Download PDF | (Nature and Environment in the Middle Ages, 3) Britton Elliott Brooks - Restoring Creation_ The Natural World in the Anglo-Saxon Saints' Lives of Cuthbert and Guthlac-D. S. Brewer (2019).
328 Pages
Introduction
EVERY HOUR CHIMES With a new example of ecological crisis: the warming oceans, the loss of biodiversity, and the rise of antienvironmental public policies. In response to our contemporary moment, the Humanities have begun to engage in earnest with questions of ecology. This present study seeks to bring medieval literature into dialogue with these issues, analysing medieval constructions and interpretations of the non-human world as expressed in literature, by considering them in their historical context. This approach highlights how medieval peoples actively reflected upon their own engagement with the non-human world, structured in great part by their theology and philosophy, and articulated them through the artistry of their literature.
Restoring Creation: the Natural World in the Anglo-Saxon Saints’ Lives of Cuthbert and Guthlac' engages with the growing interest throughout medieval scholarship in the environmental humanities, evidenced by the number of monographs published in the past few years on such topics, including Water in Medieval Literature by Albrecht Classen; Anglo-Saxon Literary Landscapes: Ecotheory and the Environmental Imagination, by Heidi Estes; and Inhabited Spaces: Anglo-Saxon Constructions of Place, by Nicole G. Discenza.
This engagement by medieval scholars is heartening, as the majority of the studies in the environmental humanities, in Estes’s words, ‘dismiss or ignore the medieval, or misrepresent it in discussions of the modern’.* This is most evident in the wider, and erroneous, conceptions of the negative role of the natural world in medieval literature, particularly in relation to ecocritical scholarship. For example, Timothy Morton, one of the leading ecocritical theorists, describes the natural world in medieval texts in negative and dismissive terms: ‘Nature, practically a synonym for evil in the Middle Ages, was considered the basis of social good by the Romantic Period.’* This oversimplification of medieval literature is unfortunate, to say the least, and fundamentally distorting, both for the project of literary analysis as a whole, and also for broader discussions in the environmental humanities.
The negative vision of the relationship between medieval people and the natural world also appears in more popular arenas, as evidenced by the scholar and writer Alexandra Harris. In her 2015 book Weatherland: Writers and Artists under English Skies, she characterises the Anglo-Saxon engagement with nature as follows: ‘The impulse of this culture is to favour the controlled, man-made, and essentially social space of the hall — lit by fire and candle [...] The outdoor winter world is dreadful by contrast.’” The non-human world was for AngloSaxons, according to Morton and Harris, evil, antagonistic, and often utilised as a negative template by which the anthropocentric positive could be defined. Connected but more nuanced views are also found in the work of medieval scholars, such as Jennifer Neville, who categorises the representation of the natural world in Old English poetry as fundamentally unconcerned with the natural world itself, and primarily anthropocentric:
What emerges is that the representation of the ‘natural world’ is never an end in itself and is always ancillary to other issues [...] the state of humanity and its position in the universe, the establishment and maintenance of society, the power of extraordinary individuals, the proximity of the deity to creation and the ability of writing to control and limit information.
More recent medieval scholarship has called these views into question. Estes notes not only the multitude of relationships Anglo-Saxons conceived of themselves, ‘the land and its nonhuman creatures’, but also highlights how even the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a text anthropocentric in its very structure, ‘contains numerous references to natural phenomena separate from the mention of human endeavors, suggesting that they are of intrinsic interest’.’ Corinne Dale has provided a recent and convincing corrective to such anthropocentric readings of Anglo-Saxon literary depictions of the non-human in her 2017 monograph, The Natural World in the Exeter Book Riddles, where she carefully argues that ‘there is a programme of resistance to anthropocentrism at work in the riddle collection, whereby the riddles challenge humancentered ways of depicting the created world’.® This present study continues in this vein, and argues that early medieval constructions of the natural world were neither as negative nor as monolithic as is often argued, and that instead they reveal a sophisticated and considered engagement with the non-human world.
