Posts Tagged medieval

Theoretical Breakthrough: Generating Matter and Antimatter from Nothing

“Under just the right conditions — which involve an ultra-high-intensity laser beam and a two-mile-long particle accelerator — it could be possible to create something out of nothing, according to University of Michigan researchers.”

“Nothing” seems to include an awful lot of equipment. Someone please explain creation ex nihilo again to these people.

Lost Civilization Under Persian Gulf?

Historical sea level data show that, prior to the flood, the Gulf basin would have been above water beginning about 75,000 years ago. And it would have been an ideal refuge from the harsh deserts surrounding it, with fresh water supplied by the Tigris, Euphrates, Karun, and Wadi Baton Rivers, as well as by underground springs. When conditions were at their driest in the surrounding hinterlands, the Gulf Oasis would have been at its largest in terms of exposed land area. At its peak, the exposed basin would have been about the size of Great Britain, Rose says.

Tigris and Euphrates, eh? That reminds me of something. Oh yeah.

Giant Storks May Have Fed on Real Hobbits

The extinct predator could have fed on fishes, lizards and birds, “and possibly in principle even small, juvenile hobbits, although we have no evidence for that,” she said. “These birds are opportunistic carnivores — if you give them plenty of prey items, they’ll hunt all of them.”

There are no signs yet of whether hobbits returned the favor by hunting these birds. “No cut marks are seen on any of its bones,” Meijer said.

Homer was apparently quite well-informed:

When the companies were thus arrayed, each under its own captain, the Trojans advanced as a flight of wild fowl or cranes that scream overhead when rain and winter drive them over the flowing waters of Oceanus to bring death and destruction on the Pygmies, and they wrangle in the air as they fly; but the Achaeans marched silently, in high heart, and minded to stand by one another. (Iliad III)

Medieval England Twice as Well Off as Today’s Poorest Nations

New research led by economists at the University of Warwick reveals that medieval England was not only far more prosperous than previously believed, it also actually boasted an average income that would be more than double the average per capita income of the world’s poorest nations today.

Say what you will about the tenets of feudalism — at least it’s an ethos.

Yesterday, April 8, was the feast day of a saint: St. Julie Billiart. I’d not heard of St. Julie before: she’s not medieval, so one won’t find her in the Golden Legend or other well-known sources of ancient and medieval hagiography. In fact, she’s quite a modern saint, born in 1751 in a little village in the Picardy province of France. She died on April 8 in 1816, so that her feast (like that of all saints) is a celebration of her dies natalis, her “birthday” into a glorified life.

Her village, Cuvilly, was small and rural; today it still sits in a patchwork of fields, perhaps not much larger that it was two hundred years ago. Though one of the youngest in a large family, Julie stood out from a young age because of her enthusiasm for sacred knowledge and her diligent practice of all she learned. Still, her opportunities for education were limited to the catechism, a local grammar school, and the instruction of her parish priest. Julie’s world got even smaller when she was twenty-two: someone with a grudge against her father took a shot at him, and Julie’s legs were paralyzed by the shock. She spent the next twenty-two years confined in bed as a shut-in.

A tragedy, we say, and doubtless it was, too, in the eyes of her family and friends. Piously we might call it a hardship to be endured with patience. Certainly, she made good use of her time, catechizing to village children, crocheting lace for the altar, and praying for hours on end. We might consider such things a consoling diversion. But, privately, I feel my throat tighten at the thought of such enclosure. Already her life was unthinkably claustrophobic by our standards: a parochial existence of limited space and limited knowledge. Imagining myself in such a situation, my attitude settles naturally into stoicism and other consolations philosophical, but I do not smile.

But Julie did. That is what she’s called, the Smiling Saint. It’s a feature in all her portraits, her trademark: St. Catherine has her wheel, but St. Julie smiles.

St. Julie’s confinement and her joy remind me of another Julie: St. Julian of Norwich. Julian was medieval–ca. mid-to-late 1400s–and she was English. She wrote one of the masterpieces of medieval English mysticism, The Revelations of Divine Love, which ended up on my Middle English Lit comps list.

Julian’s story is an instance of the strangeness of medieval Christianity to 21st century Protestants. Desiring to understand Christ’s suffering, Julian prayed to be stricken ill. This God granted, and as Julian lay dying, she called for a priest.

