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Some Contexts for Bede's Death-Song

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Howell D. Chickering Jr.
Howell D. Chickering Jr.*
Affiliation:
Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts
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Abstract

When read in the contexts of psychology, theology, and Old English poetry, Bede’s Death-Song can be confidently valued as a fine poem, and not merely as venerable wisdom. The design of this eighth-century poem shows substantial correlations with the design of the Epistola Cuthberti, in which it appears. The letter appears to combine eyewitness report with hagiographic conventions. Ambivalence at meeting one’s Judge is expressed both in its narrative and the poem; troubled feelings are balanced by a certain faith. Scriptural echoes reveal Cuthbert’s conscious intention to present the Bede of the letter as an imitator of Christ. Comparison with other Old English poetic treatments of Bede’s theme shows that the poem fully exploits the artistic potential of the vernacular tradition.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 91 , Issue 1 , January 1976 , pp. 91 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1976

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References

Notes

1 For discussions of the MSS see Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, The Manuscripts of Caedmon s Hymn and Bede's Death Song (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1937); The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1942), ed. Dobbie; The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, ed. Dobbie & G. P. Krapp (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1931–53), vi, c-cix (hereafter cited as ASPR); N. R. Ker, “The Hague Manuscript of the Epistola Cuthberti de Obitu Bedae with Bede's Song,” Medium Aïvum, 8 (1939), 40–44; Rudolph Brotanek, “Zur Uberlieferung des Sterbegesanges Bedas und der Epistola Cuthberti ad Cuthwinum.” Texte und Unter-suchungen zur altenglischen Literatur und Kirchengeschichte (Halle: Max Neimeyer, 1913), pp. 150–94, 201–02, and “Nachlese zu den Hss. der Epistola Cuthberti und des Sterbe-spruches Bedas,” Anglia, 54(1940), 159–90. For the authorship of the Death-Song, see W. Bulst, “Bedas Sterbelied,” Zeit-schrift fur Deutsches Altertum und Deutsche Literatur, 75 (1938), 111–14, queried by Dobbie, ASPR, iv, cvii; Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Bertram Col-grave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford : Clarendon, 1969), p. 580, n. 4 (references are to their edition and translation of the Hague MS. of the Epistola, appended to this edition, pp. 570–87, where an editorially corrected version of the Death-Song, in probably its oldest form, appears in its Latin context). Dobbie, ASPR, vi, 108, prints the Hague MS. text of the poem without correction.

2 E.g., Stanley B. Greenfield, A Critical History of Old English Literature (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1965), pp. 201–02; T. A. Shippey, Old English Verse (London: Hutchinson Univ. Library, 1972), pp. 112–13; C. L. Wrenn, A Study of Old English Literature (London: Harrap, 1967), pp. 105–06. Two important exceptions are Bernard F. Huppé, Doctrine and Poetry: Augustine's Influence on Old English Poetry (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1959), pp. 78–79, and Ute Schwab, “ASr—after: Das Memento Mori Bedas als christliche Kontrafaktur: Eine philologische Interpretation,” in Studi di letteralura religiosa tedesca in memoria di Sergio Lupi (Florence: Olschki, 1972). Huppé briefly analyzes the doctrinal wisdom of the poem as it is expressed through its structure. Schwab's monograph places the poem and letter in the context of Carolingian learning. She also offers a tectonic interpretation of the poem based on exegetical number symbolism and a lengthy analysis of cultural layers in the Old English poetic vocabulary.

3 Thus, it did not warrant mention in W. F. Bolton's discussion of the Epistola in his recent A History of Anglo-Latin Literature 596–1066, I (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1967), 104–06, the longest chapter of which is devoted to Bede. See further Bolton's suggestions about how the relationships between Anglo-Latin and Old English might be more fruitfully explored, in “Pre-Conquest Anglo-Latin: Perspectives and Prospects,” Comparative Literature, 23 (1971), 151–66. To date, Schwab's discussion is the only considered attempt to bring these two traditions into binocular focus on this poem.

4 Whiting, “The Life of the Venerable Bede,” in Bede: His Life, Times, and Writings, ed. A. Hamilton Thompson (Oxford: Clarendon, 1935), pp. 1–38; Hunter Blair, The World of Bede (New York: St. Martin's, 1971), pp. 307–09.

5 Cf. Charles Thomas, The Early Christian Archaeology of North Britain (New York: Oxford Univ. Press for the Univ. of Glasgow, 1971), pp. 5–9.