Where this study differs from the approaches taken by scholars like Estes is in its central argument that the relationship between humanity and the non-human world in Anglo-Saxon texts was defined in great part by contemporary theological and philosophical views. I therefore focus less on employing modern ecocritical theory, as Estes does in her book, and more on the manner in which environmental concerns would have been perceived from multiple medieval perspectives. This is an important distinction because often, in our pursuit of understanding the texts we love, we substitute our own views and theoretical perspectives for those expressed in those texts. Discenza begins her book Inhabited Spaces by highlighting this very danger:
As anyone who studies the past knows, it is all too easy to import modern modes of thought into earlier eras. We tend to assume, often unconsciously, that people think as we do. While we can never entirely leave ourselves behind, focused study can help us to identify our preconceptions and distinguish others’, so that we recognize where they share our ideas and where they differ.’
Restoring Creation: the Natural World in the Anglo-Saxon Saints’ Lives of Cuthbert and Guthlac seeks to understand how the Anglo-Saxons themselves conceptualised their relationship with the natural world, and then how those conceptions shaped their literary productions. This study also differs in its subject matter: hagiography. While at first Saints’ Lives might seem an odd choice, as they are some of the most conventional of all medieval literary genres,"’ they are also some of the most connected to the physical landscape in which the Anglo-Saxons lived. As will be discussed below, early Anglo-Saxon hagiography was concerned with elevating particular saints from very specific locations in the English landscape, most often for the purpose of establishing and expanding their cult.
These cult sites commonly became important religious centres, and as such the depictions of the natural world, whether it be elemental features like rivers and dales, mountains and forests, or animate creatures like birds, otters, and seals, are deeply connected to the physical reality which the Anglo-Saxons would have known. This inherent connectedness to the lived experience of these early medieval people allows a unique window into the ways they perceived their relationship with the non-human world, and how they chose to depict that relationship in their literary endeavours.
The Restoration of Creation: Received Exegesis
At the heart of this study of the early Anglo-Saxon vitae of saints Cuthbert and Guthlac is a specific exegetical interpretation of the Fall and its effects upon humanity and Creation. This interpretation argues that the indifferent Creation of the Fall can be restored to prelapsarian harmony with humanity by way of sanctity. Such a connection between medieval depictions of the natural world and Creation, Eden, and the Fall, has been noted by various scholars, including Catherine Clarke in her book Literary Landscapes and the Idea of England, 700-1400, particularly in connecting the classical topos of the locus amoenus with the biblical vision of Eden."’ Most recently, and in direct connection to the vitae of Cuthbert and Guthlac which are the focus of this study, Sally Shockro notes how ‘[t]he affinity between man and nature was ruptured by Adam’s fall, but it was not eternally broken [...] Through piety and purity, Cuthbert and Guthlac have repaired the breach, in themselves, between man and nature, and therefore are able to take their rightful place within the natural world’.’? Yet Shockro provides little historical, theological, and exegetical context, and subsumes this into her primary argument highlighting the agency and mutuality of animals in these vitae. The restoration of Creation has its roots, however, in biblical and patristic eschatology.’’ Acts 3:21 describes the second coming of Jesus Christ as bringing about a restoration of all things: ‘Quem oportet quidem caelum suscipere usque in tempora restitutionis omnium’ (Whom heaven indeed must receive, until the times of the restitution of all things’).'* This was interpreted by Paulin Rom. 8:20-21, and by a number of the Church Fathers, as a reference to Creation (sometimes translated as ‘creature’ here) being restored to its prelapsarian state:
Nam exspectatio creaturae revelationem filiorum Dei exspectat. Vanitati enim creatura subjecta est non volens, sed propter eum, qui subjecit eam in spe: Quia et ipsa creatura liberabitur a servitute corruptionis in libertatem gloriae filiorum Dei.
(For the expectation of the Creation waits for the revelation of the sons of God. For the Creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him that made it subject, in hope: because the Creation also itself shall be delivered from the servitude of corruption, into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.)
