materia of the True Cross feeds the hunger of penitents and pilgrims as well as the ongoing debates about the onto-epistemological mystery it embodies.

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Conclusion The Mysteries of Pedagogy

The primary texts examined in this book, from hagiographical poems to school-texts, assert unequivocally the material reality beyond the textual. This reality is not merely metaphorical; it is thoroughly integrated with bodies and places, manifesting a ‘thing-ness’ that will not be denied. Recognizing the role of materia in meaning-making is fundamental to understanding these texts. Both the texts and the materia related to them participate in ongoing debates about the relationships between knowledge and being, debates in which demonic figures, through magisterial deception and disruption, have prominent voices, deploying their seductive informal logic in dialogue with their ‘pupils.’ The verbal arts of rhetoric and dialectic, which underlie this informal logic and are essential for debating and preaching about onto-epistemological matters, are also unstable and can be used to deceive as well as to reveal and argue for truth. And the demons who use these linguistic arts so cleverly can occupy both poetic ‘places,’ long ago and far away, but also, apparently, the monastery down the road. Demonic threats lurk wherever teaching and learning take place, making pedagogy a dangerous art indeed. The only perfect lessons are bestowed by Christ, and secondarily by the apostles and many – though seemingly not all – of the saints. The teaching of demons, however, can often be more immediately compelling and convincing than righteous teaching, destabilizing even divine and saintly instruction. Poetic dialogues with demonic teachers illustrate the problem of what happens when geong ones, pre- or post-lapsarian, are left to themselves to discern the truth. These pupils often make mistakes, because that is how one learns. Furthermore, such mistakes are essential to faith, according to MacKendrick, indicating ‘a constant and necessary openness to question, a willingness to dwell in questioning, in mystery – and so in a sense of the sacred, as the complication of the world by divinity.’1 Such openness, however, can have ontological consequences, potentially leading geong questioners into danger. Teachers want their pupils to be attentive, curious, and engaged – but not too much, and not about the wrong things. While the discretio of a saint like Juliana provides protection, other saints, like Judas Cyriacus and Elene, are torn by competing interests and easily 1

Karmen MacKendrick, Divine Enticement: Theological Seductions (New York, 2013), p. 35.

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Debating with Demons distracted from the task of pursuing knowledge and truth. Relics, whether those of the saints or those of Christ himself, can seemingly help or hinder this process of knowledge-making, depending on the relic’s own will. Such objects do not always yield easily to the manipulations of larsmiðas. Another problem arises in considering the impact of poetic women and their demonic teachers on real-life larsmiðas, especially the teachers and students of early medieval England. While monastic texts reveal something about the demonic threats accompanying the education of boys and young men, a significant part of the story is missing. The question of women’s education, including education within women’s monastic houses and double monasteries, is shrouded in mystery. In early English poetry, women appear to be the preferred debate partners for demons, safely distant from ecclesiastical power centers and monastic schools. Women were actually not so distant from those schools, especially in the early medieval period. So little is known about them, however, that one can draw few conclusions from the sparse evidence relating to women’s education. Early in the conversion period, both on the continent and in England, women were valued due to their work in missions, prophecy, and healing. While Charlemagne’s court provided an environment which fostered women’s ecclesiastical engagement and education, subsequent reforms reduced their roles once again. Alcuin promoted the education of religious men and women, as well as lay people, also encouraging women’s learning in general: ‘under the supervision of Alcuin, women were sometimes key players and often demonstrated their intellect actively and politically, not just in the cloistered scriptoria.’ Letters from Alcuin to female scholars demonstrate his active interest in their intellectual development and his convictions about their sophisticated mental abilities and their important role as teachers.2 Among the few texts that provide information about the education of women, Alcuin’s writings articulate the potential that could be perceived in their rational capacities, suggesting that other related evidence may have been lost. In De ratione animae, addressed to Gundrada, whom Alcuin calls ‘Eulalia,’3 he defers to her own authority, her deep self-knowledge, as her best guide to help her through intellectual challenges. Encouraging her to recognize her own capacities fully, he says, te plus mihi cognitam esse putare voluisses quam tibi ipsi (unde vivis vel ratione viges nisi in animae substantia?) dum te perraro oculis vidi meis per quos animae naturam tuae cernere non potui (‘you have wished to consider yourself known more to me than to yourself (but how do you live and 2 3

Scheck, Reform and Resistance, pp. 10, 30–32, 53–54, 59–61. For a discussion of De ratione anima, see Rhonda McDaniel, The Third Gender and Ælfric’s Lives of Saints (Kalamazoo, 2018), pp. 80–84.

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Conclusion flourish in reason if not in the substance of your soul?) when I have rarely seen you with my eyes and have not been able to discern the nature of your soul through them’).4 Compare this to the serpent manipulating Eve into dismissing her own capacities in Genesis B, or Africanus seeing his daughter Juliana as the ‘light of [his] eyes.’ Alcuin here acknow­ ledges the need for Gundrada to recognize and have confidence in her own abilities, separate from his evaluation. Gundrada is responsible for developing her own capacity to reason, for cultivating the ‘substance of her soul.’ Her eyes, in Alcuin’s letter, are her own, and her discernment must take place within her own mind. Although Alcuin’s letters to his female correspondents provide valuable evidence of women’s role in learning among the Carolingians, less is known about women’s education in pre-conquest England. This dearth of information is part of a larger problem, as Lees and Overing have noted: ‘we know women were present, but we are everywhere faced with their absence from the cultural record, or … partial [glimpses] of … women’s “real” lives.’5 Even motherhood, in its ubiquity and essential function in the care and education of children, is elusive in textual evidence from early medieval England, as Mary Dockray-Miller has argued. One rare piece of evidence survives in the seventh-century canons of Theodore, De Ritu Mulierum, which ‘[seem] to sanction public reading and teaching … even preaching’ among women.6 While some female scholars such as Leoba became models of women’s potential ‘authority and autonomy,’7 they were considered extraordinary in their own time, and monastic reforms tended to diminish and contain women’s participation in religious life.8 Bede refers to Ælfflæd, a nun of Whitby, as a magister, although he does not confer that title on her teacher Hild,9 despite Hild’s obvious contributions 4

5 6 7 8 9

Scheck, Reform and Resistance, pp. 69–70, 189n.56. For Alcuin’s text, see ‘De ratione animae: A Text with Introduction, Critical Apparatus, and Translation’, ed. James Joseph Mark Curry, Ph.D. diss., Cornell University (1966), pp. 62.21–63.5. Lees and Overing, Double Agents, p. 1. Mary Dockray-Miller, Motherhood and Mothering in Anglo-Saxon England (New York, 2000), pp. xiii, 39. Scheck, Reform and Resistance, p. 15; see also Christine Fell, Women in AngloSaxon England (Oxford, 1984), pp. 114–115. Scheck, Reform and Resistance, pp. 15–16. Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English Church and People, ed. Bertram Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969; repr. 2007), III.24, p. 291–292; see also Stephanie Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church: Sharing a Common Fate (Woodbridge, 1992), p. 270. Clare A. Lees and Gillian R. Overing claim that in representing Hild as a ‘mother, founder, [and] educator,’ Bede considers Hild ‘not [a] principal actor’ in the story of Cædmon. Arguably, these functions represent crucial action, although Bede does seem to downplay Hild’s participation. See ‘Birthing Bishops and Fathering Poets: Bede, Hild, and the Relations of Cultural Production,’ Exemplaria, 6.1 (1994), 35–65 (p. 46).