6 Cuthbert was probably the same man who is later recorded as Abbot of Wearmouth and Jarrow. However, the authenticity of the Epistola has recently been challenged on several counts by Bolton, “Epistola Cuthberti de Obitu Bedae: A Caveat,” Medievalia et Humanistica, 1 (1970), 127–39. The unexplained differences between the Continental and Insular groups of MSS lead Bolton to suspect a pious forgery. The textual evidence is so inconclusive that the possibility of a forgery cannot be discounted, nor can the case for it be placed beyond doubt. An equally good case can be made, but no more conclusively proven, for the authority of the readings in the Hague MS., which is used by Colgrave and Mynors as the best text of the letter “because it descends independently from the common parent of the whole tradition and partakes of the merits of both branches” (p. 579). I am inclined to accept the letter as genuine, and the Hague M S. as the best text, following the interpretations of the textual history by Dobbie and Ker (n. 1 above). In any case, whether or not the letter is genuine, it presents us with a whole imaginative production, an attempt to make sense of an unadorned fact by traditional literary and theological means. It is an account of what eighth-century Anglo-Saxons wanted to understand Bede to have been upon his deathbed.

7 Recent studies of historical changes in attitudes toward death include Geoffrey Gorer, Death, Grief and Mourning (New York: Doubleday, 1965); Milton McC. Gatch, Death: Meaning and Mortality in Christian Thought and Contemporary Culture (New York: Seabury, 1969); and Philippe Aries, Western Attitudes toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present, trans. Patrica M. Ranum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1974).

8 See Colgrave, “Bede's Miracle Stories,” in Bede: His Life, Times, and Writings, pp. 201–29, and “The Earliest Saints' Lives Written in England,” Proceedings of the British Academy, 44 (1958), 35–60; see also Hunter Blair, “Lives of Saints,” in The World of Bede, pp. 272–81.

9 Adomnan's Life ofColumba, ed. and trans. Alan O. Anderson and Marjorie O. Anderson (London: Nelson, 1961); Historia Abbatum Auctore Baeda, in Venerabilis Baedae Opera Historica, ed. Charles Plummer, 2 vols, in 1 (Oxford : Clarendon, 1896), 364–87; Two Lives of St. Cuthbert, ed. and trans. Colgrave (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1940), pp. 142–306.

10 Colgrave discusses the Antonian model in his works noted above. See also Gertrud Bruning, “Adamnans Vita Columbae und ihre Ableitungen,” Zeitschrift fur Celtische Philologie, 11 (1917), 245^J7, and Benjamin Kurtz, “From St. Anthony to St. Guthlac,” University of California Publications in English, 12, No. 2 (1926), 103–46.

11 See Felix's Life of Saint Guthlac, ed. and trans. Colgrave (Cambridge, Eng. : Cambridge Univ. Press, 1956), pp. 150–61, Guthlac B, 11. 1305–79, in The Exeter Book, Vol. in of ASPR, pp. 86–89.

12 “Et sic postea laetus ac gaudens gratiasque agens omnipotent! Deo omni die et nocte, immo horis omnibus … Totam uero noctem laetus in orationibus et gratiarum actione Deo ducere studebat” (p. 580).

13 See Elisabeth KUbler-Ross, M.D., On Death and Dying (London: Tavistock, 1970), pp. 1–8, 34–71, 99–121.

14 For the typology of Heb. xi, see George W. Buchanan, To the Hebrews, The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1972), p. 249, and for detailed commentary on the homiletic thrust of Chs. xi and xii, see pp. 182–227. The authorship of this anonymous oration has been questioned ever since Origen, though it was traditionally ascribed to St. Paul.

15 The translation had proceeded as far as the miracle of the loaves and fishes: “But what are they among so many?” (John vi.9). Schwab, pp. 40–53, considers this reference as evidence for a complex arithmetic symbolism that ties the 5 lines of the Death-Song to the 5 loaves, and its 25 words and 48 syllables to numbers in the exegetical writings of Bede and others. While her argument throws light on exegetical habits of mind, I am not convinced of their necessary application to this case. To be sure, a learned contemporary might easily have given the poem such a numerical reading, but other number systems can be generated with equal facility (10 half-lines, 5 compound nouns, etc.). There is no decisive evidence that Bede intentionally built his poem upon a particular numerical framework.

16 The symptoms of swollen feet and difficult breathing also tell the modern physician that Bede probably died of congestive heart failure. I am indebted for this clinical surmise to Alan Blum, M.D., of Atlanta, Georgia.

17 See Colgrave and Mynors, p. 580, n. 4, followed by Gerald Bonner, “Bede and Medieval Civilization,” in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Peter Clemoes, n (Cambridge, Eng. : Cambridge Univ. Press, 1973), 81, n. 3.

