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Wonders and Wisdom: Anglo Saxons and the EastHeide EstesaaDepartment of English, Monmouth University, USA

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To cite this ArticleEstes, Heide(2010) 'Wonders and Wisdom: Anglo-Saxons and the East', English Studies, 91: 4, 360 373To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/00138381003637575URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00138381003637575

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Wonders and Wisdom: Anglo-Saxons

and the EastHeide Estes

What the Anglo-Saxons knew about Asia and its inhabitants was drawn from Biblical

exegesis, saints lives, and other texts derived from Latin sources. Numerous Old English

and Anglo-Latin texts of varied genre and contents give evidence of an intense interest in

the East that serves both to define Anglo-Saxon origins and to depict outsiders of varyingtypes that are made to perform as Other to members of the Anglo-Saxon community.

lfric follows Augustine and Isidore in his division of the world into three regions whose

people are descended from the biblical Ham, Shem, and Cham; the division is depicted in

Anglo-Saxon world maps and referenced in poetry such as the Old EnglishGenesis. The

Beowulf-manuscript contains several texts about the East including the prose Wonders

of the East, Letter of Alexander to Aristotle,andLife of Saint Christopher, as well as the

poemsJudithandBeowulf. The outlandish creatures described and illustrated in each of

these texts figure as outsiders to Anglo-Saxon culture and function to structure masculinity

and social cohesion. Images of monstrosity are interwoven with figurations of femininity to

bring the ideation of the other closer to home. Old English texts that refer to the East

have more to do with Anglo-Saxon preoccupations with locating themselves geographically

and temporally in Christian Europe than with historical realities. The East becomes at

once monstrous, marvellous, and mysterious, a place of the imagination in quasi-historical

accounts ranging from theLetter of Alexanderto Beowulf, each of which depicts a realm

whose wild characters and characteristics opposed the wished-for stability of roles and

functions at home among the English. With all of these figurations existing together in a

single manuscript, it becomes possible to argue that Asia as a whole functions in the same

position to medieval Christian Europe in a comprehensive fashion, anticipating the

orientalism of the post-medieval period.

The ties between Anglo-Saxon England and Rome are close enough that Nicholas Howe

once referred to Rome as the capital of Anglo-Saxon England.1 The Anglo-Saxon

Chronicle contains several references in ninth-century entries to the ongelcynnes scole

(Anglo-Saxon quarter)2 in Rome, where English expatriates and visitors could stay in

Heide Estes is affiliated with the Department of English, Monmouth University, USA.1Howe, 147.2

OKeeffe, ed., entries for the years 816, 874, and 885.

English StudiesVol. 91, No. 4, June 2010, 360373

ISSN 0013-838X (print)/ISSN 1744-4217 (online) 2010 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/00138381003637575


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an English hostel or worship at an English church. An Anglo-Saxon bishop who

travelled to Rome to receive the pallium left an account of his journey,3 and theAnglo-

Saxon Chronicle and other Old English sources mention numerous other Anglo-Saxons

voyages to Rome. However, the Chroniclemakes almost no mention of places beyond

Rome to the east. In the C-Text of theAnglo-Saxon Chronicle alone, it is recorded that in982 for Odda Romana casere to Greclande, 7 a gemette he ara Sarcena mycele fyrde

(the Roman emperor Otto [I] went to Greece, and there he met a large army of

Saracens); after large losses on both sides, Otto is the victor.4 The same manuscript of

theChroniclemakes reference to the exiled Norwegian Swein, who in 1052 for ror to

Hierusalem . . . 7 wear hamweard dead t Constantinopolim (first went to

Jerusalem and died afterward at Constantinople).5 There is no description in either

entry of places visited or of the routes travelled by Otto or Swein. Perhaps also not

insignificantly, neither Otto nor Swein is English.