My Curate was sent for to be at my ending, and by that time when he came I had set my eyes, and might not speak. He set the Cross before my face and said: I have brought thee the Image of thy Master and Saviour: look thereupon and comfort thee therewith. (III)

In that moment, her eyes fixed on the cross, Julian had visions–sixteen in all. And then she made a full recovery. In similar circumstances, I imagine I (and most people) would have rushed to share my revelations with everyone else: “Hear what God told me!” Julian did not. It is one thing to see a vision from God, but it is quite another to understand what one has seen. Julian, knowing herself to be a “simple creature unlettered”, did not trust her own meager knowledge to interpret the revelation properly. Instead, she waited, reading books and contemplating her memories of the visions, until she felt ready to explain them fully. This took twenty years.

What’s more, she did it as an anchoress: one who vows a life of contemplation and devotion in both seclusion and total enclosure, within a tiny cell in the wall of a church called an “anchorhold”. An anchoress kept a strict rule of life, though she was not cloistered in community: her authority was her father confessor, and all divergences from her prescribed routine–including fasting–required his permission. In fact, Julian’s name is a sign of her status: her anchorhold was in St. Julian’s Church in Norwich, so she adopted the church’s name as her own. No record remains of her identity prior to becoming the anchoress of St. Julian’s. Her physical location within that particular church became also the locus of her personal identity: as an anchoress, who could be visited but never seen, she was a voice speaking through a veiled window, almost the voice of the church itself. So she was Dame Julian of St. Julian’s: truly, without irony, the Church Lady.

Again, I shrink from such confinement. I often (too often!) complain about my office in the Park Hall dungeon. I’ve dubbed it my Chinese takeout box, because it is square and taller than it is wide. I’ve got no windows, no view of the world beyond the hall outside, which is itself a little-traveled backwater. But I do have a computer: my portal to the limitless frontiers of the Internet. And, more importantly, I can leave whenever I like. I don’t need the First-Year Comp office’s permission to go outdoors. The notion of an anchorhold is a bit terrifying, like being buried alive. In fact, that’s what it was:

Though there are a number of variations, the enclosure ceremony usually includes the following elements: an anchorite receives last rites, has the Office of the Dead said over her, enters her cell, and is bricked in, accompanied at each stage by various prayers.  (“Ancrene Wisse, Introduction”)

The anchoress was dead to the world, dead to herself. Again, envisioning myself in such a state, I see austerity, self-discipline, and a zealous penitence. I do not see joy.

But look to Julian’s words, dear reader, and ask if such a thing could be written out of stoicism:

[...] there be deeds evil done in our sight, and so great harms taken, that it seemeth to us that it were impossible that ever it should come to good end. And upon this we look, sorrowing and mourning therefor, so that we cannot resign us unto the blissful beholding of God as we should do. And the cause of this is that the use of our reason is now so blind, so low, and so simple, that we cannot know that high marvellous Wisdom, the Might and the Goodness of the blissful Trinity. And thus signifieth He when He saith: thou shalt see thyself if all manner of things shall be well. As if He said: Take now heed faithfully and trustingly, and at the last end thou shalt verily see it in fulness of joy. (XXXII.)

This is Julian’s attitude: not teeth-gritting endurance, but “blissful beholding” and, in the end, “fulness of joy”. And how can she have such joy in such literally straitened circumstances? Because she trusts in the “Wisdom, the Might and the Goodness” of God that “all manner of things shall be well”: evil shall be resolved, even the little evils she knows and now experiences. This is what Christ speaks to her, even as He hangs on the cross, suffering Himself: “All shall be well.” Trust that it will be so, and then comes the joy that passes understanding. St. Julie Billiart had that joy too, I believe. Though she did not leave, so far as I know, the extensive theology that St. Julian did, there is one pet phrase of hers that is commonly cited: “Oh, qu’il est bon, le bon Dieu!”

Oh, how good He is, the Good God!

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)

College teachers are often wont to crab about their students, and a frequent theme of such crabbing is the apparent lack of interest amongst students towards the business of learning itself. Nothing thrills a teacher like a hungry student; nothing appalls a teacher like the Laodicean pupil, who says, “I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing,” and knows not that he is “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked” (apologies to John the Revelator). We crave good questions and prize good answers, carrying them gloatingly to our teacher peers like trophies of a good hunt: “Behold the brilliance of my student!” Sadly, the crabbing previously mentioned seems to occur more often than the gloating.

Consider in light of this observation the beginning of Ælfric’s “Colloquy”, a scripted dialogue between students and a teacher, used to teach Latin to Anglo-Saxon students:

Pupils: Master, we young men would like you to teach us how to speak properly and with a wide vocabulary, for we are ignorant and badly spoken.

Teacher: How would you like to speak?

