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Cædmon

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Writers and critics

   Cædmon ( IPA: [kædmɒn]) is the earliest English poet whose name is
   known. An Anglo-Saxon herdsman attached to the double monastery of
   Streonæshalch ( Whitby Abbey) during the abbacy of St. Hilda ( 657–
   680), he was originally ignorant of "the art of song" but supposedly
   learned to compose one night in the course of a dream. He later became
   a zealous monk and an accomplished and inspirational religious poet.

   Cædmon is one of twelve Anglo-Saxon poets identified in medieval
   sources, and one of only three for whom both roughly contemporary
   biographical information and examples of literary output have survived.
   His story is related in the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum
   ("Ecclesiastical History of the English People") by St. Bede who wrote,
   "There was in the Monastery of this Abbess a certain brother
   particularly remarkable for the Grace of God, who was wont to make
   religious verses, so that whatever was interpreted to him out of
   scripture, he soon after put the same into poetical expressions of much
   sweetness and humility in English, which was his native language. By
   his verse the minds of many were often excited to despise the world,
   and to aspire to heaven."

   Cædmon's only known surviving work is Cædmon's Hymn, the nine-line
   alliterative vernacular praise poem in honour of God he supposedly
   learned to sing in his initial dream. The poem is one of the earliest
   attested examples of Old English and is, with the runic Ruthwell Cross
   and Franks Casket inscriptions, one of three candidates for the
   earliest attested example of Old English poetry. It is also one of the
   earliest recorded examples of sustained poetry in a Germanic language.

Life

Bede's account

   The sole source of original information about Cædmon's life and work is
   Bede's Historia ecclesiastica. According to Bede, Cædmon was a lay
   brother who worked as a herdsman at the monastery Streonæshalch (now
   known as Whitby Abbey). One evening, while the monks were feasting,
   singing, and playing a harp, Cædmon left early to sleep with the
   animals because he knew no songs. While asleep, he had a dream in which
   "someone" (quidem) approached him and asked him to sing principium
   creaturarum, "the beginning of created things." After first refusing to
   sing, Cædmon subsequently produced a short eulogistic poem praising God
   as the creator of heaven and earth.
   Whitby is a town on the North Sea, on the northeast coast of North
   Yorkshire.
   Whitby is a town on the North Sea, on the northeast coast of North
   Yorkshire.

   Upon awakening the next morning, Cædmon remembered everything he had
   sung and added additional lines to his poem. He told his foreman about
   his dream and gift and was taken immediately to see the abbess. The
   abbess and her counsellors asked Cædmon about his vision and, satisfied
   that it was a gift from God, gave him a new commission, this time for a
   poem based on “a passage of sacred history or doctrine”, by way of a
   test. When Cædmon returned the next morning with the requested poem, he
   was ordered to take monastic vows. The abbess ordered her scholars to
   teach Cædmon sacred history and doctrine, which after a night of
   thought, Bede records, Cædmon would turn into the most beautiful verse.
   According to Bede, Cædmon was responsible for a large oeuvre of
   splendid vernacular poetic texts on a variety of Christian topics.

   After a long and zealously pious life, Cædmon died like a saint:
   receiving a premonition of death, he asked to be moved to the abbey’s
   hospice for the terminally ill where, having gathered his friends
   around him, he expired just before nocturns. Although often listed as a
   saint, this is not confirmed by Bede and it has recntly been argued
   that such assertions are incorrect.

Dates

   Bede gives no specific dates in his story. Cædmon is said to have taken
   holy orders at an advanced age and it is implied that he lived at
   Streonæshalch at least in part during Hilda’s abbacy (657– 680). Book
   IV Chapter 25 of the Historia ecclesiastica appears to suggest that
   Cædmon’s death occurred at about the same time as the fire at
   Coldingham Abbey, an event dated in the E text of the Anglo-Saxon
   Chronicle to 679, but after 681 by Bede. The reference to his
   temporibus ‘at this time’ in the opening lines of Chapter 25 may refer
   more generally to Cædmon’s career as a poet. However, the next datable
   event in the Historia ecclesiastica is King Ecgfrith’s raid on Ireland
   in 684 (Book IV, Chapter 26). Taken together, this evidence suggests an
   active period beginning between 657 and 680 and ending between 679 and
   684.

Modern discoveries

   The only biographical or historical information that modern scholarship
   has been able to add to Bede’s account concerns the Brittonic origins
   of the poet’s name. Although Bede specifically notes that English was
   Cædmon’s “own” language, the poet’s name is of Celtic origin: from
   Proto-Welsh *Cadṽan and Brittonic *Catumandos. Several scholars have
   suggested that Cædmon himself may have been bilingual on the basis of
   this etymology, Hilda’s close contact with Celtic political and
   religious hierarchies, and some (not very close) analogues to the Hymn
   in Old Irish poetry. Other scholars have noticed a possible onomastic
   allusion to ‘ Adam Kadmon’ in the poet’s name, perhaps suggesting that
   the entire story is allegorical.

