Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T01:13:18.677Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Plenty, Portents and Plague: Ecclesiastical Readings of the Natural World in Early Medieval Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Sarah Foot
Sarah Foot*
Affiliation:
Christ Church, Oxford
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

      Noli pater
      Father do not allow thunder and lightning,
      Lest we be shattered by its fear and its fire.
      We fear you, the terrible one, believing there is none like you.
      All songs praise you throughout the host of angels.
      Let the summits of heaven, too, praise you with roaming lightning,
      O most loving Jesus, O righteous King of Kings.
      (Thomas Owen Clancy and Gilbert Márkus, Iona: The Earliest Poetry of a Celtic Monastery, 85)

Early medieval attitudes to the natural world were distinctly ambivalent. At one level the natural world represented the marvel of God’s creative power; filled with beauty, it supplied everything necessary for human existence, meriting praise, as in the hymn sung by the herdsman from Whitby, Cædmon:

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 46: God’s Bounty? The Churches and the Natural World , 2010 , pp. 15 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 5.24, ed. and trans. Colgrave, Bertram and Mynors, R. A. B., Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Oxford, 1969), 416–17.Google Scholar

2 The Wanderer, lines 102–105, ed. and trans. Hamer, Richard, A Choice of AngloSaxon Verse (London, 1970), 180–81.Google Scholar

3 Jolly, Karen, ‘Father God and Mother Earth: Nature-Mysticism in the AngloSaxon World’, in Salisbury, Joyce E, ed., The Medieval World of Nature: A Book of Essays (New York, 1993), 221–52, at 224–25Google Scholar. For discussion of the ‘discovery’ of nature in the twelfth-century renaissance, see Chenu, M.-D., ‘Nature and Man – the Renaissance of the Twelfth Century’, in Nature, Man and Society in the Twelfth Century: Essays on New Theological Perspectives in the Latin West, ed. and trans. Taylor, J. and Little, L. K. (Chicago, IL, 1968), 1–48.Google Scholar

4 Neville, Jennifer, Representations of the Natural World in Old English Poetry (Cambridge, 1999), 1–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Eckenrode, T. R., ‘The Growth of a Scientific Mind: Bede’s Early and Late Scientific Writings’, Downside Review 94 (1976), 197–212.Google Scholar

6 For discussion of the emergence of the term supernaturalis from the thirteenth century onwards, see Bartlett, Robert, The Natural and the Supernatural in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2008), 12–17.Google Scholar

7 Verses such as Ps. 19: 1; 24: 1; or 136: 4–9.

8 Augustine, , Enarrationes in psalmos 144.13, ed. Dekkers, D. E. and Fraipont, J., CChr SL 40 (Turnhout, 1956), 2098Google Scholar; quoted by Clancy, Thomas Owen and Márkus, Gilbert, lona:The Earliest Poetry of a Celtic Monastery (Edinburgh, 1995), 92.Google Scholar

9 De cursu stellarum ratio 9, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM 1.2 (Hanover, 1885), 860; trans. Nie, Giselle de, ‘The Spring, the Seed and the Tree: Gregory of Tours on the Wonders of Nature’, JMedH 11 (1985), 89–135, at 89.Google Scholar

10 De Nie,’The Spring’, 130–31.

11 Meyer, Kuno, Selections from Ancient Irish Poetry (London, 1911), xii–xiii.Google Scholar

12 Carney, James, Medieval Irish Lyrics (Dublin, 1967), 82–83 (no. 34).Google Scholar

13 Carney, , Medieval Irish Lyrics, 68–69 (no. 27, stanzas 5 and 9).Google Scholar

14 Buile Suibne, quoted by Clancy and Márkus, lona, 91.

15 Corráin, Donnchadh Ó, ‘Early Irish Hermit Poetry?’, in idem et al., eds, Sages, Saints and Story Tellers: Celtic Studies in Honour of Professor James Carney (Maynooth, 1989), 251–67, at 254.Google Scholar

16 Patrick Ford,’Blackbirds, Cuckoos, and Infixed Pronouns: Another Context for Early Irish Nature Poetry’, in Black, Ronald et al., eds, Celtic Connections: Proceedings of the 10th International Congress of Celtic Studies, I: Language, Literature, History, Culture (East Linton, 1999), 162–70.Google Scholar

17 O mea cella, in Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance, ed. and trans. Peter Godman (Norman, OK, 1985), no. 9, lines 1–5, 7–8 (124–25); see also Godman’s comments (18–19).