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Debating with Demons to learning both in her monastery and throughout the region. In the face of such erasures by the few known pre-conquest authors whose writings survive, assessing women’s role in education is nearly impossible. For women educated in early English monasteries, the options for areas of study were seemingly limited. It seems clear that both male and female monastics studied Aldhelm’s De Virginitate ‘as a regular text-book.’ The nuns of the community at Barking also maintained a correspondence with Aldhelm himself, who praised their scriptural knowledge.10 Lees and Overing, however, note the ‘curtailed access to certain areas of study’ in Barking and other women’s monasteries.11 Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg has observed that, during the later eighth century, fewer nunneries were established in England than in previous years; this was also true of the years after 1000. Several women’s communities and double houses, including Barking, Ely, and Tynemouth, fell to Viking attacks, leaving few women’s foundations by 1066.12 The notion that the pre-conquest era was a ‘Golden Age for women, an age of lost rights’ curtailed by the Normans, has been critiqued by Pauline Stafford.13 According to Barbara Yorke, from the double monasteries of the early Anglo-Saxon period, generally with abbesses at their heads, passing time and attacks by the Danes resulted in ‘stricter claustration’ of women and ‘poorer intellectual standards’ as well.14 Most of what is known about women’s monasteries comes from saints’ lives. Aside from such hagiographical literature, as well as De Virginitate and Regularis Concordia, it is not known which books were read by English monastic women. During the tenth-century Benedictine Reform period, some women’s houses were used as resources by relatives of the king, who took over monastic lands after Viking attacks to serve political needs or to found men’s houses. Otherwise, women’s monasteries were not a priority for the reformers.15 Double houses, Schulenburg argues, ‘caused growing suspicion among churchmen … [who contended] that it was unseemly for men to rule women in religion or women, men.’ Thereafter, 10

11 12

13 14 15

Fell, Women in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 109–111. On the audience of De Virginitate, see Clare A. Lees and Gillian R. Overing, ‘Before History, Before Difference: Bodies, Metaphor, and the Church in Anglo-Saxon England,’ The Yale Journal of Criticism, 11.2 (1998), 315–334 (pp. 319–322). Lees and Overing, Double Agents, p. 114. Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, ‘Women’s Monastic Communities, 500–1100: Patterns of Expansion and Decline,’ Signs, 14.2 (1989), 261–292 (pp. 268–269, 275–276). Pauline Stafford, ‘Women in Domesday,’ Reading Medieval Studies, 15 (1989), 75–94 (p. 77). Barbara Yorke, ‘“Sisters Under the Skin”? Anglo-Saxon Nuns and Nunneries in Southern England,’ Reading Medieval Studies, 15 (1989), 95–117 (pp. 95–97). Ibid., pp. 100–101,104–105, 111. See also Schulenburg, ‘Monastic Communities, 500–1100,’ p. 281.

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Conclusion women were more thoroughly cloistered, restricting their physical freedom and ‘economic activities’ as well as their learning.16 Sarah Foot’s account of women’s monasteries in early medieval England complicates the picture, noting the ‘fluid and diverse modes of [religious] expression in this period.’17 The variety of smaller women’s religious communities, following several different rules, as well as the dearth of sources, make it difficult to evaluate the frequency and scope of such female practices in England. After the Second Council of Nicea (ca. 787), double houses diminished due to the fact that women were seen as the ‘spiritual inferiors’ of men and were prohibited from entering ‘sacred space.’ Only Barking Abbey continued operating past the Conquest.18 It is difficult to know whether women’s communities existed, let alone whether they produced books or had schools. And how those schools might have operated is completely unknown. Though so little information is available about women’s relationship to the historical practice of early English pedagogy, women are seemingly fundamental to how poets of this period viewed the art of arguing against the cleverest and most deceptive of all adversaries. Repeatedly, the women of Old English poetry encounter demonic teachers in significant places and seek strategies to respond. Despite minimal evidence about women’s presence in pre-conquest classrooms, the embodied encounters of women and demons are fundamental to understanding early English attitudes toward pedagogy. The role of women in education represents a missing link in the story of spirituo-materiality in early English culture. Women’s learning is known mostly through perceptions of its danger. Indeed, pedagogy in general, a perilous enterprise even for highly educated men, disturbed patristic authorities by its very nature.19 Such spirituo-material practices, in their incommensurability, risk, and dangerous plenitude, always hold the potential to burst into excess beyond human control. From the Tree in Eden to Elene’s True Cross to all of the voices, bodies, and places in between, materiality in its fusion with spirituality cannot be contained. It is always transforming and transformative, never fixed, constantly changing, prone to excess and disorder. And it is everywhere, both in the past and in the present. When twenty-first-century theorists fail to pay attention to medieval theories of materiality and to recognize presence as a force in the world, they are guaranteed to misunderstand most of the people living in the world today as well as those of the past. Robertson’s warning about 16 17 18 19

Schulenburg, ‘Monastic Communities, 500–1100,’ pp. 277–278. Foot, Veiled Women, Volume I, p. 1. Ibid., pp. 1–4, 66, 68–69, 77. Jager, The Tempter’s Voice, pp. 25–27.

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Debating with Demons ‘[leaping] over the Middle Ages,’20 noted in the Introduction, needs to be taken seriously, and not only by medievalists. In examining twenty-first-century religiosity, Orsi introduces a ‘postulate of presence’ as a way of coping with the problems of modernity and acknowledging ‘the ongoing relationships between humans and … accompanying beings, human and extra-human.’ These relationships persist ‘between heaven and earth, between the living and the dead, among persons as they are and persons as they are desired to be by themselves and others.’ When these relationships are attended to, Orsi claims, ‘the transcendent [can] break into time.’21 It is ironic that the theoretical and conceptual tools that might provide an understanding of the pre-Cartesian past are the very same tools that might help modern post-Cartesian people understand one another more thoroughly. McGuire’s work, like that of Asad, Mahmood, Luhrmann, and Klassen, suggests this as well, emphasizing the need to consider the embodied reality and spiritual lives of all people, particularly those whom one studies.22 In discussions of the holistic ‘mind-body-spirit,’23 which many modern people intuitively recognize and seek to describe, early medieval theories of spirituo-materiality have much to offer. What is now frequently called ‘the mind-body connection’ was readily accepted in the early Middle Ages, its power and meaning, merged with soul and spirit, alternately celebrated and feared. Any account of materiality that disregards this fact is simply incomplete. The stories told in early English literary texts, in their complexity, represent the spirituo-material and onto-epistemological transformations of voices, bodies, minds, hearts, places, and objects, all of which burst their bounds and become impossible to separate from one another. These stories therefore provide valuable insight into the integration sought by so many in the modern world. Reading itself, as Orsi has noted, is an onto-epistemological activity, and through it, ‘interpretation may become and often is the medium for controlling the incomprehensible … uncomfortable, or dangerous.’24 Texts matter, and not just as discourse, contributing to identities in the past and in the present. Stories become integrated into the everyday, embodied lives of those who tell, write, hear, or read them. The dialogic literature examined in this book testifies to the crucial role of such stories in shaping how ordinary people come to know

20 21 22

23 24

Robertson, ‘Materialism: A Manifesto,’ p. 102. Orsi, History and Presence, pp. 65, 67–68. McGuire, Lived Religion, pp. 98–100; see also Asad, Formations of the Secular; Mahmood, ‘Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent’; Luhrmann, When God Talks Back; and Klassen, Spirits of Protestantism. Ibid., pp. 113, 120. Ibid., pp. 109–110.

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Conclusion themselves and their world in its complex material reality. The stories of the geong ones discussed in these chapters – monastic pupils, fallen angels, Eve and Adam, saints and sinners, even demons themselves – testify to the dangers, victories, and onto-epistemological mysteries of embodied, inspirited, and emplaced learning in the early Middle Ages and beyond.

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Index

Abbey of San Domenico (Perugia)  154 n.3 Abbo of Fleury  53, 70, 80–82 Bella Parisiacae Urbis 82 Passio Sancti Eadmundi 80 Quaestiones grammaticales 80 Abel 145 Abelard, Peter  57 Acta Apocrypha [Quiriaci] Pars I 186, 193 Acts, Book of  168 Adam  11–12, 60, 100, 103–105, 107, 111–113, 163, 170, 211 in Christ and Satan  120–124, 200 in Genesis  117–119, 125–150, 161 Adoptionist controversy  65–66 Adrian and Ritheus  86 n.71 Æberht, teacher of Alcuin  63, 70 Ælfflæd of Whitby  207–208 Ælfric  10, 21 n.33, 56, 70, 184–185 as teacher  73, 78, 80 Catholic Homilies  In Letania Maiore, Feria Tertia 76–77 Preface  75 n.7 Colloquy on the Occupations  10, 53, 73, 78, 81, 85, 90–91, 99 Glossary  81, 85 Grammar  81, 85 homily for Christmas Day  24 n.47 Lives of Saints Exaltatio crucis  184–185, 204 Nativitas domini nostri Iesu Christi 23–24 on grammar  53, 55, 81, 85 on the soul and the spirit  22–24, 141, 154 Ælfric Bata  10, 52, 73, 78, 82, 85, 91–99 Colloquia Difficiliora 97–99 Colloquies  10, 52, 73, 78, 82, 85, 91–97, 99 Aeneid 82 Æthilthyde, abbess  158 n.16 Æthelwold, Bishop of Winchester  10, 53, 68, 80

