Posts Tagged heroism

March 17 is the Feast of Saint Patrick.

(Seriously. What did you think I was going to write about? Saints are, like, my one schtick, especially those affiliated with Britain.)

This is one saint needs no introduction: we know Patrick, or at least think we do. Most of what we know, though, is drawn from the more flamboyant sort of medieval legendry, which is of dubious historical merit at best. A case in point is Patrick chasing the snakes out of Ireland. As the regular St. Patrick’s Day news stories are wont to remind us, there probably weren’t any snakes around on the island at the time anyway. What we miss–and what the mosaic to the right shows us symbolically–is that the legend of Patrick and the snakes is a parable about the coming of Christ’s kingdom into Ireland, so long a stronghold of idolatry: the devilish serpents of Ireland are crushed beneath the heel of Christ, though that heel is also Patrick’s. “How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace”–but those sandalled feet on a muddy Irish road were heard by the Enemy as the thundering march of a legion: a heavenly invasion.

With what manner of man or woman does our Lord invade the territory of His foe? In the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, such apostle saints are revered, and certainly Patrick is no exception: as early as the early 600s, Patrick was called by Irish Christians papa noster, “our father,” but also with the resonances of “our pope.” As an Evangelical sort of Protestant, I can attest to a similarly high view of missionaries in our wing of Christendom, especially missionaries to unevangelized peoples and resistant cultures. Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant, our traditions unite in admiration for the trailblazers of the Kingdom, without whom we would not have known the Gospel of Christ’s reign. We respect them, and sometimes (I confess) idolize them, and in doing so, set them apart from ourselves: theirs is a special breed and calling, and they are not such stuff as we laymen are.

Regarding this error, Patrick speaks to us–not through an object lesson in his story, but with his own words. Unlike so many saints of his error, Patrick left a paper trail: at least two texts that generally accepted as authentic works of the apostle to the Irish himself. Both are interesting, but Patrick’s Confessio is the more important of the two, for in it he tells of his life and defends his ministry.

(Dear reader, please take the time to read it all: it’s not very long, and this is what Patrick wanted us to know of him. Though he is gone from us, he stands in our Lord’s presence, and is bound to us by one faith, one Spirit, and one baptism. He is our brother, and we should do him this courtesy.)

And what does Patrick say of himself? How does he wish us to regard him? Certainly not as some sort of high and holy superior being. No, what Patrick wants us to see in him is the immensity of grace:

I am, then, first of all, countryfied, an exile, evidently unlearned, one who is not able to see into the future, but I know for certain, that before I was humbled I was like a stone lying in deep mire, and he that is mighty came and in his mercy raised me up and, indeed, lifted me high up and placed me on top of the wall. And from there I ought to shout out in gratitude to the Lord for his great favours in this world and for ever, that the mind of man cannot measure. (12)

Thus I give untiring thanks to God who kept me faithful in the day of my temptation, so that today I may confidently offer my soul as a living sacrifice for Christ my Lord; who am I, Lord? or, rather, what is my calling? that you appeared to me in so great a divine quality, so that today among the barbarians I might constantly exalt and magnify your name in whatever place I should be, and not only in good fortune, but even in affliction? So that whatever befalls me, be it good or bad, I should accept it equally, and give thanks always to God who revealed to me that I might trust in him, implicitly and forever, and who will encourage me so that, ignorant, and in the last days, I may dare to undertake so devout and so wonderful a work; so that I might imitate one of those whom, once, long ago, the Lord already preordained to be heralds of his Gospel to witness to all peoples to the ends of the earth. So are we seeing, and so it is fulfilled; behold, we are witnesses because the Gospel has been preached as far as the places beyond which no man lives. (34)

I am greatly God’s debtor, because he granted me so much grace, that through me many people would be reborn in God, and soon after confirmed, and that clergy would be ordained everywhere for them, the masses lately come to belief, whom the Lord drew from the ends of the earth, just as he once promised through his prophets: ‘To you shall the nations come from the ends of the earth, and shall say, “Our fathers have inherited naught but lies, worthless things in which there is no profit.”’ And again: ‘I have set you to be a light for the Gentiles that you may bring salvation to the uttermost ends of the earth.’ (38)

What can I say, that Patrick has not already said better? And this is truly what the saint wants us to hear, though it might be difficult to discern his quiet fervency through the din of parades. I cannot but imagine that Patrick would blush at the notion of parades in his honor, much less rivers running green. If you would honor Patrick, honor his God, for that is what he most desired:

But I entreat those who believe in and fear God, whoever deigns to examine or receive this document composed by the obviously unlearned sinner Patrick in Ireland, that nobody shall ever ascribe to my ignorance any trivial thing that I achieved or may have expounded that was pleasing to God, but accept and truly believe that it would have been the gift of God. And this is my confession before I die. (62)

In case my point was too vague in my post last week about dragon-slaying, this is what I meant.

