The structure of MS Junius 11 : a historical reading

70 Pages·2009·0.285 MB·English

by  Jarc, Jaka

THE STRUCTURE OF MS JUNIUS 11 Jaka Jarc, MA

CIP - 821.111'01.09(0.034.2)

Jaka Jarc. - El. knjiga. - Ljubljana :
Zavod za ustvarjalnost Hymnos, 2009

ISBN 978-961-92684-0-7
246528000

THE STRUCTURE OF
MS JUNIUS 11

A Historical Reading

Jaka Jarc, MA

Zavod za ustvarjalnost Hymnos MMIX
Table of Contents

I Introduction 5

II Anglo-Saxon perception of 14
Christianity

III The poems of “Liber I” 25
- A Historical reading

III, Old English Genesis 26
1
III, Exodus 34
2
III, Daniel 43
3
III, ‘Finit Liber I’? 49
4

IV Liber II 51
- Christ and Satan as the New Ending

V Conclusion 59

VI Bibliography 64

2
Acknowledgements

This work would never have come about without professor Richard Marsden’s
excellent raising of my curiosity which kept me working.

I owe special gratitude to Henry Ansgar Kelly, who has been so kind as to email me his
book even though my information about it not yet being published turned out to be
wrong.

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Abstract

Old English Christian Poetry is well known for its allegorical
subtexts and double meanings. Old English literature comprises of this
poetry as well as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and poems telling the
stories of real heroes and quite possibly mythical ones as well.
Through examining the Germanic aspects in the poems of MS
Junius 11 a reading of a historical subtext in the general layout
structure of the manuscript is possible. In looking at the manuscript as
a whole This 14208 words long dissertation is determining whether the
design behind the editor’s choice of poems could be to render a
historical subtext to the biblical narrative.
If a historical reading is truly possible MS Junius 11 could well be
intended as a literary monument to the key chapters of history as the
Anglo-Saxons perceived it. However, since the wheels of time do not
stop, the political climate changed before the manuscript was entirely
completed.
Christ and Satan was introduced to the manuscript at a later
date than the three initial poems. Its addition provides another possible
reading as well as obscures the initial historical one. The new ending is
the testing of Christ in the Desert. The new reading of the entire
manuscript could be intended as purely allegorical, tying each of the
initial stories to a correlating devil’s test. The historical reading is
obscured but not negated. Christ and Satan can serve as a metaphor for
Judgment day thus ending the historical narrative in the biblical future
just as it has begun in the biblical past.

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I Introduction

5
When reading through the poems of the MS Junius 11 one can
not help but realize there is a constant moving, the action never lets up.
There is very little stationary rendering of story, most of it confined to
Genesis A1. The constant motion, be it inwardly in Genesis when
Satan’s mind is stirring or outwardly in Exodus when the sea rises and
then falls again, leads from Creation in Genesis to the Judgement Day
in Christ and Satan. The whole manuscript can be viewed as a voyage
from sin to salvation “distantly illustrated by Augustine’s confessions:
as the soul moves closer to the truth, it moves further from the
individual fallen personality”. 2
There may well be more to the choice of poems however. Paul
Battles parallels this moving (specifically in Genesis A) to an Anglo-
Saxon migration myth with compelling evidence.3 The migration myth
of Old English Exodus was proved meticulously by Howe.4 In this way
of reading both poems receive a historical undertone. This dissertation
will attempt a historical reading for Daniel as well. Until Christ and
Satan was proved to be a later addition it was hard to determine why
the manuscript is composed in the way it is. This dissertation will try
to point out the historical parallels to the first three stories and touch
upon the audience for which the manuscript could have been intended.
B. Raw points out the fact that the Ælfwine in the portrait on page 2 of
the manuscript was a layman, and that it might be he for whom the

1 In talking about the vernacular poems italicized title case will be used as opposed to titles of the
relevant biblical and apocryphal texts which will be in uppercase. (Daniel / DANIEL).
2 A.N. Doane, The Saxon Genesis (Madison, 1991), p. 114.
3 P. Battles, ‘Genesis A and the Anglo-Saxon ‘migration myth’ ’, Anglo-Saxon England, vol. 29,
(2000), 45-47.
4 N. Howe, Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England, (Notre Dame, 2001), pp. 72-108.
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manuscript was made. The rich illustration (a rarity) could signify a
book made for display; however the style and simplification of certain
themes point to a lay usage.5 Kings have ordered histories to be written
throughout medieval times. Paul Deacon’s Historia Langobardorum6
is one such example. To a learned nobleman such a history would be
beneficial. In the eyes of the clergy it would make sense for it to be
clad in biblical narrative.
“There can be no doubt that in the Anglo-Saxon Christian
imagination, the descent of all people living in the post-diluvial world
from Noah was an historical fact.”7 There is also no reason to assume
that the descent up to Noah was not. The curious selection of the texts
makes sense if read historically. “One of the fundamental principles of
Anglo-Saxon art and literature is that of the interlacing - interweaving
of the various elements of a pattern with the design as a whole.”8
Poems are not separated title by title, but work well as a whole -
pointing to a purpose behind the construction. But what is the overall
story about? Why out of all the books or, better put, Old Testament
stories were Old English Genesis, Exodus and Daniel used as models?
This dissertation will be working out the key for these choices and the
way the stories were told. For this reason the poems still need to be
treated separately from one another. Their story-lines will be paralleled
with ‘chapters’ of Anglo-Saxon history attempting to show that MS