Latin poems in CUL MS K.k.5.34  10, 73–74, 77, 82, 85, 87, 89–90, 99, 117 see also Altercatio magistri et discipuli, Carmen de libero arbitrio, Responsio discipuli Africanus see under Cynewulf agency  29, 33–35, 122, 127, 203 nonhuman  30–31, 34–35, 145, 147, 175, 187 Alcimus Avitus of Vienne  82 Poema de Mosaicae historiae gestis 82, 128 n.9 Alcuin  25, 54–55, 62–64, 66–71, 79–80, 84, 86, 157–158, 206–207 as dialectician  10, 45, 49, 52–53, 61–71 De anima ratione  23, 25 n.53, 63, 68, 206–207 De dialectica  50, 58, 61, 62 n.90, 63, 68–69, 71 De grammatica  54, 64 De uirtutibus et uitiis 63 Dialogus Franconis et Saxonis de octo partibus orationis 54 Disputatio de vera philosophia  54, 64, 86 Disputatio Pippini cum Albino scholastico  27 n.61, 86 Epistola de Litteris Colendis 64 letters  64–65, 158 n.16, 206–207 Interrogationes et Responsiones in Genesin  86, 150 n.88 Versus de patribus, regibus et sanctis Euboricensis ecclesiae 63 see also Æthilthyde, Carolingian Empire, Charlemagne, dialectic, dialogue, disputation, Eriugena, grammar, Gundrada, liberal arts, pedagogy, rhetoric Aldhelm  54, 77, 79, 81, 110, 208 De Laudibus Virginum  113 n.38 De Lucifero  113 n.38 De uirginitate  79, 81, 110, 208 Enigmata  83 n.60

235

Index Alfred the Great, King of Wessex 79–80 Preface to Gregory’s Cura Pastoralis 79 allegorical interpretation  24 n.47, 39 n.137, 133 n.27, 137, 149, 170, 175–183, 187 n.35, 205 in patristic commentaries  22 n.36, 107–108, 128–129, 140, 145, 184–185 altercatio  10, 71, 73–74, 78, 84–90, 99 see also Alcuin, Altercatio Hadriani Augusti et Epicteti Philosophi, Altercatio magistri et discipuli, Aristo of Pella, Cicero, Evagrius, Isidore of Seville, PseudoAugustine, Responsio discipuli Altercatio magistri et discipuli  87–90, 99 Altercatio Hadriani Augusti et Epicteti Philosophi 86 Ambrose, saint  22 n.36, 107, 128 andgit see senses Andreas  85 n.64 Andrew, saint  168 angels  see Fall of the Angels, Gabriel, Michael anima see under soul, spirit Anselm of Canterbury, saint  52, 57, 66 Cur Deus Homo? 52 apple see fruit Apuleius  62 n.90 Periermenias  62 n.90 Arator 81 De actibus Apostolorum 81 Aristo of Pella  86 Altercatio Jasonis et Papisci 86 Aristotle  17, 28, 50, 57–59, 61–63, 68, 122 Categoriae  17, 50, 62–63, 68–70 De anima  122 n.63 Peri Hermeneias  68, 70 see also dialectic artes liberales see liberal arts Athelstan, King of England  54 auctor see authority auctorita see authority Augustine of Canterbury, saint  78 Augustine of Hippo, saint  17, 19 n.19, 55, 59, 61, 81, 107, 127–129, 145 n.67, 157-159 as dialectician  7 n.27, 55, 59, 68 De civitate Dei  150 n.7

De correptione et gratia  127 De cura pro mortuis gerenda  159 n.21 De dialectica  55, 69 De doctrina christiana 55 De Genesi contra Manichaeos 128 De gratia et libero arbitrio 127 De magistro  11 n.38, 49, 61, 74–75 De Trinitate  25–26, 69–70 on the body, soul, and spirit  22, 25–27 see also dialectic, dialogue, grammar, pedagogy Augustine, pseudo-  68, 86 Altercatio Aecclesiae contra Synagogam 86 De remedia peccatorum  1 n.3 Quaestiones Veteris et Novi Testamenti 86 authority  8–9, 11, 38, 42, 87, 93, 148, 152, 172 divine  76, 87, 126, 131–133, 135, 141–142, 148–150, 167 in Cynewulf’s Elene  182, 190–192 in Cynewulf’s Juliana  11, 154–165, 172 in logic  59, 110 of demons  45, 91, 104, 109, 112, 126, 134–135, 148–150, 167 of Eve  120–123, 129, 141 of Satan  112–119 of women  8, 122, 129, 156–157, 181, 206–209 patristic  8–9, 43, 52, 91, 106–108, 110, 112 n.32, 122, 128–129, 136, 145, 184, 209 scriptural  8, 60, 76, 110, 189–192 textual  43, 52–53, 66, 91, 196 see also Ælfric, Alcuin, Ambrose, Augustine of Hippo, Gregory the Great, Isidore of Seville, Paul baptism  188, 193, 203 Barad, Karen  3 n.11, 28, 30–31, 35 Barking Abbey  79, 208–209 The Battle of Maldon 109 Bede, saint  54, 56, 70, 79–81, 156 n.9, 207–208 Chronica maiora 79 Cunabula Grammaticae Artis Donati 86 De arte metrica 79 De natura rerum 79

236

Index De orthographia 79 De schematibus et tropis  56, 79 enigmata  83 n.60 Epistola ad Ecgberhtum 79 Historia ecclesiastica  79, 85 n.64 Martyrology  172 n.47 see also grammar, rhetoric Benedict of Nursia, saint  21–22, 46–47 Benedictine reform, English  53–54, 63, 66, 68, 73, 80, 207–209 Benedictine Rule  6 n.20, 10, 43, 82, 92 Bennett, Jane  27–28, 31, 183 Beowulf  109, 122 Berengar of Tours  57 Blickling Homilies  56, 113 n.38 body  16, 19–20, 24, 27–30, 32–36, 42–43, 51, 93, 96, 105, 205, 209–210 embodiment  33, 49, 51, 72, 104, 109, 153–155, 160, 204, 210–211 embodied knowledge  34, 124 in Christ and Satan  93, 96, 104, 124 in Cynewulf’s Elene  182–183, 185, 193–194, 197–201, 204 in Cynewulf’s Juliana 152–155, 157–160, 165–166, 171–176, 201 in devotional practice  182–183 in Genesis  112, 118–119, 122–129, 131, 136, 137 n.40, 143–146, 149–150 of Christ  36, 51, 107, 124 of demons  37, 106–107, 112–113, 115, 123 resurrected  201, 204 see also Eucharist, monasteries, place Boethius  17–18, 49, 53, 57–59, 61, 63, 67–70 commentaries 68–69 De consolation philosophiae 68–69, 81–82 De Interpretatione  62 n.90, 68–70 De topicis differentiis  57–59, 63, 69 De Trinitate (De Sancta Trinitate)  17–18, 68, 70 In Ciceronis Topica  58, 68–69 Opuscula Sacra 68–70 Porphyry’s Isagoge, Latin translation 69–70 see also dialectic, rhetoric, usia, substance Boniface, saint  54, 79, 81 enigmata  83 n.60 book  47, 76, 82–83, 92–94, 98, 155, 172

salvation as  7 Book of Cerne  113 n.38 bread see Eucharist, food Brown, George  81–83, 136 Brown, Peter  158–159, 174–175 Bynum, Caroline Walker  15 n.1, 16–17, 27, 29–30, 34–35 Byrhtferth  53, 70, 80–81 Caelius Sedulius  81 Carmen Paschale 81 Cain 145 Calvary  8, 38, 105, 176, 179, 182–183, 185, 191, 199, 201, 203 Canterbury  78–81, 83 Canterbury Classbook (Cambridge, University Library MS Gg.5.35) see under manuscripts Christ Church  81 Carmen de libero arbitrio  87–88, 117 Carmen Nyniae 36 carnality  8, 186–187 Carolingian Empire  44–45, 52–53, 57, 62–68, 127, 207 Carruthers, Mary  47–48, 121, 135, 146 Cassian, John  147 Conferences  147 n.75 De institutiones  147 n.75 Cassiodorus 61 Institutiones 61 Cassiodorus, pseudo-  54 Categoriae Decem  50, 62 n.90, 63, 67–69, 89 see also Categories, dialectic Categories  17, 50, 56–57, 62–63, 67–68, 70, 110 see also Aristotle, Categoriae Decem Cato 81–83 Distichs 81–83 Old English Distichs 82–83 Charlemagne  10, 45, 54, 63–66, 68, 206 Admonitio generalis 63 see also Alcuin, Carolingian Empire, Gundrada Charles the Bald  67 Christ  96–99, 105, 107, 112, 156 Ascension 156 as savior  7, 121–124, 150 in Cynewulf’s Elene 177–180, 182–186, 189–206 in Cynewulf’s Juliana  161, 168, 170 Passion  39, 52, 124, 150