According to lfric, one east dl middaneardes . . . is gehate Asia (the eastern

portion of middle-earth . . . is called Asia).6 This Asia is a locale of the Anglo-

Saxon imagination, a place with which writers and scribes of the time had no direct

contact. What the Anglo-Saxons knew about Moslems and Jews, and about

Babylon and Egypt and India, depended upon Biblical exegesis, saints lives, and

other texts derived from Latin sources. Numerous Old English texts, as well as Latin

versions that circulated and were copied in Anglo-Saxon England, concern Asia; these

are quite varied in genre and in content. Such variety gives evidence of intense

interest in the East, an interest that serves, paradoxically, both to define Anglo-Saxon

origins and to depict outsiders of varying types that are made to perform as Other

to members of the Anglo-Saxon community.AugustinesDe Civitate Deisurvives in two complete texts written in Anglo-Saxon

England; another English scribe recorded a series of extracts from the text.7 In the

work, Augustine describes the division of the world: si in duas partes orbem dividas,

Orientis et Occidentis, Asia erit in una, in altera vero Europa et Africa (if you

divide the world into two parts, east and west, Asia will be in one, and Europe and

Africa in the other).8 Elsewhere, Augustine comments that all of the peoples of the

world are divided among three groups, according to the sons of Noah.9 Isidore

combines these two methods of dividing the world and its peoples, and assigns the

descendants of Shem to places in Asia, those of Cham to regions in Africa, and those

of Japheth to parts of Europe.10 Isadores Etymologiae survives in nineteen full,

fragmentary, or excerpted manuscripts written in Anglo-Saxon England, and was

quite influential in bringing Patristic ideas to the English. Writing near the end of the

3Ortenberg, 197246.4OKeeffe, 85.5Ibid., 114.6MacLean, ed., 38 (lines 3701).7Gneuss, 32, 51, 95.8Augustine XVI. 17, pp. 92, 93.9Augustine XVI. 3, pp. 1425.10

Isidore, IX. 2.

Anglo-Saxons and the East 361


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tenth century in England, lfric follows Isidore in the apportionment of the world

among the descendants of Noah: Of Cham, Noes suna, com t Chananeisce folc, &

of Iaphet, am gingstan, e ws gebletsod urh Noe, com t norerne mennisc be

re Nors, for an e ri dlas sind gedlede urh hig, Asia on eastrice am

yldstan suna, Affrica on sudle s Chames cynne, & Europa on nordle Iapheesofspringe (The Canaanite people come of Ham, Noahs son, and of Japheth, the

youngest, who received Noahs blessing, come the northern peoples, by the North

Sea, because the three parts are divided through it, Asia on the east for the oldest son,

Africa in the south for Hams kin, and Europe in the northern part for Japheths

offspring).11 In other words, Europeans are descended from Japheth, Noahs

youngest son and recipient of his paternal blessing; and Africa is assigned to Ham,

who is cursed by God among the descendants of Cain. Shem, neither blessed nor

cursed, is associated with Asia, a place characterised above all by variation in its

inhabitants and ambiguity in their interpretation.

Asia is not only a place of mystery: for Isidore, as for Augustine and the Anglo-

Saxons, Paradisus est locus in orientis partibus constitutus (Paradise is located in

the part established as the Orient).12 Many medieval maps of the world place

Paradise at the very top, which is to say at the eastern edge of the worlds land masses.

Far at the other side of Asia, and often at the very centre of the map, is to be found

Jerusalem. This Jerusalem is the home of the Hebrews, who are understood to be

descendants from Shem in a link the Anglo-Saxons imagine as being quite direct. In

the Old English poetic Genesis, for example, the line from Shem to the Hebrews is

drawn without intermediary:

On re mge wron men tile,ara an ws Eber haten,eafora Semes; of am eorle wocunrim eoda, a nu elingas,ealle eorbuend, Ebrei hata.

Of that tribe were good men, of whom one was called Eber, Shems heir; of thatman were born countless peoples, whom now men, all earth-dwellers, call Hebrews.(Genesis, lines 16448)13

Jerusalem was, as the Anglo-Saxons knew from numerous homilies, saints lives,

and other texts, the location of Solomons temple; for Anglo-Saxon and other

medieval Christians, Solomon represents Christian wisdom.14 Jerusalem is also the

home of Christianity through its central place in the life of Jesus. Between Jerusalem

and Paradise lie vast unexplored territories filled, in the medieval Christian

imagination, with a host of wonders and monsters. From Paradise to Jerusalem via

11Crawford, ed., 27.12Isidore, XIV. 3.13Krapp, ed., 188, 16198.14

Menner, ed., xix.

362 H. Estes


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a map full of marvels, Asia is diverse in its inhabitants and ambiguous in its

figurations.

