Christ I

Christ I (also known as Christ A or (The) Advent Lyrics), is a fragmentary collection of Old English poems on the coming of the Lord, preserved in the Exeter Book. In its present state, the poem comprises 439 lines in twelve distinct sections. In the assessment of Edward B. Irving Jr, "two masterpieces stand out of the mass of Anglo-Saxon religious poetry: The Dream of the Rood and the sequence of liturgical lyrics in the Exeter Book ... known as Christ I".[1]

Christ I
Exeter Book folio 10r, showing lines 139-71 of the poem, and the way in which the manuscript marks the section break between what modern scholars identify as lyrics 6 and 7. The image also illustrates post-medieval glossing of the poem.
Also known asAdvent Lyrics or Christ A
Author(s)anonymous
LanguageOld English
DateUnknown, possibly around 800
SeriesOld English Christ poems, along with Christ II and Christ III
Manuscript(s)Exeter Book, folios 8r-14r
GenreReligious poem in 12 subsections
SubjectThe Advent of Christ

The topic of the poem is Advent, the time period in the annual liturgical cycle leading up to the anniversary of the coming of Christ, a period of great spiritual and symbolic significance within the Church — for some in early medieval Europe a time of fasting, and the subject of a sermon by Gregory the Great (AD 590-604).[2] The Old English lyrics of Christ I, playing off the Latin antiphons, reflect on this period of symbolic preparation.

Manuscript and associated texts

Christ I is found on folios 8r-14r of the Exeter Book, a collection of Old English poetry today containing 123 folios. The collection also contains a number of other religious and allegorical poems.[3] Some folios have been lost at the start of the poem, meaning that an indeterminate amount of the original composition is missing.[4]

Christ I, concerning the Advent of Jesus, is followed in the Exeter Book by a poem on Jesus's Ascension composed by Cynewulf, generally known in modern scholarship as Christ II, which in turn is followed by Christ III, on the Last Judgment. Together these three poems comprise a total of 1664 lines, and are in turn linked to the poems that follow, Guthlac A and Guthlac B. The sequence of Christ I-III is sometimes known simply as Christ, and has at times been thought to be one poem completed by a single author. Linguistic and stylistic differences indicate, however, that Christ I-III originated as separate compositions (perhaps with Christ II being composed as a bridge between Christ I and Christ III). Nevertheless, Christ I-III stands as an artistically coherent compilation.[5]

The text also contains glosses by Laurence Nowell from the sixteenth century or George Hickes from the seventeenth.[6]

Origins

Because Christ II is signed by Cynewulf, earlier scholarship supposed that Christ I might also be his work;[7] but recent research agrees that the authorship is unknown.[8][5]: 4–5  Claes Schaar suggested that the poem may have been written between the end of the eighth century and the beginning of the ninth.[8]

Sample

The following passage describes the Advent of Christ and is a modern English translation of Lyric 5 (lines 104-29 in the numbering of the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records):

Sources and structure

As presented in the Exeter Book, Christ I is divided into five sections, each marked by a large capital, a line-break, and punctuation, as follows: lines 1-70, 71-163, 164-272, 275-377, 378-439.[7]: 15 

However, researchers have found it helpful to understand Christ I as comprising twelve sections or 'lyrics'. Each lyric is introduced with a selection from a Latin antiphon (verses from Scripture sung before and after the reading of a psalm chosen to reflect the fundamental ideas presented in the psalm), followed by lines of poetry in Old English which expand on that source. Most of the antiphons used are known as the O Antiphons, which receive their name because they all begin with the Latin interjection O (rendered in the poem with the Old English interjection ēalā).[10][11][12] Medieval manuscripts of the O Antiphons vary in order and content, meaning that the precise sources for several of the Christ I lyrics are uncertain.[13][7]

Several of the Greater Antiphons are not used in Christ I, leading some scholars speculate that, since we know that the beginning of Christ I is missing, the missing antiphons ("O Sapientia", "O Adonai", and "O radix Jesse") were originally used in the poem but have been lost.[14]

The following table summarises the content and sources of each of the twelve lyrics. Unless otherwise stated, information on sources comes from Burgert[7]: 51  and the antiphon text from Bamberg State Library, MS Misc. Patr. 17/B.11.10, folios 133-62, 10c.[13]: 12–14 

lyric lines folios topic OE incipit sources greater antiphon?
1 1-17 8r Christ as repairer of a broken house. lost O, rex gentium et desideratus carus,

lapisque angularis qui facis utraque unum,

veni, salva hominem quem de limo

formasti

 Y
2 18-49 8r Christ as redeemer of humankind and

Mary's conception of Jesus.

 Eala þu reccend ond þu riht cyning O, clavis David et sceptrum domus

Israel, qui aperis et nemo claudit,

claudis et nemo aperit, veni et educ

vinctos de domo carceris smedentes in

tenebris et umbra mortis.

 Y
3 50-70 8r-9r Jerusalem's eager awaiting of Christ. Eala sibbe gesihð, sancta Hierusalem O, Hierusalem, civitas Dei summi, leva in

circuitu oculos tuos et vide Dominum Deum

tuum, ecce jam veniet solvere te a

vinculo.

 Y
4 71-103 9r-9v Mary's merits and the wonder of her conception. Eala wifa wynn geond wuldres þrym O, virgo virginum, quomodo fiat istud,

quia nec primo te similis visa es, nec

habebis sequentem? Filiae Hierusalem, quid me

admiramini? Divinum est mystérium hoc quod

cernitis.

 Y
5 104-29 9v Christ as the morning star. Eala earendel, engla beorhtast O, oriens, splendor lucis aeternae et sol

justiciae, veni et inlumina sedentes in

tenebris et umbra mortis.