Pupils: We are concerned about the way we speak, as we want to speak correctly and with meaning, and not with meaningless base words. Would you beat us and make us learn? For it is better for us to be beaten to learn than to remain ignorant. However, we know that you are a kind-hearted man who would not wish to inflict blows on us unless we ask for them.

Never have I heard students speak thus! Nor do I really think that we can see these comments as the unfiltered opinions of genuine Anglo-Saxon students: this is a colloquy, after all–a pedagogical tool–and bears the same relation to actual conversation as scripted dialogues in present-day language texts. These are the attitudes that Ælfric considers appropriate in students, not the attitudes that were necessarily felt or expressed.

But still I take this thousand-year-old prescribed exchange to heart, personalizing it as I do much of Anglo-Saxon literature. It convicts me, because I do not truly desire wisdom so much as I ought. I’ll seek out books, but not the rod, and I’ll snuggle down in my ignorance when the painful way of learning opens itself before me. I know I cannot expect students like this, but I pray I may become a student like this.

So, another week, another feast for an Anglo-Saxon saint: February 2, the Feast of St. Chad. Don’t remember Chad? Oh, surely you recall those obnoxious little flecks of paper in the hotly contested presidential election of 2000, the chads? Dimpled chads, hanging chads, swinging chads, pregnant chads: so much hinged on what amounted, materially speaking, to little more than abortive attempts at confetti. Well, at some point somebody with a humorous sense of history put together chads and Chad, and found the fit rather neat: “Hard to Punch Holes in Story of St. Chad.” A little too neat: some took the news stories’ labeling of St. Chad as “patron saint of disputed elections” literally, to the point where the Snopes folks weighed in on the question. The short version: Chad’s tenure as a bishop of Northumbria was contested, and he stepped aside for the odious St. Wilfrid. (Full disclosure: I’m an anti-Wilfrid partisan, not that anyone cares anymore.) However, interesting correspondences do not a patron saint make, nor do waggish puns, and St. Chad is certainly not the patron saint of disputed elections.

But let us dwell no more on elections past, for I would have St. Chad remembered for another reason: namely, as the bishop who wouldn’t ride a horse. It was not a matter of fear, as would be the case with me. (Horses? Utterly terrifying, all flailing hooves, flaring nostrils, and uncomfortably large teeth.) Instead, Chad followed what he thought was the model of the episcopal office: the lives of the apostles and the life of his teacher, St. Aidan.

Chad, being thus consecrated bishop, began immediately to devote himself to ecclesiastical truth and to chastity; to apply himself to humility, continence, and study; to travel about, not on horseback, but after the manner of the apostles, on foot, to preach the Gospel in towns, the open country, cottages, villages, and castles; for he was one of the disciples of Aidan, and endeavored to instruct his people, by the same actions and behavior, according to his and his brother Cedd’s example. (Bede Historia 3.28)

Bede, whose account of Chad is the primary record of his life, clearly admired this bishop, for he saw in Chad the humility and service absent in monarchical bishops like St. Wilfrid. (See? Look at me hatin’. Well, Bede started it!) To Chad, and to Bede, a good bishop is a shepherd, tending to the nurture and safety of his flock. Practically, for Chad that meant what soldiers today call “boots on the ground”: an active presence, moving among his people, seeing them and touching their lives. It was not an easy practice, and Chad was probably not a young man: he had already served as an abbot prior to his appointment to the see of Northumbria, not an office for the young. But it was what Chad felt the job required, so he did it.

Of course, I’ve only explained how St. Chad didn’t ride a horse, not how he wouldn’t. That came later, after the newly appointed Archbishop Theodore, needing a worthy bishop on short notice, called upon the deposed Chad to be bishop of Mercia. Chad acquiesced, and resumed his old ways, trudging long roads through lands settled and unsettled to minister to his new flock. Archbishop Theodore, “seeing that it was the custom of that most reverend prelate to go about the work of the Gospel to several places rather on foot than on horseback, [...] commanded him to ride whenever he had a long journey to undertake” (Bede Historia 4.3). Theodore’s reasons are unknown: perhaps he feared for Chad’s health, or else thought walking beneath the dignity of the office. Whatever the archbishop’s reason, Chad refused and continued in his “custom”: he would not ride a horse.