The Cottonian world map, a product of the early eleventh century in England,

contains actual Asian places and geographical features, including Babylon, the Nile,

and India, in quae sunt Gentes XLIV (in which there are 44 peoples) alongsidesuch curiosities as Noahs Arc, gryphons, and Gog and Magog. The Cottonian map

appears in Cotton Tiberius B. v., a manuscript of miscellaneous materials including

the itinerary of Archbishop Sigerics journey to Rome; lists of popes, abbots, and

priests; computistical materials and a calendar; astronomical and scientific texts; and

both Latin and Old English versions of the Wonders of the East.15

The text ofWonders is accompanied by colour illustrations.16 The wonders of

the text and illustrations include animals or monsters clearly identifiable as non-

human, as well as human or semi-human figures.17 Descriptions of the various

creatures in theWondersare located with reference to places named on the Cottonian

map, such as Babylon and Egypt. The first place named in Wonders is the island of

Antimolima, whose main city, Archemedon, is populated by merchants and by rams

as big as oxen. Here, we are still in the realm of possible reality: to someone

unfamiliar with it, an animal such as the aurochs or the eland could reasonably have

been described as a large goat. Wonders also includes reference to ylpenda

(elephants, x10), well-known to modern generations of zoo-goers but surely

marvellous to someone who knew only the smaller wild and domestic animals of

northern Europe.

Early on, the text describes familiar-looking animals such as roosters and wild

beasts; however, these burst into flame if they are touched by any person. tsyndon ungefregelicu lyblac (Those are unusual witchcraft,x3) the text comments

rather laconically. As the text progresses, the animals become more and more

marvellous: a nddran habba twa heafde, re eagan scina nihtes swa leohte

swa blacern (the snakes have two heads, and their eyes shine at night as bright as a

lantern, x5); soon after this, Alexander and his readers encounter unusual dogs

called Conopoenas that have horses manan 7 eoferes tucxas 7 hunda heafda, 7

heora oru by swylce fyres lig (horses manes and boars tusks and dogs heads,

and their breath is like a fires flame, x7). Perhaps more wondrous than grotesque,

there are also dragons (x16), gryphons (x34), and phoenixes (x35).

Also woven into the text are descriptions, accompanied by illustrations, of a variety

of human or partially human beings. Two different kinds of creatures are called

homodubii which, the text explains in each case, means in Old English twylice

(doubtful or ambiguous,x8,x17). The first creatures so described are six feet tall

and extremely hirsute, but the others seem far more dubious in their humanity: Hi

beo o ene nafelan on menniscum gescape 7 syan on eoseles gescape; hi habba

15Hill, 23; Gneuss, 69.16See Orchard, 175203, for the texts ofWonders. Illustrations are in Kevin Kiernan, ed., Electronic Beowulf.17

Freedman, 124; Kim, 16280.



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longe sceancan swa fugelas 7 lielice stefne (They are of human shape until the

navel, and after that in the shape of a donkey; they have long shanks like birds, and

soft voices, x17).

Other creatures referred to as moncynn (people) or menn (men) are

creatures fifteen feet tall and with two faces who, onne hi kennan willa, onnefara hi on scipum to Indeum, 7 r hyra gecynd on weorold bringa (when they

wish to give birth, then they go in ships to India, and there they bring their offspring

into the world, x11); headless creatures a habba on heora breostum heora eagan

7 mu (who have on their breasts their eyes and mouth, x15); and humans

recalling the snakes already mentioned, ara eagan scina swa leohte swa man micel

blacern onle on ystre nihte (whose eyes shine as bright as if someone lit a large

lantern in the dark night,x22). The text also describes creatures with huge heads and

ears like fans, and when they sleep, oer eare hi him on niht underbreda, 7 mid

oran hy wreo him (they spread one ear out underneath themselves at night, and

wrap themselves with the other, x21). Perhaps most sinister are the cannibalistic

Donestre, a syndon geweaxene swa frihteras fram an heafde o one nafelan, 7 se

oer dl by mannes lice gelic (who grow like soothsayers from the head to the

navel, and the other half is like a mans body, x20). They capture foreigners,

captivate them with lies, and fter an hi hine freta ealne butan his heafde 7 onne

sitta 7 wepa ofer am heafde (after that they eat him, all but his head, and then

sit and weep over the head, x20). In a return to the real world, we meet Ethiopians

sweartan hiwes (with black faces, x32), but the placement of these actual people

among a list of monsters suggests that the Anglo-Saxons may not have viewed them

as entirely human.Besides all of these, there are two kinds of monstrous females: a race of hunters a

habba beardas swa sie o heora breost (that have beards so long that they reach

their breast,x26) as well as a group of women thirteen feet tall with skin as white as