 Y
6 130-63 9v-10r Christ's redemption of humankind. Eala gæsta god, hu þu gleawlice O, Emmanuel, rex et legifer noster, expectatio

gentium et sal vatio earum, veni ad salvandum

nos, jam noli tardare.

 Y
7[15] 164-213 10r-11r A dialogue between Joseph and Mary, as Joseph doubts Mary's virginity. Eala Ioseph min, Iacobes bearn O, Joseph, quomodo credidisti quod antea

expavisti? Quid enim? In ea natum est de

Spiritu Sancto quem Gabrihel annuncians Christum

esse venturum.

Matthew I:18-21

 N
8 214-74 11r-11v Christ as king. Eala þu soða ond þu sibsuma O rex pacifice Y
9 275-347 11v-12v Mary as queen of heaven. Eala þu mæra middangeardes O mundi domina Y
10 348-77 12v-13r The fulfilment of Isiah's prophecy. Eala þu halga heofona dryhten Isaiah 7:14 N
11 378-415 13r-13v Praise of the Trinity and of the Seraphim. Eala seo wlitige, weorðmynda full Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus deus sabaoth.

Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria tua, osanna in excelsis.

Benedictus qui uenit in nomine domini,

osanna in excelsis[13]


The song of Seraphim (Isaias 6:3 ff. and Matthew 21:9)

 N
12 416-39 13v-14r How people should praise Christ. Eala hwæt, þæt is wræclic wrixl in wera life O admirabile commercium N

Interpretation of structure

The order of antiphons that the author uses for the lyrics imply that the poet was not concerned about any distinctions between antiphons, or the order that he had found them in his sources.[14] Upon analysis of the position of each poem, no rational order can be found, suggesting that the order of each poem in the sequence is unimportant.[16]

Influence on other writers
Further information: Eärendil and Elwing

J.R.R. Tolkien was influenced by the following lines from Christ I (lines 104-5), which inspired his portrayal the character Eärendil in his legendarium and is one of many examples of the Old English word middangeard which partly inspired Tolkien's fantasy world:[17]

Tolkien wrote "There was something very remote and strange and beautiful behind those words, if I could grasp it, far beyond ancient English."[18]

Editions and translations

Editions
  • Krapp, George Philip; Dobbie, Elliott Van Kirk, eds. (1936), The Exeter Book, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records: A Collective Edition, New York: Columbia University Press, ISBN 9780231087667, OCLC 352008, pp. 3-49; online at the Oxford Text Archive
  • The Advent Lyrics of the Exeter Book, ed. by Jackson J. Campbell (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959)
  • The Old English Advent a Typological Commentary, ed. by R. B. Burlin, Yale Studies in English, 168 (New Haven, CT, 1968)

Translations

Notes
  1. Edward B. Irving Jr, 'The Advent of Poetry: Christ I', Anglo-Saxon England, 25 (1996), 123-34.
  2. Mershman 1907.
  3. Rumble 1998, pp. 285.
  4. Lara Farina, 'Before Affection: Christ I and the Social Erotic', Exemplaria, 13 (2001), 469-96 (479 n. 25) doi:10.1179/exm.2001.13.2.469.
  5. Roy M. Liuzza, 'The Old English Christ and Guthlac: Texts, Manuscripts, and Critics', The Review of English Studies, 41 (1990), 1-11.
  6. Muir, Bernard J., ed. (2000). The Exeter anthology of Old English poetry: an edition of Exeter Dean and Chapter MS 3501 (2nd ed.). Exeter: University of Exeter Press. pp. 15–16. ISBN 0-85989-630-7.
  7. Edward Burgert, The Dependence of Part I of Cynewulf's Christ upon the Antiphonary (Washington, D. C.: Milans, 1921).
  8. Schaar 1949, pp. 9.
  9. The Exeter Book, ed. by George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records: A Collective Edition, 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), with vowel length marking added on the basis of John R. Clark Hall, A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 4th rev. edn by Herbet D. Meritt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960).
  10. Otten 1907, pp. 1.
  11. Henry 1911.
  12. Campbell 1959, pp. 8.
  13. Thomas D. Hill, 'The Seraphim's Song: The "Sanctus" in the Old English "Christ I", Lines 403-415', Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 83 (1982), 26-30.
  14. Campbell 1959, pp. 9.
  15. Thomas D. Hill, 'A Liturgical Source for Christ I 164-213 (Advent Lyric VII)', Medium Ævum, 46 (1977), 12-15 doi:10.2307/43621097.
  16. Campbell 1959, pp. 11.
  17. Carpenter, Humphrey (1977). J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography. New York: Ballantine Books. "Reunion", pp. 72, 79. ISBN 978-0-04-928037-3.
  18. Day, David. 2003 The World of Tolkien. London: Octopus Publishing Group, p. 8.

References
  • Campbell, Jackson J (1959). The Advent Lyrics of the Exeter Book. Princeton: Princeton UP.
  • Cook, Albert S (1909). "Introduction". In Cook, Albert S. (ed.). The Christ of Cynewulf (2nd ed.). Boston: Ginn and Company. Retrieved 15 March 2015.
  • Henry, Hugh T. (1911). "O Antiphons". The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. New York: The Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved 15 March 2015.
  • Mershman, Francis (1907). "Advent". The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. New York: The Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved 15 March 2015.
  • Otten, Joseph (1907). "Antiphon". The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. New York: The Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved 15 March 2015.
  • Rumble, Alexander R. (1998). "Exeter Book". In Szarmach, Paul E.; Tavormina, M T; Rosenthal, Joel T (eds.). Medieval England: an Encyclopedia. New York: Garland, Inc.
  • Schaar, Claes (1949). Critical Studies in the Cynewulf Group. Lund: C.W.K. Gleerup.

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