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35-527: The Vercelli Book consists of 135 folios, and although the manuscript was probably compiled and written in the late 10th century, not all of the texts found in the manuscript were originally written at that time. The poems ascribed to Cynewulf ( The Fates of the Apostles and Elene ) could have been created much earlier. The Vercelli Book contains 23 prose homilies (the Vercelli Homilies ) and

70-675: A different perspective, Cynewulf's intent may not have been to claim authorship, but to "seek the prayers of others for the safety of his soul". It is contended that Cynewulf wished to be remembered in the prayers of his audience in return for the pleasure they would derive from his poems. In a sense his expectation of a spiritual reward can be contrasted with the material reward that other poets of his time would have expected for their craft. Julius Zupitza Julius Zupitza (4 January 1844 in Kerpen , Upper Silesia – 6 July 1895 in Berlin)

105-830: A long while assigned a plethora of Old English pieces to Cynewulf on the basis that these pieces somewhat resembled the style of his signed poems. It was at one time plausible to believe that Cynewulf was author of the Riddles of the Exeter Book , the Phoenix , the Andreas , and the Guthlac ; even famous unassigned poems such as the Dream of the Rood , the Harrowing of Hell , and

140-531: A philosophy in which poetry was "associated with wisdom". Following the studies of S. K. Das (1942) and Claes Schaar (1949), mainstream scholarship tends to limit Cynewulf's canon to the four poems which bear his acrostic mark: the Exeter Book holds Cynewulf's Juliana and Christ II ( The Ascension ) and the Vercelli Book his Elene and Fates of the Apostles . Early scholars for

175-460: A prose vita of Saint Guthlac , interspersed with six poems: The book is a parchment manuscript of the end of the tenth century, containing a miscellany , or florilegium , of religious texts that were apparently selected for private inspiration. The meticulous hand is Anglo-Saxon square minuscule . It was found in the library by Friedrich Blume, in 1822, and was first described in his Iter Italicum (Stettin, 4 vols., 1824–36). The presence of

210-457: A short appointment at the University of Vienna in the area of Northern Germanic languages, he was appointed first professor and chair of English philology at the prestigious University of Berlin . He remained in this position until he died of a stroke in 1895. In 1893, he received an honorary doctoral degree from the University of Cambridge . This article about a German academic is

245-601: A specific author. Blume reported his find to German historian Johann Martin Lappenberg , who in turn wrote to the British antiquary Charles Purton Cooper . Blume did not, as was earlier thought, transcribe the manuscript himself. Rather, Cooper, on behalf of the British Record Commission , commissioned Dr. C. Maier of the University of Tübingen to make a transcript, which he did in 1834. This copy

280-563: Is a plausible candidate for Cynewulf the poet, based on the argument that the poet's elaborate religious pieces must lend themselves to "the scholarship and faith of the professional ecclesiastic speaking with authority", but this conclusion is not universally accepted. Alternative suggestions for the poet's identity include Cynwulf, a Dunwich priest (fl. 803), and Cenwulf, Abbot of Peterborough (d. 1006). In his Christ II , Cynewulf wrote: Then he who created this world ... honoured us and gave us gifts ... and also sowed and set in

315-493: Is accepted, but it is likely he flourished in the ninth century . A firm terminus ante quem that can be put on the date of Cynewulf are the dates of the Vercelli and Exeter manuscripts, which are approximately in the second half of the tenth century. Other than that, no certain date can be put on the author, leaving open the full range of Old English literature between the 7th and the early 10th centuries. Any attempt to link

350-576: Is observed without the medial e so the runic acrostic says Cynwulf. Cynewulf anticipates cryptography , using the letters of his own name to make a poem about the Final Judgment. He says, "C and Y kneel in prayer; N sends up its supplications; E trusts in God; W and U know they will go to Heaven; L and F tremble." And this is written in Runic letters. The practice of claiming authorship over one's poems

385-475: The Physiologus have at one time been ascribed to him. The four poems, like a substantial portion of Anglo-Saxon poetry, are sculpted in alliterative verse . All four poems draw upon Latin sources such as homilies and hagiographies (the lives of saints) for their content, and this is to be particularly contrasted to other Old English poems, e.g. Genesis, Exodus, and Daniel , which are drawn directly from

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420-558: The Vercelli and Exeter manuscripts were primarily late West Saxon in their scribal translations, it is most probable that Cynewulf wrote in the Anglian dialect and it follows that he resided either in the province of Northumbria or Mercia . This is shown through linguistic and metrical analysis of his poems, e.g., Elene , where in the poem's epilogue (beginning l.1236) the imperfect rhymes become corrected when Anglian forms of

