What Christians Can Learn from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People about Biblical Womanhood, Part 1

  

What Christians Can Learn from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People about Biblical Womanhood, Part 1

 

As readers of my long-term blog know, I rarely reference current events. I usually want my blog to feel more timeless, but there’s a hot debate in evangelical conversations right now, and that is over “biblical womanhood,” especially regarding women’s authoritative roles in the church.*

 

Saxon church at Cambridge

I’d like to consider this hot topic by looking at our primary source for the history both of Britain and of the English church in the early Middle Ages: the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written by Bede, a monk in the northeast of Britain, in AD 731. Bede’s text is not obscure. Portions are included in every survey of British literature textbook, such as the Norton Anthology of English Literature. Every fall since 2004, I have begun my British Literature Survey class with the account Bede gives of the first extant English poem by the first English Christian poet, Caedmon.

 

I love the story of Caedmon, the shy cowherd who is visited by an angel and receives a miraculous gift to sing about God and biblical truths in his native Old English language and poetic style. But my focus here isn’t on the historical account of Caedmon, it’s on the religious leader he is told to report to, who leads the council in determining whether or not Caedmon’s gift is a miracle.**

 

This leader’s name was Hilda, abbess over the double monastery of the place now called Whitby.

 

There were several of these double monasteries in the Anglo-Saxon period of England (after the gradual conversion of the island to Christianity, so from the early 600s).*** These double monasteries housed both nuns and monks (separately), and at least some (all?) were ruled over by abbesses, such as Abbess Hilda.

 

After the council determines that Caedmon indeed has been given a miraculous gift, Hilda advises him to give up his secular occupation (cowherding) and become a monk, with apparently the specific vocation of writing songs (the monastery’s own Chris Tomlin). It is Hilda who “admitted him into the Community as a brother” (that is, a monk) and “ordered him to be instructed in the events of sacred history” (Bede 4.24).

 

For all of these years, my British Literature Survey students have been subtly learning, through this story of Caedmon, about a woman who does not fit our contemporary notion of “biblical womanhood” as conceived by the Council for Biblical Manhood & Womanhood.

 

This short account included at the beginning of the Norton Anthology of English Literature (NAEL), which is probably the most widely-used English literature survey text in the U.S., briefly allows students at my Baptist university to see a different attitude toward Christian women’s roles.

This brings me back to the origin of my blog and its title: why it’s so important to read the old books. In his essay “On the Reading of Old Books”, C.S. Lewis writes,

 

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.

 

Similarly, Lewis advises his readers in “Learning in War-Time” that we need to know the past

 

because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion.****

 

In both of these quotes (and in a few more I could pull up), Lewis reminds us that reading only within our own time, keeps us from seeing how attitudes and assumptions have differed in different eras and places. We in our arrogance think that we are right in all our assumptions, but we can learn much from what was taken as true in the past. Past periods of time had their own mistakes, but they also understood truths that perhaps we’ve neglected, suggests Lewis.

 

 

I wish that the NAEL would include a lot more of Bede. Indeed, Bede devotes an entire chapter to the life of abbess Hilda (the chapter prior to the story of Caedmon). We are told that she was not just abbess over the whole monastery at what is now Whitby, but she had “founded or organized” that monastery (3.23), where “she taught the observance of righteousness, mercy, purity, and other virtues” (my italics).

 

Kings and princes (male leaders, in other words) “used to come and ask her advice in their difficulties and take it,” says Bede. “Those under her direction were required to make a thorough study of the Scriptures and occupy themselves in good works” (3.23; my italics).

 

Bede cannot seem to praise Abbess Hilda enough. She is praised as a shepherd, “instruct[ing] the flock committed to her.” Bede compares Hilda to the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12, writing that “it pleased [God] to try her holy soul by a long sickness, in order that, as with the Apostle, her strength might be made perfect in weakness” (translator’s italics). Her life, says Bede, “afforded a shining example . . . to all who wished to live a good life” (4.23; my italics)—in other words, not just to other women. Bede does not use gendered statements about Hilda’s godly example.*****

 

There’s more in Bede’s account of the Abbess Hilda (d. 680), but how can/should/do modern conservative Christians respond to Hilda, this godly religious leader who happens to be a woman?

 

 

In Part 2 of my blog post, I will explore more of the exemplary women in religious leadership roles that Bede writes about in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People and compare Bede’s church history book with today’s most popular church history books in regards to their discussion of influential women in the church (based on the section “Writing Medieval Women out of Church History” from Beth Barr’s Making of Biblical Womanhood, pp. 96-99).

