Resignation (or simply Age mec) is two poems found in the Exeter Book, donated to Exeter Cathedral by bishop Leofric in 1050. The book contains quite a number of poems, the more famous being Christ, Widsith, The Seafarer, The Ruin and several riddles. The tome has apparently gone through many hardships; from the circa 130 original leaves about twenty are lost or replaced, and at many places the MS is burnt.
Resignation A and B are among the often overlooked pieces of the book, and for quite some time not much thought had been given to them—to the extent, indeed, that the two disparate poems were taken to be one. The discrepancy was pointed out only in the 70’s by Bliss and Frantzen in their article titled “The Integrity of Resignation”, wherein they proved that at line 69 a new poem starts, altogether different from the preceding prayer. Their analysis is based on the physical state of the book, as well as differences in style, syntax and the vocabulary of the two poems (for instance, Resignation A is distinctly Anglian, and is dominated by the use of imperative and subjunctive structures, whereas Resignation B appears to be regular West Saxon). The poems appeared as one in Krapp and Dobbie’s edition of the Exeter Book in 1936 (215–18), but even recent editions, such as B. J. Muir’s (appearing in 2000), fail to mark the distinction.1
The results of the research of Bliss and Frantzen, however, in effect render some of the questions and criticisms that have been raised concerning the poems meaningless.2 Such are the obvious discrepancies between the diction and the aims of the ‘poem’, and the perceived sudden plunges towards entirely different directions (quoted in Bliss and Frantzen 390–95). Unfortunately, no literary analysis which takes into account the findings of Bliss and Frantzen has as yet appeared.3 The aforementioned authors provide a brief comparative synopsis of the two poems, and they include a prose translation of Resignation B, but they go no further, and provide no possible sources. Neither does a full translation of the poems exist. I will attempt
1 A welcome difference is apparent in Fulk and Cain’s A History of Old English Literature, who notes, pace Bliss and Frantzen, that Resignation is in fact two poems. However, even the definitive edition of OE elegies by Anne L. Klinck, although mentioning that Bliss and Frantzen determined Resignation to be two texts, nevertheless handles the material as one poem (although she does present some counter-arguments to Bliss and Frantzen, she admits that these are more or less speculations) (Klinck 55–56).
2 An ample enumeration of them is to be found in Klinck (55–56): “the first part is very repetitive, and the second fails to develop its suggestive images of the longed-for boat and the flourishing tree that counterpoint the speaker’s misery; the poem's ending, which merely admonishes the unfortunate to make the best of a bad job, is a let-down.”
3 Not even Fulk and Cain devote the poems more than a single paragraph (136), only mentioning them as one of the variae in the Exeter Book.
to remedy this situation, and at the end of the paper I also give my own literal translation of both poems, based on the text of Krapp and Dobbie.
The most that has been said about Resignation is that it is either a versified prayer, such as the Pater Noster, the Gloria or the Psalms, or that it is in line “with the commendatio animæ” tradition (Stanley, qtd. in Bliss and Frantzen 395ff). I feel both statements to be erroneous. Firstly, there is no “prose” original for Resignation (or not even, as in the case of the Psalms, lyric antecedents in Hebrew). Secondly, the poem is not a commendatio animae, that is, a prayer offering the soul of a dying man to God, in the conventional sense.
Resignation A is a prayer, which, quite clearly, offers the speaker’s soul to God. The speaker of the poem asks God to possess him in order that he might attain God in everything. He offers God his very being: his body and his thoughts are severally mentioned as being subjected to God’s will. Although the speaker acknowledges that he has committed many sins, he begs God to cleanse him of them;
and he is frightened of the idea that he might fall prey to Satan and his fallen angels.
He begs God help to save him: and he promises to remember the help and try to (retroactively) merit it. The speaker in the last lines does indeed seem to be moribund:
but this stands in stark contrast with the first fifteen lines, where he appears to ask God to aid him in living a good life. I believe that these lines are simply an instance of memento mori, especially since the theme is not carried further: just before the MS breaks off, the speaker recalls how those around him thanked God for the blessings showered upon him.
There are many possible analogues for Resignation A. The ideas it gives expression to have been part and parcel of Christianity and Christian thinking since the birth of the religion. There are, however, two particular texts which offer interesting parallels, and occasionally even verbatim agreement. One is St Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions; the other is a sermon of St Columbanus. Firstly, I will describe the former.