While several patristic texts interpret these verses in a similar manner, the most relevant here, given its influence and availability in Anglo-Saxon England, is St Ambrose’s Exameron:' ‘quod Apostolicae quoque liceat astruere auctoritatis exemplo. scriptum est enim [Rom. 8:20] [...] liberabitur autem et ipsa creatura a seruitute corruptionis, cum gratia diuinae remunerationis adfulserit’” (‘For this belief one may find authority also in the words of the Apostle. It is written [...] however, even Creation itself will also be delivered from its slavery to corruption when the grace of divine reward has shown forth’). Jerome likewise interprets this restoration (restitutio) as an eschatological vision of the return to an Edenic natural world: ‘Quando autem filii Dei adsumpti fuerint, et ipsa creatura de hoc seruitio liberatur’'® (When, moreover, the sons of God shall have attained glory, Creation itself will also be delivered from this slavery’). This restoration of Creation, however, is not only relegated to an eschatological future, but is also glimpsed and made manifest in the present via the power of saints. The specific exegesis that supports this reading, and which is most relevant for the Anglo-Saxon authors analysed in this study, is that of St Augustine of Hippo, later adapted by the Venerable Bede. The influence of Augustine’s and Bede’s shared exegesis is evident in the vitae of Cuthbert and Guthlac that are the focus of this study, primarily by the way the Anglo-Saxon authors incorporated, often nearly verbatim, sections of the exegesis in all but one of the Latin texts; in the single outlier (the Anoymous Vita S. Cuthberti) the underlying influence of the Augustinian interpretation can be discerned from its structure and content. In the case of the OE texts, the exegesis is evident in both the vernacular translation of the Latin sections, as well as in its influence over structure and content.
Patristic Exegesis and Anglo-Saxon Literature
The use of patristic exegesis in interpretations of Anglo-Saxon literature, particularly texts written in Old English, remains contentious. The debate has its roots in Bernard Huppé’s 1959 Doctrine and Poetry: Augustine’s Influence on Old English Poetry, which employed Augustinian exegesis to interpret, among other texts, Caedmon's Hymn and Genesis A." Huppé viewed Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana as formulating a ‘Christian theory of literature’ which provided ‘the basic program for a Christian culture’, and influenced ‘the early practice of poetry in the vernacular, specifically Old English’.** The force of Huppé’s conviction, however, often led to an indiscriminate application of patristic exegesis, resulting in a number of distortions. Morton Bloomfield, for example, highlights how Huppé’s suggestion that the parallel phrases ‘Meotodes meahte, his modgepanc, and weorc Wuldorfeder’ in Cedmon’s Hymn ‘may suggest the Trinity’ relies on Huppé translating modgepanc as ‘wisdom’, which Bloomfield argues can only be translated thus ‘by a great freedom’.”' Bloomfield and later scholars did not, however, reject the notion of using patristic exegesis as an interpretative tool, but argued for a more measured approach. Judith Garde and Bernard Muir, for example, advocate an approach based on ‘the necessary concurrence of appropriate patristic analogues and close examination of a text’ rather than Huppé’s ‘indiscriminate imposition’, primarily via the liturgy, which they argue is the most profitable avenue for patristic influence on OE poetry.”
More recently critics such as Larry McKill and Nina Boyd have further argued against Huppé’s open application of patristic exegesis.” McKill, for example, highlights how Huppé’s analysis of Genesis A distorts ‘the poem’s own explicit theme’ by its ‘exegetical imposition’.“* What most recent critics agree on is the measured and appropriate application of patristic exegesis, whether via the liturgy, or demonstrable contemporary knowledge of such exegesis.” This study will follow in a similar measured vein, and will argue the application of the specific Augustinian and Bedan exegesis is justified for the following reasons: first, the majority of the texts analysed in this thesis are in Anglo-Latin, where the influence of patristic exegesis is much easier to identify; second, as mentioned above, there is a section of the exegesis incorporated nearly verbatim in all the Latin texts except for the VCA; third, the OE texts are necessarily influenced by the exegesis as they are translations and adaptations of the AngloLatin vitae.
