The Anglo-Saxon Metaphysics and Its Ambiguities
Nina Katarina Štular
Nina Katarina Štular is a Sophomore Philosophy and English Literature double major at DePauw University. She serves as a research assistant on a project dedicated to setting up a database of scholarly sources on Anglo-Saxon literary culture. She also works as a writing tutor, is a member of DePauw ethics and bioethics bowl teams, and interns at Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics. In the next academic year, she will pursue her academic interests in Aesthetics, Philosophy of Language, and modernist writings as a visiting student at Mansfield College, Oxford University.
The Old English literary corpus offers us many opportunities for discussion of the temporary and eternal aspects of human existence. We can partly attribute this interest in that of the body and soul to the challenges that the highly material Anglo-Saxon culture faced when converting to Christianity soon after they settled in the British Isles in 5th century AD. A close analysis of the poems Soul and Body I and The Seafarer, Homily VI of the Vercelli book, and Alfred’s enriched translation of Boethius—four very different texts that deal with the embodiment—brings up fascinating questions about the ontology of temporally remote Anglo-Saxons: Do Anglo-Saxons view the bodily and the spiritual as two different aspects of one reality or as two realities in constant conflict? How do they differentiate between that of the body and that of the soul? Where is the seat of agency and what role does reason play in the effort to maintain a soul worthy of the afterlife? I will argue that a close reading of the texts reveals great ambiguities with regards to what the Anglo-Saxon metaphysical views are. Accepting such ambiguities first, gives us a better understanding of how closely connected the metaphysical view of reality is with a view of selfhood and second, disrupts our assumptions about the universalizability of the standard soul-body binary in early-Medieval literature.
In the poem Soul & Body I, the dichotomy between the bodily and the spiritual is most clearly laid out. Even the structure of the poem helps carry the poetic message, as it establishes a clear contrast between the fate of the saved and the doomed; the first half of the poem gives voice to a soul, lamenting its demise, whereas the second half presents a saved soul rejoicing over its body. At the very beginning the poem introduces lic ond sawle (5) [‘body and soul’] as sybbe (4) [‘siblings’] that are joint in this intimate relationship before deað cymeð (3) [‘death comes’]. Personified death as the ultimate divider separates the soul from its lichoman (11) or [‘body-home’] and in the case of the first soul dooms it to wait for judgement. While waiting, the soul sceal cuman (9) [‘is obliged to come’] and visit her former abode every seventh night. The strong obligation expressed by the verb sculon implies that this obliged visit is a part of the punishment for the soul. The visit itself, on the other hand, indicates that the soul sustains outside of the body, even if only to facilitate the execution of divine punishment.
In its monologue the punished soul emphasizes precisely the tragic nature of such divine punishment; while the body seems to be the agent of all the sinful actions that earned its doom, the soul suffers punishment with the body as if they were one. The soul’s indignation over the body’s earthly actions is evident from the series of exclamatory accusations with which the soul begins its lament. It accuses the body of not considering the afterlife in its actions by only pursuing personal, earthly pleasures. The soul tells us that angels, per God’s request, brought it to the body and explicitly identifies the body as the wielder of their doom by accusatorily using the pronoun þu. In midst of expressing the distinctness of agency, however, the soul also acknowledges how tied its existence is with the body’s: Eardode ic þe on innan. Ne meahte ic ðe of cuman (33) [‘I was settled within you. I could not exist without you’]. The doomed soul constructs this circumstantial unity as a detested state of imprisonment as it reveals that it wished no association with its sinful lichoman: A ic uncres gedales onbad earfoðlice (37-8) [‘I always impatiently awaited our separation’]. But however much the soul may rage over the body that it þruh þaes sylfes hand (56) [‘through its own hand’] caused their damnation, the two are joint in their fate as they must face the judgement together.
