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Plenty, Portents and Plague: Ecclesiastical Readings of the Natural World in Early Medieval Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Sarah Foot
Sarah Foot*
Affiliation:
Christ Church, Oxford
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Extract

      Noli pater
      Father do not allow thunder and lightning,
      Lest we be shattered by its fear and its fire.
      We fear you, the terrible one, believing there is none like you.
      All songs praise you throughout the host of angels.
      Let the summits of heaven, too, praise you with roaming lightning,
      O most loving Jesus, O righteous King of Kings.
      (Thomas Owen Clancy and Gilbert Márkus, Iona: The Earliest Poetry of a Celtic Monastery, 85)

Early medieval attitudes to the natural world were distinctly ambivalent. At one level the natural world represented the marvel of God’s creative power; filled with beauty, it supplied everything necessary for human existence, meriting praise, as in the hymn sung by the herdsman from Whitby, Cædmon:

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 46: God’s Bounty? The Churches and the Natural World , 2010 , pp. 15 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2010

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References

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18 Ibid., lines 25–28.

19 Ibid., no. 13 (144–45); here, as Godman explained (20),’the nightingale, recalling a series of delicate analogies between Creator and creation, becomes symbolic of the relationship between man and God’.

20 Alcuin, Conflictus veris et hiemis: ibid., no. 14 (144–49); Sedulius Scottus,’Debate of the rose and the lily’: ibid., no. 45 (282–87).

21 Scottus,’Plea for patronage’: ibid., no. 46 (286–87).

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28 Ibid. 88–89.

29 Matt. 13: 3–9, 18–23.

30 Old English Rune Poem, no. 29, trans. Halsall, 92–93; for commentary, ibid. 160–63.

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33 Ibid. 2.3 (80–81). On this incident, see also, in this volume, Olga Gusakova, ‘A Saint and the Natural World: A Motif of Obedience in three early Anglo-Saxon Saints’ Lives’, 42–52.

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37 Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum, ch. 67, trans. Dam, Raymond van, Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs (Liverpool, 1988), 91 Google Scholar; quoted by Giselle De Nie, ‘Caesarius of Arles and Gregory of Tours: Two Sixth-Century Gallic Bishops and Christian Magic’, in Edel, Doris, ed., Cultural Identity and Cultural Integration: Ireland and Europe in the Early Middle Ages (Dublin, 1995), 170–96, at 191.Google Scholar

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40 A sentiment encapsulated most succinctly in the Old English poem, The Fortunes of Men, which describes the birth of an infant and then states:‘God alone knows what, while the child grows, the winter will bring’ (lines 8—9), going on to list the various different fates that might befall the hapless adult;‘Such things are not man’s to control’ (line 14): Krapp, G. P. and Dobbie, E.V K., eds, The Exeter Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3 (NewYork, 1936), 154.Google Scholar

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45 Annals of Ulster, s.a. 735 (ed. Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill, 188–89); also recorded in the Annals of Tigernach in the same year: Breen and McCarthy,’Astronomical Observations’, 13.

46 Listed and discussed by Breen and McCarthy, ‘Astronomical Observations’, 10–19.

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63 Astronomer, Life of Louis the Pious, ch. 58.1 – 58.2 (trans. Cabaniss, 112–14).

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66 Astronomer, Life of Louis the Pious, ch. 58.1 – 58.2 (trans. Cabaniss, 112–14).

67 Ibid., ch. 62.3 (trans. Cabaniss, 121); Ashley,‘Power of Symbols’, 41–45.

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78 Ibid.

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85 Adomnán, Life of St Columba 2.44, trans. Sharpe, Richard, Adomnán of Iona: Life of St Columba (London, 1995), 199–200; Flint, Rise of Magic, 187.Google Scholar

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88 Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, 2.4, trans. Fouke, W. D., History of the Langobards, by Paul the Deacon (Philadelphia, PA, 1907), 56–58 Google Scholar; quoted in full by Maddicott, J. R., ‘Plague in Seventh-Century England’, P&P, no. 156(1997), 7–54, at 36.Google Scholar

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91 Gregory, Histories 4.5,31; 5.34:6.14; 8.17 (trans. Lewis, 199–200,225–26,296,346, 449); Maddicott,‘Plague’, 18; McCready, Miracles, 27.

92 Adomnán, Life of Columba 2.46 (trans. Sharpe, 203); Maddicott,‘Plague’, 18.

93 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 4.7–8 (ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, 356–59); Bede, Life of Cuthbert, ch. 27 (ed. and trans. Colgrave, 246–49).

94 Maddicott, ‘Plague’, 19–20.

95 Bede, Life of Cuthbert, ch. 33 (ed. and trans. Colgrave, 258–61); Maddicott, ‘Plague’, 37–38.

96 Calvin B. Kendall, ‘Imitation and the Venerable Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica’, in King, Margot and Stevens, Wesley, eds, Saints, Scholars, and Heroes, 2 vols (Collegeville, MN, 1979), 1: 161–90, at 180; Magennis, Images of Community, 129.Google Scholar

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99 Bede, On Ezra and Nehemiah 10.9, trans. Scott de Gregorio (Liverpool, 2006), 145–46; cf. McCready, Miracles, 25–26.

100 Gregory, Homilies on the Gospels, book I, homily 1.5, ed. Raymond Etaix, CChr SL 141 (Turnhout, 1999), 9 (trans. Robert Markus, A., Gregory the Great and his World (Cambridge, 1997), 51); cf. Luke 21: 25–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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102 Graham D. Caie, The Old English Poem Judgement Day II (Woodbridge, 2000), 84–85.