5 B. Raw, ‘The probable derivation of most of the illustrations in Junius XI from an illustrated Old
Saxon Genesis’, Anglo-Saxon England, vol. 5, (1976), p. 135.
6 P. Deacon, The History of the Lombards (Philadelphia, 2003).
7 D. Anlezark, “Sceaf , Japheth, and the Origins of Anglo-Saxons”, ASE 31, (2002), 13-46 at 45.
8 T.D. Hill, ‘The Fall of Angels and Man in the Old English Genesis B’, L.E. Nicholson and D.W.
Frese (eds.), Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Essays in Appreciation, (Notre Dame, 1975), p. 289.
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Junius 11 reads as an allegorical presentation of human History to the
end of Genesis A and is focused on the key-points in Anglo-Saxon
history in Exodus and Daniel. The biblical narrative is exact up to a
point but many additions have been made and specific motives have
been targeted throughout the manuscript ensuring that the reader could
empathise with the story-line.
“It can be said in certainty that the three poems were written by
different poets.”9 The selection was made by Anglo-Saxon monks;
probably a specific editor, since the first three texts are in the same
hand10. This as well makes it seem that the selection could not have
been accidental.
Christ and Satan however, was proved to be added later. It is
written in three separate hands different from the one before.11 It
seems to be imposing a different reading of the manuscript as a whole.
Either the new editor was not aware of the intended design or, which is
more likely, the political and hence historical situation has markedly
changed in the long period of time it took to compose the manuscript.
The possible original historical reading finishes with a look into the
future, and thus remains possible. The addition of a conclusion adds a
new reading which will be examined in the chapter on Christ and
Satan.
One of the indicators of a historical reading for MS Junius 11
are the Germanic cultural specifics interweaved with the Latin source
material. One must search among canonical and protocanonical

9 E.B. Irving (ed.), The Old English Exodus, (New Haven, 1953), p. 27.
10 A.N.Doane (ed.), Genesis A: a new edition, (Madison, 1979), p. 47.
11 Ibid.
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material in order to determine what the Old English and Old Saxon
poets might have added, accentuated, omitted or brought into the
forefront in order for the reader to better relate to the text at hand.
Since the three poems in question were composed at different
occasions not all of them were necessarily intended to be read
historically. It was their selection and quite possibly editing that made
this kind of reading possible for the manuscript as a whole.
The problem of distinguishing between protocanonical and
canonical texts is complex. The term ‘canonical’ applied to a set of
books is a Christian innovation of the fourth century.12 When the term
is used in this Dissertation it represents the vast selection of texts that
are, for lack of a better word, non-canonical. The distinction is not as
important for the purpose of this dissertation as it might seem at first
glance.
Through use of both canonical and non-canonical texts one
purpose only is achieved, the distinguishing of Anglo-Saxon (oral)
cultural emphasis as opposed to scripture. Especially where the phrase
‘I heard’ as opposed to ‘the books tell us’ does not make the
distinction for us. In terms of MS Junius 11 both canonical and non-
canonical works serve as sources and hence the goal of this
dissertation is not to point out which served for which part of the
poems in the manuscript but to point out which details of the poems
trace their origin from neither of them.

12 D.A. DeSilva, Introducing the Apocrypha: Message, Context, and Significance, (Grand Rapids,
2002), p. 15-16, 27.
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The first question arising in reading Anglo-Saxon vernacular
literature is: Is it simple and primitive or is it worthy of deeper reading.
When do we start to read too much into it? Since major theosophical
works of the early middle ages were written in Latin, it could be
conjectured that any written text in the vernacular is “out of the loop”.
After all Latin was the language of the “scientists” of the time. The
vernacular has its advantages as well. It is obscure enough to the rest
of the world to venture on wilder theological rides.
The Old English was a unifying factor in creating an English
identity already in ‘Alfredian times’. As such the language has a
powerful political role. “The prestige and traditionality of the verse
language sponsor West-Saxon power as a national identity. In this
sense, the poems are performances: they reactivate poetic tradition in
order to assert a new discourse of history.”13 – even though Thormann
was talking about the Chronicle poems the point can stand by itself.
Vernacular poetry may well have the role of narrating historical fact.
How far biblical historical fact is parallel to national historical fact is
in the eye of the beholder. Tolkien in his introduction to Old English
Exodus points out the greater than usual “harmony between the ancient
English style and the biblical subject matter” and the heroic style
“devised originally rather for poems like Beowulf than for poems like
those in the MS Junius 11”.14

13 J. Thormann, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Poems and the making of the English nation’, Anglo-
Saxonism and the Construction of Social Identity ,Frantzen J. and Niles J.D. (ed.), (Gainesville,
1997), pp. 60-85 at p. 65.
14 J.R.R. Tolkien (ed.), The Old English Exodus, (Oxford, 1981), p. 33, 34.
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