455-617: The Holy Cross and spread Christianity; in Juliana , the title character dies after she refuses to marry a pagan man, thus retaining her Christian integrity; in Fates of the Apostles , the speaker creates a song that meditates on the deaths of the apostles which they "joyously faced". Elene and Juliana fit in the category of poems that depict the lives of saints. These two poems along with Andreas and Guthlac (parts A and B) constitute

490-429: The Apostles , Juliana , Elene , and Christ II (also referred to as The Ascension ). The four signed poems of Cynewulf are vast in that they collectively comprise several thousand lines of verse. In comparison, the one work attributed to Cædmon , Cædmon's Hymn , is quite succinct at nine lines. Some basic statements can be made by examining such aspects as the spellings of his name and his verse. Although

525-484: The Bible as opposed to secondary accounts. In terms of length, Elene is by far the longest poem of Cynewulf's corpus at 1,321 lines. It is followed by Juliana , at 731 lines, Christ II , at 427 lines, and The Fates of the Apostles , at a brisk 122 lines. Three of the poems are martyrolical, in that the central character(s) in each die/suffer for their religious values. In Elene , Saint Helena endures her quest to find

560-711: The Vercelli Book. In turn, John Mitchell Kemble partly based his Poetry of the Codex Vercellensis (London, 1856) on Grimm's edition; Maier's transcript was also the basis for C. W. M. Grein's critical edition in Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Poesie (Göttingen, 1858, rev. Leipzig, 1894). Given Vercelli's remote location (across the Alps for German and English scholars), Maier's was the only available transcription for decades; Julius Zupitza 's 1877 edition

595-471: The West Saxon translation of the texts. Any definite conclusion to Cynewulf being either Northumbrian or Mercian has been hard to come by, but linguistic evidence suggests that the medial ⟨e⟩ in the signed Cynewulf would have, during the broad window period of Cynewulf's existence, been characteristic of a Mercian dialect. All the evidence considered, no exact deduction of Cynewulf's date

630-473: The ascetic way of life. The homilies represent part of the anonymous tradition of religious prose writing in Anglo Saxon England". In his book The Vercelli Homilies , Donald Scragg claims that because of the poetry, the Vercelli Book "is in no sense a homiliary". He argues that most of the homilies in the Vercelli Book are sermons with general themes, while two of the homilies describe lives of

665-470: The cusp of Cynewulf's career, while Juliana and Fates of the Apostles seem to be created by a less inspired, and perhaps less mature, poet. All four of Cynewulf's poems contain passages where the letters of the poet's name are woven into the text using runic symbols that also double as meaningful ideas pertinent to the text. In Juliana and Elene , the interwoven name is spelled in the more recognizable form as Cynewulf, while in Fates and Christ II it

700-416: The eighth century. Also deserving consideration is the argument that the acrostic was most fashionable in ninth century poetry and Cynewulf's own acrostic signature would have followed the trend during this time. Cynewulf was without question a literate and educated man, since there is no other way we can "account for the ripeness which he displays in his poetry". Given the subject matter of his poetry he

735-472: The late 8th and early 10th centuries. Cynewulf is a well attested Anglo-Saxon given name literally meaning cyne (royal, of a king) and wulf (wolf). Known for his religious compositions, Cynewulf is regarded as one of the pre-eminent figures of Anglo-Saxon Christian poetry. Posterity knows of his name by means of runic signatures that are interwoven into the four poems which comprise his scholastically recognized corpus. These poems are: The Fates of

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770-454: The man with a documented historical figure has met failure or resulted in an improbable connection. However, the presence of early West Saxon forms in both manuscripts means that it is possible an Alfredian scribe initially translated Cynewulf's verse, placing him no later than the turn of the tenth century. A tentative terminus post quem is based on the two textual variations of Cynewulf's name, Cynewulf and Cynwulf. The older spelling of

805-488: The mind of men many kinds of wisdom of heart. One he allows to remember wise poems, sends him a noble understanding, through the spirit of his mouth. The man whose mind has been given the art of wisdom can say and sing all kinds of things. Likewise, Cynewulf's autobiographical reflection in the epilogue of Elene claims that his own skill in poetry comes directly from God , who "unlocked the art of poesy" within him. Cynewulf seems to have justified his poetic endeavours through