In this state of afterlife, the soul is the speaker and the actor, while in the time of their earthly existence, the body possessed full agency. The fact that the soul now must curse its body without having the capacity to impact their joint fate is a great part of its grievance as it laments: þin sawl sceal minum unwillum oft gescecan, wemman þe mid wordum, swa ðu worhtest to me (62-4) [‘your soul has to against my will often seek you and defile you with words, like you did’]. Further, when the soul talks about the judgement, it emphasizes that the body will have to speak for the two of them. Through this exchange, the soul establishes a connection between the seat of agency and the ability to speak. The poet then further emphasizes this connection as she states that the body ne mæg him ondsware (106) [‘cannot answer them’] as it lays in decay when the soul leaves it, devoid of agency in death.
The second part of the poem presents a stark contrast to the misery of the doomed soul and the wretchedness of its sinful body. Instead of a landslide of indignant exclamations, this joyous soul greets its body like a wife would her husband as it addresses the body as leofesta (135) [‘beloved’] and min dryhten (138) [‘my lord’]. This body too clearly bore the agency in life, as is evident from the soul’s frequent use of the pronoun þu, but the body chose to do deeds that benefited the soul: “Fæstest ðu on foldan ond gefyldest me godes lichoman, gastes drynces” [‘You fasted on earth and fed me the body of God, the drink of the soul’]. Despite its sacrifice, however, the body still is wyrmum to wiste (154) [‘food for worms’], but instead of grimly exposing every gruesome detail of bodily decay as the doomed soul did, the saved soul expresses sympathy and anticipation to reap the rewards of the judgement ætsomne (158) [‘together’] with her body-home. While correct life-choices of the body in the second part of the poem allow the saved soul to anticipate a pleasant eternity with her body, the soul still is the only one with the ability to speak.
Scholars have often focused on the highly hostile attitude that the soul displays towards the body in the first part of the poem and interpreted Soul and Body as evidence that the Anglo-Saxons adopted the views of traditional Christian duality that deems the soul more valuable and important than the body. Such an interpretation largely relies on a contestable assumption that the soul is indeed a trustworthy narrator and that its judgement reflects the Anglo-Saxon thinking. Such a reading also ignores that soul’s speech in Soul and Body has very little power despite the doomed soul’s dramatic complaints: Even though the soul takes on a seemingly dominant role in the poem, it is entirely speechless and powerless both during the lifetime, and on the judgement day. Even while it laments or rejoices, its words, apart from their symbolic and intrinsic power, seem to have little tangible effect. Additionally, if we attribute any weight to the second part of the poem—the saved soul’s praise—we can hardly ignore the soul’s recognition of the body’s role in their salvation; if the doomed body is entirely to blame for the individual’s demise, the saved body too needs to be fully credited with the individual’s salvation. If Soul and Body does testify of duality, this duality is theologically quite unorthodox.
Another highly unusual aspect of the poem is that the soul and the body share their fate and yet have completely different concepts of what is good for them. This inverse relationship between the interests of the body and the soul indeed appears puzzling from a theological perspective: why would good food and riches appeal to the body if the soul would suffer dearly from those same actions? This is especially true if the owner of the body would be completely unaware of doing harm to his soul because it has no capacity of speech while in its body-home. Homily IV of Vercelli book tries to resolve this strange dissonance of desires by introducing the crucial role that the capacity to reason that God grants us plays during our earthly existence: “the Lord gave us that understanding, as He wished, so that we understand his will and our soul’s salvation”. Body and soul would according to the author of Homily VI be on anum willan [‘of one will’] if the body hyrwdest Godes beboda [‘heard God’s commands’]. However, even if an individual has the capacity to tell right from wrong, only the body has agency to act during the lifetime—reason alone fails to explain why soul and body are judged together.
