4 - Relating to the Divine in the Exeter Book: Christ I and Christ III

Summary

WITHIN A Christian spiritual life, the passions must be controlled and love must be redirected towards God and one's neighbour. This requires limiting certain emotions, but it demands the production of others. Whereas in a text like Beowulf emotions can have an inevitable quality, reflecting the sheer nature of the world though also to some extent a person's character and allegiances, in religious texts there can be a drive to provoke emotions that might not be present, or might indeed be culpably absent. In the Regularis Concordia, the monastic customary produced in the reign of Edgar as part of the tenth-century reform movement, the monk is instructed to ‘pour forth in the Lord's sight prayer from the heart rather than from the lips’ (‘in Domini conspectu effundat preces corde magis quam ore’) so that ‘through deep compunction of heart’ (‘per magnam animi compunctionem’) he may ‘obtain the pardon of all his sins’ (‘scelerum omnium … ueniam obtinet’). Penitence is foregrounded here, but other emotions are also produced as part of religious practice: wonder, fear, joy and compassion. The present chapter focuses on how poetic texts could be used to construct emotional relationships with the divine, relationships that audiences might actively enter into through prayer, contemplation or public reading or recitation. The texts under examination are the first and third sections of the Christ sequence that opens the Exeter Book. Since the Exeter Book probably had a monastic origin and use, the Christ sequence represents vernacular poetry in the service of monastic spirituality. Christ I, also known as Advent or The Advent Lyrics, is based on antiphons sung liturgically in the Advent and Christmas seasons and to some extent directly scripts expressions of emotion on the part of those reading, or rather praying, the poem. Christ III, also known as Christ in Judgement, is a Doomsday poem designed to stimulate penitential fear and sorrow, but it also thematizes empathy and compassion. Both texts represent and provoke emotions in such a way as to draw their audiences into an active relationship with God and with other holy persons and the congregation of the faithful. They provide scaffolding for a conscious and deliberate emotional practice for the good of the soul and the Christian community.