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DRYHTHELM'S DESIRE: COMPUNCTION AND BEDE'S CELESTIAL TOPOGRAPHY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2018

ERIK CARLSON
ERIK CARLSON*
Affiliation:
University of Arkansas, Fort Smith
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Abstract

Modern critics usually read the vision of Dryhthelm as an account of a man frightened into penitential asceticism even though Bede explains that Dryhthelm lived out his days in the desire for heaven, not fear of punishment. While fear is an important part of Dryhthelm's conversion, Bede depicts the process according to the doctrine of compunction as it is received from Gregory the Great, who presents compunction as a process by which fear of punishment yields to love and the desire for heaven. Reading the conversion of Dryhthelm as a process of Gregorian compunction reveals both Bede's fundamental optimism about the vision Dryhthelm has seen and a spirituality in the text that is more nuanced and positive than the fire and ice that figure so prominently in it. Proceeding from these observations, the paper argues that the celestial topography of Dryhthelm's vision is a spiritual topography — a map of personal and emotional progress through compunction, as understood by Gregory the Great and received by Bede, and only incidentally a map of celestial regions deemed logically necessary by later theologians. These conclusions complicate hellfire and brimstone readings of this and other Anglo-Saxon texts about judgment and penance, and they call for nuanced readings of compunction as a complex and productive experience.

Keywords

BedeDryhthelmvisionspiritualitycompunctionfear
Type
Research Article
Information
Traditio , Volume 73 , 2018 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © Fordham University 2018 

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Footnotes

For their comments on various stages of this project, I would like to thank Andrew Scheil, Andrew Rabin, Kevin Jones, and Francesco Tarelli. Any deficiencies in it belong to the author alone.

References

1 All references to the text of Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum are to Bertram Colgrave and Mynors, R. A. B., eds. and trans., Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Oxford, 1969)Google Scholar, hereafter abbreviated in the text as Ecclesiastical History and in notes as HE. All translations of this and other texts are mine unless otherwise noted.

2 Dinzelbacher, Peter, Vision und Visionsliteratur im Mittelalter (Stuttgart, 1981), 136–37Google Scholar, 149, 199–203; Carozzi, Claude, Le voyage de l’âme dans l'au-delà d'après la littérature latine: Ve–XIIIe siècle (Rome, 1994), 194–226Google Scholar; Zaleski, Carol, Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times (Oxford, 1987), 28–32Google Scholar.

3 Whether Dryhthelm's vision of souls being tried and castigated with tortures of fire and ice constitutes an account of Purgatory is a matter of critical debate. Le Goff concedes that purgation is at work but does not accept this passage as pertinent to the later doctrine: Le Goff, Jacques, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Goldhammer, Arthur (Chicago, 1984), 115–16Google Scholar. See, however, Forbes, Helen Foxhall, “‘Diuiduntur in Quattuor’: The Interim Judgement in Anglo-Saxon England,” Journal of Theological Studies 61 (2010): 659–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 668; Moreira, Isabel, Heaven's Purge: Purgatory in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially chap. 6, “Purgatory and Bede and Boniface”; Cardoso, Ciro Flamarion, “O Purgatorio no mundo de Beda,” Signum: Revista da ABREM; Assoçião Brasiliera de Estudos Medievais 5 (2001): 47–71Google Scholar, at 60–63; Bedingfield, M. Bradford, “Anglo-Saxons on Fire,” Journal of Theological Studies 52 (2001): 658–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 663; Foot, Sarah, “Anglo-Saxon ‘Purgatory,’” in The Church, the Afterlife, and the Fate of the Soul, ed. Clarke, Peter and Claydon, Tony (Woodbridge, 2009), 87–96Google Scholar, at 88–89; Kabir, Ananya, Paradise, Death, and Doomsday (Cambridge, 2001), 90–91Google Scholar. See also Miller, Linda, “Dryhthelm's Journey to the Other World: Bede's Literary Uses of Tradition,” Comitatus 2 (1971): 3–15Google Scholar.

4 See Colgrave, Bertram, “Bede's Miracle Stories,” in Bede, His Life, Times, and Writings, ed. Thompson, A. H. (New York, 1932; repr. 1966), 201–29Google Scholar; Mayr-Harting, Henry, “Bede's Patristic Thinking as an Historian,” in Religion and Society in the Medieval West (Burlington, VT, 1994; repr. 2010), 367–74Google Scholar; Ward, Benedicta, “Miracles and History: A Reconsideration of the Miracle Stories Used by Bede,” in Famulus Christi: Essays in Commemoration of the Thirteenth Centenary of the Birth of the Venerable Bede, ed. Bonner, Gerald (London, 1976), 70–76Google Scholar, at 73.