While the doomed soul in Soul and Body rhetorically insists on equating responsibility with agency and blames the body for everything, Homily VI conveys a different image of accountability. As with Soul and Body, the lamenting soul accuses the body of disregarding the soul’s fate when pursuing earthly actions, but instead of further distancing itself from the body’s action it emphasizes its closeness to it as it says it was the body’s eacnung [‘conception’], wlite [‘beauty’] spræc [‘speech’], gehyrnes [‘hearing’], and glædness [‘glory’] to name just a few: “All that you were I was of this in you; and after I was alone from you, all this was lost to you, and you were naught without me.” How can the soul possibly have any grounds to lament being judged alongside the body if it is so ever-present in whatever the body acted on? While the soul is ever-present in the body, it does not carry agency; it nevertheless carries responsibility for the body’s actions, because as gast fram Gode sended [‘ghost sent from God’] the soul gives the body the capacity for bad actions and thus carries a share of responsibility. With this slightly more nuanced picture of the kind of agency that the soul has, it becomes further evident that a message that the author of Homily VI wishes to pass to his audience consists first of a warning not to estrange your soul from your body and then of an incentive to use reason to keep your body and soul working towards the same goal.
By specifying the goal of human earthly existence, Homily VI complicates the metaphysical picture of Soul and Body; the homily reveals what happens to the pair after the judgement and gives interesting insight into the way its author perceives reality. In the case of salvation, “the body breaks up into many forms [i.e., colors]” that start changing from those resembling plants and animals, to those of gemstones and sunshine. The testimony of the metaphysical unity of creation comes directly from Christ the judge as he says: “In the form of this body one may see that it is similar to that which the soul establishes for him.”Curiously, as their metaphysical substances visibly unite, the body and the soul also become one in their agency as they “are immediately able to speak.” When separated, only one at a time can speak and thus has capacity for action, but as soon as they unite in reward for their earthly deeds, they become of one voice and one will and begin praising God.
A vivid description of what kind of unity awaits the soul and body that earn eternal damnation by contrast reinforces the ideal. Just as in the case of salvation, the damned body “breaks into many forms” but those forms are dark and ugly. The soul too undergoes a change as it “transforms into an evil color, in the same manner as the body, and is still of worse form.” In this case, Christ the judge does not declare that the transformation indicates metaphysical unity, so we can only speculate whether or not a metaphysical revelation indeed occurred. Rather, the creator gives a cold and determined judgement: “Go you, soul, into the ruined [lit. forlorn] house. Since you two sinned together, you two also should perish together.” It appears that for the damned, the verdict is all that matters, as Christ remains ambiguous on the metaphysical details.
However rich a literary comparison between Soul and Body and Homily IV is, we cannot get around the fact metaphysical implications of the two works are ambiguous and elusive. Based on the Judgement scene of Homily VI, one could argue either that soul and body are metaphysically different and get reworked and united after final judgement, or that they are metaphysically the same and that the judge merely reveals their common nature after judgement. Prompted by this plurality of interpretative options, Jacob Riyeff argues that “we as critics must clarify our terms when discussing the body- and- soul theme if we are to gain purchase on just how dualism is represented in the theme’s various instantiations.” In his paper “Dualism in Old English Literature: The Body- and- Soul Theme and Vercelli Homily IV,” he points out that much of the field’s work on the two pieces has been focused on the doomed soul’s anger and contempt towards its body and extrapolated a certain kind of dualism out of it. But whether such dualism is the classic mind-body, anthropological, axiological, or metaphysical is according to Riyeff too often left in vague terms. Riyeff’s concern indeed presents a problem for our desire to extrapolate a philosophical argument about reality from Anglo-Saxon poems and homilies; even if we agree with Riyeff in that the judge’s description of soul and body’s unified nature in Homily VI “affirms the complementarity of body and soul and their mutual implication in one another,” we may have a hard time discerning whether the natures of body and soul are complementary in a metaphysical sense.
Furthermore, the metaphysical conclusions that we will extrapolate from the pieces will highly depend on whether we read them literally or figuratively. In Anglo-Saxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions, Leslie Lockett explores Anglo-Saxon perceptions of the mind and contests metaphoric readings of the expressions in the Anglo-Saxon literary field. She argues that, by reading Anglo-Saxon literary opus figuratively, we are assuming “that the Anglo-Saxons shared our modern understanding of the physiology of emotion; that they believed that the mind and mental states were abstract,” and accuses us of projecting “our own relentlessly dualistic view of the mind-body relationship” onto this temporally remote culture. Indeed, our understanding of the Anglo-Saxon metaphysical views is much different if we understand angels carrying the soul down from heaven and the soul’s weekly visits of its body-home figuratively or literally; while the former reading merely establishes God’s constant presence in the affairs of life, the latter reading attributes the soul with mass as well as with the capacity to actually produce sounds—if read literally, the Anglo-Saxons could be construed as ingenious metaphysical materialists rather than dualists.