237

Index Resurrection  22 n.36, 51–52, 141–142 see also Eucharist, exemplum, Harrowing of Hell, Incarnation, pedagogy, Temptation of Christ Christ and Satan  11, 100, 103–104, 112–117, 120–124, 142, 187, 200 Junius 11 see under manuscripts sources  113 n.38 Chronicles, 1, Book of  147 n.72 Cicero  48–49, 51, 61, 86 De oratore 48–49 Topics 69 Tusculan Disputations 60 see also dialectic, dialogue, disputation, rhetoric colloquies see under Ælfric, Ælfric Bata Colloquium hispericum 86 comitatus  112–115, 118 n.51 computus 80 Constantine, emperor  178, 180, 182, 186–189, 199 Corbie (Gaul)  68 Corinthians, 2, Book of  108 Cosdrue, king  184 cræft  31, 83, 90–91, 94, 116, 118–119, 131, 166, 188, 190–192, 195 cross  179, 185, 188–190, 192, 201, 203 see also tree, True Cross Crucifixion see under Christ Cumae (Italy)  153, 158, 175 curiositas  121, 135, 146, 169 curriculum see dialectic, grammar, liberal arts, quadrivium, rhetoric, verbal arts Cynewulf, poet  11 Elene  11–12, 176–204, 209 Simon, father of Judas Cyriacus  193–194, 199, 204 sources  186 n.29, 193 Vercelli Book see under manuscripts Zacheus, grandfather of Judas Cyriacus  193–194, 199, 204 Juliana  11–12, 151–178, 187, 189, 197 Africanus  152–153, 155–156, 160–167, 171, 176, 207 Eleseus  152–153, 155–156, 160–167, 171–172, 174, 197 Exeter Book see under manuscripts source see Passio S. Iulianae see also Elene, Judas Cyriacus, Juliana, Stephen, True Cross Cyriacus see Judas Cyriacus

David, king  191 demons  76, 85, 100, 105–107, 190, 206, 211 as storytellers  15, 41–42, 103–104, 109, 113, 123–133, 145–150, 166, 171 in Christ and Satan and Genesis  112–119, 123–150, 160–170, 207 in Cynewulf’s Juliana  153, 155, 164–173, 176 in monasteries  63 n.94, 72–73, 77, 89–91, 95–97, 99 see also authority, exemplum, hell, monasteries, narrative, pedagogy, Satan Dendle, Peter  105–107, 132 De raris fabulis 86 De raris fabulis retractata  86, 91 Descartes, René  15–16, 19, 28, 34, 36, 210 devil see Satan dialectic  9–10, 37, 43–45, 47–71, 78–89, 103, 111, 205 defined 61 dialectical norms  88–89 in Christ and Satan and Genesis 122, 125, 127, 129–131, 134, 141 in Cynewulf’s Juliana  160, 165, 176 in Cynewulf’s Elene  178–179, 191, 196 in works of Alcuin  10, 53, 59–71, 84 in works of Augustine of Hippo  7 n.27, 55, 68–70 in works of Boethius  53, 57–59, 68–70 in works of John Scottus Eriugena 67–68 in works of Martianus Capella  45–46, 67–70, 74, 76 see also flit, liberal arts, verbal arts dialogue 125 didactic  54, 59, 64, 70–71, 73, 84, 86–88, 92 dynamism of  61, 85, 205, 210 poetic  71, 103, 109–111, 123, 125, 129, 205 see also Adrian and Ritheus, Ælfric, Ælfric Bata, Alcuin, Augustine of Hippo, Bede, Colloquium hispericum, De raris fabulis, De raris fabulis retractata, Ioca Monachorum, Solomon and Saturn

238

Index discernment see discretio discretio  11, 47, 87–88, 99, 205–207 defined  62, 147 in Cynewulf’s Juliana 151–153, 157–158, 165–167, 170, 173, 176 in Genesis  124, 126–127, 129, 132, 138, 141–142, 146–150 Disputatio Puerorum per Interrogationes et Responsiones 86 disputation  11–12, 56–71, 83–87, 92, 94, 109–111 in Christ and Satan and Genesis 114, 126–127, 129, 131, 134 in Cynewulf’s Elene 178–181, 190–195, 202 in Cynewulf’s Juliana  153, 160–161, 165–167, 171 Donatus 54–56 Ars maior  54, 56 Ars minor 86 drama  50, 107 n.13 Dream of the Rood  1, 35, 182 Dumitrescu, Irina  52, 60, 82, 84–85, 92 n.94 Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury  80, 154 n.5 Dunstan’s Classbook (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Auct.F.4.32) see under mansucripts eating see Eucharist, food, fruit Eden  8, 12, 38, 100, 111, 209 in Christ and Satan and Genesis  104–105, 119–131, 134, 138, 141, 145–149 in Cynewulf’s Elene  179, 200 in Cynewulf’s Juliana  153, 160, 163, 170, 176 education see pedagogy Egeria  182, 203 Itinerarium Peregrinatio (Itinerarium Egeriae)  182, 203 Elene, saint  176, 178–181, 186, 189–192, 194–200, 202–205 see also Constantine, Cynewulf, Judas Cyriacus, pedagogy, saints, True Cross Elene see under Cynewulf Eleseus see under Cynewulf elocutio 55–56 Ely (monastery)  208 Empire, Roman see Roman Empire

Enders, Jody  49–52, 60, 198 Eriugena, John Scottus  64, 67–69, 104 n. 3, 112 n.3, 127, 140 Carmina 68 De divina praedestinatione 67 Periphyseon  67, 69, 140 see also dialectic, Gottschalk, predestination, Prudentius of Troyes Eucharist  7, 15, 17, 22, 35–36, 51–52, 62, 98, 108, 142, 182–184, 196, 199 see also Christ Eugenia, saint  157 Euphrosyne, saint  157 Eusebius  83 n.60 enigmata  83 n.60 Eutyches 54 Evagrius 86 Altercatio Simonis Iudaei et Theophili Christiani 86 Eve  11–12, 60, 163–170, 176, 211 in Christ and Satan and Genesis  100–105, 111–113, 117–153, 161, 200, 202, 207 see also Adam, authority, Eden, Genesis, motherhood, pedagogy, voice exemplum  60, 75, 77, 97, 110–111, 126, 204 Christ as  96–99 Juliana as  154–156, 158, 160, 174–176 Satan and demons as  116, 123 Exeter 69 Exeter Book see under manuscripts Exodus, Book of  147 n.72 eyes  133–134, 143, 146, 156, 163, 207 Ezekiel, Book of  147 n.72 Fall of Adam and Eve  9, 11–12, 100, 103–108, 111, 200 in Christ and Satan  113, 117, 120–124 in Genesis A 144–145 in Genesis B  119, 126–130, 134–147 Fall of the angels  11–12, 100–105, 112–127, 145, 149–150, 200, 211 fate see wyrd Felix, Abbot of Crowland  79 Vita S. Guthlaci 79 Felix, Bishop of Urgel  65–66 feorhneru 7 ferhð see under mind

239

Index Fleury (Gaul)  53, 70, 80, 92 flit  82–83, 88, 91, 109–111, 165, 193, 202 flitcræft 110 food  7, 34, 41, 91, 92–93, 98–99, 149, 183, 195–197, 203 Foucault, Michel  26, 30, 38 Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison 26 ‘Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias’ 38 fruit  96, 123–134, 137–139, 142–150, 200

Greenblatt, Stephen  28 The Swerve: How the World Became Modern 28 Gregory Nazianzen  67 Gregory the Great, saint  2, 75, 79, 81, 117, 169 n.44 Dialogi  5–6, 20–22, 46–47, 75 n.4, 77, 112, 134, 149, 156, 168 n.40, 176 Liber regulae pastoralis  2, 79 Gundrada (Eulalia), kinswoman of Charlemagne  64–65, 206–207 Guthlac, saint  79, 106