840-501: The name was Cyniwulf , and Sisam points out that the ⟨i⟩ tends to change to an ⟨e⟩ about the middle of the eighth century, and the general use of the ⟨i⟩ phases itself out by the end of the century, suggesting Cynewulf cannot be dated much before the year 800. Moreover, it has been argued that the "cult of the cross", which can find ground in Cynewulf's Elene , achieved its cultural apex in

875-567: The only versified saints' legends in the Old English vernacular. The Ascension ( Christ II ) is outside the umbrella of the other three works, and is a vehement description of a devotional subject. The exact chronology of the poems is not known. One argument asserts that Elene is likely the last of the poems because the autobiographical epilogue implies that Cynewulf is old at the time of composition, but this view has been doubted. Nevertheless, it seems that Christ II and Elene represent

910-448: The saints (XVII and XXIII). The manuscript contains two homilies (I and VI) that are primarily narrative pieces and lack the typical homiletic structure. The arrangement of the homilies, coupled with the placement of the poetic pieces, creates a manuscript which Scragg considers to be "one of the most important vernacular books to survive from the pre- Conquest period". None of the homilies can be precisely dated, nor can any be assigned to

945-486: The scribe did the copying is relatively mechanical. In most cases, he copied the dialect and the manuscript punctuation that was found in the original texts, and these aspects therefore aid in reconstructing the variety of exemplars. The texts therefore range in date for although they were all copied in the later tenth century, they need not all have been written in this period". The verse items occur in three randomly placed groups intermixed with prose. Evidence suggests that

980-469: The scribe may have assembled the material over an extended period of time. Elaine Treharne in Old and Middle English: An Anthology suggests: "Although the examples are diverse, and no apparent chronological or formal arrangement can be discerned, the texts suggest the compiler was someone in a monastic setting who wished to illustrate his personal interest in penitential and eschatological themes and to glorify

1015-456: The volume was explained by a hospice catering especially to English pilgrims that was founded by Jacopo Guala Bicchieri (d. 1227), bishop of Vercelli , who had been papal legate in England 1216–1218. In the words of a modern critic, "The Vercelli Book appears ... to have been put together from a number of different exemplars with no apparent overall design in mind. The manner in which

1050-498: The words are substituted for the West Saxon forms. For instance, the manuscript presents the miht:peaht false rhyme which can be corrected when the middle vowel sounds of both words are replaced with an [æ] sound. The new maeht:paeht rhyme shows a typical Anglian smoothing of the ⟨ea⟩ . Numerous other "Anglianisms" in Elene and Juliana have been taken to be indicative of an original Anglian dialect underlying

1085-820: Was a German philologist and one of the founders of English philology in Germany. Zupitza was the son of Major Andreas Zupitza and his wife, Adelheid, née Albrecht. He received his Gymnasium education in Oppeln . Zupitza studied classical, Germanic, and Romance philology and Sanskrit at the University of Breslau and the University of Berlin , working with Friedrich Pfeiffer, Ottomar Behnsch, Heinrich Rückert , Karl Müllenhoff , August Boeckh , and Moritz Haupt . He received his doctoral degree in 1865 in Berlin and his postdoctoral degree ( habilitation ) in 1869 in Breslau . After

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1120-420: Was a break from the tradition of the anonymous poet, where no composition was viewed as being owned by its creator. Cynewulf devised a tradition where authorship would connote ownership of the piece and an originality that would be respected by future generations. Furthermore, by integrating his name, Cynewulf was attempting to retain the structure and form of his poetry that would undergo mutations otherwise. From

1155-608: Was likely a man in holy orders, and the deep Christian knowledge conveyed through his verse implies that he was well learned in ecclesiastical and hagiographical literature, as well as the dogma and doctrine of the Catholic Church. His apparent reliance on Latin sources for inspiration also means he knew the Latin language, and this of course would correlate with him being a man of the Church. Cynewulf of Lindisfarne (d. c. 780)

1190-540: Was the basis for Benjamin Thorpe 's putative edition, "well advanced" by 1835 but never published (the Record Commission was dissolved in 1837). Copies of his work were kept and distributed between 1869 and 1917, though some copies must have been sent out: one such copy was the basis for Jacob Grimm 's Andreas und Elene (Kassel, 1840), an edition of the Old English poems Andreas and Elene , both found in

1225-403: Was the first one based on a new inspection of the manuscript. Cynewulf Cynewulf ( / ˈ k ɪ n i w ʊ l f / , Old English: [ˈkynewuɫf] ; also spelled Cynwulf or Kynewulf ) is one of twelve Old English poets known by name, and one of four whose work is known to survive today. He presumably flourished in the 9th century, with possible dates extending into

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