What follows in Bede’s account is a subtle dance of courtesy and deference, for Theodore would not let things stand as they were: “[F]inding [Chad] very unwilling to omit his former pious labour, he himself, with his hands, lifted him on the horse; for he thought him a holy man, and therefore obliged him to ride wherever he had need to go” (Bede Historia 4.3). Bede sketches his scene with a few words, simple actions without color, but I imagine it whenever I re-read Bede: Archbishop Theodore on horse with his entourage, a muddy road, a stooped figure in weather-stained robes. But then the positions reverse: the lofty descends, and the lowly is lifted up. How could Chad refuse such humility? And so Chad accepted the horse in the end.

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.

The tales of King Arthur have fascinated me ever since I first read them, years ago, in a volume of Reader’s Digest condensed books. One section of those stories that always attracted but puzzled me was the Quest for the Holy Grail. To an American Protestant of the late 20th century, this cycle of tales was evocatively alien, declaring itself Christian but expressing that affiliation in strange, unfamiliar ways. According to the version I read, the Holy Grail was the cup from the Last Supper, still containing liquid blood (!). Accompanying it was the spear that pierced Christ’s side, continually dripping blood (!!). And these things were brought to Britain by Joseph of Arimathea (!!!). Apparently all that got left out of my Bible! (Though it was never actually in anyone’s Bible–the Grail story isn’t even apocryphal, much less canonical.)

These years later, the Grail Quest still fascinates me, though it is now less strange than it was. It has become a familiar pattern of story, a narrative that feels normal and natural to me. That’s because I’ve come to understand something of the logic behind the Grail Quest literature. Part of what makes Grail literature so strange is that the reader naturally expects it to be of the same type of literature as the other Arthurian romances–and it isn’t. Grail romance uses the forms and trappings of chivalric romance, but its purposes are different. While chivalric romance tells the stories of knights and their earthly adventures, Grail romance is about a story behind those stories. The knights have earthly adventures, but those adventures mean something deeper: the knights unwittingly find themselves acting out roles of spiritual significance. In short, Grail romance is an allegory in which the characters, for the most part, don’t realize they’re in an allegory. And that, dear reader, is my point in discussing these three character types from the Grail Quest.

The oldest Grail romance, Chretien de Troyes’s Perceval, is about the Fool character type. Perceval is a simpleton and a naif who knows nothing about what the world is like or how it works, and continually causes trouble for himself and everyone else because of his ignorance. He wants to be a knight, but he doesn’t understand what a knight is; he only knows what a knight looks like, so he imitates the trappings of knighthood but fails to emulate the character and ideals of chivalry. The worst part is that Perceval the Fool doesn’t understand that he’s inside a story, and this recognition is necessary for the Grail Quest. For him, his life is a series of random disconnected episodes with no plot or meaning. It’s all very fascinating, but he understands none of it, least of all his own proper role. He cannot see where he is going, so he is always in danger of stumbling.

The Knight is the central character of the Grail Quest, and there are many knights in the Grail romances: Lancelot, Gawain, Bors, Galahad, even Perceval, once he awakens from his foolish state. The Knight is dimly aware of the story: he knows he is on a quest–that is, he knows the story’s end–but along the way he wanders through a trackless wilderness of perils and wonders. But despite the mysteries around him, the Knight’s consciousness of the story (the quest) and his role in it (the hero) gives him a sense of purpose. Armed with this knowledge, the Knight can face the trials of the quest with confidence.

Along the way, the Fools and Knights frequently encounter the third character type, the Hermit (sometimes a priest, an abbot, a nun, an anchorite, a friar–always someone of the holy orders). The Hermit’s role is to explain the story to those who, knowingly or not, are on the quest. After an adventure, a wandering knight will usually happen upon a lonely hermitage in the forest, and as the kindly old hermit feeds him and patches his wounds, he explains to the knight the inner significance of the adventure: the evil knight represented Satan, the imprisoned maidens were the souls of the elect, and the knight acted the part of Christ, rescuing His people from the clutches of the Devil. Because the Hermit sees the story around him, his perception of events is different from the Knight’s, and the Knight is often surprised when the Hermit praises or condemns him for his choices.  This is because the Hermit hardly seems to notice the mundane events anymore: he looks through them, to their higher significance.

The experience of a Grail romance, both for the characters and the readers, resembles the experience of looking at an Orthodox icon, though in this case the icon is a story, not an image. And within the story we see those who understand the story’s purpose and those that don’t: those who see the archetype above the icon and those whose vision stops at a “crude” 6th century egg tempera daub. Also, this is what my experience of Christianity is like. Often I do not see and do not understand: then I am a Fool. Sometimes I see, but do not fully understand: then I am a Knight. And rarely, sometimes only for a brief moment, I both see and understand: then I am a Hermit.