Gabriel, archangel  105 gast see under spirit gender  3, 29, 32–33, 129, 156–157 Genesis, Book of  105–106, 112 n.32, 117 n.49, 125, 129 n.14, 179 Genesis poems  11, 100–104, 112–113, 117, 123–130, 134, 137, 141, 145, 149 Genesis A  104 n.3, 112, 117, 144–145 Genesis B  11, 82, 104 n.3, 117–120, 124–150, 161, 163, 202, 207 sources  125 n.1, 128, 144 n.61 geong  73, 78, 103, 111, 161, 166, 205 in Christ and Satan and Genesis 115, 118–119, 124, 126, 130–132, 141, 146 gewitt see under senses Ghent (Belgium)  80 Glastonbury  80, 154 n.5 Gnostics  107 n.13, 129 Golgotha see Calvary Good Friday  203 Gospel of Nicodemus  113 n.38 Gottschalk of Orbais  67, 127 grammar  43, 55, 57, 62, 70, 74–75, 80, 137, 150, 179 in works of Alcuin  54–55, 63–64, 66 in works of Augustine of Hippo 54–55 in works of Martianus Capella  45–46, 53–54, 74 study in early medieval England  9–10, 44, 52–56, 71, 78, 81–87, 90–91, 93–94, 96, 99 see also Abbo of Fleury, Ælfric, Ælfric Bata, Aldhelm, Bede, Boniface, Donatus, Isidore of Seville, Israel the Grammarian, liberal arts, Priscian, pseudo-Cassiodorus, Tatwine, verbal arts, Virgilius Maro Grammaticus

Hadrian of Canterbury  79 hands  115–116, 120–121, 124, 200–201, 203 Harrowing of Hell  104, 112 n.3, 120–124, 142 heart  24, 96–97, 118, 136, 140, 143–144, 147–148, 169, 173, 210 heaven  7–8, 38, 87–88, 100, 105, 160, 167, 201, 210 in Christ and Satan and Genesis  111–115, 117–118, 120–124 Hebrew  107 n.13, 183, 185, 200–201 Hekman, Susan  4, 29–31 Helen, saint see Elene hell  21, 37–38, 87–89, 103, 105, 168, 174, 200, 202 in Christ and Satan and Genesis 111, 113–120, 122–123, 143 Heraclius, emperor  184 hermeneutics  107–108, 140 Hild of Whitby  207–208 Hoptasia  180, 187–189 Hrabanus Maurus  63, 83 n.60 De laudibus Sanctae Crucis  83 n.60 Huns 188 hyge see under mind hyle (ΰλη) see substance imitatio Christi 199 Incarnation  1, 6, 10, 15–17, 25 n.54–55, 38, 52, 65 in Christ and Satan and Genesis 121, 128–129, 141–142 in Cynewulf’s Elene  182, 184, 200–201 see also body, Christ informal logic  10, 44, 71, 103–104, 109–111, 191, 205

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Index defined 110 in Christ and Satan and Genesis  112–113, 116–117, 120–122, 125–126, 130 in Cynewulf’s Juliana 152–153, 160–161, 176 inventio  47–48, 50–51, 116–117, 121, 126, 146, 160 in Cynewulf’s Elene  194, 196, 198–199, 201 Inventio crucis  177–183, 189–192, 195, 199, 201, 203–204 Inventio sanctae crucis (Acta Sanctorum)  186 n.29 invention see inventio Ioca Monachorum 86 Ireland  54, 67, 79, 81 Irenaeus of Lyon  130 n.18 Adversus haereses  130 n.18 Irvine, Martin  53, 55, 81–82, 179 Isaiah, prophet  191 Isidore of Seville, 16, 50, 54, 179, 181 De Veteri et Novo Testamento Quaestiones 86 Etymologiae  16, 50, 54, 181 Synonyma  1 n.3 Islam  105 n.4, 107 n.13, 179 Israel the Grammarian  54

Juliana see under Cynewulf Junius 11 see under manuscripts Juvencus 81 Evangelia 81 Kings, 1, Book of  147 n.72

labor  10, 27, 31, 90–91, 143–144, 182 Lactantius 81–82 De ave Phoenice 81 læn  137–139, 141 læran see under pedagogy landscape see under place Lantfred of Winchester  70 Lapidge, Michael  49, 54, 68–70, 79–83, 87–88 lar see under pedagogy lareow see under pedagogy larsmið see under pedagogy Last Judgment  1–2, 4, 25, 89, 117, 124, 145, 204 Law, Vivien  53–55, 62 lay teaching see under pedagogy lectio divina  7, 98, 121, 146, 150 Lees, Clare  8 n.30, 19, 107, 175–176, 207–208 Leoba 207 Leofric, Bishop of Exeter  69, 154 n.5 leornian see under pedagogy liberal arts  10, 44, 46, 52–54, 56, 63–64, Jager, Eric  2, 22 n.36, 106–108, 122, 79, 83–84, 103 see also verbal arts 128–129, 131 Jerusalem  178, 180, 182, 185, 187, 190, Life of St. Mary of Egypt  85 n.64 ‘linguistic turn’  4, 29–31, 179 192, 203 literacy see reading Jews  8, 42, 86, 105, 108, 130 n.17 locus see topos diaspora 187 logic see informal logic in Cynewulf’s Elene  178–179, 181, Lucan 82 183, 186–187, 189–204 Pharsalia 82 Job, Book of  147 n.72 Lucifer see Satan Joel, Book of  147 n.72 Lucretius 27 John the Baptist, saint  168 Judas Cyriacus, saint  12, 176–181, 185, Luke, Book of  112 n.32, 195 192–205 MacKendrick, Karmen  25 n.55, 36, as storyteller  178–179, 181, 185, 149, 205 192–195 magister see pedagogy see also Cynewulf, Elene, Jews, manuscripts pedagogy, saints, Stephen Cambridge, Corpus Christi College Judgment see Last Judgment MS 206  69–70 Juliana, saint  11–12, 151–178, 191, 195, Cambridge, University Library 197, 205, 207 MS Gg.5.35 (Canterbury Januaria  158, 175 Classbook) 83 see also Cynewulf, exemplum, pedagogy, saints, women

241

Index Cambridge University Library MS Kk.5.34 87 Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501 (Exeter Book)  154, 167 n.39, 172 London, British Library Harley MS 3020  154 n.5 London, British Library Royal MS 8.C.iii  11 n.38 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Auct.F.4.32 (Dunstan’s Classbook) 83 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Junius 11  100, 103–105, 112 n.36, 113 n.38, 120, 122, 125, 128–131, 142, 152 date  112 n.36 illuminations  112 n.36, 130 n.18, 145 Oxford, Merton College MS 309  69 Oxford, St. John’s College MS 154 92 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 10861  154 Vatican MS Palatinus Latinus 1447  144 n.61 Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare CXVII (Vercelli Book)  1 Martianus Capella  45–46, 51, 53–54, 57, 67–70, 74, 76 De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii  45–46, 68–70 see also dialectic, grammar, rhetoric martyrdom 32 in Cynewulf’s Elene  181, 185, 193–200 in Cynewulf’s Juliana 152–153, 155–157, 159–160, 165–166, 172–176 see also saints, violence Mary see Virgin Mary materiality  4–10, 24, 32–38, 47–48, 93–94, 97, 106–107, 205, 211 association with substance or ‘first matter’ 17–18 in Christ and Satan and Genesis  115–116, 119–120, 124, 129, 142–143, 147, 149 in Cynewulf’s Elene 176–187, 100–205 in Cynewulf’s Juliana 153–157, 159–160, 172, 175–176

materia or matter  6, 15–16, 18–19, 21, 27, 42 defined  6, 16, 30 ‘material turn’  29–31 medieval theories of  28, 31, 34–36, 109, 209–210 modern theories of  27–32 relationship to place  38, 42, 47–48, 108, 113–115 transformations  3, 103, 123–130, 137, 143, 172, 176, 195 see also spirituo-materiality matter see materiality Matthew, Book of  173, 195 maximal proposition  58–59 McGuire, Meredith  16 n.2, 32–34, 210 memory  3, 23, 33–34, 39, 44, 46–52 in Christ and Satan and Genesis 121, 146 in Cynewulf’s Elene  180, 183–184, 191, 199, 201 in Cynewulf’s Juliana  159, 174 mens see under mind Mercia 79–80 metaphor see allegorical interpretation Michael, archangel  105 Midrash Konen  130 n.17 Milo  83 n.60 Carmen de sobrietate  83 n.60 mind  16–28, 31–34, 48–49, 93, 96–98, 107, 112, 210 as a fortress  169–171, 176 as a home  173–174 in Christ and Satan and Genesis  115–123, 126, 128–133, 136–140, 143–146, 149–150 in Cynewulf’s Elene  178, 190–192, 194, 197, 201–202 in Cynewulf’s Juliana  150–155, 158, 161–166, 169–173, 176, 197, 201 key terms ferhð  18 n.16, 20, 144, 169, 192, 195–196, 200 ferhðsefa  190, 194 gemynd  20, 23 hyge  18 n.16, 20, 118–119, 130, 136, 140, 169, 201 ingehygd 169 mens  23, 26, 97 mod  18 n.16, 20, 23, 117, 119, 130, 133, 135, 161, 165, 169, 173, 195 modblind 190