 

 

* cf. the “hot” books right now: Aimee Byrd’s Recovering from Biblical Manhood & Womanhood (Zondervan, 2020) and especially Beth Allison Barr’s The Making of Biblical Womanhood (Brazos, 2021). My journey into Bede here is especially inspired by Barr’s accounts of medieval women in her book. In looking at Bede’s “biblical women” I am adding to her examples.

 

** You can find this account of the poet Caedmon in Book 4, chapter 24, of Bede.

 

*** D.H. Farmer’s notes to my Penguin edition of Bede list “Whitby, Ely, Wimborne Minster and others” (p. 369).

 

**** These essays from C. S. Lewis are found in God in the Dock and The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, respectively.

 

***** I have been working from the Penguin editions translation by Leo Sherley-Price and revised by R.E. Latham.

Of Trees and the Tree (and George Herbert)

Of Trees and the Tree (and George Herbert)

Our neighborhood HOA is chopping down trees today. These are decades-old, very-tall, healthy pine trees that, from what we’ve been told, pre-date the housing development they’re now a part of. Earlier this spring, my family was rudely surprised and shaken to find that a tree removal crew had arrived to cut down all four of the evergreen trees that flanked our home (an end-unit condo). (Tree “removal” is such a euphemism for what actually happens in the hacking off of healthy limbs and then slicing down of tall tree trunks until nothing is left but a stump. “Butchery” is a more accurate term.) These pine trees had shaded our house from the hot Southern California sun and provided greenery in our window views that added layers and color to views of pavement, stucco housing, and harsh sunshine.

 

Why the HOA decided (without letting residents know) that they were going to cut down the trees is another matter (pine cones dropping on cars was the answer I received). I knew I loved and was thankful for these trees. But I didn’t know how much I truly valued those trees until they were gone and we were left with nothing but stumps. No shade, no green boughs to see out of second-story windows. Stumps. When the crews showed up today to chop down more healthy, verdant pine trees in our sun-drenched area (see photo of the trees prior to execution), I knew I had to leave my neighborhood for the day.

And I thought of George Herbert.

 

I think Herbert loved trees. I’m speculating, of course, but several of his English poems use a metaphor or analogy of humans as trees. My favorite can be found in his poem “Affliction (1),” which I’ve written about on my blog before: http://readingtheoldbooks.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-limits-of-book-learning-gh-day-17.html. It’s actually a moment of frustration where the speaker wishes he were a tree, because at least that would give him a useful purpose and occupation:

 

I read, and sigh, and wish I were a tree,—

          For sure then I should grow

To fruit or shade; at least some bird would trust

Her household to me, and I should be just. (“Affliction (1)” lines 57-60)

 

Then there’s “Employment (2)” where Herbert’s speaker proclaims,

 

Oh that I were an Orange-tree, 

                             That busie plant!

Then should I ever laden be,

                             And never want

Some fruit for him that dressed me. (lines 21-25)*

 

Herbert once again refers to the trees as a home for birds in “Miserie”:

 

The bird that sees a daintie bowre

Made in the tree, where she was wont to sit,

        Wonders and sings, but not his power

Who made the arbour: this exceeds her wit. (lines 55-58)**

 

I wonder if in dwelling on the trees’ purpose as homes for birds, Herbert is remembering Jesus’s words in the Gospels. In Luke 13:18-19 (or parallel passage in Matthew 13:32), Jesus says, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches” (ESV).

 

I think God loves trees. They are after all His creation (and He called them “good” [Genesis 1:12]).

 

We no doubt recall that the analogy of humans compared to growing trees is found several places in Scripture. Psalm 1 comes to mind.*** Believers are to be growing and flourishing like a healthy tree, producing fruit. In fact, Herbert’s entire poem “Paradise” is based around this metaphor: “I bless thee, Lord, because I GROW / Among thy trees, which in a ROW / To thee both fruit and order OW” (lines 1-3).

 

But another association we have with trees—or, in particular, a tree--is Herbert’s second most-common reference in his English poems, and that is to THE tree, the one on which Jesus died.

 

In “Unkindness” Herbert writes, “My God upon a tree / His bloud did spill” (lines 22-23), while in “Longing” he pictures how, “Lord Jesu, thou didst bow / Thy dying head upon the tree” (lines 31-32).

