Bede and Gregory's allusive angles - The Venerable Bede and Pope Gregory the Great - Critical Essay

Criticism, Summer, 2002 by Stephen J. Harris

An interest in race is also evident in the Old English request by Gregory to hear "of hwelcon londe odpe of hwylcre peode" ("of which land or of which tribe") the boys were brought. This replicates Bede's Latin almost exactly, but is nevertheless relatively unusual. A statement of inquiry into geographical origins is atypical in Anglo-Saxon texts. A heathen judge asks Bede's Alban, a Celt and the British proto-martyr, "Cuius ... familia: vel generis es?" ("What is your family or race?" I,vii.30)--the Old English version of this episode omits the question entirely. The emphasis here is on kinship, not geography. Beowulf, on his arrival in Geatland, is asked by the shore guard, "Nu ic eower sceal/frumcyn witan" ("Now I must know your ancestry," 11. 251b-252a). (46) Beowulf is commonly named "beam Ecgpeowes" ("son of Ecgtheow"). Characters tend to be introduced into Old English poems by their ancestry, rarely by their place of birth. It is their nobility, not their homeland, that gives them social worth. Consider Andreas, a long Old English poetic life of St. Andrew in the Vercelli Book, which introduces the apostles as "peodnes pegnas" ("thanes of the lord," 3a), Germanic heroes associated with a high king (47); Widsith, a traveling poet who tells of his ancestry (4a-5b), and for whom tribes, not countries, define a community; and St. Margaret, whose sanctity is tested in one version of her passio by a demon whose lineage she demands to know. (48) Since a nobleman's holdings could be in a number of different kingdoms, association with the family will have taken primacy over association with its sometimes scattered territory. A possible exception comes in the eleventh-century poem The Battle of Maldon, where AElfwine is "beam AElfrices" (1. 209b), although he notes his kin is from Mercia. (49) In short, the introduction of "londe" into Gregory's question is marked by its relative infrequency in such situations, and indicates that a broad geographic identity can meaningfully mask ethnic differences.

With respect to the Latin terms under consideration, venustus is translated in the Old English by "faeger." In Old English, the term "faeger" generally means the same thing as beautiful. As AElfric of Eynsham, the prolific tenth-century Anglo-Saxon homilist and teacher, clearly notes in his glossary, "pulcher homo faeger mann." (50) While "faeger" can mean proper, righteous, honest, and pleasing to the eye, it carries much the same connotations in monastic writing as pulcher. Aldhelm, an eighth-century Anglo-Saxon bishop and scholar, in his prose De virginitate, uses the adjective pulcherrime which is glossed in Old English as "faegestre." Intriguingly, venustate is later glossed in that text with the same Old English term, "faegemesse," perhaps suggesting in this instance a collapse of distinction between sorts of beauty. (51) The mid-eleventh-century Liber scintillarum of Defensor, a monk of Liguge, reads, "Christus non in corporis sed in anime pulchritudine delectatur illam ergo et tu dilige in qua delectatur deus"; this is glossed in Old English, "crist na on lichaman ac on sawle faegernysse gegladad pa eornostlice eac pu lufa on paera gegladad god" ("Christ allures with beauty not of the body but of the soul so that you may with earnestness love each one who is drawn to God"). (52) Note the use of delectare, which Bede used in his homily on Matthew in direct relation to pulcher, perhaps modeled on Augustine's Confessions (II, vi)--beauty draws one to God. Defensor continues in his extended definition of pulcher to attribute to Gregory the notion that heavenly beauty can be confounded by earthly Beauty. (53) Perhaps to warn of such confusion, and to alert learned Anglo-Saxons to the symbolic function of beauty, an Old English prognostication reads, "Si videris faciem tuam pulchram gaudium significat," glossed, " gif pu gesihst ansine pine faegere blisse getacnap" ("If you see beauty in your own form, this signifies grace/joy"). (54) Again and commonly, physical beauty enjoys a symbolic and allusive function in these Anglo-Saxon texts.