5 - Christ and Satan: the End of the Cycle

Summary

On page 213 of Junius 11 a new kind of poetic text begins, running through to page 229 (see Fig. 8). It differs dramatically from the other poems in the sequence: it is in a different script to that of the hand that copied the Genesis, Exodus and Daniel poems and there is little evidence that it was to be illustrated in the same way as the poetry that precedes it. Here and there the text is cramped into a page. At times it is worn, even rushed, and the ink has been smudged (pages 214 and 224 are good examples of the latter) and it shows signs of interference by a later ‘corrector’ who attempted to rework its language into late West Saxon. Modern editors have sought to repair and amend a substantial number of words that would otherwise be incomprehensible, or have filled in gaps where the alliteration is incomplete. There is a sense of disorder lingering around this poetry.

The text on these final surviving pages of the last gathering of Junius 11 has been called Christ and Satan since 1857 at the latest, although editors and critics working with that title have yet to agree on just how many poems are present. Some see one unified poem, while others see two or three fragments of verse roughly melded together. This poem contains passages of instruction and homiletic calls to interpret the world and asks the reader to be mindful of the tragedies that have befallen figures from salvation history. Given that Christ and Satan was added to the manuscript some time after work had halted on the project that gives us ‘Liber I’, those who picked the work up again were keen to see that the Old Testament portion of the manuscript continued towards an appropriate end with poetry in which Christ's defeat of devilry, and hold over all time, takes centre stage. Yet, as it exists now in the Junius 11 codex, Christ and Satan is more than a fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy. It is a sequence of interrelated passages that are arranged into a pattern offering the opportunity for each of its twelve, numbered sections to be compared or contrasted with one another. Historical cataclysms in Christ and Satan, such as the Harrowing of Hell and the Last Judgement, are positioned so that they are in proximity, so that one might intensify and charge the other.