marble a habba eoferes tucxas 7 feax o helan side, 7 on lendenum oxan

tgl . . . 7 hi habba olfenda fet 7 eoferes te (who have boars tusks and hair down

to their heels, and ox-tails on their loins . . . and they have camels feet and boars

teeth,x27). Near the end of the text there is mention of a fremfulle (generous)

people who give visitors a woman, whom Alexander the Great has spared

annihilation because he found their humanity wondrous (a ws he wundriende,

x30). That the races of men include members able to give birth and include women

who can be given as gifts suggests that the term menn should be translated as

tribe or people, not as male creatures. The existence alongside mixed gender

groups of specifically feminine categories of monstrosity indicates that gender is

perceived as a category of difference and, simultaneously, suggests that the

conception and ideology of difference itself is gendered in Anglo-Saxon England.

The idea of woman as distinctly different from man, and of man as normative, is

given explicit formulation by Jerome: . . . quamdiu mulier partui servit et liberis,

hanc habet ad virum differentiam, quam corpus ad animam. Sin autem Christo

magis voluerit servire quam saeculo, mulier esse cessabit, et dicetur vir ( . . . as long

364 H. Estes


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as woman is for birth and children, then she is as different from man as body is from

soul. But if she wishes to serve Christ more than the world, then she will cease to be a

woman and will be called man).18 Men who devote themselves to Christ are still

menthey do not transmute into some other kind of being. Women, on the other

hand, are of a different order, fundamentally different from men unless they becomebrides of Christ. As Jeffrey Jerome Cohen has argued, Anglo-Saxon texts place giants

in an originary position in English history, by assigning to them the construction of

Roman stonework at London and Bath, yet figure them concurrently as the enemy, as

seen in the cannibalism of the monster Grendel. Such is the vexing duality of the

monster, especially in northern tradition. The giant is simultaneously the origin of

the world and its greatest enemy.19 In figuring Eve as the source of the fall of man,

but also subsequently as the mother of all humanity, and Mary as the source of Jesus

and thus of Christian grace and redemption, Christianity arguably also figures

woman as simultaneous origin and enemy.

The ability to give women as gifts, to use them as a medium of exchange, appears

to be the characteristic that guarantees humanity for the group the Wondersstates is

spared by Alexander and his armies. Gift-giving is, of course, crucial to Anglo-Saxon

social networks, not only in the Germanic past of heroic poetry, but also as

demonstrated when, for example, in the late ninth century King Alfred sends

manuscripts to several English bishops along with valuable jewelled pointers. Anglo-

Saxon social networks are also enabled by the role of women as peace-weaver, in

which a woman of one tribe makes a union of marriage to a prominent member of

another tribe in the attempt to guarantee social stability. While such union is

sometimes figured as consisting of the giving of the woman from one man toanother, in fact the role of peace-weaver suggests agency. As the example of

Wealhtheow in Beowulfsuggests, a successful peace-weaver will be a woman who is

rhetorically skilled, generous with gifts, and able to read and react to shifting power

balances.

The women given as gifts by members of the tribe favoured by Alexander appear to

possess no such agency. Rather, they are under total control of the groups men. This

is what places them in sharp contrast to the groups composed solely of women, who

are under no masculine power and whose humanity is suspect. In a study ofBeowulf,

Mary Dockray-Miller has argued that in the world of the poem masculinity is

power, most emphatically the power to control the actions of others.20 Dockray-

Miller suggests that Modthryth and Grendels mother are masculinised by the

violence of their actions in Beowulf; in Wonders, the women who do not live within

the influence of masculine power are rendered monstrous. Women whose physical

appearance suggests masculinitywith beards down to their breasts, for

exampleare also presented as grotesques. The text works to establish clear

18Jerome, PL 26: 533B-C.19Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, 10.20

Dockray-Miller.



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boundaries between masculine and feminine in terms of acceptable social roles as well

as of physical configuration.21

The location of these monstrously dubious women in Asia highlights the

confluence of gender and other kinds of difference in Wondersand other Old English

narratives of the East. In addition to appearing in Cotton Tiberius B. v., theWonders of the East is also preserved in a manuscript containing the unique text of

Beowulfas well as a poem based on the Biblical book of Judith and two additional

prose pieces, the Letter of Alexander to Aristotle and a fragmentary Life of Saint

Christopher. These texts, like Wonders, all figure Asia and/or woman as Other.