Saint Augustine of Hippo’s Exegesis
Augustinian exegesis is often difficult to delineate, as his ideas evolved throughout his forty-year exegetical career.” This included five attempts at explicating the Genesis narrative: De Genesi contra Manichaeos (388-90); De Genesi ad litteram imperfectus liber (c.393); the last three books of the Confessiones (397-400); De Genesi ad litteram (404-15); and book eleven of De civitate Dei (417-18).” The result of this development in Augustine’s thinking about Creation is helpfully summarised by Karla Pollmann, who argues that Augustine has two distinct, though related, positions concerning the effects of the Fall on Creation in Genesis: an early pessimistic view, which gives way to a more optimistic outlook as his thinking matured.” In Augustine’s early De Genesi contra Manichaeos, he perceives the relationship between Creation and humanity through Classical and Hebraic notions of a pessimistic cosmos that starts with a Golden Age of Paradise that is distorted, and which subsequently declines. Augustine’s earlier vision understands Creation itself to be transformed by the actions of humans, and that any inimical elements within it are a consequence of those actions.” In addition to these classical and Jewish influences, Augustine was also influenced in his early perception by Christian exegetes like Basil the Great and St Ambrose who posit that, though Paradise was itself cursed in the Fall, Creation is now used by God for the development of humanity towards redemption.” It is this vision of Creation which shapes Augustine’s De Genesi contra Manichaeos, evidenced by his interpretation of the critical verse Gen. 3:18, ‘spinas et tribulos germinabit tibi et comedes herbas terrae’ (‘[t]horns and thistles shall it bring
forth to you: and you shall eat the herbs of the earth’),*' as portraying a harmonious Creation that only becomes inimical to humanity after the Fall: ‘Ergo dicendum est, quod per peccatum hominis terra maledicta sit, ut spinas pareret’ (‘Therefore it should be said, that through the sin of man the earth was cursed, so as to bring forth thorns’).°* As noted by Hanneke Reuling, Augustine likewise follows the exegeses of Basil and Ambrose in interpreting this punishment as functioning to push humanity towards redemption:
sed ut peccati humani crimen semper hominibus ante oculos poneret, quo admonerentur aliquando averti a peccatis et ad dei praecepta converti.*#
(But so that it should always place before the eyes of men the judgment of human sin, whereby they might from time to time be admonished by it to turn away from their sins and back to God’s commandments.)
Augustine is not completely convinced by his own exegesis, however, and is incapable of reconciling the prelapsarian Paradise described in Gen. 1:24-25, where God declares that all the beasts (including reptiles) he made are good, with the existence of seemingly useless creatures, including flies and worms.” Augustine resolves this paradox by joining these hardships with the exegesis above, where the creatures can function in the same manner as the thorns in Gen. 3: to help push humanity towards redemption.
In Augustine’s later work, De Genesi ad litteram, the uncertainty expressed in his earlier commentary is replaced by a fully formed and consistent exegesis, and his central interpretation of the Fall has shifted: where before Creation was cursed by the Fall, Augustine here argues that Creation is wholly good, suffering no transformational effects. In his commentary on the same verse, Gen. 3:18, Augustine reinterprets the emergence of thorns to represent not transformation on the part of Creation, but instead an ontological separation based on the fallen state of humanity:
Spinas et tribulos pariet tibi, ut haec etiam antea terra pariens non tamen homini pareret ad laborem, sed cuiusque modi animalibus conuenientem cibum [...] tunc autem coeperit ista homini parere ad aerumnosum negotium, cum post peccatum coepit in terra laborare.*®
(It will bring forth thorns and spiny plants for you, this may also [be interpreted] that the earth brought them forth before, not to submit man to work, but as fitting food for animals of this kind [...] then, however, that began to subject man to wretched work, when after sin he began to labour on the earth.)