 

Then, in “Sacrifice,” Herbert writes from the perspective of Christ on the cross:

O all ye who passe by, behold and see;

Man stole the fruit, but I must climbe the tree;

The tree of life to all, but onely me:

                                              Was ever grief like mine? (lines 201-4)

This specific tree, the cross, has an exalted place in Christian history and English literature, from the Old English poem The Dream of the Rood (which means “dream of the cross”) to these Renaissance-era poems of George Herbert and beyond.****

  

Perhaps we Christians need a slightly higher view of trees. I am certainly not arguing for a complete upending the Great Chain of Being, that of animal being higher than vegetable which is higher than mineral. But at least we need to recognize and appreciate trees’ beauty, their shade, and the homes they provide for birds and other animals—and especially to be thankful to God for creating them. It’s purely coincidence that Arbor Day is this month (April). My husband and I have been trying to nurture the little seedlings that are the “children” of the beautiful pine tree that was chopped down in front of our home.

 

Herbert’s poem “Providence” celebrates how God’s providence is at work in the natural world and especially under the stewardship of humans. In “Providence” Herbert imagines how trees could be “tuning on their native lute” to praise God (lines 10-11), but they have not been given the gifts (of reason and speech) that humans have to praise God. Humans are to praise God on behalf of all creation, says Herbert (lines 13-20).

 

No offense to Herbert (or to humans), but I wouldn’t mind hearing the trees make their own music to praise God (“tuning on their native lute(s)”). Indeed, in his poem “Easter,” Herbert writes that the cross, that one special tree, “taught all wood to resound his name” (line 9). Because of that one tree, says Herbert, all trees, all wood in fact, resounds the name of our Savior.

 

Scripture abounds with images of Creation, including trees, praising God. Even as I mourn the loss of my own trees, I look forward to enjoying praise to God from His Creation in His perfect kingdom, as anticipated in Isaiah 44:23b (ESV):

  

break forth into singing, O mountains,
O forest, and every tree in it!
For the LORD has redeemed Jacob,
and will be glorified in Israel.

 

California Redwoods (thankfully protected!)

 

Notes

 

* Another example is the poem “Man,” where Herbert declares that “Man is ev’ry thing

And more: He is a tree, yet bears no fruit” (lines 7-8).

 

** The idea here that birds (or beasts or other parts of Creation) don’t have the knowledge or ability to praise God in the way that humans do is one that Herbert develops more fully in his poem “Providence.”

 

*** Herbert may have written a poetic paraphrase of Psalm 1. F.E. Hutchinson includes a paraphrase of Psalm 1 in his Works of George Herbert under the heading “Doubtful Poems.”

 

**** In The Dream of the Rood, the tree tells its story of having been “felled from the forest’s edge,” made into the cross that a heroic Christ mounts, buried and raised like Christ, and ultimately exalted, “honored [by God] over all the trees of the forest.” Throughout the poem, the tree is given such monikers as the “victory-tree” and the “tree of glory.” (Translation from R.M. Liuzza, Old English Poetry: An Anthology)

Paradox and the Babe in the Manger: Richard Crashaw’s 17th c. Christmas Poem

 

Paradox and the Babe in the Manger: Richard Crashaw’s 17^th c. Christmas Poem

 

It’s Advent season, and my little daughter has been playing with her Fisher Price nativity set since we brought it out after Thanksgiving. Images and figures of Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus in a manger are still (thankfully!) seen on display in homes, in yards, and at churches all around. It’s easy for us to picture the little baby Jesus asleep on the hay, but as we look at the typical manger scenes, how often do we think about the paradoxes inherent in that Incarnation of God’s Son?

 

There is a beautiful stanza from Richard Crashaw’s 17^th century Christmas poem “In the Holy Nativity of Our Lord God: A Hymn Sung as by the Shepherds” that grabbed my attention this season as I was listening to a recent choral rendition of that poem.

 

In a piece he called “Song of the Shepherds” (2013), Alec Roth set several slightly modified stanzas of Crashaw’s mid-length (105+ lines) poem to music. You can listen to it here, sung by San Diego Pro Arte Voices (a 2018 recording): https://youtu.be/EG-LN5cwor8

And you can follow along with the lyrics on a PDF posted on Alec Roth’s website: http://alecroth.com/assets/Uploads/Docs/Song%20of%20the%20Shepherds.pdf

 

Roth takes a stanza sung by the “full chorus” in Crashaw’s poem and turns it into a refrain for his beautiful choral piece. Here is the stanza as seen in Crashaw’s original poem (approximately line 80*):

 

Welcome, all wonders in one sight!

       Eternity shut in a span;

Summer in winter; day in night;

       Heaven in earth, and God in man.