Since examining a poem and a homily yielded little strong metaphysical evidence, we now turn to a third genre within Anglo-Saxon literary culture—enriched translation. In “Alfred, Alcuin, and the Soul,” Paul Szarmach tries to justify that the vernacular serves “as a vehicle for independent, speculative discourse.” In our wish to grasp anything at all about Anglo-Saxon metaphysics, we will take as given this contestable assumption and look at Alfred insertion of the threefold soul in his translation of Boethius. According to Alfred, the soul is threefold in nature and does not inhabit the body in a material way: þu eac þa ðriefaldan sawla on geðwærum limum styrest, swa þæt ðære sawlle þy læsse ne bið on ðam læstan fingere ðe on eallum þam lichoman [‘You cause the threefold soul to occupy the entire body, so that there is not less soul on the little finger than in all the body’]. The spatial peculiarity of the soul indeed implies metaphysical duality, but Alfred could have felt the need to insert this explanation of duality in his translation precisely because the average Anglo-Saxon materialist would have struggled with this aspect of Christian teaching.
Possibly even more metaphysically interesting is Alfred’s description of the three natures of the soul: An ðara gecynda is þæt heo bið willingende, oðer þæt hio bið irisende, þridde þæt hio bið gesceadwis [‘One such nature is that she [sawle, ‘soul’] follows its desire, the other that she follows its emotions, and the third that she is rational’]. According to Alfred, both desire and emotion are present in animals but reason distinguishes human soul from the animal soul. Such dissection of the soul once again has ambiguous metaphysical implications; since the three natures of the soul are so distinct that they make for the difference between humans and animals, one could take this as an argument for metaphysical pluralism. On the other hand, one could look at this passage merely as a specification of mind-body dualism: the immaterial soul, as well as the material body can be conceptually divided—desire, emotions, and reason would thus be for the soul what legs, arms, and torso are for the body. Once again, we find ourselves at a loss for a conclusive metaphysical assertion.
Despite that the metaphysical landscape of the Anglo-Saxon culture appears to be full of ambiguities and neither soul itself, nor the writers of homily, nor enriched vernacular philosophy grants us a firm foundation for a metaphysical position, there remains one more place we can turn to—the individual’s metaphysical experience. An elegiac poem The Seafarer depicts the experience of a sea-voyager who lives a on the sea and contemplates his temporal and metaphysical being. Almost by circumstance, his solitary lifestyle forces him to deny his body the earthly pleasures that supposedly harm the soul as he says that whoever navigates the sea has no time to think about “the harp, nor to the ring-taking, nor to the joys in women… nor about anything else but the welling of waves.” Freed from temptation to seek earthly pleasures, he describes his existence as a state of constant meditation as his “mind departs outside its thought-locks…departing broadly, the corners of the earth.” As his thoughts occupy higher matters he proclaims: Ic gelyfle no þæt him eorðwelan ece stondað [‘I do not believe that the earthly happiness will withstand eternity’]. He clearly expresses a belief in a temporal duality of reality—while some things pass either of “disease or old age or else the blade’s hatred,” those of God remain. As Christine Fell puts it in “Perceptions of Transience,” “the poet of The Seafarer, in combining two traditions, the heroic—if we may so define it, preoccupation with survival of honour after loss of life—and the Christian hope for security of tenure in Heaven, is perceiving the transience on two levels, or, at any rate, as contrasted with two types of permanence.” Through his constant contact with natural forces mightier than himself, the seafarer puts life into perspective for us as he clearly delineates two natures of reality—the passing and the eternal.