Reuling notes how Augustine’s interpretation centres on the pronoun fibi, where the thorns and thistles were always present in Creation, but have now ‘changed their purpose [...] before sin the thorns and thistles grew for other reasons, and after sin, they were produced for Adam’.*’ Charles Mathewes likewise argues that Augustine here sees Creation as inherently good: ‘for reasons both Scriptural and metaphysical, Augustine holds that it is the quality of orientation to that world that is the source of our malady’.* In Augustine’s mature exegesis it is our relational orientation that has been distorted by the Fall, not Creation itself. The harmonious or antagonistic relationship between Creation and humanity depends on, in Pollmann’s words, ‘the measure of agreement (“congruentia”) with deficient (i.e., post-lapsarian) human nature’.*” The focus of the exegesis is entirely anthropocentric, and Creation retains its status of good regardless of what our perception of it may be. Augustine has re-sanctified Creation and allowed the problem of natural evil to be seen much as the problem of moral evil: a non-entity based purely upon humanity’s fallen state of being in relation to God and Creation.” This disharmony with nature is therefore depend-
ent upon the level of moral and spiritual holiness of the individual human and, as Pollmann argues, the inimical relational position between humanity and Creation can be sometimes reversed.*!
The Venerable Bede’s Exegesis
Bede’s In Genesim is an early text in his career, composed sometime between 717 and 725, which places it after the VCM (705-16), and either concurrent with or slightly before his VCP (c.721).” In the text Bede’s interpretation of the Fall in the pivotal Gen. 3:18 verse draws heavily on Augustine’s De Genesi contra Manichaeos:
Per peccatum enim hominis terra maledicta est, ut spinas pareret, non ut ipsa poenas sentiret quae sine sensu est, sed ut peccati humani crimen semper hominibus ante oculos poneret, quo admonerentur aliquando auerti a peccatis et ad Dei precepta conuerti.“
(For through the sin of man the earth was cursed, so that it brings forth thorns, not so that the earth itself, which is without sense, would feel the punishments, but so that it should always place before the eyes of men the judgment of human sin, whereby they might from time to time be admonished by it to turn away from their sins and back to God’s commandments.)
Bede likewise includes the section in which Augustine highlights the pedagogical function of fallen Creation which, via a metaphor of unfruitful trees, points to the allegorical orthodoxy to be learnt from the book of Creation:
Nam et herbae uenenosae ad poenam uel ad exercitationem mortalium creatae sunt. [...] Per infructuosas quoque arbores insultatur hominibus, ut intellegant quam sit erubescendum sine fructu bonorum operum esse in agro Dei.*
(For poisonous plants were created for the punishment and discipline of mortals. [...] Likewise men are insulted by unfruitful trees, so that they might know how shameful it is to be without the fruit of good works in the field of God.)
Bede diverges, however, from Augustine’s initial exegesis while commenting on Gen. 1:29-30, by arguing explicitly that the animal kingdom was equally harmonious before the Fall:
ne ipsae aues raptu infirmorum alitum uiuebant, nec lupus insidias explorabat ouilia circum [...] uniuersa concorditer herbis uirentibus ac fructibus uescebantur arborum.*°
(Birds themselves did not live by stealing the food of weaker animals, nor did the wolf seek an ambush around the sheepfold [...] everything in harmony fed on the green plants and the fruits of the trees.)
