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Ælfric's Judith: manipulative or manipulated?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Mary Clayton
Mary Clayton
Affiliation:
University College, Dublin
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Extract

Ælfric's Judith is one of the few Anglo-Saxon works for which we have explicit authorial guidance on how it is to be interpreted. In the often-quoted Letter to Sigetveard, Ælfric says:

Iudith seo wuduwe, be oferwann Holofernem pone Siriscan ealdormann, hæfð hire agene boc betwux pisum bocum be hire agenum sige; seo ys eac on Englisc on ure wisan gesett eow mannum to bysne, pæ ge eowerne eard mid wæmnum bewerian wið onwinnendne here.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 23 , December 1994 , pp. 215 - 227
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 Judith, ed. Assmann, B., ‘Abt Ælfrics angelsächsische Homilie ¨ber das Buch Judith’, Anglia 10 (1888), 76–104Google Scholar and again in Angelsächsische Homilien and Heiligenleben, Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa 3 (1889; repr. with a supplementary introduction by Clemoes, P. A. M. (Darmstadt, 1964)), 102–16Google Scholar. References are to the 1889 edition.

2 The Old English Version of the Heptateuch, ed. Crawford, S. J., EETS os 160 (London, 1922), 48Google Scholar: “The widow Judith, who overcame the Assyrian general Holofernes, has her own book among these books about her own victory; it is also set down in English in our manner, as an example to you people that you should defend your land against the invading army with weapons”. Translations here and throughout are my own.

3 Judith, ed. Assmann, lines 434–7: ‘Take example from this Judith, how chastely she lived before Christ's birth, and do not betray to God in the time of the gospels the holy chastity which you promised to Christ’.

4 Pringle, I., ‘Judith: the Homily and the Poem’, Traditio 31 (1975), 83–97, at 87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Ibid. p. 87.

6 Ibid. p. 91.

7 Ibid. p. 95.

8 The Old English Version of the Heptateuch, ed. Crawford, , pp. 49–51Google Scholar: “because they fought with weapons so fiercely against the heathen army, which violently attacked them and wished to annihilate them and expel them from the country which God had given them, and diminish the praise of God. What, then Mathathias, the glorious thegn of God, fought with his five sons against the invading army much more often than you will believe and they were victorious by means of the true God, in whom they believed according to the law of Moses. They did not want to fight with fair words alone, in that they spoke well and changed afterwards… Machabeus then fulfilled what he had said with brave deeds and overcame his enemies and therefore his victorious deeds are set down in these two books in the Bible, in honour of God, and I have translated them into English: read them if you wish as counsel for yourselves”.

9 On the addressee of Ælfric's text, see the Appendix (below pp. 225–7).

10 For examples, see Godden, M., ‘Biblical Literature: the Old Testament’, in The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, ed. Godden, M. and Lapidge, M. (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 206–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Judith, ed. Assmann, lines 120–9a: “no one could do anything to this people as long as they cherished their God properly. Whenever they turned away from worshipping him to the heathen gods, they were plundered and held to scorn by heathen peoples. Whenever they turned with true penance to their God again, he immediately made them mighty and strong to withstand their enemies. Their God truly hates unrighteousness”.

12 Esther, ed. Assmann, , Angelsächsische Homilien and Heiligenleben, pp. 92–101.Google Scholar

13 Judith, ed. Assmann, lines 404–5a: ‘This is no false story: it is thus in Latin in the Bible’. I adopt the reading pus proposed by Stanley, E. G., ‘Ælfric on the Canonicity of the Book of Judith’, N&Q ns 230 (1985), 439Google Scholar, rather than Assmann's erroneous nis.

14 See Stanley, ibid.

15 Judith, ed. Assmann, lines 407–17: ‘The Saviour's saying was fulfilled in her: “Each one who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted”. She [was] humble and chaste and she overcame the proud one; unimportant and weak and she conquered the great one; therefore she undoubtedly symbolized in her deeds the holy church, which now believes in God, that is Christ's church in all Christian people, his only pure bride, who, with brave faith, always serving Christ in purity, cut off the head of the old devil”.