242

Index mod-cræft 192 modgemynd  191, 201 modgeþanc 194 modsefa  20, 131, 162, 201 sefa  18 n.16, 20, 191, 194, 200 see also body, soul, spirit miracle  25, 151, 156, 159, 172–178, 184, 200–201, 203–204 mod see under mind modsefa see under mind monasteries  21, 42–47, 52, 62, 103, 109, 146–150, 165 n.35, 205–209 double 207–209 English  10, 53, 68–74, 77–100, 206–209 women’s 206–209 monastic schools see schools monks see monasteries Moses 191 motherhood  6, 16–17, 29, 120–121, 129, 142, 180–182, 197, 199, 207 music  1–2, 4, 36 n.111, 37

Orsi, Robert  32 n.98, 33 n.104, 109 n.21, 182, 202, 210 Oswald, Archbishop of York  80 ousia see usia Overing, Gillian  140, 142–143, 149, 175–176, 207–208

Passio S. Iulianae  154, 164 n.33, 166, 167 n.38–39, 168, 170, 172 n.47, 173 n.50–51 see also Juliana patristic authority see under authority Paul, saint  108, 122, 129, 157, 168, 172, 193–194 Paulinus of Aquileia  1 n.3 Liber exhortationis ad Henricum comitem  1 n.3 Paulinus of Nola  184 n.23 pedagogy  6, 9–15, 19, 36, 41–52, 57, 59, 64, 71–74, 104, 109–110, 202–209, 211 clerical  8–9, 52, 63, 73–100 demonic  5, 16, 36, 48–49, 61, 99–106, 205–206, 209 narrative  36–38, 42, 47, 99–111, in Christ and Satan and 210–211 Genesis  113, 119–149 in Christ and Satan and Genesis 113, in Cynewulf’s Elene 178–181 121–124, 126, 128–133, 139, 145, in Cynewulf’s Juliana  153, 155, 147–151 157, 160, 164–171, 176 in Cynewulf’s Elene  178–183, 185, in the monastery  12, 72–78, 187–197, 201, 204 89–90, 95–99, 109, 141 in Cynewulf’s Juliana 153–155, divine  2–3, 74–75, 87, 97–99 160–161, 166–167, 171, 174–175 Christ as teacher  5, 10–11, 61, 110, Nicene Creed  66 123, 205 Nicomedia (Turkey)  152, 155, 158, 175 in Christ and Satan and Normans 207–208 Genesis  119, 129–135, 141–143, Northumbria 79 146, 148–150 nuns see under monasteries in Cynewulf’s Elene  191, 204 in Cynewulf’s Juliana 166–167, Old English Martyrology  172 n.47 169, 174 onto-epistemology  3–4, 9–15, 18, in early England  9 n.33, 10, 71, 30–51, 59–78, 90–91, 99–113, 121, 73–100 151, 205, 210–211 key terms defined 28 forlæran  119, 140, 144, 189 in Christ and Satan and Genesis 119, læran  2, 5, 7, 114, 120, 138, 123–130, 137, 141–150 167–168, 173, 188, 194, 203 in Cynewulf’s Elene  180–182, 185, lar  3, 5, 77, 119, 132–133, 135, 187, 193, 201–202 137–139, 143, 169, 171, 190–194, see also spirituo-materiality 201–203 opus Dei  74, 95, 99 lareow  5, 76, 170 Origen  113 n.38 larsmið  181, 183, 185, 189, commentary on Matthew  113 n.38 191–192, 201, 203–204, 206

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Index leornian 3 leornungcræft  tæcan 5 of Alcuin  64–66, 157–158, 206–207 of Elene  203–204 of Eve  126, 129–130, 139, 144–145, 147 of Judas Cyriacus  178, 181, 188–194, 199 of Juliana  153–161, 173–174, 176 of laypeople  9, 11, 64, 75, 77, 99, 206–207, 209 of women  206–209 of Satan  2–6, 10–12, 37, 88, 97, 103–104, 106 in Christ and Satan and Genesis  111–114, 116, 119, 123, 145 in Elene  181, 185–186, 189, 202 see also Alcuin, demons, Elene, Eve, Judas Cyriacus, Juliana, monasteries, pupils, Satan, schools, women Pelagius 127 penance  168 n.39–40, 204 Persius 82 Satires 82 Peter, 2, Book of  112 n.32 Peter, saint  168, 188 Peterborough 69 Philip, saint  168 Pilate, Pontius  168, 203 pilgrimage  32–33, 179, 183–185, 199, 203–204 place  4, 8–9, 16, 32, 39–43, 74, 100–109, 113, 205, 209–211 and landscape  39, 158, 174 and space  37–41, 47, 126 and territory  114–117 in Christ and Satan and Genesis  121–130, 138, 145–150 in Cynewulf’s Elene  179–183, 185, 189, 191–200 in Cynewulf’s Juliana  152–162, 166, 169, 171–176 relationship with mind  20, 118, 123 see also mind sacred  12, 32, 35–36, 38–41, 51, 71, 85, 99, 203, 209 see also topos Plato  27–29, 47, 49, 61, 67 Plutarch 23

Porphyry  62 n.90, 68, 70 Isagoge  62 n.90, 68, 70 preaching  1–2, 5–7, 9, 23, 45, 52, 55–56, 64, 75, 129, 173 n.49, 191, 205, 207 predestination  67, 127 see also Gottschalk, John Scottus Eriugena presence  32, 33 n.104, 51, 108, 209–210 in Christ and Satan and Genesis 134, 138 in Cynewulf’s Elene  178, 181–185, 202–203 in Cynewulf’s Juliana  153, 156–157, 159, 172, 174–176 Priscian  54, 62, 85 Prosper of Aquitaine  81 Epigrammata 81 Prudentius 81 Psychomachia 81 Prudentius of Troyes  67, 84 pupils  3, 6, 9–12, 47–50, 59, 104, 110–111, 205 in Christ and Satan and Genesis 114, 119–129, 133, 135, 141–142, 146 in Cynewulf’s Juliana  153, 164–169, 173 in monastic schools  10, 12, 52–54, 71–100, 103, 141, 150, 211 see also demons, pedagogy, schools, Satan quadrivium  70, 80–81 quæstiones  47, 50, 57, 59, 86, 109–111, 205 in Christ and Satan and Genesis 117, 126 in Cynewulf’s Elene  178, 180–182, 188–191, 194–196, 200 in Cynewulf’s Juliana  152, 156, 159–166, 176 Questions of Bartholemew  113 n.38 Quintilian 51 Qur’an  179 n.3 Ramsey 80–81 rape  49, 165 n.35 ratio  23, 53, 58–59, 67, 110–111, 150, 206–207 in Christ and Satan and Genesis 116, 129–130, 136–137, 140–141 reading  47, 51, 75, 79, 107–108, 169, 207, 210

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Index in Christ and Satan and Genesis  121–122, 125, 135, 141–142, 146, 150 reason see ratio Regularis Concordia  92, 208 relics  11–12, 35–36, 41, 151–160, 172, 174–204, 206, 209 see also True Cross reliquaries  154 n.3, 187, 202–204 replacement, doctrine of   112 n.34, 117 resistance  30, 33, 38, 41–42, 105, 130, 132–133, 147, 155, 157, 159, 202 Responsio discipuli  87–90, 99 Resurrection see under Christ rhetoric  9, 37, 43–51, 54, 60, 66, 71, 74–75, 103, 109–110, 205 in Christ and Satan and Genesis 122, 125, 129–132, 134 in Cynewulf’s Elene  179, 191, 195 in Cynewulf’s Juliana  160, 161 n.28 in works of Alcuin  55, 61, 63–64, 71, 86 in works of Boethius  57–59 in works of Martianus Capella 45–46 study in early medieval England  52–53, 55–57, 78–79, 84, 88–89 see also liberal arts, verbal arts Rhetorica ad Herennium 48–49 riddles 35 Robertson, Kellie  27–30, 34, 209–210 Roman Empire in Cynewulf’s Elene 178–179, 183–190, 195, 198, 200, 202–204 in Cynewulf’s Juliana 152–153, 155–156, 162, 176 Rome (city)  78, 108, 158, 162, 175, 187–188, 204 Rule see Benedictine Rule ruminatio 146