18 Ibid., lines 25–28.

19 Ibid., no. 13 (144–45); here, as Godman explained (20),’the nightingale, recalling a series of delicate analogies between Creator and creation, becomes symbolic of the relationship between man and God’.

20 Alcuin, Conflictus veris et hiemis: ibid., no. 14 (144–49); Sedulius Scottus,’Debate of the rose and the lily’: ibid., no. 45 (282–87).

21 Scottus,’Plea for patronage’: ibid., no. 46 (286–87).

22 Hugh, Magennis, Images of Community in Old English Poetry (Cambridge, 1996), 147–48.Google Scholar

23 Genesis A, lines 1512–17, 1560–61: trans. Barrar, Kathleen, ‘A Spacious, Green and Hospitable Land: Paradise in Old English Poetry’, BJRL 86.2 (2004), 105–25, at 112.Google Scholar See also Kabir, Ananya Jahanara, Paradise, Death and Domesday in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Cambridge 2001), 141–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Menologium, lines 205–207a, trans. Kemp Malone, ‘The Old English Calendar Poem’, in Bagby Atwood, E. and Hill, Archibald A., eds, Studies in Language, Literature, and Culture of the Middle Ages and Later (Austin, TX, 1969), 193–99, at 198.Google Scholar

25 Menologium, lines 90b-92a (195–96).

26 Ibid., lines 140b-143a (197).

27 The Old English Rune Poem, ed. and trans. Maureen Halsall (Toronto, ON, 1981), 92–93 (no. 24).

28 Ibid. 88–89.

29 Matt. 13: 3–9, 18–23.

30 Old English Rune Poem, no. 29, trans. Halsall, 92–93; for commentary, ibid. 160–63.

31 Anon, Life of St Cuthbert 2.5, ed. and trans. Colgrave, Bertram, Two Lives of St Cuthbert (Cambridge, 1940), 86–87.Google Scholar

32 Ibid. 3.5 (100–03).

33 Ibid. 2.3 (80–81). On this incident, see also, in this volume, Olga Gusakova, ‘A Saint and the Natural World: A Motif of Obedience in three early Anglo-Saxon Saints’ Lives’, 42–52.

34 Bitel, Lisa, Isle of the Saints: Monastic Settlement and Christian Community in Early Ireland (Ithaca, NY, 1990; paperback edn, Cork, 1993), 33–34.Google Scholar

35 Stephen, Life of Bishop Wilfrid, ch. 26, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave, The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanas (Cambridge,1927), 52–53.

36 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 4.13 (ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, 372–75).

37 Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum, ch. 67, trans. Dam, Raymond van, Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs (Liverpool, 1988), 91 Google Scholar; quoted by Giselle De Nie, ‘Caesarius of Arles and Gregory of Tours: Two Sixth-Century Gallic Bishops and Christian Magic’, in Edel, Doris, ed., Cultural Identity and Cultural Integration: Ireland and Europe in the Early Middle Ages (Dublin, 1995), 170–96, at 191.Google Scholar

38 Gregory of Tours, Vitae patrum 6.7, trans. James, Edward, Gregory of Tours: Life of the Fathers (Liverpool, 1985), 41 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; quoted by Flint, Valerie, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Oxford, 1991), 270.Google Scholar

39 Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum, ch. 23 (trans, van Dam, 42); quoted by Flint, The Rise of Magic, 268.