I’ve always been a sucker for a good monster story. As a boy, I would browse through my parents’ books, especially the encyclopedias, and stop whenever I saw an illustration of a monster. This was particularly true of dragons, of which I was specially fond. This was also how I first encountered Beowulf: as a story in which a hero fights a dragon. It was many years before I actually read Beowulf, of course, but my first knowledge of that Old English epic was as a dragon story.*

When I finally got around to reading Beowulf—years later and at the instigation of Tolkien—I naturally focused on the end: Beowulf’s last great monster fight against the dragon. It’s a particularly satisfying example of the dragon-slayer’s tale, both heroic in tone and dramatic in action. There’s also a note of tragedy, though: the dragon is slain, but so is the hero, who is old but goes down fighting. (Hopefully I’ve spoiled no-one’s Beowulf experience by revealing this: it’s over a thousand years old, after all.) It is the fitting last movement of a heroic life, one last act of bravery and sacrifice, but—alas—only a temporary solution, for Beowulf’s people are doomed to suffer and be scattered.

This theme in Beowulf—the balance of triumph and tragedy—is one of Tolkien’s chief concerns in his magisterial essay, “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” For Tolkien, in fact, it is what the poem is about: “[M]an at war with the hostile world, and his inevitable overthrow in Time.”

[A]s in a little circle of light about their halls, men with courage as their stay went forward to that battle with the hostile world and the offspring of the dark which ends for all, even the kings and champions, in defeat. (67)

Inevitable defeat—yet the hero goes anyway. But why do it? Is it merely foolish bravado? Should not the hero rather be wise than brave, yield to the natural order, and treat dragons with sensible caution? Better a live dog than a dead lion, after all! This is sometimes the rejoinder to Tolkien’s model of heroism, and other readings of Beowulf have been suggested, that cast Beowulf’s last fight as foolish error, or vainglorious bravado, or even ill-considered mercenary greed. (The dragon did have a treasure, after all.)

I’m sure it will surprise no-one to learn that I favor Tolkien’s perspective over the others. This is not, however, out of a naïve acceptance of the inherent heroism of hopeless last stands. Instead, Tolkien’s perspective (and my acceptance of it) arises from a prior belief in human dignity—even humans after the fall. In his essay “On Fairy-Stories,” Tolkien shares a poem, written in a letter to a friend, which describes his view of postlapsarian humanity:

[…] Although now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned.
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned […] (74)

This image of mankind appears in the Lord of the Rings in the character of Aragorn: the crownless king who wanders as a vagabond, his broken sword the sign of ancestral rank and ancestral failure. But before that, it appeared in Beowulf, in Beowulf himself:

To Beowulf the news was quickly brought
of that horror—that his own home,
best of buildings, had burned in waves of fire,
the gift-throne of the Geats. To the good man that was
painful in spirit, greatest of sorrows;
the wise one believed he had bitterly offended
the Ruler of all, the eternal Lord,
against the old law; his breast within groaned
with dark thoughts—that was not his custom. (2324-32)

This is Beowulf after the dragon attacks: old Beowulf, fifty years after his youthful adventures in Denmark, now a venerable king. Only, now his hall is burned, along with his throne, “the gift-throne of the Geats.” And in this moment, his first anguished thought is of God, of divine justice, and of his own sin—but still he fights the dragon.

