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Holofernes's head: tacen and teaching in the Old English Judith

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Ann W. Astell
Ann W. Astell
Affiliation:
Purdue University, Indiana
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Extract

Ælfric's On the Old and New Testament includes a brief synopsis of the story of Judith, the Hebrew widow who decapitated the Assyrian general, Holofernes. In it, Ælfric refers his friend Sigeweard to an English version of the Liber Judith which has been written ‘eow mannum to bysne, þæt ge eowerne eard mid wæmnum bewerian wiþ onwinnendne here’. Ælfric thus defines the tropology or moral lesson of the Judith story as a timely call to men such as Sigeweard to resist the invading army of Danes. Most scholars agree that Ælfric is alluding to his own homily about Judith (‘on ure wisan gesett’), not the Old English poem celebrating the same heroine. Nevertheless many have held that Anglo-Saxon auditors of the poem derived the militaristic moral from it that Ælfric draws from the poem's biblical source.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 18 , December 1989 , pp. 117 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

1 Ælfric, , ‘Letter to Sigeweard’, The Old English Version of the Heptateuch, ed. Crawford, S.J., EETS OS 160 (1922), 48.Google Scholar

2 See Assmann, B., ‘Abt Ælfric's angelsächsische Homilie über das Buch Judith’, Anglia 10 (1888), 76–104, andGoogle ScholarPringle, I., ‘Judith: the Homily and the Poem’, Traditio 31 (1975), 85–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 See Wrenn, C.L., A Study of Old English Literature (London, 1967), p. 181;Google ScholarFoster, T.G., Judith: Studies in Meter, Language and Style, Quellen und Forschungen 71 (Strassburg, 1892), 90–103; andCrossRefGoogle ScholarWardale, E.E., Chapters on Old English Literature (New York, 1965), esp. pp. 215–17.Google ScholarThey suggest that the poem was written in honour of Æthelflæd, the widow of Æthelred of Mercia, who successfully led the Mercian troops against the Danes between 915 and 918. For a more cautious view, see Sisam, K., Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford, 1953), p. 67.Google Scholar

4 See Beowulf and Judith, ed. Dobbie, E.V.K., ASPR 4 (New York, 1953), lxii–lxivGoogle Scholarand Judith, ed. Timmer, B.J., rev. 2nd ed. (Exeter, 1978), pp. 6–11.Google ScholarSee now also Wenisch, F., ‘Judith–eine westsächsische Dichtung?’ Anglia 100 (1982), 273–300.Google Scholar

5 Pringle, ‘Homily and Poem’, p. 92.

6 Cf. Judith, ed. Timmer, p. 8.

7 See Woolf, R., ‘The Lost Opening to the Judith’, MLR 50 (1955), 168–72;CrossRefGoogle ScholarAnderson, G.K., The Literature of the Anglo-Saxons, 2nd ed. (New York, 1966), p. 134;CrossRefGoogle ScholarCampbell, J.J., ‘Schematic Technique in Judith’, ELH 38 (1971), 155–72;CrossRefGoogle ScholarDoubleday, J., ‘The Principle of Contrast in Judith’, NM 72 (1971), 436–41;Google Scholarand Huppé, B.F., The Web of Words (Albany, NY, 1970), pp. 157 and 173 and passim.Google Scholar

8 See Chamberlain, D., ‘Judith: a Fragmentary and Political Poem’, Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Essays in Appreciation for John C. McGalliard, ed. Nicholson, L.E. and Frese, D.W. (Notre Dame, IN, 1975), pp. 135–59, at 156.Google Scholar

9 Cf. Judith, ed. Timmer, , p. 8, and Sleeth, C.R., Studies in ‘Christ and Satan’, McMaster OE Stud. and Texts 3 (Toronto, 1982), p. 72.Google Scholar

10 Pringle is, I believe, the only critic who has attempted to harmonize the allegory of the Judith story with the poem's patriotic motive. He does so artificially, however, by dividing Judith into two poems, appealing to oratores and bellatores respectively. According to Pringle, the initial treatment of Judith ‘as an example of the triumph of chastity’ (p. 97) underscores the need for monastic reform as a precondition for Anglo-Saxon victory over the Danes, as it is represented in the heroic Israelite/Assyrian combat of the second half.

11 Augustine, St, On Christian Doctrine III.37, trans Robertson, D.W. Jr, (Indianapolis, IN, 1958 and 1983), pp. 116–17. St Augustine's own view of history, as articulated in The City of God was, to be sure, much more complex than that of Eusebius, who envisioned a virtual identification of church and state, of divine and human powers, in the person of the Christian king (Christus et Caesar). Nevertheless, the notion of two supra-temporal principles at play, co-determining the events of earthly history behind the scenes, is thoroughly Augustinian and inclusive of the demand for human cooperation.Google Scholar

12 Bonner, G., Saint Bede in the Tradition of Western Apocalyptic Commentary, Jarrow Lecture, 1966 (Jarrow upon Tyne), pp. 5 and 13.Google Scholar

13 Ibid. p.5.

14 Ibid.

15 Cf. Pringle, ‘Homily and Poem’, pp. 87–8.

16 Whitman, J. makes a useful distinction between allegoresis and compositional allegory as two inverse literary kinds within the allegorical tradition in Allegory: the Dynamics of an Ancient and Medieval Technique (Oxford, 1987), at pp. 1–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 See Calder, D.G., ‘The Art of Cynewulf's Juliana’, MLQ 34 (1975), 355–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Judith, ed. Timmer, 45b. This edition is cited throughout.