5 Davidse, Jan, “On Bede as Christian Historian,” in Houwen, L. A. J. R. and MacDonald, A. A., eds., Beda Venerabilis: Historian, Monk, & Northumbrian (Groningen, 1996), 1–15Google Scholar; Roger Ray, “Bede, the Exegete, as Church Historian,” in Famulus Christi, 125–40, at 126.

6 Walterspacher, Ralph, “Book V of Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum: Perspectives on Salvation History and Eschatology,” Archa Verbi 1 (2004): 11–24Google Scholar. Cf. Ray, “Bede the Exegete,” 126.

7 Foot, “Anglo-Saxon Purgatory,” 87. See also Miller, “Dryhthelm's Journey,” 13; Walterspacher, “Book V of Bede's Historia,” 16.

8 Foot, “Anglo-Saxon Purgatory,” 87 and 88.

9 Walterspacher, “Book V of Bede's Historia,” 17.

10 Keskiaho, Jesse, Dreams and Visions in the Early Middle Ages: The Reception and Use of Patristic Ideas, 400–900 (Cambridge, 2015), 65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 “Haec et alia, quae uiderat, idem uir Domini, non omnibus passim desidiosis ac uitae suae incuriosis referre uolebat, sed illis solummodo, qui uel tormentorum metu perterriti, uel spe gaudiorum perennium delectati profectum pietatis ex eius verbis haurire volebant.” HE 5.12.

12 “Infatigabili caelestium bonorum desiderio.” HE 5.12.

13 “Examinandae et castigandae sunt animae illorum, qui differentes confiteri et emendare scelera quae fecerunt, in ipso tandem mortis articulo ad paenitentiam confugiunt, et sic de corpore exeunt.” HE 5.12.

14 Dinzelbacher underscores the proximity of the two intermediary zones by tracing Dryhthelm's passage between them in Vision und Visionsliteratur (n. 2 above), 149. See also Sarah Foot, “Anglo-Saxon Purgatory” (n. 3 above), 89–90; Carozzi, Le Voyage de l’âme (n. 2 above), 233.

15 Rowley, Sharon, “The Role and Function of Otherworldly Visions in Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum,” in The World of Travellers: Exploration and Imagination, ed. Dekker, Kees, Olsen, Karin, and Hofstra, Tette (Leuven, 2009), 163–81Google Scholar, at 165.

16 Rabin, Andrew, “Bede, Dryhthelm, and the Witness to the Other World,” Modern Philology 106 (2009): 375–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 377, 379 n. 10, 389–92.

17 Rabin, “Bede, Dryhthelm, and the Witness to the Other World,” 389.

18 The necessary starting point is Hausherr, Irénée, Penthos: The Doctrine of Compunction in the Christian East, trans. Hustader, Anselm (Kalamazoo, 1982)Google Scholar; this is the most comprehensive treatment available of compunction in patristic thought. For a more recent account and a survey of intervening scholarship, see Stewart, Columba, Cassian the Monk (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar. Also see McEntire, Sandra, The Doctrine of Compunction in Medieval England: Holy Tears (Lampeter, 1990), 22–23Google Scholar; Petersen, Joan M., The Dialogues of Gregory the Great in Their Late Antique Cultural Background (Toronto, 1984), 160–64Google Scholar; Gillet, Robert, “Grégoire le Grand,” in Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique, doctrine et histoire 7 (1994), 893–94Google Scholar.

19 As McEntire (Doctrine of Compunction, 4) observes, western scholars too frequently give compunction a small part in the later doctrine of contrition. For a succinct account of this difficulty, see Gerrits, G. H., Inter Timorem et Spem: A Study of the Theological Thought of Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen (1367–1398) (Leiden, 1986), 178–79Google Scholar n. 103; see also Carroll, M. T. A., The Venerable Bede: His Spiritual Teaching (Washington, DC, 1946), 162–64Google Scholar, particularly n. 148.

