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Monument à la mémoire de Cædmon, 1898, cimetière de l'église Sainte-Marie à Whitby
Caedmon (AC)
Died 670. Saint Bede recorded the life of Caedmon, the cowherd of Whitby Abbey, who though rough and untutored, by some strange power, in his later years broke into song and became the father of English poetry. Some say he was quite old when he first exercised his gift. The legend is that for years he was so ashamed of his inability, on account of his shyness, to take his turn in singing on festive occasions that he would steal away and hide himself. 'Wherefore, being sometimes at feasts, when all agreed for glee's sake to sing in turn, he no sooner saw the harp come towards him than he rose from the board and turned homewards.'
One night, however, when he had left the feast and had taken refuge in the stable, he heard a voice saying: 'Sing, Caedmon. Sing some song to Me.' Caedmon stammered in reply: 'I cannot sing.''But you shall sing,' replied the voice. 'What shall I sing?' Caedmon asked in wonder. The voice answered: 'Sing the beginning of created things.' And Caedmon, in that moment, attempting to sing, found his stammering tongue had been loosened.
In the morning he recalled the words of his song and, adding other verses to it, appeared before the Abbess Hilda, to whom he related his strange story. He sang to her the song he had sung in the night, and she and all who heard were amazed, and agreed 'that heavenly grace had been conferred upon him by the Lord.'
He became a lay-brother and, still in the great abbey of Whitby, was taught by his fellow monks the truths of the Bible; these he turned into poetry 'so sweet to the ear that his teachers became his hearers.''He sang,' says Bede, 'of the creation of the world, the origin of man, and the history of Israel, of the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of Christ, and the teaching of the Apostles.' This first Anglo-Saxon writer of religious poetry covered with his paraphrases the whole field of Scripture, and though 'others after him strove to compose religious poems, none could vie with him, for he learned the art of poetry not from men, but from God.'
He is said to have died in holiness and perfect charity to all, after showing that he knew his life was at an end, although he was not seriously ill.
It was a remarkable instance of the power of the Bible to stimulate the imagination and awaken natural genius. Thus, Caedmon brought to the common people the energy and realism of the Scriptures, which, entering deeply into the life of the nation, have never ceased through all the centuries to invigorate and inspire the culture of the English-speaking world. Though only nine lines of one of his hymns, Dream of the Road, said to have been composed in a dream, survives, he is called the 'Father of English Sacred Poetry.' His feast is still celebrated at Whitby (Benedictines, Delaney, Encyclopedia, Farmer, Gill).
St. Caedmon
Author of BiblicalPoems in Anglo-Saxon, date of birth unknown; died between 670 and 680. While Caedmon's part in the authorship of the so-called Caedmonianpoems has been steadily narrowed by modern scholarship, the events in the lifeof this giftedreligiouspoet are definitively established by the painstaking Bede, who lived in the nearby monastery of Wearmouth in the following generation. Bede tells us (Hist. Eccles., Bk. IV, ch. xxiv) that Caedmon, whose name is perhaps Celtic(Bradley), or a Hebrew or Chaldaicpseudonym (Palgrave, Cook), was at first attached as a labourer to the double monastery of Whitby(Streoneshalh), founded in 657 by St. Hilda, a friend of St. Aidan. (See AIDAN.) One night, when the servants of the monastery were gathered about the table for good-fellowship, and the harp was passed from hand to hand, Caedmon, knowing nothing of poetry, left the company for shame, as he had often done, and retired to the stable, as he was assigned that night to the care of the draught cattle. As he slept, there stood by him in vision one who called him by name, and bade him sing. "I cannot sing, and therefore I left the feast.""Sing to me, however, sing of Creation." Thereupon Caedmon began to sing in praise of God verses which he had never heard before. Of these verses, called Caedmon'shymn, Bede gives the Latinequivalent, the Alfredian translation of Bede gives a West-Saxon poetic version, and one manuscriptof Bede appends a Northumbrian poetic version, perhaps the very words of Caedmon. In the morning Caedmon recited his story and his verses to Hildaand the learned men of the monastery, and all agreed that he had received a Divine gift. Caedmon, having further shown his gift by turning into excellent verse some sacredstories recited to him, yielded to the exhortation of Hildathat he take the monastichabit. He was taught the whole series of sacredhistory, and then, like a clean animal ruminating, turned it into sweet verse. His poems treated of Genesis, Exodus, and stories from other books of the Old Testament, the Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension, the Descent of the Holy Ghost, the teaching of the Apostles, the Last Judgment, Hell and Heaven. Bede ends his narrative with an account of Caedmon'sholy death. According to William of Malmesbury, writing 1125, he was probably buriedat Whithy, and his sanctity was attested by many miracles. His canonization was probably popular rather than formal.