The Letter is addressed to Alexanders tutor, Aristotle, and narrates Alexanders

travels through Asia in his quest to conquer the world. In it, Alexander describes the

humans, beasts, marvels, and monsters he encounters. Much of the Letter is more

prosaic thanWonders, describing animals and humans within the realm of probable

experience. Alexander repeatedly mentions in passing that he and his armies must

contend with missenlican cynd ndrena 7 hrifa wildeora (various kinds of

serpents and wild beasts,x9).22 When Alexander pauses to describe these beasts and

serpents, those creatures are marvellous indeed. But the first thing Alexander

mentions in hisLetterabout which he writes to his teacher, Aristotle, a wundrode

ic (then I wondered, x8) is the vast quantity of gold to be found in the castle of

Porus, king of Fasiacen.

The first encounter with adversity that Alexander describes in detail is neither

monster nor beast, but the difficulty of coping with the heat of the desert. The

problem of obtaining clean water to drink occupies five longish sections in

Alexanders letter (out of forty-one sections in all). The land itself, relentless in itsparched heat, becomes the first threat to Alexander and his men. Interestingly,

eore (earth) is gendered feminine in Old English.23 It may perhaps not go too

far to suggest that the Old English translator, if not Alexander himself, saw the earth

of the East as a hostile feminine presence in a text in which women are either

monstrous or are little more than things to be exchanged by men, in an analogue to

the way in which the earth is a thing to be traversed by Alexander and the men of his

army.

Having at last located a source of clean water, Alexander then describes various

encounters with wondrous and monstrous beasts, some actual animals, others

existing only in imagination. In short order, his army encounters wyrmas

(serpents) with three-pronged tongues and breath swylce byrnende ecelle (like

a burning torch, x18); bats with te in monna gelicnisse (teeth like those of

humans,x19); hwite leon (white lions, x19); boars of unmtlicre micelnesse

(immeasurable size, x19); a rhinoceros, which is egeslice gewpnod (terribly

21Kim, 124.22For the text of the Letter, see Orchard, 22453. Translations are my own.23Hall, s.v. eore. Does this foreshadow Allan Quatermains encounter of a breast-like mountain (or is it a

mountainous breast?) in King Solomons Mines (Haggard) or the naming of the Grand Tetons in the Rocky

Mountains of the American West?

366 H. Estes


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armed) with rie hornas on foran heafde (three horns on the front of its head)

and which tramples several dozen of Alexanders warriors before they are able to kill

it with arrows and spears (x20); and Indisce mys (Indian mice) the size and

shape of foxes, which do considerable damage to Alexanders horses and cattle (x22).

After these setbacks, Alexander once again encounters King Porus with his army.Rather than fight, however, Porus surrenders and gives gifts of great gold to

Alexander and his men.

Alexander then comments somewhat listlessly that he and his men woldan ma

wunderlicra inga geseon 7 sceawian 7 mrlicra. Ac a ne gesawon we swa we a

geferdon noht elles buton a westan feldas 7 wudu 7 duna be m garsecge, a

wron monnum ungeferde for wildeorum 7 wyrmum (wished to see and witness

more marvellous and noteworthy things. But as we travelled we saw nothing but

desolate expanses and woods and hills by the ocean, which were impassable for men

because of wild beasts and serpents,x26). Suddenly, however, they are set upon by a

crocodile, which they bludgeon to death because edged weapons are useless, and then

an immense herd of elephants, which they frighten away with pigs, of which

Alexander says elephants are afraid.

Then, on oer eodlond India (in another district in India, x29) Alexander

and his men encounter ruge wifmen, 7 wpned men wron hie swa ruwe 7 swa

gehre swa wildeor (hairy women, and men who were as hairy and as shaggy as

wild animals, x29). Moreover, they are nine feet tall, naked, and of the habit of

catching whales with their bare hands to eat. As in Wonders, women who resemble

menwhose difference from men is less obvious than expected or, perhaps,

desiredfall into the realm of dubious humanity. In the same paragraph, Alexandermentions halfhundinga micle mngeo (a great number of half-dogs, x29) who

attempt to harm his army but flee when subjected to a hail of arrows. The hairy

women may perhaps be read as half-female in analogy to these beasts.

Alexander gives a longer description to the falling snow and the rain of fire his men

next encounter. He concludes his narrative with a description of his search for the

realm of the trees of Sun and Moon, his journey there, and his posing of questions

and receipt of answersabout the time and place of his death. In an interesting

touch, the names of the beasts and serpents he encounters on this journey, rather

than the creatures themselves, are wunderlicum (wondrous, x33). He arrives in

the realm of these trees to find them guarded by men and women who dress only in

animal skins. The person in charge of this place is a three-hundred-year-old male

bishop, ten feet tall, with black skin and pierced ears, who tells Alexander that gif

ine gerefan beo clne from wif gehrine (if your companions are innocent of

womans touch, x35), they may approach the trees.