Great little one, whose all-embracing birth

Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heav’n to earth.

 

Crashaw’s original Nativity poem, first published in 1646 and revised in 1652, features two shepherds singing with a chorus, similar to an oratorio, such as Handel’s Messiah. Such pastoral poetry was a popular genre at the time, and Crashaw’s shepherds (Tityrus and Thyrsis) are essentially the voices of  Bethlehem shepherds from the Luke 2 account of Christ’s birth. Here’s a link to Crashaw’s Nativity poem from Poetry Foundation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44058/in-the-holy-nativity-of-our-lord

 

The poem begins, “Come we shepherds,” inviting all their peers to marvel at the birth of “the Mighty Babe” (line 45) and to sing about it, that is, to spread the word about the marvelous sight.

 

The poem is also replete with dark vs. light imagery, reminiscent of Milton’s “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,” published shortly before Crashaw’s poem. Crashaw’s poem emphasizes throughout that the shepherds visit at night and that Christ is the Son/sun bringing day to the darkness. In the opening lines, the shepherds’ “blessed sight / hath met love’s noon in nature’s night” (lines 1-2), presenting us immediately with a paradox of the Incarnation.

 

God the Son is love and light (“love’s noon”), coming into the world, not only at nighttime, but also in the midst of spiritual darkness (“nature’s night”). Furthermore, the glorious light of the Lord is dimmed by inhabiting the opaque flesh of humankind.

 

Theologians and poets have long marveled at and even reveled in these paradoxes of the Incarnation: the all-powerful Son of God becoming a helpless babe, the glory of God wrapped in human flesh. “O Thou whose glorious, yet contracted light / Wrapped in night’s mantle stole into a manger,” writes George Herbert in his poem “Christmas” (lines 9-10).** Crashaw might be a convert to Roman Catholicism, while Herbert and Milton are various shades of Protestant, but each of these 17^th-century authors appreciates the paradoxes inherent in the Christ child.

 

This brings me back to the beautiful stanza I mentioned at the outset, highlighted by becoming a refrain in Alec Roth’s choral setting. This is one of three consecutive stanzas sung by the full chorus and beginning with “Welcome.” To whom? The comma suggests a vocative: addressing all the wonders inherent in that one sight of the nativity of Christ. Yet the subsequent stanzas more clearly suggest that this welcome is to the Christ child. HE is “all wonders in one sight!” (line 79).  

 

Now enter the paradoxes again: he is “Eternity shut in a span,” the eternal God living a human lifespan. In a return to the dark vs. light imagery, he is “Summer in winter. Day in night” (line 81). Then the fourth line of the stanza gives us what the Incarnation is: “Heaven in earth, and God in man.”

 

Next, he is the “Great little one,” possibly more of an oxymoron than a paradox and not quite as evocative as Milton’s image of the swaddled infant Christ like Hercules wrestling serpents in his Nativity Ode (lines 227-8). But “Great little one” also fits with Crashaw’s emphasis on the baby as King, as he uses that particular title (“King”) for the Christ child 3 times in his Nativity poem.  

 

This “Great little one['s] all-embracing birth” (changed to “glorious birth” by Alec Roth) might give some pause: who or what is doing the embracing, and what is being embraced? There seems to be intentional ambiguity here and no space in this blog post to tease it out, but the “all-embracing birth” could be simply referring to the previous line’s theology (“God in man”) and ahead to the conclusion of the sentence: “Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heaven to earth” (line 84). That is, in this birth God the Son is fully embracing both his natures (100% God and 100% human).

 

I’d like to close with two other, and more witty, paradoxes from Crashaw’s poem, the first about the “cold, and not too cleanly, manger” (line 40):

  

The Babe whose birth embraves this morn,

Made his own bed ere he was born. (lines 48-49)

 

This one just points to God the Son as Creator. “All things were made by him,” states John 1:3 (KJV), so that makes the Christ child the original creator of the hay and wood that form his manger bed. (See below for a note on “embrave.”)***

 

Finally, given that Crashaw’s “In the Holy Nativity of Our Lord God” is “Sung as by the Shepherds,” I shall conclude with a paradox related to the latter:

 

. . . dread Lamb! whose love must keep

The shepherds more than they the sheep. (lines 101-2)

 

Giving Christ another of his biblical names, the Lamb of God, Crashaw plays on the shepherds’ occupation as “keeping watch over their flock” (Luke 2:8 KJV). This Lamb will instead “keep” watch over the shepherds (keep them spiritually safe, save them, etc.—see John 17:11, Philippians 4:7, 2 Thessalonians 3:3, Jude 1:24 in the KJV).