Work

General corpus

   Bede’s account indicates that Cædmon was responsible for the
   composition of a large oeuvre of vernacular religious poetry. In
   contrast to Saints Aldhelm and Dunstan, Cædmon’s poetry is said to have
   been exclusively religious. Bede reports that Cædmon “could never
   compose any foolish or trivial poem, but only those which were
   concerned with devotion” and his list of Cædmon’s output includes work
   on religious subjects only: accounts of creation, translations from the
   Old and New Testaments, and songs about the “terrors of future
   judgment, horrors of hell, … joys of the heavenly kingdom, … and divine
   mercies and judgments.” Of this corpus, only the opening lines of his
   first poem survive. While vernacular poems matching Bede’s description
   of several of Cædmon’s later works are found in London, British
   Library, Junius 11 (traditionally referred to as the “Junius” or
   “Cædmon” manuscript), the older traditional attribution of these texts
   to Cædmon or Cædmon’s influence cannot stand. The poems show
   significant stylistic differences both internally and with Cædmon’s
   original Hymn, and there is nothing about their order or content to
   suggest that they could not have been composed and anthologised without
   any influence from Bede’s discussion of Cædmon’s oeuvre: the first
   three Junius poems are in their biblical order and, while Christ and
   Satan could be understood as partially fitting Bede’s description of
   Cædmon’s work on future judgment, pains of hell and joys of the
   heavenly kingdom, the match is not exact enough to preclude independent
   composition. As Fritz and Day have shown, indeed, Bede’s list itself
   may owe less to direct knowledge of Cædmon’s actual output than to
   traditional ideas about the subjects fit for Christian poetry or the
   order of the catechism. Similar influences may, of course, also have
   affected the makeup of the Junius volume.

Cædmon's Hymn

   One of two candidates for the earliest surviving copy of Cædmon's Hymn
   is found in "The Moore Bede" (ca. 737) which is held by the Cambridge
   University Library (Kk. 5. 16, often referred to as M). The other
   candidate is St. Petersburg, National Library of Russia, lat. Q. v. I.
   18 (P)
   Enlarge
   One of two candidates for the earliest surviving copy of Cædmon's Hymn
   is found in "The Moore Bede" (ca. 737) which is held by the Cambridge
   University Library (Kk. 5. 16, often referred to as M). The other
   candidate is St. Petersburg, National Library of Russia, lat. Q. v. I.
   18 (P)

   The only known survivor from Cædmon’s oeuvre is his Hymn ( audio
   version). The poem is known from twenty-one manuscript copies, making
   it the best-attested Old English poem after Bede’s Death Song (35
   witnesses) and the best attested in the poetic corpus in manuscripts
   copied or owned in the British Isles during the Anglo-Saxon period. The
   Hymn also has by far the most complicated known textual history of any
   surviving Anglo-Saxon poem. It is found in two dialects and five
   distinct recensions (Northumbrian aelda, Northumbrian eordu, West-Saxon
   eorðan, West-Saxon ylda, and West-Saxon eorðe), all but one of which
   are known from three or more witnesses. It is one of the earliest
   attested examples of written Old English and one of the earliest
   recorded examples of sustained poetry in a Germanic language. Together
   with the runic Ruthwell Cross and Franks Casket inscriptions, Cædmon's
   Hymn is one of three candidates for the earliest attested example of
   Old English poetry.

Manuscript evidence

   All copies of Hymn are found in manuscripts of the Historia
   ecclesiastica or its translation, where they serve as either a gloss to
   Bede’s Latin translation of the Old English poem, or, in the case of
   the Old English version, a replacement for Bede's translation in the
   main text of the History. Despite this close connection with Bede’s
   work, the Hymn does not appear to have been transmitted with the
   Historia ecclesiastica regularly until relatively late in its textual
   history. Scribes other than those responsible for the main text often
   copy the vernacular text of the Hymn in manuscripts of the Latin
   Historia. In three cases, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 243,
   Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 43, and Winchester, Cathedral I, the
   poem is copied by scribes working a quarter-century or more after the
   main text was first set down. Even when the poem is in the same hand as
   the manuscript’s main text, there is little evidence to suggest that it
   was copied from the same exemplar as the Latin Historia: nearly
   identical versions of the Old English poem are found in manuscripts
   belonging to different recensions of the Latin text; closely related
   copies of the Latin Historia sometimes contain very different versions
   of the Old English poem. With the exception of the Old English
   translation, no single recension of the Historia ecclesiastica is
   characterised by the presence of a particular recension of the
   vernacular poem.

Earliest text

   The oldest known version of the poem is the Northumbrian aelda
   recension. The surviving witnesses to this text, Cambridge, University
   Library, Kk. 5. 16 (M) and St. Petersburg, National Library of Russia,
   lat. Q. v. I. 18 (P), date to at least the mid-8^th century. M in
   particular is traditionally ascribed to Bede's own monastery and life
   time, though there is little evidence to suggest it was copied much
   before the mid-8^th century.

   The following text has been transcribed from M (mid-8^th century;
   Northumbria). Text has been normalised to show modern punctuation and
   line- and word-division:

          Nu scylun hergan    hefaenricaes uard
          metudæs maecti    end his modgidanc
          uerc uuldurfadur—    sue he uundra gihuaes
          eci dryctin    or astelidæ
          he aerist scop    aelda barnum
          heben til hrofe    haleg scepen
          tha middungeard    moncynnæs uard
          eci dryctin    æfter tiadæ
          firum foldu    frea allmectig

          Now [we] must honour the guardian of heaven,
          the might of the architect, and his purpose,
          the work of the father of glory
          — as he, the eternal lord, established the beginning of wonders.
          He, the holy creator,
          first created heaven as a roof for the children of men.
          Then the guardian of mankind, the eternal lord,
          the lord almighty, afterwards appointed the middle earth,
          the lands, for men.

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