19 The Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. Bethurum, D. (Oxford, 1957), p. 128.Google Scholar

20 Ibid. pp. 116–17.

21 Passages from the Vulgate Liber Judith are quoted from Biblia sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem viii (Rome, 1950), 210–80.Google Scholar

22 PL 16, cols. 246–7.

23 PL 14, col. 707.

24 Epistola II ad Gallam viduam, PL 65, cols. 319–20.

25 PL 109, cols. 573 and 575.

26 De Elia, PL 14, col. 707.

27 ‘A Fragmentary and Political Poem’, p. 156.

28 ‘Judith and the Theme of Sapientia et Fortitudo’, Massachusetts Stud, in Eng. 4 (1973), 3–12.Google Scholar

29 The Blickling Homilies of the Tenth Century, ed. Morris, R., EETS os 58, 63 and 73 (1874–1980), 33.Google Scholar

30 See Berkhout, C.T. and Doubleday, J.F., ‘The Net in Judith 46b–54a’, NM 74 (1973), 630–4.Google Scholar

31 PL 109, col. 573.

32 Ibid. col. 572.

33 Sermo de Judith, PL 39, col. 1839.

34 Expositio, PL 109, col. 573.

35 Assmann, ‘Ælfric's Buch Judith’, p. 103.

36 Cf. Expositio, PL 109, col. 575.

37 St Jerome, Epistola LXXIX ad Salvinam, PL 22, col. 732.

38 Calder notes that Cynewulf's Juliana, unlike the suffering and emotionally expressive saint in the Acta, ‘is only described by the poet as full of unflinching steadfastness’; see ‘The Art’, p. 365.

39 The phrase is from Hugh of St Victor's Allegoriae in Vetus Testamentam XI, PL 175, col. 747. The idea is much older. St Jerome, for instance, likens Judith to Mary in her virginal espousal to Christ (PL 22, col. 408). Ælfric calls Judith, as a type of the church, Christ's ‘an clæne bryd’ (‘Ælfric's Buch Judith’, ed. Assman, p. 103). St Paul, of course, describes the bridal relationship between the church and Christ in a classical way in Ephesians v.21–33.

40 Expositio, PL 109, col. 573.

41 Cynewulf's ’Elene’, ed Gradon, P.O.E., rev. 2nd ed. (Exeter, 1977), lines 85a and 92b–3. There is, by the way, a traditional allegorical association between heafod and rod that supports the poet's attempt to make Holofernes's head, like the cross of Constantine's vision, a rousing sign of victory for his Anglo-Saxon audience. The Genesis prophecy, ‘Ipsa conteret caput eius’, after all, finds its fulfilment on Calvary when Mary's son vanquishes Satan. Bede presents David decapitating Goliath as a type of Christ separating souls from Satan, the head of sinners and the source of unrighteousness in his members.Google ScholarSee In I Samuhelem, Opera exegetica II.2, CCSL 119 (Turnhout, 1962), 159. The Blickling homily Dominica tertia in quadragesima urges the faithful to bless themselves ‘mid Cristes rode tacne’ and thus exorcise the devil who dreads the cross more than an executioner ‘mid sweorde wiþ heafdes’ (The Blickling Homilies, ed. Morris, p. 47).Google Scholar

42 Ælfric, , Lives of Three English Saints, ed. Needham, G.I., rev. 2nd ed. (Exeter, 1976), p. 28. Bede tells the story of Oswald's erection of the cross at Heavenfield in Historia ecclesiastica 111.2. In Bede's account, miracles of physical healing and miracles of military victoryover barbarians are both associated with the cross, which stands as a sign of the king's faith in God's assistance. Similarly, in Historia ecclesiastica 1.20, the army of the Britons, still wet with baptismal water and full of faith in the Easter triumph, advances under the leadership of Bishop Germanus against the vastly superior forces of the invading Picts and Saxons – and miraculously overcomes them. Clearly the English at the time of Bede and Ælfric had little difficulty in connecting the allegory of salvation, so often described as a battle against the foe, with actual defensive warfare against pagan invaders – a connection explored in the incarnational art of Judith.Google Scholar

43 Renoir, A. (‘Judith and the Limits of Poetry’, ES 43 (1962), 145–55) compares the poet's typological panelling to the split-screen technique used in modern cinema.Google Scholar