Bede’s In Genesim, therefore, presents Creation as transformed by the sin of Adam into its present state of predation and decay. He agrees with Augustine that the function of such facets of Creation is to push humanity towards redemption. Bede also believes, however, that this postlapsarian relationship between humanity and Creation is not fixed, as it is fundamentally tied to Adam and Eve’s fall from perfect holiness. Thus, Bede argues, the relationship can be restored to a prelapsarian state by way of saints, whose sanctity is great enough that the relational effects of the Fall are taken away: ‘Denique testimonium primae creationis legimus uiris sanctis atque humiliter Deo seruientibus et aues obsequium praebuisse’ (Finally, as evidence of the first creation, we read that birds have rendered obedience to saints humbly serving God’).”” The obedience of the saints results in the restoration of humanity’s place in the divine hierarchy, regaining the dominion that God originally gave it in Gen. 1:28. This is exegetically connected to the common interpretation of Jesus as the New Adam, a role which the saints typologically take on here.*” That Bede utilises the image of a bird and saint in his exegesis here speaks to the influence of texts like the VCA in his interpretative development, and also highlights the importance of Cuthbert in Bede’s thought. Likewise, Bede’s emphasis of this otherwise minor detail highlights the importance of this Augustinian exegesis in his thought, and given Bede’s influence over Anglo-Saxon hagiography in general, as well as the specific saints explored here, their shared interpretation has far-reaching implications. These two exegetes therefore share an understanding of three key points that are central to the depiction of the relationship between Creation and the saints Cuthbert and Guthlac in their early Anglo-Saxon vitae: first, that the unpleasant and indifferent portions of Creation function in the postlapsarian world to urge humanity, the saints included, towards greater holiness and eventual redemption; second, that the Fall produced a relational breach between humanity and Creation (whether actual or ontological); third, that the effects of the Fall can be temporarily removed by restoring a portion of Creation into its prelapsarian state by means of sanctity.’ This shared exegetical position creates a place for saints to work miracles, and is at the heart of each of the texts analysed in this book. In the VCA the Augustinian/Bedan exegesis of the Fall is implicit, while in the remaining texts (VCM, VCP, VSG, OEPG, and Guthlac A) it is physically present in part or whole.
The focus of this study is the early Anglo-Saxon vitae of Cuthbert and Guthlac in relation to the restoration of Creation, and in accordance with this focus I have imposed certain limitations. I have chosen these two eremitic saints because of their direct and transformative interaction with Creation, and have excluded other, non-eremitic, vitae, such as the Vita S. Wilfridi. As a structural frame, Ihave excluded all the later manifestations (post-950) of both saints, in text or material culture: for example, works such as the Guthlac Roll and the Old English poem Durham. I have also excluded Alfric’s adaptation of Cuthbertine material in his Catholic Homilies for the following reasons: first, Alfric’s Homily II.X was likely composed around 995,°' at least half a century later than the latest text analysed in the thesis, the Old English Prose Life of Guthlac (c. 920); second, the scholarship on A2lfrician hagiography is comparatively extensive, and this study seeks to redress that imbalance by focusing on the pre-Alfrician corpus of Anglo-Saxon vitae; third, Homily II.X removes not only most of the landscape detail from the Cuthbertine tradition, but also removes the framing exegesis concerning the restoration of Creation discussed above, a point I address in the conclusion. Finally, I have not included the Old English poem Guthlac B in my analysis because, first, this study focuses on the saints’ living relationship with Creation, and the content of Guthlac B, the saint’s death and ascension, places it outside the scope of this study; and second, the only scene of Guthlac’s interaction with Creation in Guthlac B is that of the birds who honour the saint by singing after he feeds them.” This scene is used in the text as an allegorical parallel for Guthlac’s support of pilgrims with spiritual sustenance, and is not primarily concerned with the relationship between the saint and physical Creation.
This book is organised in the chronological sequence in which the texts were composed, as each of the texts, after the first, draws on its predecessors. Chapter 1 considers how the Anonymous Vita Sancti Cuthberti explores Cuthbert’s ability to restore Creation by means of obedience, focusing on the use of the Latin word praecipio. The VCA delineates how Cuthbert’s monastic obedience contributes to the restoration of prelapsarian moments, and how the imitative order of a monastery is a part of how the world can be transformed. The author grounds this presentation of sanctity’s transformative effect on Creation firmly in the world of eighth-century Northumbria through his highly physical depiction of the landscape, as well as his textual identification of potential sites for lay pilgrimage in the immediate landscape of Farne and Lindisfarne.
Chapter 2 analyses Bede’s metrical Vita Sancti Cuthberti, arguing that in this overlooked early text, Bede is already fashioning Cuthbert into a saint of universal relevance through his depiction of Cuthbert as an idealised Gregorian monk-pastor; this is in contrast with most previous studies that have located this transformation in Bede’s later prose Vita Sancti Cuthberti. Bede achieves this transformation with a novel development in hagiography, where he focuses on the distinctly monastic obedience of Cuthbert to the Divine Office, and the role of that obedience in the restoration of Creation. I argue that the VCM, as the poetic first half of an opus geminatum, both in form and content, was not only a ruminative and poetic exercise for the young Bede himself, but also functioned as such for its intended readers. It is in the VCM that Augustine’s exegetical framework of the Fall enters Anglo-Saxon hagiography.