20 The identity of John Cassian, and therefore the authorship of his works, has recently been questioned by Tzamalikos, Panayiotis in A Newly Discovered Greek Father: Cassian the Sabaite Eclipsed by John Cassian of Marseilles (Leiden, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and The Real Cassian Revisited: Monastic Life, Greek Paideia, and Origenism in the 6th Century (Leiden, 2012). However, reviewers identify crippling flaws in his argument: see Stewart, Columba, “Another Cassian?,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 66 (2015): 372–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Cassiday's, Augustine review in Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies 3 (2014): 119–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Columba Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 122–29. Gregory's preeminence as the “doctor of compunction” is noted at 123. Jean Leclercq acknowledges Gregory's mark on the western understanding of compunction by titling the second chapter of Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture (New York, 1974) “St. Gregory, Doctor of Desire.” The importance of Gregory's teaching, and particularly Dialogues 3.34, is noted by Emily Thornbury, in “Aldhelm's Rejection of the Muses and the Mechanics of Poetic Inspiration in Anglo-Saxon England,” Anglo-Saxon England 88 (2007): 71–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 86–87. James Palmer outlines compunction in Anglo-Saxon England not inaccurately but less satisfactorily with reference to Defensor's Liber scintillarum and Climacus's Ladder of Divine Ascent, both of which reach England comparatively late: see his “Compunctio and the Heart in the Old English Poem The Wanderer,” Neophilologus 88 (2004): 447–60. On the late arrival of Climacus's works to the Latin tradition, see Völker, Walther, Scala Paradisi: Eine Studie zu Johannees Climacus und zugleich eine Vorstudie zu Symeon dem neuen Theologen (Wiesbaden, 1968), 8Google Scholar; also see Heppell, Muriel, “The Latin Translation of the Ladder of Divine Ascent of John Climacus,” Mediterranean Historical Review 4 (1989): 340–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Carroll, Venerable Bede, 162–64. Bede's interest in Gregory has been widely observed. For a recent discussion and survey of scholarly tradition, see De Gregorio, Scott, “The Venerable Bede and Gregory the Great: Exegetical Connections, Spiritual Departures,” Early Medieval Europe 18 (2010): 43–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 All references are to Adelbert de Vogüé, ed., Gregoire Le Grande: Dialogues, SC 251, 260, 265 (Paris, 1978), hereafter abbreviated Dialogues and referred to with book and chapter numbers.

24 Dialogues 3.34. “In truth there are principally two kinds of compunction, because the soul thirsting for God is first pierced by fear and afterwards by love. For first, it afflicts itself with tears because, when it mulls over its evils, on their account it fears to endure eternal punishment. But truly when dread has been consumed by the long anxiety of mourning, then a certain security is born of the anticipation of pardon, and the spirit is inflamed with the love of heavenly joys, and he who first wept lest he be led to punishment, afterwards begins to weep most bitterly because he is kept waiting for the kingdom. And indeed the mind contemplates what choirs of angels might be, what very society of blessed spirits, what majesty of the inward vision of God, and laments the more because it fails to obtain perennial goods than it previously wept when it feared eternal evils. And thus it happens that the completed compunction of fear hands over the spirit to the compunction of love.”

25 Scholarship tends to emphasize certain parts of this process at the expense of Gregory's synthesis, and the result sometimes misrepresents the process. Christopher Vaccaro argues cogently in agreement with Sandra McEntire for translating Old English onbryrdnes as compunction, but appears to conflate compunctio amoris/dilectionis with the hypernym compunctio cordis in a misreading of Aelfric in “Inbryrded Breostsefa: Compunction in Line 841a of Cynewulf's Elene,” Notes and Queries 52 (2005): 160–61, at 161. James Palmer quotes Leclercq's explanation that compunctio cordis tends to become compunctio dilectionis without noting Leclercq's move from hypernym to hyponym and elision of the compunction of fear; this does not disrupt his argument about the emotional force of The Wanderer, but in its emphasis on desire, it provides an imbalanced summary of the doctrine of compunction (“Compunctio and the Heart,” 449).

26 Moralia 32.3. “Therefore [the mind] is carried up above itself when it contemplates heavenly things; and, now observing itself more freely by rising above itself, whatever remains of it outside itself, below, it more accurately perceives… . Hence it is that often our mind, however much it may grow numb, frigid in the activity of human affairs, however much it may offend in or be ignorant of certain things, however much it may weigh certain sins as nothing, nevertheless, when it raises itself up through the compunction of prayer to earnestly desire heavenly things, it returns after weeping incited to examine itself more attentively with the eye of its compunction.”

27 All references to Bede's homilies are to Hurst, D., ed., Bedae Venerabilis Homeliarum Evangelii Libri II, CCL 122 (Turnhout, 1955)Google Scholar, hereafter referred to by series, number, and line. The current reference is to Homilies 1.9.168–71. “The contemplative life, however, is when someone taught by long exercise of good work, instructed by the sweetness of long prayer, accustomed to frequent compunction of tears, has learned to be free from all the business of the world and turn the eye of the mind to love alone, and may have begun to gain a foretaste of the joy of perpetual blessedness which he is to obtain in the future life by ardently desiring it in the present, and sometimes even, insofar as is appropriate to mortals, by seeing it in the ecstasy of the mind.” André Crépin notes this moment in his introduction to a recent edition of the Ecclesiastical History: Lapidge, Michael, ed., Histoire ecclésiastique du peuple anglais, trans. Monat, Pierre and Robin, Philippe, 3 vols., SC 489, 490, and 491 (Paris, 2005), 1:24Google Scholar. In line 166 Hurst gives “a cunstis mundi negotiis,” though cunctis is certainly meant, as recorded by Giles, J. A., The Miscellaneous Works of Venerable Bede, 6 vols. (London, 1843), 5:263Google Scholar.