 

Richard Crashaw presents more paradoxes in his poem, and no doubt we can come up with even more related to the entire nativity story, but I hope my introduction to a few of these has inspired you to view through new eyes that manger scene currently decorating your home or your neighbor’s front yard. Can you see “all wonders in [that] one sight”?

 

 

* My line numbers come from the Norton Anthology of English Literature. Printed versions of Crashaw’s poem vary in their line numbers, both because two versions (1646 and 1652) of his poem exist and because the Chorus’s echoes (refrains) are not always printed in full.

 

** See my past blogs on George Herbert’s “Christmas” for more on that two-part short poem:  

http://readingtheoldbooks.blogspot.com/2012/12/singing-shepherds-gh-day-24.html

 

http://readingtheoldbooks.blogspot.com/2012/07/christmas-in-july-gh-day-4.html

 

http://readingtheoldbooks.blogspot.com/2013/07/under-contract-gh-33.html

 

 

*** When I first read “embraves the morn” (~line 51), I thought it must be a typo, right? Indeed, the Norton Critical Edition texts modify this to “embraces the morn.” But a quick look into the Oxford English Dictionary reveals that it’s not a typo. “Embrave” in the late 16^th -early 18^th century meant to adorn, embellish, or beautify (en+brave, with the older meaning of “brave” as splendid, such as related to one’s finery). By the mid-17^th century (1648+), when Crashaw is writing, “embrave” also meant to “render courageous.” I love playing with the ideas here of the Christ child’s birth adorning the dawn or even, in a personified way, rendering the morning more courageous. After all, the one with the power to redeem the world, including the creation, has entered it. Thankfully, the Norton Anthology of English Literature retains the obsolete word “embraves,” with a helpful gloss on the meaning, but even if we look at the variation seen in a few other editions like the Norton Critical Ed., we can find something meaningful in the Christ child embracing the morn, which is echoed in the later “all-embracing birth” of line 83.

Rossetti's "Christmastide" Revisited

 

I'm republishing this blog that I wrote for Christmas 2013 on Christina Rossetti's "Christmastide." Its emphasis on how believers should respond in communion ("Worship we") to the Advent of Christ is truly needed this season (2020), perhaps more than in recent years.

*********  

For Christmas this year, I returned to a few poems by Christina Georgina Rossetti, sister of a famous Pre-Raphaelite painter* and a prolific poet in her own right. Her most famous poem is “A Christmas Carol,” which many know by its first line, “In the bleak midwinter.” However, Rossetti’s lovely poem “Christmastide,” from the 1880s, has also been set to music:**

Love came down at Christmas,

    Love all lovely, Love Divine;

Love was born at Christmas,

    Star and Angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,

    Love Incarnate, Love Divine;

Worship we our Jesus:

    But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,

    Love be yours and love be mine,

Love to God and all men,

    Love for plea and gift and sign.

As often in Christina Rossetti’s religious poems, the words are simple, but the theology may go a bit deeper. At Jesus’ birth, the star marked the place and the angels conveyed the verbal message, but the poet asks in the second stanza what shall be the sign we today use to celebrate Christ’s birth? (“Wherewith” in the 16^th-century Geneva Bible and in Shakespeare is occasionally used to mean “with what?” But it can also be short for “wherewithal,” that is, the means needed for a particular purpose.***)

The poet answers her question in the third stanza: “love” will be that sacred sign, “our token.” A token can be a badge worn to indicate allegiance to a particular person. Scripture indicates that love should be what sets Christians apart and identifies them with the Lord (John 13:35).

A token can also be something to be exchanged for goods or services, and, as the Oxford American Dictionary states, that token is typically given as a gift. Christ was the love of God given to mankind: “Love Incarnate, Love Divine” (line 6): fully man (in a human body) and fully God (divine). This is one gift we can “exchange” for the justification before God that Rossetti alludes to in the last line: “Love for plea” (an appeal or entreaty).

The 3 stanzas of the poem emphasize the “Godhead” (Trinity) we worship, as well as the three “uses” in the last line of the Love/love that came down at Christmas.

Rossetti emphasizes Christmas as a holy season through the old-fashioned word “tide” in her title: “Christmastide” suggests a church feast day.*** Stanzas two and three reflect the communal aspect of a festival day through the first-person plural pronouns: “we” and “our.” Line 10 moves from the previous line’s collective “our” (together, facing outward) to the celebrants’ facing each other and “exchanging” love in the way that congregants exchange greetings. Line 11 then moves back, and further, outward, giving God’s love back to him and extending that love to all mankind (cf. 1 John 4:7-21).