For a monk, innocence of womans touch would mean absence of sexual activity,

but in a non-Christian, non-monastic context this doesnt seem quite right. Given the

paucity of representations of the feminine in theLetter, one might conclude that any

contact with the feminine denotes, de facto, contamination. The absence of the

feminine in Alexanders masculine, militaristic, imperialist world is emphasised by



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the fact that the letter is addressed to Alexanders mother and sisterswomen placed

outside the reach of the world described in the letter by the very fact that they can be

reached only through the medium of written communication. As readers, they may

be as distant as tenth-century Anglo-Saxons or as twenty-first-century Anglo-

Saxonists.Andy Orchard notes several passages in which the Old English translator of the

Latin version of AlexandersLettermakes the character of Alexander less sympathetic,

more self-absorbed and arrogant, a monstrous figure of pride, a monster-slayer

who, in Christian eyes, is every bit as outlandish and inhuman as the creatures he

fights.24 Yet he is a European man in Asia; the letter, written from his point of view

and disseminated widely in medieval Europe, constructs the peoples and creatures he

encounters as opportunities for conquest. The Asian King Porus retreats rather than

engaging Alexanders army, thus surrendering his status as wpnedman.

Wpen (weapon) also refers to the male genitalia; Poruss surrender of

weapons, then, suggests that he surrenders masculinity altogether. In an oppositional

parallel to the female figures reduced to half-women by the presence of apparently

masculine quantities of hair, King Porus is reduced to half-man, or not man at all, by

his withdrawal from conflict with King Alexander.

The dynamic of European traveller in Asia, narrated explicitly in Alexanders Letter

and implied in the catalogue ofWonders, is reversed in the Old English Life of Saint

Christopher.25 In one of the nice little ironies of Old English textual scholarship, the

Life of Saint Christopheris acephalous, its opening lines or, more likely, pages having

been lost at some point in the history of the Beowulfmanuscript. Though it is not

stated in the extant portion of this text, traditions current in Anglo-Saxon Englanddescribe Christopher as having the head of a dog. According to the Old English

Martyrology, Christopher comes of re eode r men habba hunda heafod and

of re eoran on re ton men hi selfe (from the people where men have the

heads of dogs and from the land where men eat one another).26 In the context of the

Wonders of the East, this land must be in Asia. Moreover, Christopher cannot speak

until he prays for human speech and an angelic figure breathes into his mouth. As the

Beowulf-manuscripts extant text of theLife of Saint Christopheropens, Christopher is

already in Samo, an island off the coast of Greeceand, therefore, in Europewhere

he has encountered the pagan king Dagnus, who is furious that Christopher denies

the divinity of his pagan gods and is having him tortured to try to get him to recant.

The king has Christopher killed, but he ultimately accepts Christianity. In this tale,

then, a monstrous Asian, a being of dubious humanity with a dogs head and without

the capacity of speech, perhaps even a cannibal, accepts faith and brings it to Europe,

where he is responsible for the conversion to Christianity of European men.

Monstrosity, like femininity, can be transcended by Christian faith.

24Orchard, 139.25For the text of the Life of Saint Christopher, see Rypins, ed., 6876.26

Herzfeld, ed., 66, 68.

368 H. Estes


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The Beowulf-manuscript concludes with the Old English poetic Judith, another

Asian narrative set in Bethulia, a legendary city near Jerusalem. The city is besieged

by Nebuchadnezzars army for refusing to pay tribute; Judith infiltrates the enemy

encampment and returns home several days later with the head of Holofernes, the

general in charge. Judiths prayer of the Bible addressed to Lord, God of Israel(13.9) is transformed in the poem into an appeal to a tripartite God:

Ic e, fryma god ond frofre gst,bearn alwaldan, biddan wyllemiltse inre me earfendre,rynesse rym.

Of you, God of all creatures, Holy Ghost and Son of the Almighty, glory of Trinity,I, needy one, wish to ask mercy. (lines 836)

This supplication is quite clearly in the tradition of Christian and not of Jewish

prayer. Judith and her people are named Hebrews in the poem, in a shift from their

Biblical affiliation as Israelites, because in medieval Christian exegesis, the peoples

of the Hebrew scriptures or Old Testament are divided into two opposing groups.