16 It is found, for example, in Jerome, Ep. lxxix (PL 22, 732): ‘in typo Ecclesiae, diabolum capite truncavit’; in Isidore, Allegoriae (PL 83, 16): ‘Judith et Esther typum Ecclesiae gestant, hostes fidei puniunt, ac populum Dei ab interitu eruunt’; and, most especially, in Hrabanus Maurus's Commentary on Judith (PL 109, 539–92).

17 It is very close to pseudo-Augustine, Serm. xlix (PL 39, 1840), which quotes Judith's promise to Holofernes to take him into Jerusalem and continues: ‘Non decuit pudicam mentiri, non intelligentibus dixit, perfecit actibus quod promisit’; and cf. also Jerome, Apologia adversus libros Rufini (PL 23, 412).

18 Judith, ed. Assmann, lines 424–8: ‘She did not wish, as the narrative tells us, to have the cruel one's war–spoil, which the people gave her, but cursed his battle-gear altogether; she did not want to use them, but threw them away from her; she did not wish to have any sin because of his paganism’.

19 Quotations from the Vulgate are from Biblia sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem VII (Rome, 1950), 210–80.Google Scholar

20 Judith, ed. Assmann, lines 429–41: “There are some nuns who live shamefully, considering it a small fault that they commit fornication and that they can easily make amends for so little. But she who once commits fornication will never be a virgin again, nor will she have the reward of the hundredfold increase. Take example from this Judith, how chastely she lived before Christ's birth, and do not betray to God in the time of the gospels the holy chastity which you promised to Christ, because he will condemn the secret fornicators and he will burn the foul wretches in hell, as it stands in the Latin according to Paul's teaching: God will judge fornicators and adulterers’.

21 Huppe, B. F., The Web of Words (Albany, NY, 1970), pp. 139–42Google Scholar, has a good account of the association of Judith with chastity.

22 Judith, ed. Assmann, lines 245–7a: ‘As soon as he beheld her shining face, he was seized by lust in his inconstant heart’.

23 See Ælfric's life of Agatha in Ælfric's Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, W. W., EETS os 76 and 82 (1881–1885, repr. as one volume, 1966), 194–209, at 196.Google Scholar

24 Judith, ed. Assmann, lines 287–90: ‘Then she came adorned, not because of lust, and stood in front of him, very beautiful in appearance, and his heart was immediately inflamed with desire for her, in his lust’.

25 I am very grateful to Malcolm Godden and Hugh Magennis for their comments on this paper.

26 Sisam, K., Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford, 1953), p. 67, n. 2.Google Scholar

27 Judith, ed. Assmann, lines 429–37 (translated above, n. 20).

28 Councils and Synods with Other Documents delating to the English Church, ed. Whitelock, D., Brett, M. and Brooke, C. N. L., 2 vols. (Oxford, 1981) I, 347.Google Scholar

29 ‘Die Institutes of Polity, Civil and Ecclesiastical’, ed. Jost, K., Swiss Stud. in Eng. 47 (Bern, 1959), 129Google Scholar: ‘Concerning priests and nuns. It is right that priests and nuns as well should live according to the rule and observe chastity whether they wish to live in a minster or command the respect of the world’.

30 Ibid. p. 128. ‘Concerning cloistered nuns. It is right that cloistered nuns should practise the rules of their monastery, just as we said previously about monks, and should never have any intercourse of worldly intimacy with lay people’.

31 Dumville, D. N., ‘Learning and the Church in the England of King Edmund I’, in Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar, Stud. in AS Hist. 3 (Woodbridge, 1992), 173–84, at 177–8.Google Scholar

32 Dumville, , ‘Between Alfred the Great and Edgar the Peacemaker: Æthelstan, First King of England’, in Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar, pp. 141–71, at 165–6.Google Scholar

33 Councils and Synods, ed. Whitelock, , Brett, and Brooke, , p. 347.Google Scholar

34 Ibid. p. 364 (3.1).

35 Judith, ed. Assmann, lines 203–8: “And she lived chastely, after her husband's death, in her upper chamber with her maid-servants. She was very beautiful and lovely in appearance and she always fasted, except on feast–days, with a garment made of hair next to her body always, in fear of God, without dishonour”.