40 A sentiment encapsulated most succinctly in the Old English poem, The Fortunes of Men, which describes the birth of an infant and then states:‘God alone knows what, while the child grows, the winter will bring’ (lines 8—9), going on to list the various different fates that might befall the hapless adult;‘Such things are not man’s to control’ (line 14): Krapp, G. P. and Dobbie, E.V K., eds, The Exeter Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3 (NewYork, 1936), 154.Google Scholar

41 Bailey, Terence, The Processions of Samm and the Western Church (Toronto, ON, 1971). 94–97. 128–31.Google Scholar

42 Flint, Rise of Magic, 189.

43 Bartlett, Natural and Supernatural, 51–70.

44 The Annals of Ulster (to AD 1131), s.a. 692, ed. Seán Mac Airt and Gearóid Mac Niocaill (Dublin, 1983), 154—55; also recorded in the Chronnicon Scotorum, Annals of Tigernach and Annals of Clonmacnoise: Aidan Breen and Daniel McCarthy, ‘Astro nomical Observations in the Irish Annals and their Motivation,’ Peritia II (1997), 1–43, at 13.

45 Annals of Ulster, s.a. 735 (ed. Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill, 188–89); also recorded in the Annals of Tigernach in the same year: Breen and McCarthy,’Astronomical Observations’, 13.

46 Listed and discussed by Breen and McCarthy, ‘Astronomical Observations’, 10–19.

47 For this early Irish interest in the workings of nature, see Smyth, Marina, Understanding the Universe in Seventh-Century Ireland (Woodbridge, 1997).Google Scholar

48 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, s.a. 776, trans. Whitelock, Dorothy, EHD I, c. 500–1042, 2nd edn (London, 1979), no. 1. All further references to this work cite Whitelock’s translation and follow her corrected dates.Google Scholar

49 Annals of Fulda, s.a. 889, trans. Timothy Reuter (Manchester, 1994), 118.

50 Royal Frankish Annals, s.a. 822, 824, trans. Scholz, Bernard Walter, Carolingian Chronicles (Ann Arbor, Ml, 1972), 110, 117; Astronomer, Life of Louis the Pious, ch. 42.4 Google Scholar, trans. Cabaniss, Allen, Son of Charlemagne: A Contemporary Life of Louis the Pious (Syracuse, NY, 1961)Google Scholar; Ashley, Scott, ‘The Power of Symbols: Interpreting Portents in the Carolingian Empire’, Medieval History 4 (1994), 34—50, at 37.Google Scholar

51 Ashley,‘Power of Symbols’, 37.

52 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, s.a. 793 (MSS D and E).

53 The earliest comment came from Alcuin, the English cleric at Charlemagne’s court in letters to the king of Northumbria and to the Bishop of Lindisfarne written after the attack in June: trans. Whitelock, EHD I, nos 193–94.

54 Annals of Ulster, s.a. 664 (ed. Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill, 134–35).

55 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 3.27, 4.1, 5.24 (ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, 310–11, 328–29, 564–65); cf. Bede, Chronica minora, s.a. 664, ed. Mommsen, T., Chronica minora saec. IV, V VI, VII, MGH AA 12 (Berlin, 1898), 313; Chronica majora, s.a. 664: ibid. Compare also Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, s.a. 664. (MSS A, B and C):‘In this year there was an eclipse of the sun and Eorcenberht, king of the people of Kent died. … And the same year there was a great pestilence’; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, s.a. 664 (MS E):‘In this year there was an eclipse of the sun on 3 May, and in this year a great pestilence came to the island of Britain, and in that pestilence Bishop Tuda died … And Eorcenberht king of the people of Kent died’.Google Scholar

56 McCarthy and Breen, ‘Astronomical Observations’, 29.

57 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 3.29 (ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, 318–21); McCarthy and Breen, ‘Astronomical Observations’, 29–30.

58 McCarthy and Breen, ‘Astronomical Observations’, 28–29.

59 Woods, David, ‘An Earthquake in Britain in 664?’, Peritia 19 (2005), 256–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

60 Bartlett, Natural and Supernatural, 51–70.

61 Einhard, Life of Charlemagne, ch. 32, trans. Dutton, Paul, Carolingian Civilization: A Reader, 2nd edn (Peterborough, ON, 2004), 46–47; Ashley,‘Power of Symbols’, 38.Google Scholar

62 Astronomer, Life of Louis the Pious, ch. 37.2 (trans. Cabaniss, 77); cf. Royal Frankish Annals, s.a. 823 (and 825 for the end of the girl’s fast) (trans. Scholz, 114, 118).