God’s Son, the personification of Love, came down at Christmas, not just to be the center of the beautiful nativity story believers celebrate in crèche and chorus, but to be the gift we lift back up as our plea before God and our sign to all mankind.

*Dante Gabriel Rossetti, painter and poet

**See, for instance, a partial list of settings at http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/love_came_down_at_christmas.htm

***See the Oxford English Dictionary

Spelling the Wonders of God’s Creation: The Old English “Order of the World”

There’s a beautiful lesser-known poem from the Old English Exeter Book called “The Order of the World” (alternately, and I think more appropriately, titled “The Wonder of Creation”). The short poem (100 lines) is, as it terms itself, a herespel (line 37), a praise song to God the Father Almighty extolling the beauties of His creation, particularly the sunrise and sunset, the sea and the land.

Sunset over the Pacific Ocean

After an introduction of sorts, the Creation song begins:

Lo! In the beginning the Father Almighty,

High guardian of treasure, formed heaven and earth,

The wide depths of the sea and the visible world, (lines 38-40)

I find this translation by R. M. Liuzza to be lovely.* He has had to modernize many of the obsolete words, but has done so in a way that keeps the original OE alliterative aesthetics in the lines, if not the actual alliterative sounds because so many of the poetic words used in “The Order of the World” have fallen out of the English language.**

Take these lines of the Creation song that introduce the poet’s primary focus on the heavenly bodies, particularly the sun:

So they bear forth beauty into the world,

the glory of God and his generous deeds. (47-48; my emphasis)

The original alliteration in line 47 was on worulde and an obsolete word for beauty, wlite. By translating wlite as “beauty,” Liuzza has shifted the alliteration of the line off of “world” to the verb “bear” (OE berath). It would be a significant shift aesthetically for a listener 1000 years ago, but works just fine for a modern reader.***

We can find another beautiful passage in Liuzza’s translation a few lines later in the praise song:

. . . His power propels

heaven’s candle and the high waves with it,

the Lord of life beckons, and brings

all creation into his own vast embrace. (53-56)

From the general picture of “heaven’s candle” (a popular OE metaphor for the sun) above and the seas beneath, the poet moves into images of the sunrise and then sunset. The sunrise is “this bright light / that comes over the misty cliffs each morning / traversing the waves adorned with wonders” (59-61).

If the sun arrives adorned with wonders, it departs likewise:

Departing with wonder into the western sky,

the most glorious star goes traveling in a troop,

until in the evening it treads the edge

of the outer ocean, and summons another gloom; (68-71)

Like the idealized, often sea-faring Germanic warrior of Old English poetry, the sun travels across the sky with companions, although I’m not sure what the poet envisions these to be (clouds? the unseen heavenly bodies?).

No doubt all of us can recall amazing sunsets (and possibly for you early birds even sunrises) that we have experienced during our lives. Indeed, one of the wonderful things about the old books is how they can help people throughout the ages feel a kinship with each other. As the “Order of the World” poet demonstrates, over a thousand years ago people were just as captivated by the diurnal appearance and disappearance of “heaven’s candle.”

After a brief contemplation on the mystery of the sun after it “passes beyond the horizon / into murk and gloom under the mass of waters” (78-79), the poet offers a beautiful sum-up of his praise song. In more simple, yet highly poetic, lines the poet sings,

And so he knit together—as he well knew how—

Day with night, depth with height,

The sky with the sea, the shore with the streams,

Land and water, fishes and waves.

That work never weakens, he holds it all well; (82-86)

Line 82 is almost an exact replica of line 43, near the beginning of the herespel, which, as typical with OE poetry, is a poem within the poem. The emphasis is on God as the great crafter/shaper with the wisdom to join together all of his Creation.

Such Creation praise songs are familiar in the biblical Psalms and in Old English literature.**** Yet “The Order of the World” is not just a beautiful depiction of the sun and sea and not just a praise song to God. Old English words are often compounds, and the latter half of herespel (line 37, translated by Liuzza “praise-song”), usually means in Old English a discourse, homily/sermon, or narrative. (Just as a side note, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the noun “spell” in English isn’t associated with enchantment until centuries later.)