The Caedmonianpoems, found in a unique tenth-century manuscript, now in the Bodleian Library, were first published and ascribed to Caedmonin 1655 by Francis Junius (du Jon), a friend of Milton, and librarian to the Earl of Arundel. The manuscript consists of poems on Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, and a group of poems in a different hand, now called collectively "Christ and Satan", and containing the Fallof the Angels, the Descent into Hell, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Last Judgment, and the Temptation in the Wilderness. The tendency among Anglo-Saxonscholars has been to deny the Caedmonianauthorship of most of these poems, except part of the "Genesis", called A, and parts of the "Christ and Satan". In 1875 Professor Sieversadvanced the theory, on grounds of metre, language, and style, that the part of the "Genesis" called B, ll. 235-370, and ll. 421-851, an evident interpolation, was merely a translation and recension of a lost Old Saxon"Genesis" poem of the ninth century, whose extant New Testament part is known as the "Heliand". Old Saxonis the Old LowGermandialect of the continental Saxons, who were converted in part from England. The Sieverstheory, whose history is one of the brilliant episodes of modern philology, was established in 1894 by the discovery of fragments of an Old Saxon"Genesis". (Parallel passages in Cook and Tinker.)
Bede tells us that many English writers of sacredverse had imitated Caedmon, but that none had equalled him. The literary value of parts of the Caedmonianpoems is undoubtedly of a high order. The Biblestories are not merely paraphrased, but have been brooded upon by the poet until developed into a vivid picture, with touches drawn from the Englishlife and landscape about him. The story of the flight of Israelresoundswith the tread of armies and the excitement of camp and battle. The "Genesis" and the "Christ and Satan" have the glow of dramatic life, and the character of Satan is sharply delineated. The poems, whether we say they are Caedmon's or of the school of Caedmon, mark a worthy beginning of the long and noble line of Englishsacred poetry.
Sources
BROOKE, Early English Literature(London, 1892); MORLEY, English Writers(London, 1888), I; KER, Dark Ages(New York, 1904); HAZLITT-WARTON, History of English Poetry (London, 1873); AZARIAS, Old English Thought (New York, 1879); LINGARD, Anglo-Saxon Church (London, 1852); TURNER, History of the Anglo-Saxons (London, 1803); TEN BRINK, English Literature (New York, 1882), I; IDEM, Geschichte der enlgischen Litteratur (Strasburg, 1899), 98 and app.; KÖRTING, Grundriss der englischen Litteratur (Münster, 1905); WöLCKER, Grundriss zur Geschichte der angelsächsischen Litt.; IDEM, Caedmon u. Milton, Anglia, IV, 40; MONTALEMBERT, Monks of the West (Edinburgh, 1861); Acta Sanctorum, 11 Feb.; SIEVERS, Der Heliand und die angelsächsische Genesis (Halle, 1875); PLUMMER, Hist. Eccl. Gentis Anglor. Bedae(Oxford, 1896); GREIN-WöLCKER, Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Poesie (Kassel, 1894); MILLER, O. E. Version of Bede, with tr. (London, 1890), 95, 96; THORPE, Caedmon's Metrical Paraphrase, etc., with Eng. Tr. (London, 1832); COOK AND TINKER, Translations from Old English (Boston, 1902); PALGRAVE in Archaeologia, XXIV, 341; COOK, Publications Modern Language Association, VI, 9; STEVENS in The Acadamy, 21 Oct., 1876; GURTEEN, Caedmon, Dante, and Milton (New York, 1896); ZANGMEISTER AND BRAUNE, Neue Heidelberger Jahrbücher (1894), IV, 205; HOLTHAUSEN, Altsächsisches Elementarbuch (Heidelberg, May, 1900).
Crowne, J. Vincent. "St. Caedmon." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 3. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908. 11 Feb. 2017 <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03131c.htm>.
Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by Matthew Reak.
Ecclesiastical approbation.Nihil Obstat. November 1, 1908. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur.+John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.