It is well known that Augustine has been one of the most popular and influential Christian authors. After his death, an extreme resurgence of interest in his life and his theology occurred in the post-Roman Germanic states during the 9th century, which became an enduring trend. The best evidence to this is that except for a few fragments and two 6th-century manuscripts, all of our extant copies of the Confessions come from the 9th century. The 9th century also saw, with the reinvention of Antique learning in Carolingian Francia, an extreme resurgence of interest in Augustine’s works (Schubert 447ff.). The philosophical and theological debates were fuelled with material from Augustine, and indeed he himself was a matter of controversy. His teaching concerning Grace and Providence was often mistaken for some sort of “semi-Pelagianism” already during the Doctor’s life, but in the 9th century Augustine’s theories and stance in many debates were reanalysed and
reinterpreted,4 especially based on passages of the Confessions. We have 7(!) manuscripts of the Latin surviving in various places in Anglo-Saxon England (SoASLC 71), and Bede quoted and used his texts in works such as De ortographia, De Natura Rerum, De Temporum Ratione and his commentary of the Genesis (ibid.;
see also Wallis lxxxiv). Alas, we know of no extant prose Old English translation, Augustine’s book, or that it would be some sort of a collectanea of Augustine. But the close similitude of the two works is striking, and deserves to be drawn attention to.
Below, I enumerate the similarities in thought and diction that I have found.5
The first lines (1-2a), which offer the speaker’s soul to God, constitute an offer which is reiterated in the Confessions many times and in a variety of forms. For a close parallel, I would quote book V, paragraph iii, 4: “Moreover, when they do discover that you are their Maker, they do not give themselves to you so that you may preserve what you have made.”6 (Chadwick 74) This offering of oneself to God is such a central concept in the Confessions that Augustine condemns everyone (in this case, the Manichees) who refuses to do so.7
Lines 2b-5a describe the creation of the world. This was a problem which fascinated Augustine; besides dedicating the entirety of books XII and XIII of the Confessions to it, he also wrote the treatise De Genesi ad litteram (libri duodecim), 'On the literal meaning of Genesis (in twelve books)'. The bishop of Carthage fought a lifelong war against those who wished to treat the Book of Creation as a simple myth on the one hand (e.g., the Manichees), and on the other hand against those who read it literally without accepting the spiritual truths contained therein.
In the following lines (5b-15a) the offer made at the opening of the poem is reiterated, and in greater detail. One of the closest verbatim agreements with Augustine occurs here; for example, “Let me offer you in sacrifice the service of my thinking and my tongue”, XI, ii, 3 (Chadwick 222); 8 or “May I dedicate to your
4 For the controversy during Augustine’s lifetime see: Márkus; Koopmans; Rees. For Augustine’s re-evaluation, see Geschichte der christlichen Kirche im Frühmittelalter by Schubert passim; and Rees 98–124.
5 In the following discussion, I give the text in Henry Chadwick’s translation. The numbering is to be construed in this order: book; paragraph; Chadwick’s own subdivision. Chadwick, besides the commonly accepted numbering of the passages offers his own, alternative division of the paragraphs of the Confessions. For ease of reference, I shall also give the appropriate page numbers. Latin quotations, given in footnotes, are taken from the edition of the Confessions to be found in the Loeb Classical Library (in two volumes), quoted by page numbers.
6...et invenientes, quia to fecisti eos, non ipsi se dant tibi, se, ut serves quod fecisti, et quales se ipsi fecerant occidunt se tibi... (Loeb I, 212)
7 For other passages, voicing the same idea see: IV, x (15)
8 Sacrificem tibi famulatum cogitationis et linguae meae, et da quod offeram tibi. (Loeb II, 210)
service my power to speak and write and read and count”, I, xv, 24 (Chadwick 18); 9 or “You know, Lord my God, that quick thinking and capacity for acute analysis are your gift. But that did not move me to offer them in sacrifice to you . . . I went to much pains to keep a good part of my talents under my own control”, IV, xvi, 30 (Chadwick 70). 10 The verbal correspondence is very strong, especially in the case of the first quotation; and my corpora based searches revealed that this precise formation in Latin is unique to Augustine.11 It is therefore, I feel, not unreasonable to suppose a connection between Resignation A and the Confessions, especially in light of further agreements of sense and diction.
For getacna me . . . raed araere many parallels can be found throughout the Confessions. Augustine wishes to attend God’s will: the first nine books of his work recount precisely this. It is, however, a passage from book X, xxix, 40, which I would like to quote: “grant what you command, and command what you will” (Chadwick 202).12 This was perceived by contemporaries as a central thought of the Confessions;
so much so that it is claimed that the whole Pelagian controversy was ignited by this single passage (Chadwick ibid., Rees passim).