28 “Non tamen ea mihi, qua ante consueram, conuersatione sed multum dissimili ex hoc tempore uiuendum est.” HE 5.12.

29 “I have seen colder things.” HE 5.12.

30 Lawrence Martin recognizes Bede's interest in compunction in this passage and connects it to Moralia 32.3, noting that Bede connects the two birds with “two stages in the psychological process of repentance” and notes that it is “quite different” from Gregory's interpretation of the sacrifice, which is based on those of Augustine and Jerome. See his chapter “Bede and Preaching” in Cambridge Companion to Bede, ed. Scott De Gregorio (Cambridge, 2010), 156–69, at 167. See also the discussion of this passage in Martin's introduction to his book Gospel Homilies (Kalamazoo, 1991). An “echo” of Gregory in this passage is noted by Scott De Gregorio, Innovation and Tradition in the Writings of the Venerable Bede (Morgantown, WV, 2006), 190–91; De Gregorio also notes Martin's attention to the resemblance. It is noteworthy, however, that Bede's passage duplicates the language of Dialogues 3.34 directly.

31 In Hurst's edition, the verb is sentiens, “feeling,” which reflects the majority of the manuscripts he uses, but he notes the presence of sitiens, “thirsting,” in three manuscripts of early insular origin or character. De Vogüé records sitiens, “thirsting” in this setting in Dialogues 3.34. Both the textual tradition and the metaphorical character of sitiens, in light of lectio difficilior, recommend it here.

32 Homilies 1.18.173–92. “For there are two kinds of compunction by which those faithful to the Lord offer themselves on the altar of the heart, because certainly, just as we have received it from the words of the fathers, the soul thirsting for God is first pierced by fear and afterwards by love. For first it afflicts itself in tears because, when it mulls over its evils, on their account it fears to endure eternal punishment, which is to present one turtle or young dove as an offering for sin. But when dread has been consumed by the long anxiety of mourning, then a certain security is born of the anticipation of pardon, and the spirit is inflamed with the love of heavenly joys, and he who first wept lest he be led to punishment afterwards begins to weep most bitterly because he is kept waiting for the kingdom, which is to make a sacrifice of the other turtle or young dove.”

33 De Gregorio, Scott, “Affective Spirituality: Theory and Practice in Bede and Alfred the Great,” Essays in Medieval Studies 22 (2005): 129–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 132.

34 “Many things … to be abhorred or desired … either terrified by the fear of torments, or delighted by the hope of eternal joys.” HE 5.12.

35 “Ad excitationem uiuentium de morte animae.” HE 5.12; Rowley, “The Role and Function of Otherworldly Visions” (n. 15 above), at 171, 181.

36 “Terrified by such a horrifying spectacle.” HE 5.12.

37 HE 5.12.

38 I am not aware of a reading that locates the pleasant zone on top of the wall. However, Bede's text seems to require this interpretation: “cum ergo peruenissemus ad murum, statim nescio quo ordine fuimus in summitate eius. Et ecce ibi campus erat latissimus ac laetissimus.” No mention is made of descending or looking down from the wall, and the emphatic introduction of the field suggests that its situation is surprising.

39 “Contemplatur etenim mens qui sint illi angelorum chori, quae ipsa societas beatorum spirituum, quae maiestas internae visionis Dei.” Dialogues 3.34.

40 “I see before us a much greater grace of light than before.” HE 5.12.

41 HE 5.12.

42 “I hated to return to my body, truly delighted by the sweetness and beauty of that place I had looked at, and also the fellowship of them whom I saw in it.” HE 5.12.

43 “Thus he subdued his old body between daily fasts until the day of his calling [away, i.e. death] in the indefatigable desire for heavenly goods.” HE 5.12.

44 As a result of compunction, the soul “amplius plangit quia a bonis perennibus deest, quam flebat prius cum mala aeterna metuebat. Sicque fit, ut perfecta conpunctio formidinis tradat animum conpunctioni dilectionis.” Dialogues 3.34.