63 Astronomer, Life of Louis the Pious, ch. 58.1 – 58.2 (trans. Cabaniss, 112–14).

64 Lupus of Ferrières, letter to Altuin, monk at St Alban’s, near Mainz, trans. Regenos, Graydon W., The Letters of Lupus of Ferrières (The Hague,1966), 23 (no. 8).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

65 Einhard, letter to the Emperor Louis, after June 837, trans. Dutton, , Carolingian Civilization (Broadview, ON, 1993), 301 Google Scholar. Cf. Annals of Xanten, s.a. 837, ed. Bernhard von Simson, MGH SRG 12 (Hanover, 1909), 10:‘An enormous whirlwind kept breaking out and a comet was seen, sending out a great heat trail to the east which to human eyes looked as if it was three cubits long. And the heathen ravaged Walcheren, from where they carried off many women as captives, along with a huge amount of treasure of various kinds.’

66 Astronomer, Life of Louis the Pious, ch. 58.1 – 58.2 (trans. Cabaniss, 112–14).

67 Ibid., ch. 62.3 (trans. Cabaniss, 121); Ashley,‘Power of Symbols’, 41–45.

68 Caesarius of Arles, Sermon 13, ed. and French trans. Delage, M.-J., Sermons au peuple par Césaire d’Arles, SC 175 (Paris, 1971), 426–27; cited by Bartlett, Natural and Supernatural, 54–55. And compare also Bartlett’s discussion of the sermons of Hrabanus Maurus in the 820s: ibid. 56–58.Google Scholar

69 Bartlett, Natural and Supernatural, 55. Compare also the so-called Iudiculus superstitionum (a list of superstitions and pagan practices apparendy compiled in the circle of the Anglo-Saxon missionary Boniface in the 740s), §21:‘Of the eclipse of the moon – what they call “Triumph, Moon!”’, trans. Dutton, , Carolingian Civilization, 2nd edn, 3 (no. 1)Google Scholar;Alain Dierkens,‘Superstitions, christianisme et paganisme à la fin de l’époque mérovingienne: A propos de I’Indiculus superstitionum et paganiarum, MS. Vat. Pal. lat. 577, fol. 7’, in Hasquin, Hervé, ed., Magie, sorcellerie, parapsychologie (Brussels, 1984), 9—26.Google Scholar

70 Bartlett, Natural and Supernatural, 57–58.

71 Liuzza, Roy M., ‘What the Thunder Said: Anglo-Saxon Brontologies and the Problem of Sources’, Review of English Studies ns 55, no. 218(2004), 1–23, at 8–11.Google Scholar

72 Gregory of Tours, Histories 10.30, trans. Thorpe, Lewis, Gregory of Tours: The History of the Franks (Harmondsworth,1974), 592–93.Google Scholar

73 Annals of Xanten, s.a. 873 (ed. von Simson, 33).

74 Hanska, Jussi, Strategies of Sanity and Survival: Religious Responses to Natural Disasters in the Middle Ages, Studia Fennica Historica 2 (Helsinki, 2002), 10–12.Google Scholar

75 Neville, Jennifer, ‘The Seasons in Old English Poetry’, in Carruthers, Léo, ed., La Ronde des Saisons, Cultures et civilisations médiévales 16 (Paris, 1998), 37–49, at 37.Google Scholar

76 McCormick, Michael, Dutton, Paul Edward and Mayewski, Paul A., ‘Volcanoes and the Climate Forcing of Carolingian Europe, A.D. 750–950’, Speculum 82 (2007), 865–95. The years in question were 763–64, 821–22, 823–24, 855–56, 859–60, 873–74, 913,927–28,939–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

77 Ibid. 878.

78 Ibid.

79 AElfric, De temporibus anni 4.36–40, ed. H. Henel, EETS os 213 (London, 1942), 36; Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion, ed. P. S. Baker and M. Lapidge, EETS ss 15 (Oxford, 1995), 12, 112; both cited by Anderson, Earl R, ‘The Seasons of the Year in Old English’, Anglo-Saxon England 26 (1997), 231–63, at 231–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