Since this very poetic poem is intended as a homily, the poet instructs his hearers to “Learn these lessons!” (Leorna thas lare; literally “Learn this lore”; line 23). Didactic poetry is the norm in the Middle Ages, and the poet operates under the assumption that the order and beauties of God’s creation should result naturally in obedience to the Creator (cf. Romans 1:18-25). The poem thus concludes,

And so a man should strive to obey the Maker,

every child of men should abandon idle lusts,

life’s fleeting fancies, and hurry to true bliss,

abandon every hateful enmity, set aside

old sinful deeds, and set out for that better realm. (98-102)

Abandon idle pleasures, particularly sinful ones, and set your sights on things above, preaches the poet. Why? Because this life is “fleeting,” which is how many translators render the OE word læne (present-day English “loan”). That is, our life is on loan to us—a repeated idea in OE literature (cf. The Wanderer lines 108-10, The Seafarer line 66, Beowulf 2845).

“The Order of the World” thus encourages both its original hearers and its present-day readers, in contemplating the order and beauty of Creation, to humble themselves before their Almighty Creator.*****

* R. M. Liuzza, Old English Poetry: An Anthology (Broadview, 2014). You can view the original poem at the University of Virginia Old English site: http://faculty.virginia.edu/OldEnglish/aspr/a3.14.html

** Old English poetry relies on alliteration and stresses, rather than rhyme, using the beginning sounds of words (alliteration) to link together the two halves of a poetic line. Rhyme in OE poetry is very rare.

*** Line 48 is a perfect example of OE alliterative aesthetics, with two words in the first half of the line alliterating with one in the second half: “dryhtnes duguthe ond his dæda thrym.” Given all the obsolete words, the “d” alliteration does not, however, work when translated to modern English. Liuzza has kept “deeds” (OE “dæda”) but shifted the alliteration to the modern “g” words.

**** See, for example, Psalm 19 or 104, as well as the OE “Cædmon’s Hymn” and Beowulf lines 90-98.

**** Contrast the example of the monster Grendel in the Old English poem Beowulf, who is enraged by the Creation-focused song of praise he hears sung in Hrothgar’s meadhall and lashes out in violence as God’s adversary (line 786), ultimately earning God’s judgment as meted out by Beowulf (cf. lines 86-104, 381-4, 685-7, 711, 928-31, etc.).

Whither Have You Wandered? Lessons from the Old English Poem “Widsith”

Whither Have You Wandered? Lessons from the Old English Poem “Widsith”

This past spring I covered several Old English poems with my graduate class from a relatively recent anthology edited and translated by R. M. Liuzza. The final piece in this collection is a short 143-line poem called “Widsith.” As with most Old English poetry (written in the purely Germanic Anglo-Saxon English language and therefore accessible to modern readers only via translation), its author is unknown.* “Widsith” literally means “wide-traveler.” The poem tells us that Widsith is one of the “gleomen” (lit. glee-men; line 136), or bards, who made their living in the Middle Ages by singing tales while playing a harp. (Widsith has named his harp “Scilling.”)

harp from Anglo-Saxon exhibit at the British Museum

Throughout the poem Widsith boasts of where he has been and what men or tribes of power and influence he has played for, as well as what wisdom he has gleaned about valor, authority, and generosity:

Since I have sojourned in many strange lands

Across the wide world, where I have come to know

Good and evil, cut off from my home,

Wandered wide, far away from my kinsmen,

Therefore I can sing and tell a tale. (lines 50-54)

I had not expected this poem to “do much” for me. For one, it seems like a lot of name-dropping: in places, somewhat like an awards-acceptance speech or the acknowledgements preface to a book. For instance, “And I was with Eormanric all the while, / where the king of the Goths did good for me; / he gave me a ring” (lines 88-90).

In others, the poem reads more like a boastful resumé of contacts and accomplishments, such as “I was also in Italy with Ælfwine” (line 70), and when Widsith sings of the generous queen Ealhhild, “many men, proud of heart, / said in words what they knew well, / that they had never heard a better song” (106-8).

The refrain “I was with” (OE “Ic wæs mid”) echoes throughout the poem/song, as in line 79: “I was with the Scots” (OE “Mid Scottum ic wæs”).

Yet, looking more closely at the variety of people groups “name-dropped,” I realized that as widely traveled as Widsith claims to be, he cannot possibly have been with the Huns, the Angles, and the Romans (lines 57, 61, 69). The Swedes, the Syrians, and the Greeks (58, 75, 76). Nor with Caesar (76). Much less the Israelites, Assyrians, Indians, Egyptians, Medes, and Persians (82-84).