Chapter 3 shows how Bede’s second account of Cuthbert’s life, the prose Vita Sancti Cuthberti, further transforms Cuthbert into an idealised monk-pastor, harmoniously balancing the active and contemplative lives. Here Bede alters the very nature of Cuthbert’s sanctity from the static predestination of the VCA and VCM, into a model of growth towards spiritual maturity based on the Evagrian Vita Sancti Antonii. The restoration miracles in the VCP are made to function in two primary ways: first, to provide an impetus for Cuthbert’s maturation; and second, to provide evidence of that saintly progression. Together with these changes Bede further develops the exegetical framework of the restoration of Creation by borrowing directly from Augustine in order to explain the miracles.
Chapter 4 transitions to St Guthlac, a warrior who renounced his aristocratic heritage to pursue the ascetic life on Crowland, an island amidst the East Anglian fens. This chapter focuses on the first vita of St Guthlac, Felix’s Vita Sancti Guthlaci, which details the life and death of the early eighth-century saint. Uniquely in early Anglo-Saxon hagiography, Felix’s Vita was commissioned not by an ecclesiastical establishment, but instead at the request of King Aélfwald of the East Angles. I argue here that Felix presents a distinctively physical depiction of the landscape, as compared to the general depictions of his hagiographical sources (the Vita Antonti for example), employing structures of thought that echo representations of land and space seen in contemporary boundary clauses. Such a depiction connects to the likelihood that both Felix and his patron would have had first-hand knowledge of the East Anglian fens. I explore how Felix builds on Evagrian and Bedan models in order to display Guthlac’s progression towards sanctity as centrally connected to this physical landscape. Felix takes the restoration of Creation further than his models and in the portrayal of Guthlac’s death and ascension the entire island of Crowland and the surrounding fens are filled with ambrosial smells and heavenly light.
Chapter 5 discusses two of the vernacular vitae of Guthlac: the Old English Prose Life of Guthlac and Guthlac A. First, it shows how the OEPG adapts Felix’s text to create a physical landscape of Anglo-Saxon England with deeper focus and wider appeal by utilising a lexis of landscape shared with contemporary boundary clauses. The result is a markedly physical vernacular landscape which emphasises to a greater degree than Felix the connection between Guthlac’s spiritual progression and the delineated landscape. Second, it argues that Guthlac A not only exaggerates the role of the landscape to the extent that the central conflict lies in the competition between Guthlac and the demons for Crowland, but also that the poem more explicitly connects Guthlac with the doctrine of replacement, which joins his arrival to the eremitic space even more with the Edenic paradise. The arrival of Guthlac is also imagined in terms connected to the arrival of Adam to Eden, where both are the rightful guardians of their respective landscapes; Guthlac A thereby depicts the saint finding a uniquely intense joy in his restored relationship with animate and elemental Creation.
The journey this book makes reveals the ways Anglo-Saxons actively considered humanity’s relationship with the non-human world, and represented it in their literary endeavours: representations shaped by Augustinian and Bedan exegesis, but which were altered, developed, added to, and subtracted from, creating distinct and potent images of Cuthbert and Guthlac interacting with a Creation experientially familiar to many who heard or read these vitae. There is a solidity to such an analysis that seeks for inclusion in our discourses about the ways humans have interacted with the non-human throughout history. It reminds us that people, even within a coherent cultural tradition, are never monolithic, but are syncretic, developmental, reflective, and that we should approach the medieval period with care and discernment, as well as a healthy humility of perspective. Restoring Creation: the Natural World in the Anglo-Saxon Saints’ Lives of Cuthbert and Guthlac, I hope, reminds us as well that our interactions with the non-human are equally syncretic, shaped by a variety of cultural, philosophical, theological, linguistic, literary, and personal factors, and that the stories we tell about such interactions are born from this rich soil.
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