45 Bede, Homilies 1.18.182 and Dialogues 3.34 (nn. 33 and 24 above, respectively).

46 Straw, Carol, Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection (Berkeley, 1988), 229–35Google Scholar.

47 “These and other things which he had seen, he did not care to relate randomly to all the slothful or those negligent of his life, but only to those who, whether terrified by fear of torments or delighted by the hope of eternal joys, wished to drink up an advancement of piety from his words.” HE 5.12.

48 “Asked because of a desire for compunction.” HE 3.19.

49 HE 5.12.

50 “A memorable miracle, and like those of old.” HE 5.12. McReady, William D, Miracles and the Venerable Bede (Toronto, 1994), 179Google Scholar.

51 Rabin, “Bede, Dryhthelm, and the Witness to the Other World” (n. 15 above), 393.

52 Leclercq, Love of Learning and the Desire for God (n. 21 above), 72–73. See 29–32 for Leclercq's definition of compunction, which is a theme of the whole book. His discussion of the Canticum Canticorum on 84–86 is particularly illuminating.

53 “Audio subitum post terga sonitum inmanissimi fletus ac miserrimi.” HE 5.12.

54 “Aspicio ante nos multo maiorem luminis gratiam quam prius.” HE 5.12.

55 “Multum detestatus sum reuerti ad corpus, delectatus nimirum suauitate ac decore loci illius, quem intuebar, simul et consortio eorum, quos in illo uidebam. Nec tamen aliquid ductorem meum rogare audebam; sed inter haec nescio quo ordine repente me inter homines uiuere cerno.” HE 5.12.

56 See nn. 2 and 3 above.

57 See Paul Meyvaert, “Bede the Scholar,” in Famulus Christi (n. 4 above), 40–69; Biggs, Frederick, “Bede's Use of Augustine: Echoes from Some Sermons?” Revue bénédictine 108 (1998): 201–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 202; Ward, Benedicta, “Bede the Theologian,” in The Medieval Theologians, ed. Evans, G. R. (Oxford, 2001), 57–64Google Scholar, at 57 and 60; Kelly, Joseph, “Augustine and Bede on the Gospel,” in Congresso internazionale su S. Agostino nel XVI Centenario della conversione, 3 vols. (Rome, 1986), 3:159–65Google Scholar, at 160–61; Scott De Gregorio, “The Venerable Bede and Gregory the Great” (n. 21 above).

58 Seymour, St. John D., “The Eschatology of the Early Irish Church,” Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 14 (1926): 179–211Google Scholar, at 191–97, particularly 196.

59 The angel refers to the souls in pain as those “qui tamen, quia confessionem et paenitentiam uel in morte habuerunt, omnes in dies iudicii ad regnum caelorum perueniunt.” HE 5.12.

60 Carol Zaleski describes the episode as “a manifesto for Benedictine Monasticism, ascetic discipline, and masses for the dead” in Otherworld Journeys (n. 2 above), 32. Also see Ananya Kabir, Paradise, Death, and Doomsday (n. 3 above), 47–48, 106.

61 See Kabir, Paradise, Death, and Doomsday, 97. Kabir speculates that Bede's account is a “direct response” to Boniface's account of the Monk of Wenlock, which she in turn regards as dependent on the Prognosticon of Julian of Toledo (97, 102). The argument proceeds from this speculation, cautiously advanced, to assertions of influence founded on it: these, in turn, are presented as evidence that “confirms both this dependence [of Bede on Boniface] and their divergent approaches towards the ideas conveyed in the Prognosticon.” This begs the question. Helen Foxhall Forbes refutes Kabir's reading of the Prognosticon and rejects it as a potential source: see Foxhall Forbes, “Diuiduntur in Quattuor” (n. 3 above), at 3–4.

62 Moreira, Heaven's Purge (n. 3 above), 162; Foxhall Forbes, “Diuiduntur in Quattuor,” 10–13.

63 Rabin, “Bede, Dryhthelm, and the Witness to the Other World,” 389.

64 On the permeability of this boundary, see Dinzelbacher, Vision und Visionsliteratur (n. 2 above), 149. Also see Foot, “Anglo-Saxon Purgatory” (n. 3 above), 89–90; Carozzi, Le Voyage de l’âme (n. 2 above), 233.

65 “On the day of judgment, they all will reach the kingdom of Heaven. The prayers of the living, and almsgivings, and fasting, and most of all the celebration of masses, help many to be liberated even before the day of judgment.” HE 5.12.

66 “In … contrition of mind and body.” HE 5.12.

67 “In the indefatigable desire for heavenly goods.” HE 5.12.

68 “For the calling of the living out from the death of the soul.” HE 5.12.