Anyone familiar with the biblical Old Testament immediately starts making connections with people groups in this last passage: the Assyrians conquering the northern kingdom of Israel; the Hebrews enslaved by the Egyptians (OE “Ebreum,” line 83**); the southern kingdom of Judah conquered by the Medo-Persians and taken into exile. Clearly the “Widsith” poet knew his Old Testament Bible: how else could be have been “with” all of these peoples?

His traveling now becomes clear: much of it has been done through his encounter with stories. These “meetings” with people, real and some likely imagined, have helped form his experience.

In the closing chapter of his book An Experiment in Criticism, C. S. Lewis reminds us that such encounters are one of the primary reasons for reading good, imaginative literature (“as opposed to scientific or otherwise informative reading,” p. 136):

“What then,” Lewis says, “is the good of . . . occupying our hearts with stories of what never happened and entering vicariously into feelings which we should try to avoid having in our own person? . . . The nearest I have yet got to an answer,” he continues, “is that we seek an enlargement of our being. We want to be more than ourselves. . . . We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own” (Experiment in Criticism 137).

The stories Widsith has encountered and the ones that he retells have been part of his wide wandering, just as much as any experience with King Guthhere of the Burgundians, who gave him a ring “as my song’s reward” (line 67), or Queen Ealhhild the peace-weaver, whom Widsith says he accompanied on her journey to Eormanric, king of the Ostrogoths (5-8).

Widsith says he has been with both “heathens and heroes” (line 81) and makes several references early on to people and events found in that greatest of Old English poems Beowulf (cf. lines 45-49). (I too have “traveled” back to the land of the Half-Danes under Hrothgar, who is referenced here, and to Beowulf’s home realm of the Geats: have you?) [See my past post on Beowulf.]

Toward the end of “Widsith” the repeated phrase is “I sought” (OE “sohte ic”), followed by individuals’ names, all in the context of “seeking the best companions” (line 110). For example, “I sought Eadwin and Elsa” (117). The poet is clear that he is traveling, as he “pass[es] through all the land of the Goths” and others (109), to find a good “band of comrades” (125).*** Applying that to our figurative wandering through stories, what kind of comrades are we seeking? Are we seeking the most trustworthy companions?

Literature, says C. S. Lewis, “admits us to experiences other than our own.” However, he continues, “They are not, any more than our personal experiences, all equally worth having” (pp. 139-40).

Widsith has sought to enrich himself through his wanderings, both literal (he has been rewarded with rings and other treasures by appreciative patrons) and through tales he has “heard” (cf. lines 10 & 16/17). As with most Old English poets, he looks for lessons, mostly here about leadership: a good prince guides his land well, knowing his authority comes from God (10-13, 131-34).

When Widsith’s wide-traveling enriches him, he is a model of gratitude: “I make known before many in the mead-hall / how my noble patrons chose to reward me” (lines 55-56). Widsith, according to the custom of his society, pays these gifts forward when he returns home, offering his treasures to his own lord, Eadgils, in gratitude for protection and a gift of land (93-95). As a grateful man who recognizes generosity and pays it forward, Widsith is himself commended by the poet-narrator of the poem: “And so, wandering as their fate unfolds, / the singers of men among many lands, / speak[] at need, saying words of thanks” (135-37).

How wide have you wandered? How might you write your own account of wanderings “with” stories/songs/Scriptures (like the “Widsith” poet)?

As a mom of an infant daughter, I don’t get to travel much anymore, whether literally or even figuratively through reading. However, perhaps your traveling is more through television or film stories than through reading. The application works equally well to the latest series binge-watched on Netflix or Amazon. Where have you been wandering? Are you seeking the best companions? Is your traveling enriching you (or impoverishing you)? Is it leading you toward a more thankful heart?

* Old English poetry was composed from the 7^th through the 11^th centuries A.D., before the Norman Conquest of England in A.D. 1066, following which the English language changed dramatically (enter Norman French), as did English poetry in both style and subject. “Widsith” is from the Exeter Book, one of the few surviving manuscripts of Old English texts.

** I do confess to being a bit mystified why Indians (that is, people from India) should come between the obvious Hebrews and Egyptians match-up in line 83, though (OE “mid Ebreum ond mid Indeum ond mid Egyptum”). Perhaps someone can enlighten me here?

*** The same word is in the OE here at lines 110 & 125: “gesitha.” It’s an obsolete word that is used widely in OE heroic poems to refer to loyal warrior companions. They fight together and then socialize together in the meadhall. Essentially a band of brothers: the people you trust to have your back and who accompany you through life.