While the seafarer begins with a description of his personal view of reality, the poem soon turns into an impersonal sermon about the right way to live. In his warning of temporality of flesh, The Seafarer poet interestingly positions the mind into the bodily domain: “Nor can the flesh-home, when the life is lost, swallow down sweetness, nor suffer sorrow, nor stir its hands, nor think with its mind.” Without lingering on this metaphysically significant statement, the poet then leaves us off with several recommendations for achieving the eternal. The mind clearly plays an important role in willing the body to do what is good for the soul as “man must steer a strong mind, and hold it firmly.” Much alike the evangelist Matthew in the New Testament asserting that one’s heart will be where one’s treasure is, The Seafarer poet urges us to “consider where we should possess our home, and then think about how we may come there again” and thereby implies that our fate is in our hands. An individual as depicted in The Seafarer seems to be a unified being treading the earthly realm that can either decide to invest in the pleasures of this world and perish with it, or turns his mind towards the eternity and achieve it; while the narrator clearly grapples with a temporal duality, he seems to be grappling with it as a single metaphysical unit.
Interpreting the Anglo-Saxon culture as metaphysically clear-cut dualist would allow us to neatly place it into the historical development of Christian theology. But looking at the primary sources reveals a much more complex reality. Soul and Body structurally imply duality, but with some close reading one could easily argue that the duality is merely a conflict within a metaphysically unified being, and the issues of agency and responsibility in the poem raise further complicating questions. Homily VI of Vercelli book addresses some of the inconsistencies of Soul and Body but through an oddly articulated Judgement scene that opens the door for a metaphysically pluralist interpretation. Alfred’s insertions in Boethius similarly answer some questions about the nature of the soul, but whether Alfred was conveying his understanding of vernacular philosophy or laying out Anglo-Saxon views remains unknown. Finally, The Seafarer offers us an insight into an individual’s understanding of this complicated mix of metaphysical views. The poet reveals to us a deeply contemplative figure that rather than inquiring into the nature of reality worries about his subjective placement in it.
Apart from highlighting the challenges that a modern scholar faces when attempting to answer questions about Anglo-Saxon metaphysical views, all the contrasting and contradicting interpretations that these individual sources allow for imply that the Anglo-Saxons shared the struggle. Making sense of reality and our own situatedness within it is a complex process that a simple answer will not solve. The practice of trying to answer the questions about the Anglo-Saxon metaphysics reveals that perhaps the question itself is flawed—perhaps Anglo-Saxons have no common cross-culturally assented to metaphysical understanding of reality. The many texts on the embodiment can then be understood as separate ways in which individuals revealed their processes of making sense of metaphysics. As Amity Reading argues in Reading the Anglo-Saxon Self Through the Vercelli Book, the soul-and-body texts such as the poems and the homily studied in this paper put forth “a constitutive rhetorical model, a fluid and adaptable if didactic way of thinking about the self that seldom functions identically within two different texts”. While having a certain concept of selfhood and self-identity differs from holding a formal metaphysical theory of reality the two have a lot in common; any metaphysical theory comes from a self and must necessarily include a theory of one’s own metaphysical existence. Therefore, metaphysical theories are informed by theories of self and can be equally elusive, contingent, and even subjective.
While a modern audience might recognize the relevance of concepts of identity and selfhood to a formal endeavor of metaphysically mapping reality, the field of Anglo-Saxon literary studies traditionally overlooks it. Interpreting deviant aspects of texts as merely struggles in accepting the mind-body duality has an appeal due to its simplicity, but fails to convincingly capture the reality of the Anglo-Saxon situation; the Anglo-Saxons came into contact with Christianity after a long and rich history of pagan tradition. Viewing their literary works on embodiment through a lens of a theologically orthodox mind-body duality oversimplifies the many nuances of the texts and imposes a binary on a culture, without proper backing. It displays a misunderstanding of how arbitrary and radical the concept of mind-body dualism is historically and how challenging the adoption of it would be for a pagan culture. Precisely to battle our tendencies to seek confirmation of our pre-existing assumptions about temporally remote cultures, it is important that we study Anglo-Saxon literature on embodiment by acknowledging and grappling with all its ambiguities. Only if we incorporate the ambiguities of the texts in our arguments instead of brushing them aside can we recognize the richness and complexity of the human metaphysical experience.
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