Lines 15b-18, wherein the speaker begs God not to hand him over to the devil, even though he deserves it, mirror several statements of Augustine: “We have been justly handed over the ancient sinner, the president of death, who has persuaded us to conform our will to his will which did not remain in your truth”, VII, xxi, 27 (Chadwick 131).13 It is even as the speaker of the prayer says: “I listen to you less than my rôle (or benefit) were” ( þeah þe ic scyppendum wuldorcyninge waccor hyrde, ricum dryhtne, þonne min ræd wære). This statement of acknowledging one’s sinful nature again appears in 25b-29b.
The speaker asks God to lend him aid in fighting against his “bitter bale-deeds”, and promises that he shall keep this aid in mind, and, as I wrote before, he shall try to retroactively deserve it. Augustine's entire theology was built on the doctrine of prevenient Grace (especially in the form of infant baptism), and in the Confessions he often gives voice to his opinion that man alone, without God’s pre-emptive and prevenient help cannot do anything. It is God who takes the first action in the salvation of man: all an individual is able to do is to accept God’s grace and merit it. From the several passages describing this, I would like to quote Book IV, i, 1:
“Without you, what am I to myself but a guide to my own self-destruction?”
9 ...tibi serviat quod loquor et scribo et lego et numero. (Loeb I 46)
10 ... scis tu, domine deus meus, quia et celeritas intelligendi et dispiciendi acumen donum tuum est. Sed non inde sacrificabam tibi. [...] quia tam bonam partem substantiae meae sategi habere in potestate.
(Loeb I, 198–200)
11 The corpora I used are the Library of Latin Texts A and B, maintained by brepolis.net (access was kindly provided by the CEU Mediaeval Library); and the Documenta Catholica Omnia.
12 ...da quod iubes et iube quod vis. (Loeb II 150)
13 ...et iuste traditi sumus antiquo peccatori, praepositio mortis, quia persuasit voluntati nostrae similitudinem voluntatis suae, qua in veritate tua non stetit. (Loeb I 396–98)
(Chadwick 52),14 and “Protect us and bear us up. It is you who will carry us; you will bear us up from our infancy until old age”, from IV, xvi, 31 (Chadwick 71).15
Forgif þu me, min frea, fierst ond ondgiet . . . (l.22), until to cunnunge is a moving petition of the speaker to God to enable him to comprehend whatever happens in his life with which God wishes to test him (I posit an alternative reading in the appropriate footnotes). The speaker also asks for enough time—this, I believe, is a sign of his desire to retrospectively make sense of the past events of his life. That again is a very Augustinian thought, as the Doctor wrote his autobiography precisely to try to construct a coherent, logical narrative of his conversion. At the very beginning of the Confessions, after having duly praised God, Augustine opens with
“Grant me Lord to know and understand”, I, i, 1 (Chadwick 3),16 which, while being a quotation from Psalm 118 (119), establishes a frame of the work. The closing lines of the Confessions are the following: “What can enable the human mind to understand this? [...] Only you can be asked, only you can be begged, only on your door can we knock. Yes indeed, that is how it is received, how it is found, how the door is opened”, XIII, xxxviii, 53 (Chadwick 304-5).17 Or again, when Augustine asks God to
“make it clear to me, physician of my most intimate self, that good results from my present undertaking", X, iii, 4 (Chadwick 180).18
The following ten lines are in many ways repetitions of the themes I discussed earlier. In line 34b, however, there is a keyword: leatlicor 'more sluggish, tardy, lazy'.
Laziness was a central problem to Augustine: laziness to accept our allotted rôle, to do what is right. He describes his life before conversion thus in VIII, v, 12: “Though at every point you showed that what you were saying was true, yet I, convinced by that truth, had no answer to give you except merely slow and sleepy words: ‘At once’—‘But presently’—‘Just a little longer, please’” (Chadwick 141)19, likening himself to a lazy man putting of getting up until it is too late. Some passages later he describes his anguish thus: “I was afraid you might hear my prayer quickly, and that you might too rapidly heal me of the disease of lust which I preferred to satisfy rather than suppress”, VIII, vi, 17 (Chadwick 145),20 and that the “only thing left to it [Augustine’s soul] was a mute trembling, and as if it were facing death it was terrified of being restrained from the treadmill of habit by which it suffered sickness unto death”, VIII, vii, 18 (Chadwick 146).21 The speaker of Resignation A, too, speaks of a laziness to correct his ways, even though this had been commanded to him by God.