80 Indiculus superstitiomim, trans. Dutton, Carolingian Civilization, 2nd edn, 3—4 (no. 1); Dierkens,‘Superstitions’.

81 Agobard, De grandine et tonitruis, eh. I, trans. Dutton, , Carolingian Civilization, 2nd edn, 220 (no. 33).Google Scholar

82 Ibid. chs. 2–3 (221).

83 Ibid. ch. 7 (221). See Paul Dutton, ‘Thunder and Hail over the Carolingian Countryside’, in Sweeney, Del, ed., Agriculture in the Middle Ages: Technology, Practice, and Representation (Philadelphia, PA, 1995), III—37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

84 Gregory of Tours, Histories 10.30, trans. Thorpe, 592–93. Cf. ibid. 4.5 (199–200: Rogations instituted by St Gall during Lent in response to plague); 9.21 (510: plague at Marseilles, spread to Lyons but averted through Rogations).

85 Adomnán, Life of St Columba 2.44, trans. Sharpe, Richard, Adomnán of Iona: Life of St Columba (London, 1995), 199–200; Flint, Rise of Magic, 187.Google Scholar

86 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 4.3 (ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, 342–43); McCready, William D., Miracles and the Venerable Bede (Toronto, ON, 1994), 25.Google Scholar

87 Cf. Annals of Fulda, s.a. 873 (trans. Reuter, 71), describing the ‘worms like locusts’ in considerable detail, the damage they did in Germany and in Italy, and the consequent famine in both places.

88 Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, 2.4, trans. Fouke, W. D., History of the Langobards, by Paul the Deacon (Philadelphia, PA, 1907), 56–58 Google Scholar; quoted in full by Maddicott, J. R., ‘Plague in Seventh-Century England’, P&P, no. 156(1997), 7–54, at 36.Google Scholar

89 Maddicott,‘Plague’, 11.

90 Bede, Life of Cuthbert, ch. 8 (ed. and trans. Colgrave, 180–81); Adomnán, Life of Columba 2.46 (trans. Sharpe, 203); Maddicott, ‘Plague’, 14.

91 Gregory, Histories 4.5,31; 5.34:6.14; 8.17 (trans. Lewis, 199–200,225–26,296,346, 449); Maddicott,‘Plague’, 18; McCready, Miracles, 27.

92 Adomnán, Life of Columba 2.46 (trans. Sharpe, 203); Maddicott,‘Plague’, 18.

93 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 4.7–8 (ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, 356–59); Bede, Life of Cuthbert, ch. 27 (ed. and trans. Colgrave, 246–49).

94 Maddicott, ‘Plague’, 19–20.

95 Bede, Life of Cuthbert, ch. 33 (ed. and trans. Colgrave, 258–61); Maddicott, ‘Plague’, 37–38.

96 Calvin B. Kendall, ‘Imitation and the Venerable Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica’, in King, Margot and Stevens, Wesley, eds, Saints, Scholars, and Heroes, 2 vols (Collegeville, MN, 1979), 1: 161–90, at 180; Magennis, Images of Community, 129.Google Scholar

97 Augustine,‘Sermon on Matthew’ 11.25–26, ed. Morin, G., Sancti Augustini sermones post Maurinos reperti (Rome, 1930), 360; trans. Neville, Representations, 165–66.Google Scholar

98 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 4.3 (ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, 342–45).

99 Bede, On Ezra and Nehemiah 10.9, trans. Scott de Gregorio (Liverpool, 2006), 145–46; cf. McCready, Miracles, 25–26.

100 Gregory, Homilies on the Gospels, book I, homily 1.5, ed. Raymond Etaix, CChr SL 141 (Turnhout, 1999), 9 (trans. Robert Markus, A., Gregory the Great and his World (Cambridge, 1997), 51); cf. Luke 21: 25–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

101 Neville,‘The Seasons’, 44—48.

102 Graham D. Caie, The Old English Poem Judgement Day II (Woodbridge, 2000), 84–85.