Those individuals idealised in the Old Testament books are adopted as ancestral

figures for European Christians; those whose presentation is more ambiguous or fully

negative are taken as ancestral figures for the Jews, a people at best tolerated and at

worst reviled in Christian commentaries of the Middle Ages, accused of denying the

divinity of Christ and either wilfully or perversely blind to the significance of their

own scripture, figurations Rosemary Radford Ruether and Jeremy Cohen, amongothers, have explored.27 As the originary people of the book, their disagreement with

late-coming Christian interpreters about its meaning occasions anxiety; Patristic and

medieval Christian exegetes expended a not inconsiderable amount of energy in

explaining the spiritual impoverishment and theological blindness of post-Christian

Jews. As a body, then, Jews mirror the land of Asia in being both source of and threat

to medieval European Christianity. Moreover, as I have argued in detail elsewhere,

Judiths status as a powerful woman is inherently problematic for the Old English

author of the poem.28 In this poem, then, the tropes of femininity, Jewishness, and

eastern setting intersect in their figuration as simultaneously originary and menacing.

I turn finally to Beowulfwhich, in the taxonomy I have been developing in this

paper, is the exception. Generally the poem has been seen as central to the

manuscript in which it is preservedit is by far the longest text in the codex, and to

students of Anglo-Saxon England who have privileged poetry over prose and work

without a known source over materials translated from Latin sources, it has long been

considered not only the most important work in the manuscript in which it is

preserved, but one of the most important artefacts of Old English literature. Attempts

27Ruether; Jeremy Cohen.28

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to read the manuscript as a coherent whole have centred on the themes and

characteristics ofBeowulf, most famously its monsters. The Letter of Alexanderand the

Wonders of the Eastfall easily into place in a reading of the manuscript that foregrounds

monstrosity, and the fragmentaryLife of Saint Christophercan be read as belonging in

the same group because of the tradition (current in Anglo-Saxon England andelsewhere in early medieval Europe) that ascribes to Christopher the head of a dog. The

poetic Judith becomes, in such a reading, the problematic poem. Some readers have

found that the monstrosity of Holofernes gives the poem a place in the manuscript, or

have argued on palaeographic and codicological grounds that it was an original part of

the codex, while others have suggested that it was a late, accidental addition based on

the fact that the scribe of part ofBeowulfis the same as the scribe ofJudith.29

The vastly overwhelming majority of materials preserved in Old English are prose

texts, primarily religious materials and mostly those with Latin sources. Such materials

often survive in multiple manuscripts, unlike Old English poems, almost all of which

exist in a single text only. The fact that the Anglo-Saxons seem to have devoted

significantly greater resources to the copying of prose texts suggests that they may have

privileged these texts over poems. The three prose texts and the poeticJudithfound in

theBeowulf-manuscript all exist in various Anglo-Saxon versions, albeit not necessarily

in multiple identical or nearly identical Old English texts.30 For Beowulf, there is

duplication in survival of some of the embedded narratives, including a fragmentary

version of theFight at Finnsburh31 as well as non-Anglo-Saxon reference to Scyld and

Hygelac: Scyld is identified with Skjoldr of Scandinavian tradition, and Hygelac with

Chlochilaichus, who appears in theHistoria Regum Francorumof Gregory of Tours.32

However, for the controlling narrative of the poem, in which Beowulf challenges andkills three successive monsters (and is killed by the last of the three), there is no

duplication, in Old English or in analogous Germanic legend. If we take multiple

survival of texts as an index of their importance to Anglo-Saxon writers and compilers,

Beowulf is the least significant of the works in the manuscript.

If we viewBeowulfas the afterthought in the codex, we can see that the remainder

of the manuscript collects materials about Asia, materials that portray the region in

an ambiguous relationship to Europe. As the locus for Paradise, Asia is the source for

all humanity. With Jerusalem located in Asia, the region is the source of the Hebrews,

the original Chosen People, and their bible; and of Christianity, in that much of the

narrative of Jesus life and death takes place in Jerusalem. Through the monsters

described in the various texts, Asia becomes a threat to European travellers such as

Alexander. But in the figure of Saint Christopher, Asia becomes the source of

conversion for the Greek king of Samo and his people.