Sanctuarium seu Vitae Sanctorum 186 n.29 Santa Maria de Monteluce (Perugia)  154 n.3 Satan  1–5, 73, 76, 95–100, 103–106, 111–112 in Christ and Satan and Genesis  112–119, 121–125, 128, 130, 135–136, 143, 148 in Cynewulf’s Elene  178, 180–181, 185–186, 189, 191, 195, 200, 202, 204 in Cynewulf’s Juliana 168–170 see also demons, exemplum, hell, pedagogy Saul see Paul sawl see under soul Scholasticism  53, 62 schools  8–12, 42–43, 52–54, 68, 71–103, 109, 141, 206–209 schoolboys see pupils scripture see under authority Second Council of Nicea  209 sefa see under mind Semi-Pelagians 127 senses  20, 23–24, 47, 154, 183 in Christ and Satan and Genesis  115–118, 123–124, 128–133, 136–140, 146 key terms andgit  6, 24 gewitt  20, 117, 139, 202 sensus  20, 23–24, 140–141 see also body, mind Simon, Samaritan magician  168 Simonides of Ceos  48, 51 sollicitudo 97 Solomon and Saturn  53, 85 n.64, 86 n.71 soul  2–3, 18–28, 32, 36, 42–43, 76, 93–97, 105, 207, 210 defined by Ælfric  23–24, 141, 154 in Christ and Satan and Genesis 122, 124, 128–129, 137–146, 150–152 Saint-Bertin (Francia)  68 in Cynewulf’s Elene  193, 201 saints  8–9, 11–12, 15, 27, 36, 75, in Cynewulf’s Juliana  153–155, 159, 103–105, 150–205, 211 168, 170–171, 175 as topoi 155–160 key terms cult of  152–153, 155–157, 174–176, anima  20, 22–24, 93, 97 182 feorh  25 n.52 tombs of  153, 155–159, 174–176 sawl  6, 18 n.16, 22–24, 25 n.52, 76, see also Elene, Judas Cyriacus, Juliana, 120, 138, 144, 193, 201 martyrdom, relics, Stephen see also body, spirit salvation see under Christ

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Index Soul and Body 34 space see under place Spinoza 27 spirit  3, 15–28, 31–36, 38, 42, 73, 97–98, 103–104, 108, 209–211 defined 18–19 in Christ and Satan and Genesis 112, 122–132, 137, 144–146, 149–150 in Cynewulf’s Elene  178, 184, 186–187, 190, 193, 195, 197, 200–201 in Cynewulf’s Juliana  155–156, 161, 169–171, 174 key terms anima  20, 22–24, 93, 97 see also soul breostsefa 200–201 feð 169 gast  19, 22–24, 116, 124, 161, 184, 201 gehygd 170 spiritus  17, 19–20, 22–24, 26, 137 Third person of Trinity  6, 17–19, 22, 26, 124 see also body, mind, soul spirituo-materiality  3–18, 31–36, 41–42, 92, 103–108, 209–210 defined 3–4 in Christ and Satan and Genesis  121–126, 128, 137, 145–151 in Cynewulf’s Elene  179–180, 184, 188, 198, 200–202, 204 in Cynewulf’s Juliana  151, 153, 155, 170–172, 174–176 see also materiality, ontoepistemology, spirit St. Gall (Switzerland)  62 Stephen, protomartyr  193–195, 197, 199, 201, 204 see also Judas Cyriacus, martyrdom, saints stone 193–196 story see narrative students see pupils subjectivity  31–35, 40, 140 n.49, 142–143, 157 substance  6, 17–18, 23, 27, 61–62, 87, 181–182, 206–207 see also materiality substantia see substance Sylvester, Pope  188

Symposius  83 n.60 enigmata  83 n.60 tæcan see under pedagogy Tatwine  54, 79 Ars Grammatica 79 enigmata  83 n.60 teacher see pedagogy Temptation of Christ  104 n.3, 112 n.3, 115–116, 195 territory see under place Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury 79 canons of Theodore  207 De Ritu Mulierum 207 thing theory  17 n.7, 183 ‘things’  16–17, 27, 29, 35, 131 n.21, 161, 175–180, 185, 205 Timothy, 1, Book of  129 Timothy 2, Book of  158 titulus 203 Topics  56, 58, 110 see also Boethius, Cicero topos  8–9, 35–37, 47–49, 58, 73, 99–100, 104 in Christ and Satan and Genesis 125, 134, 147, 149 in Cynewulf’s Elene  178–180, 183, 191, 194, 199–200 in Cynewulf’s Juliana  155, 158–159, 169, 176 see also dialectic, place, rhetoric transubstantiation 35 tree  16, 145, 148, 161, 173, 192–197, 201, 209 of Death/Knowledge of Good and Evil  11, 122, 124, 126–128, 130–133, 143 of Life  126, 130–131, 183, 200 see also cross, True Cross Trinity  6, 10, 15–19, 23, 52, 62, 65, 70, 87, 182 trivium see verbal arts True Cross  11–12, 176–204, 209 Tynemouth (monastery)  208 usia  17, 18 n.15, 67 verbal arts  3, 9–11, 16, 42–74, 78, 84–90, 104, 109, 111, 205

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Index in Christ and Satan and Genesis  124–126, 130–134, 141–142, 147, 150 in Cynewulf’s Juliana  166–167, 171 see also dialectic, grammar, liberal arts, rhetoric Vercelli Book see under manuscripts Vercelli homilies  1 Vercelli homily X  1–8, 169, 200 sources  1 n.3 vernacular literature  108, 129, 154 Vikings  69, 79, 109, 208 violence  32, 44–52, 82, 92–93, 96, 150 in Cynewulf’s Elene  179, 181, 184, 189, 191–199 in Cynewulf’s Juliana  160, 162–165, 171–172, 174 see also martyrdom, rape, verbal arts Virgilius Maro Grammaticus  54 Epitomae 54 Virgin Mary  6, 65, 121-124, 128, 180, 203 Visio Pauli  113 n.38 voice  4, 35–38, 42–49, 85–86, 90, 100, 105, 183, 209–210 of Eve in Christ and Satan and Genesis  120–123, 125–126, 129, 140, 145 in Cynewulf’s Elene 199–201 in Cynewulf’s Juliana 155–158, 160–162, 164 voluntas see will

Wearmouth-Jarrow 79 see also Bede Whitby 207–208 see also Ælfflæd, Bede, Hild will  23, 25 n.55, 28, 87, 197 in Christ and Satan and Genesis 127, 140, 144 in Cynewulf’s Juliana  156, 160–165, 167, 169, 171, 176 Winchester  73, 80–81, 85, 87, 89 Old Minster  80–81 witchcraft  107 n.13 women  3, 8, 17, 37, 42, 49, 64, 108, 206–209 in Christ and Satan and Genesis  120–124, 128–129, 140 in Cynewulf’s Juliana  152, 154, 156–158, 160–163, 165, 175 in early medieval England  9 n.33, 207–209 see also Elene, Eve, Juliana, monasteries, pedagogy wood  16, 28, 34 n. 111, 181, 185, 199, 202 Worcester  69–70, 79 Wulfstan  56, 136 De fide catholica 136 Wulfstan Cantor  83 n.60 wyrd 161–164 York  63, 69–70, 79 Zohar  130 n.17