18 See Francis P. Magoun, Jr., “Oral-Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry,” Speculum, 28 (1953), 446–63, and “Bede's Story of Cœdman: The Case History of an Anglo-Saxon Oral Singer,” Speculum, 30 (1955), 49–63; Michael Curschmann, “Oral Poetry in Mediaeval English, French and German Literature: Some Notes on Recent Research,” Speculum, 42 (1967), 36–52, which includes a bibliography of the important studies to that date. Formulas do not prove oral composition, however, as Larry D. Benson elegantly demonstrated in “The Literary Character of Anglo-Saxon Formulaic Poetry,” PMLA, 81 (1966), 334–41.

19 The limited evidence and the related question of free scribal copying are discussed by Alan Jabbour, “Memorial Transmission in Old English Poetry,” Chaucer Review, 3 (1969), 174–90. I think it is probably safe to rule out conjectures by Blanche C. Williams and Bulst that Bede remembered and recited a Cœdmonian text or a piece of folk wisdom. See Williams' Gnomic Poetry in Anglo-Saxon (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1914), pp. 67–69.

20 R. W. Chambers, always judicious in the face of incomplete evidence, unhesitatingly ascribed the composition of the Death-Song to Bede in his British Academy lecture of 1936; see Proceedings of the British Academy, 22 (1936), 141.

21 For different uses of this terminology, see Magoun, “The Theme of the Beasts of Battle in Anglo-Saxon Poetry,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 56 (1955), 82–83; P. B. Taylor, “Themes of Death in Beowulf,” in Old English Poetry: Fifteen Essays, ed. Robert P. Creed (Providence: Brown Univ. Press, 1967), pp. 249–51; Donald K. Fry, “Old English Formulaic Themes and Type-Scenes,” Neophilologus, 52 (1968), 48–54, and “Themes and Type-Scenes in Elene 1–113,” Speculum, 44 (1969), 35–45.

22 “Item de terrore futun iudicii et horrore poenae gehen-nalis ac dulcedine regni caelestis multa carmina faciebat. Sed et alia perplurade beneficiis et iudiciis diuinis, in quibuscunctis homines ab amore scelerum abstrahere, ad dilectionem uero et sollertiam bonae actionis excitare curabat” (p. 418).

23 Text from ASPR, vi, 57. The translation is mine. For others see ASPR, vi, 176, and Williams, p. 151.

24 This may serve as a warning of woe for sinners That a man of wisdom need feel no dismay, No whit of dread in the Day of Doom.

In the face of that terror he shall not fear When he sees the Shaper of all Creation Moving to Judgment with wondrous might. Kennedy, Early English Christian Poetry (1952; rpt. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1963), p. 269. For an alternative translation by Samuel Moore, who reads the first 3 lines quite differently, see ASPR, in, 255–56. Quotation from Shepherd is from his “Scriptural Poetry,” in Continuations and Beginnings: Studies in Old English Literature, ed. E. G. Stanley (London: Nelson, 1966), p. 20.

25 See Greenfield, A Critical History, pp. 220–21, and “Attitudes and Values in The Seafarer,” Studies in Philology, 51 (1954), 15–20; Neil D. Isaacs, “Image, Metaphor, Irony, Allusion and Moral : The Shifting Perspectives of The Seafarer,” Structural Principles in Old English Poetry (Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1968), pp. 19–34.

26 See Isaacs, p. 27 ; The Seafarer, ed. Ida L. Gordon (London: Methuen, 1960), p. 39. See also G. V. Smithers, “The Meaning of The Seafarer and The Wanderer,” Medium AEuum, 26 (1957), 137–53; 28 (1959), 1–22, 99–104.

27 This difficult word, the second element of which may be either neuter or feminine in its meaning of “journey,” can also be read as “need-fear” or “sudden peril,” taking -fœr as masculine a-stem. A. H. Smith opts for the masculine in his edition of the Death-Song in Three Northumbrian Poems (London : Methuen, 1933), p. 42. The greater likelihood is that it means “the necessary journey.” The most authoritative study to date, Alfred Bammesberger, “Zu altenglisch -faerae in Bedas Sterbespruch,” Zeitschrift fur vergleichende Sprachforschung, 85 (1971), 276–79, comes out in favor of a neuter -far. Schwab would accept either the feminine or neuter stem as meaning “journey,” though she prefers the feminine (pp. 14–15).

28 Linda L. Miller, “Dryhthelm's Journey to the Other World: Bede's Literary Use of Tradition,” Comitatus, 2 (1971), 3–15, reaches a similar conclusion about Bede's art in H. E., v, 12. She notes his stylistic preferences, such as the emphasis on fear through syntax, and points out that “the air of simplicity does not contradict the high degree of literary craft” (p. 14).

29 Warm thanks to Fred C. Robinson, Yale Univ., for helpful criticism of the present essay.