Reading the manuscript from this point of view, we might notice that Beowulf is

also a book about the East. The events narrated take place among Danes and Geats, in

29Kevin S. Kiernan, Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript, 15067; Lucas; Griffith, ed., 23.30For the prose Judith, see Assmann.31For the text ofThe Fight at Finnsburh, see Klaeber, 21938.32

Klaeber, 121; Bjork and Obermeyer, 13; Hills, 306.

370 H. Estes


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lands now called Denmark and Swedento the east of England. The people

described are the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons; the lands are the places of the Anglo-

Saxons origin. The text is a narrative about monsters that threaten the social

coherence of the community, as well as its spiritual integrity, in that Hrothgars

people resort to idol-worship for lack of another way to rid themselves of thepestilence of Grendel. From Hrothgars point of view, Beowulf himself comes from

the east. Like Christopher, monstrous in his size and physical configuration, Beowulf

is monstrous in his strength and stamina, in that he has the power of thirty men in

his hand, can swim fully armed through the ocean for a week, and travel underwater

toward Grendels mothers lair for the better part of a day. Like Christopher, who

brings Christian salvation to Dagnus and his people, Beowulf brings to the Danes

salvation from the predations of Grendel. Beowulf (as poem rather than as title

character) also figures gender as intersecting with monstrosity in the character of

Grendels mother. Grendel is monstrous because he kills thirty men at a time and eats

them. We can assume that Grendels mother ate Ascheres body before leaving his

head as a signpost to her lair, but this is left unstated; as I have already noted,

Dockray-Miller argues that Grendels mothers monstrosity consists in her

appropriation of masculine acts of violence and vengeance rather than in the

cannibalism she perhaps shares with her offspring.

I have been arguing that Old English texts that refer to the East have more to do

with Anglo-Saxon preoccupations with locating themselves geographically and

temporally in Christian Europe than with historical realities. The texts the Anglo-

Saxons chose to render into Old English, and the ways in which they adapted them,

demonstrate the importance of Latin Christian texts in constructing their world view,as well as the ways in which they used those texts to define their own identity. As

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen argues, England in the centuries before the Norman Conquest

was a heterogeneous collection of peoples who were constantly forced to examine

who they were in relation to a shifting array of alterities; and further, Anglo-Saxon

England was relentlessly pondering what it means to be a warrior, a Christian, a hero,

a saint, an outlaw, a king, a sexed and gendered being.33 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen

figures the giantthe appearance and destruction of the giant, as well as the giant as

excluded from human communityas what enables masculine identity formation

and the development of a sense of community in Anglo-Saxon England. The giant is,

however, only one figure of alterity to serve that function. Jews serve as figures

simultaneously originary and abjected for medieval Christianity, and Jews are, it

could be argued, the absent presence in texts such as Wonders, because Jerusalem and

Babylon (which during the Anglo-Saxon period was the centre of Jewish culture) are

repeatedly referenced, but the text then always swerves immediately away from

discussion of their inhabitants to describe, instead, monsters or marvels inhabiting

some territory near by. The monsters of texts such as Wondersfigure as outsiders to

Anglo-Saxon culture and function to structure masculinity and social cohesion in a

33

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, 45.



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manner comparable to the work Jeffrey Jerome Cohen describes of legends about

giants. The point is sharpened when the monsters are gendered specifically as

feminine; the Jews present in Judith and absent in references in Wonders to Babylon

and the Red Sea function comparably in medieval Christian theology.

Clearly, Anglo-Saxon authors, translators, adaptors, editors, and scribes haveabsorbed ideas and ideologies about the East from Latin sources. lfric, moreover,

is clearer and more direct than Isidore in linking morally charged Biblical figures to

specific regions of the known world. Yet the scribal collocation of materials in the

Beowulf-manuscript shows that the Anglo-Saxons made of their Latin sources

something new. Boundaries between masculine and feminine are eroded; the line

between human and monster continuously crossed with the imagination of various

marginal creatures. The East becomes at once monstrous, marvellous, and

mysterious. It is a place of the imagination, in quasi-historical accounts ranging from

the Letter of Alexander to Beowulf, and the imagination is given free rein in the

creation of a realm whose wild characters and characteristics opposed the wished-for

stability of roles and functions at home among the English. If Anglo-Saxon women

and men do not fit the oppositional models suggested as ideals by Jerome, at least the

women are un-bearded and the men weaponed. With all of these figurations existing

together in a single manuscript, it becomes possible to argue that Asia as a whole

functions in the same position to medieval Christian Europe in a comprehensive

fashion, anticipating the orientalism of the post-medieval period.

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