14 Quid enim sum ego mihi sine te nisi dux in praeceps? (Loeb I 148)
15 Protege nos et porta nos. Tu portabis, tu portabis et parvulos et usque ad canos tu portabis: quoniam firmitas nostra quando tu es, tunc est firmitas, cum autem nostra est, infirmitas est.(Loeb I 200–202)
16 Da mihi, Domine, scire et intelligere... (Loeb I 2)
17 Et hoc intelligere quis hominum dabit homini? [...] A te petatur, in te petatur, ad te petatur: sic, sic accipientur, sic invenientur, sic aperietur. (Loeb II 474)
18 Verum tu, medice meus intime, quo fructu iste faciam, eliqua mihi (referring to his writing of the Confesssions). (Loeb II 78)
19 Et undique ostendenti vera te dicere, non erat omnino, quid responderem veritate convictus, nisi tantum verba lenta et somnolenta: “modo”, “ecce modo”, “sine paulum”. (Loeb I 426)
20 Timebat enim, ne me cito exaudires et cito sanares a morbo concupiscentiae, quem malebam expleri quam exstingui. (Loeb I 440)
21 Remanserat muta trepidatio, et quasi mortem formidabat restringi a fluxu consuetudinis, quo tabescebat mortem. (Loeb I 442)
He, however, like Augustine, knows that God is merciful and forgives us past sins (ll.
36b-37a).
The Bishop of Hippo throughout his Confessions speaks of the necessity to concentrate with all of one's powers, soul, and being on God in order to attain salvation. He describes his effort in the Neoplatonic terms of spiritual ascent to God in IV, xii, 19 (Chadwick 64)22, or V, i, 1 (Chadwick 72)23. I have already described the memento mori-motif present in both Resignation A and in Augustine's work; and I continue with line 45.
The speaker of the prayer is clearly afraid for his soul, and envisages a veritable psychomachia, with Satan and his angels assaying him from all sides, to snatch him away from the presence of God. He begs God to thwart the hope of the devils and punish them. This is very much reminiscent of the closure of book VII:
It is one thing from a wooded summit to catch a glimpse of the homeland of peace and not to find the way to it, but vainly to attempt the journey along an impracticable route surrounded by the ambushes and assaults of fugitive deserters with their chief, the lion and the dragon. It is another thing to hold on to the way that leads there, defended by the protection of the heavenly emperor. There no deserters from the heavenly army lie in waiting to attack. For this way they hate like torture.
VII, xxi, 27 (Chadwick 131-2)24
What Augustine here is describing is in fact life, beset on all sides with the assaults of Satan and his slaves, englas oferhydige þonne ece Crist. Pride was by “Augustine considered the most basic sin, which stood at the root of the fall” (McKim 362).
Proud sinners (including himself) “act as if they were allowed to do what would never be permitted by your eternal law. They think they are free to act with impunity when by the very blindness of their behaviour they are being punished, and inflict on themselves incomparably worse damage than on others”, V, viii, 14 (Chadwick 81).25
I have already written about the themes which are reiterated by the speaker of the prayer: the one last connection I would like to make is the speaker’s fear for his soul (ond ic ymb sawle eom feam siþum forht, ll. 65b-66a), and his thankfulness for the bounty of grace granted to him by God (ll.65b-68b). Augustine considered, according to his account, the death of the soul an actual possibility: “Insofar as the death of his [Christ’s] flesh was in my opinion unreal, the death of my soul was real”,
22 Fili hominum, etc. (Loeb I 182)
23 Ut exsurgat, etc. (Loeb I 204)
24 Et aliud est de silvestri cacumine videre patriam pacis, et iter ad eam non invenire, et frusta conari per invia, circum obsidentibus et insidantibus fugitivis desertoribus, cum principe suo leone et dracone: et aliud tenere viam illuc ducentem, cura caelestis imperatoris mutinam, ubi non latrocinantur qui caelestem militiam deseruerunt; vitant enim eam sicut supplicium. (Loeb I 398)
25 Multa iniuriosa faciunt, mira hebetudine et punienda legibus, nisi consuetudo patrona sit, hoc
25 Multa iniuriosa faciunt, mira hebetudine et punienda legibus, nisi consuetudo patrona sit, hoc