But let us proceed to a reason—at least, a reason I find plausible and personally compelling. (Caution! This is not peer-reviewed scholarly content, but the romantic musings of a student. Also, they’re my unpublished first thoughts, and they may end up being useful down the road, so don’t jack my style!) In my pursuit of all things Old English, I encountered an Anglo-Saxon homilist named Ælfric of Eynsham. His sermons are lucid, rhetorically sophisticated, and often nearly lyrical. One in particular has drawn me back repeatedly: “De Falsis Diis,” or “Regarding the False Gods.” The purpose of this sermon is two-fold: to contrast the true God with his false rivals, and to explain the origins of idolatry. To introduce his subject, though, he explains the nature of the true God, according to the ecumenical creeds accepted in the West in that era, and then describes the primal relationship between humanity and their Creator. Why do I bring this up? Because here there be dragons:

… [I]t is better for us to believe truly in the Holy Trinity (halgan þrynnysse), and to profess belief in them, than it is for us to ponder excessively about it.  The Trinity made the shining angels, and Adam and Eve afterward as humans, and gave them authority over the earthly things of creation; and they did not break that single command of God (an Godes bebod).  Then Adam lived carefree in bliss, and no creature could injure him, while that he kept that heavenly command (heofonlice bebod).  Fire did not harm him, though he stepped his feet into it, nor might any water drown the man, even if he ran suddenly into the waves.  Nor could any wild beast, nor any kind of serpent (wurmcynne), dare to injure the man with its mouth’s bite.  Neither hunger nor thirst, nor grievous cold, nor any extreme heat, nor sickness was able to trouble Adam in the earth, while he with faithfulness kept that little command (lytle bebod).

Afterward, when he had sinned, and God’s command broken, then he lost that blessing, and lived in trouble, so that the louse bit him boldly and the flea, the one who before the dragon (draca) dared not even touch.  Then he needed to be cautious with water and with fire, and to take care warily that he not fall down too hard, and to provide food for himself with proper difficulty; and those natural virtues that God made into him, he had then to keep, if he would have them, with great care, just as yet the good do, that with difficulty keep themselves from sins. (25-55; translation mine)

I hope, dear reader, that you note Ælfric’s careful parallelism and the drastic contrast it creates: humanity before the fall, fearless, untouchable, healthy, happy, and good; humanity after the fall, timid, fragile, frail, desperate, and wicked. And the pivot upon which this inverted world turned upside down was God’s single command—that little command (lytle bebod). I do not think the preacher’s emphasis on the command’s lytlenes is meant to cast God as unreasonable, but instead to heighten the foolishness—and the tragedy—of humanity’s violation of it. Ælfric, in essence, muses with Boromir in Pete Jackson’s version of LotR, that “it is a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing—such a little thing.”

But Ælfric’s sermon does not leave man in an utterly wretched state. No, along with the loss of blessedness comes a new duty of obedience for the man: work, labor,  to get “for himself with proper difficulty” some remnant of the goods he has forfeited. The obvious one he mentions first, God’s edict that “by the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread” (Gen. 3:19). The second is less obvious, the hard labor of living rightly and resisting sin. However, there is a third good, other than sustenance and virtue, which Ælfric’s prelapsarian humanity possessed, which Ælfric does not redress: the threat of the natural world against weak, mortal man. The reversal the preacher describes is utterly pathetic—”the louse bit him boldly and the flea, the one who before the dragon dared not even touch”—but he names no labor of man to alleviate it.

But that, I think, is Beowulf’s labor, the hero’s labor: to still face the danger of the world, incarnate in the dragon, and to fight it. Not because the dragon can be beaten for good and all—it cannot, any more than one day’s sweat can make bread forever, any more than one temptation resisted can make a man pure forever. No, Beowulf fights the dragon because it is his duty and his proper labor. He does not to surrender to the natural order because it is not the natural order: we were not meant for this, to be the meat of dragons, to fear the fire that warms us, the water that sustains us, and even the ground that supports us. We were not meant for fear, but we surrendered our primal fearlessness. What remains is courage, and that is Beowulf’s labor.

So, in the end, I see dragon-slaying as more than just a good subject for a ripping yarn: it is the emblem of dignity in fallen humanity. Ceasing to be kings enthroned, we have become knights errant, finding our honor in work, not privilege. We must eat bread with the sweat on our brows, we must labor to keep our virtue, and, yes—we must fight dragons.

* These days my loyalty has shifted from dragons to giants, also because of Beowulf—come for the dragon, stay for the cannibal demon troll. I still have great affection for dragons, though.

Works Cited

Ælfric. Homilies of Ælfric: A Supplementary Collection. Vol. 2. Ed. John C. Pope. London: Oxford UP, 1968. 2 volumes.

Beowulf: A New Verse Translation. Trans. R.M. Liuzza.  Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 2000.

Tolkien, J.R.R.  “Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics.” An Anthology of Beowulf Criticism. Ed. Lewis E. Nicholson.  Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame, 1963. 51-103.