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Acknowledgments

Debating with Demons is the result of many years’ study and contemplation of the materials discussed in the chapters. As a graduate student, I first began work with some texts mentioned in the Introduction, an early exploration of which was published in Essays in Medieval Studies, 15 (1999). Preliminary discussions of material in Chapter 4 appeared in Transitional States: Cultural Change, Tradition, Memory in Medieval England, edited by Graham D. Caie and Michael D.C. Drout (Tempe, 2018). Chapter 6 is the result of a long-term examination of Cynewulf’s Juliana that began with a presentation at the American History Association meeting in 2011 at the invitation of Mary Dockray-Miller; continued in an article published as ‘Demonic Pedagogy and the Teaching Saint: Voice, Body, and Place in Cynewulf’s Juliana,’ in Medieval Feminist Forum, 54 (2018); and concluded, significantly reshaped, in this book. Chapter 7 incorporates material on Cynewulf’s Elene that I have repeatedly revisited since completing my doctoral dissertation in 2002; these gradual explorations appeared under the titles ‘Things in Doubt: Inventio, Dialectic, and Jewish Secrets in Cynewulf’s Elene,’ in Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 108 (2009) and ‘The Hunger of Judas: Teaching and Materiality in Cynewulf’s Elene,’ Medieval Perspectives, 33 (2018), finding their most complete and wide-ranging iteration here. The publication of this book was funded in part by a subvention from the Inquiry 1000 program at Augusta University. Early phases of the research were aided by travel funding granted through Augusta University’s Faculty Research and Faculty Development fund and the Professional Impact Fund of the Pamplin College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. This book would not have been possible without the assistance of diverse individuals for whom I am very grateful. During the lengthy process of researching and writing, I have been supported by the knowledge, encouragement, and strength of many valued colleagues and friends. Any errors or omissions herein are my own. C. Elizabeth Fanning and Blaire Zeiders read the entire manuscript and offered insightful feedback to assist with the revision; I thank them for their time, expertise, eagle-eyed editorial skill, and enthusiasm. For years of dedicated mentorship and friendship, I am grateful to Allen J. Frantzen, who read the manuscript, provided valuable suggestions for its improvement, and granted permission to cite his unpublished essay on Cynewulf’s Juliana. Mary Dockray-Miller, Michael D.C. Drout, Stephen Harris, Martin Foys, Wendy J. Turner, and Jonathan Goode have been supportive colleagues 248

Acknowledgments and mentors over the years, and I value their good-natured collegiality and stimulating scholarship. Anonymous peer reviewers for Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Medieval Perspectives, Medieval Feminist Forum, and Boydell & Brewer provided valuable feedback on early phases of this work, as did Charles D. Wright, Philip Edward Phillips, and Britt Mize. I appreciate these reviewers’ insights and their ability to see potential that, in some cases, I could not yet perceive myself. Working with the editorial and production staffs at Boydell & Brewer has been a pleasure; I am particularly grateful to my editorial director, Caroline Palmer, as well as Rohais Landon, Nick Bingham, Elizabeth McDonald, Rebecca Cribb, Emily Champion, and Bonnie McGill. The cover image of Debating with Demons is reproduced from MS Junius 11, p. 17 with the permission of the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. I thank Samantha Sherbourne in the Bodliean’s Imaging Services Office for her assistance and responsiveness. The final stages of writing this book were completed with the generous support of Elna Green, Dean of the Pamplin College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Augusta University. I have also been fortunate in two long-term and indomitable chairs in the Department of English and Foreign Languages at Augusta University, Lillie B. Johnson and Rhonda Armstrong, who provided encouragement, funding, and release time from teaching to bring this book to completion. I will always be thankful for our many years of collegiality and friendship. Augusta University’s former Office of Faculty Development and Teaching Excellence provided encouragement and funding to support the writing of this book. The Writers’ and Scholars’ Retreats sponsored by OFDTE afforded the time and concentration necessary to prepare the book proposal and sample chapters, a crucial phase in the book’s development. I am grateful to ODFTE’s director, Deborah Richardson, and assistant director, Robert Bledsoe, for their friendship and enthusiasm. For many years, the faculty and staff of Reese Library on the Summerville Campus of Augusta University have provided invaluable research support for this work. Special thanks are due to Melissa Johnson, Fay Verburg, Aspasia Luster, and members of the circulation and interlibrary loan staffs. In my department at Augusta University, I have been very fortunate in my colleagues, dedicated teacher-scholars with a seemingly endless supply of good humor and mutual respect. I am grateful to Christopher Botero, Robert Bledsoe, Jim Minick, Spencer Wise, Valerie Cato, Jun Zhao, Todd Hoffman, E. Nicole Meyer, Duygu Minton, and especially the members of the Writing Circle: Seretha Williams, Rhonda Armstrong, Candis Bond, Lee Anna Maynard, Giada Biasetti, Liana Babayan, Blaire Zeiders, Christina Harner, and Anna Harris-Parker. Our departmental staff, past and present, has provided assistance with many aspects of this work; special thanks are due to Kathy Slivka, Jane Millward, Alvina 249

Acknowledgments Quinn, Rachel Martin, Alice Wynn, Krislyn Davis, and Jasmin Rivas. My students at Augusta University have commiserated with me over writer’s block and seemingly endless revisions of the Debating with Demons manuscript, a process which has been much more enjoyable thanks to their collegiality and patience. The writing of this book was supported by years of friendship and kind encouragement from many other long-term members of our university community, including Brian Rust, Ted Atkinson, Betty and Bill House, Mary and the late Larry McCormack, Grace and Jeff Heck, Peggy and Rick Ward, Nancy and the late Tom Sutherland, Richard and Claire Stracke, Rick Davis, Jim Garvey, Walter Evans, Jana Sandarg, and Lillie B. Johnson. For the Juliets, my ‘Augusta moms,’ I am especially grateful. C. Elizabeth Fanning and Timothy Donahue have lent strength and support to all my endeavors over the years, including writing this book, and have shared in many challenges and victories along the way. I am thankful for their friendship, insight, and good humor during hundreds of enriching conversations. In my sister Annie Heckman, I have had a multi-talented and valuable advisor. As a gifted artist and graphic designer, she provided assistance with the book cover image; as an insightful scholar of religious studies, she supplied reading material and guidance that became fundamental to the theoretical apparatus of this book, also reading early chapter drafts and providing suggestions for their improvement. Without her advice and expertise, the project could not have taken its current form. Other members of my family, though far away, have been close in heart throughout this process, especially Marianne Heckman, Joyce Heckman, Christine Trimarco, Elizabeth Heckman, JoAnne and Jean-Claude Abed, and Mackenzie and Aiden Abed. This book is dedicated to my mother and father, Jacqueline and Philip Heckman, who made many sacrifices to give their children the best possible education. It is no accident and no surprise that we all found our avocation in teaching. I will always be grateful for their support, their example, and their love. This book is also dedicated in loving memory to my younger brother, Stephen J. Heckman, another gifted teacher and a person of great intelligence, kindness, and courage. He was in my cheering section at the beginning, staunchly supported my career, and enriched the lives of all who knew him. He resides always in my heart and daily inspires my work.

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ANGLO-SAXON STUDIES Volume 1: The Dramatic Liturgy of Anglo-Saxon England, M. Bradford Bedingfield Volume 2: The Art of the Anglo-Saxon Goldsmith: Fine Metalwork in Anglo-Saxon England: its Practice and Practitioners, Elizabeth Coatsworth and Michael Pinder Volume 3: The Ruler Portraits of Anglo-Saxon England, Catherine E. Karkov Volume 4: Dying and Death in Later Anglo-Saxon England, Victoria Thompson Volume 5: Landscapes of Monastic Foundation: The Establishment of Religious Houses in East Anglia, c. 650–1200, Tim Pestell Volume 6: Pastoral Care in Late Anglo-Saxon England, edited by Francesca Tinti Volume 7: Episcopal Culture in Late Anglo-Saxon England, Mary Frances Giandrea Volume 8: Elves in Anglo-Saxon England: Matters of Belief, Health, Gender and Identity, Alaric Hall Volume 9: Feasting the Dead: Food and Drink in Anglo-Saxon Burial Rituals, Christina Lee Volume 10: Anglo-Saxon Button Brooches: Typology, Genealogy, Chronology, Seiichi Suzuki Volume 11: Wasperton: A Roman, British and Anglo-Saxon Community in Central England, edited by Martin Carver with Catherine Hills and Jonathan Scheschkewitz Volume 12: A Companion to Bede, George Hardin Brown Volume 13: Trees in Anglo-Saxon England: Literature, Lore and Landscape, Della Hooke Volume 14: The Homiletic Writings of Archbishop Wulfstan, Joyce Tally Lionarons Volume 15: The Archaeology of the East Anglian Conversion, Richard Hoggett Volume 16: The Old English Version of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, Sharon M. Rowley Volume 17: Writing Power in Anglo-Saxon England: Texts, Hierarchies, Economies, Catherine A. M. Clarke Volume 18: Cognitive Approaches to Old English Poetry, Antonina Harbus Volume 19: Environment, Society and Landscape in Early Medieval England: Time and Topography, Tom Williamson

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