Tolkien, J.R.R. “On Fairy-Stories.” A Tolkien Reader. New York: Ballantine, 1966. 33-99.

Today, February 16^th, is the feast of St. Juliana in the Latin tradition. While the earliest lists of martyrs link her with Cumae (through birth), she is also associated with Naples (the home of her relics) and Nicomedia (the legendary site of her martyrdom). Pinning her down historically is really impossible: though the venerable Catholic Encyclopedia asserts for Juliana the quasi-historicity of a conflated personage, it concedes that the stories associated with her are simply legends. What I care about, however, is not the history, but the legend, because the legendary Juliana is the one that is significant in Christian imaginations across centuries and cultures. In particular, I care about Juliana because she shares, with Beowulf, the distinction of being one of only two people in the Old English poetic corpus who manage to put a demon in a submission hold.

Juliana’s legend comes to us through various sources: the two I’m most familiar with are the Old English poem “Juliana”, by Cynewulf, and 13^th century Latin hagiographic compilation, the Golden Legend. (The Old English text of “Juliana” is here.) There are differences between the two: in Cynewulf’s poem, Juliana’s pagan fiance is Eleusius; in the Golden Legend, he is Eulogius; and so forth. But their accounts of Juliana’s encounter with a demon generally agree.

Here’s the abridged story for background: Juliana, daughter of a wealthy pagan, converts to Christianity. Unfortunately, she is betrothed to a prefect who is also a pagan; when he pressures her to move forward with the nuptials, she demands he also convert before the marriage. He refuses, she is jailed and then tortured.

It is in the midst of these torments that Juliana receives an (apparently) heavenly visitation, in which she is commanded to capitulate to her persecutor’s demands:

Then suddenly came into the prison the Enemy of mankind, skilled in evil; and he had the form of an angel. Wise was he in afflictions, this enemy of the soul, this captain of Hell, and unto the holy maid he said, “Why sufferest thou who art most dear and precious unto the King of glory, our God ? This judge hath prepared for thee the worst tortures, torment without end, if thou wilt not prudently sacrifice and make propitiation unto his gods. Be thou in haste when he bids thee be led outward hence, that thou make a sacrifice, an offering of victory, before that death come upon thee, death in the presence of the warriors. In this wise shalt thou survive the anger of this judge, O blessed maid!” (Juliana)

Juliana, rightly, questions this messenger’s veracity, praying for confirmation of the demon’s words from God. In reply, God gives her another command:

Then unto her spake a glorious voice from the clouds and uttered this word: “Do thou seize this vile one and hold him fast, till that he rightly declare unto thee his purpose, even from the beginning what his kinship may be.” And the heart of the glorious maid was glad; and she seized upon that devil. (Juliana)

At that point, the demon, like Grendel, wants nothing more than to get away—but Juliana’s grip, like Beowulf’s, is inescapable. She compels the trapped demon to confess all his misdeeds—an impressive catalog by any standard—that takes up the next 265 lines of the poem. In the end, she is called forth from prison to stand trial, and out she goes, dragging the devil with her, who begs for his release:

And in his grievous plight he began to lament his journey, bewail his torment, grieve for his fate, and he said unto her:

“I entreat thee, gracious Juliana, by the grace of God, that thou work upon me no further insult or reproach before men than thou hast already done, when thou overcamest the wisest in the prison shades, the king of the dwellers in Hell, in the city of fiends, who is our father, the lord of death. Behold thou hast afflicted me with painful blows, and in truth I know that, before or since, never did I meet in the kingdoms of the world a woman like unto thee, of more courageous heart, or more perverse, of all the race of women. Clear is it to me that thou wouldst be in all things unashamed in thy wise heart.” (Juliana)

Juliana relents, and the demon limps back to Hell, embarrassed at the thought of reporting his failure to the other devils. On this last point, the Old English poem is vividly and hilariously clear: “he, the announcer of evil, was wiser than to tell unto his fellows, the ministers of torment, how it befell him upon his journey” (Juliana).

So, this is the heroine of February 16: a martyr who endured to the end, who refused to surrender for relief, and indeed saw the temptation to surrender as itself another kind of attack.

* The image at the head of this post was discovered (via Google) on Flickr, taken by a photographer with the nom de album Jaycross, and is (apparently) a Spanish painting—not sure of the date.