Abstract
The Old English wisdom apocryphon Solomon Saturn II presents a range of interpretative difficulties. At the heart of these is the apparently disjointed dialogue between King Solomon and the euhemerized pagan god Saturn, which ranges across topics such as the power of books, the properties of the elements, and the origins of hell. One particular challenge for readers lies in understanding the monstrous Vasa mortis (“Instruments of Death”), described by Solomon early in the poem. The features attributed to this wrætlican wiht (wondrous creature), which Solomon claims to have discovered and keeps imprisoned in chains, draw on a range of biblical and apocryphal intertexts. An important, but neglected, aspect of the characterisation of the Vasa mortis is the monster’s intense emotion. It “cries out mournfully,” “laments its grief,” “wallows in torment,” “pines painfully.” This chapter will explore the ways in which the Vasa mortis and its emotions provide an important, if not crucial, metaphor establishing the central problem of the dialogue: why is it that some people are happy, while others are miserable? The account of the monster is followed immediately in the poem by a riddle about Old Age and death, which “subdues all,” and a sequence on the transience of nature and the folly of those who trust the permanence of wealth, honour, and worldly power. The poem’s interest in the relationship between an individual’s emotional state and fate is taken up in earnest in relation to the paradox of a hypothetical pair of twins, one of whom is “gloomy,” “unfortunate,” “sorrowful,” and becomes a social outcast. This chapter will explore in detail the emotional vocabulary of Solomon and Saturn II, and the ways in which the monstrous emotions of the Vasa mortis offer an ideational unity to this most enigmatic of early medieval texts.
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Notes
- 1.
See Daniel Anlezark, ed., The Old English Dialogues of Solomon and Saturn (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2009), 31–2; this edition is cited throughout.
- 2.
See Anlezark, Dialogues, pp. 33–4; Patrick O’Neill, “On the Date, Provenance and Relationship of the ‘Solomon and Saturn’ Dialogues,” Anglo-Saxon England 26 (1997): 157–8; Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, “The Geographic List of Solomon and Saturn II,” Anglo-Saxon England 20 (1991): 137. See also Robert J. Menner, “Nimrod and the Wolf in the Old English Solomon and Saturn,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 37 (1938): 332–54.
- 3.
The poem survives uniquely in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 422 (Part A), 1–26. For a full discussion see Anlezark, Dialogues, 1–4.
- 4.
It is likely that early medieval readers would have taken Solomon’s concern as something of a joke; similarly, for the informed reader Saturn is not “a child of men,” but of the sky and earth. Solomon’s defeat of Saturn is inevitable, though the pathway to this eventuality is often obscure across the text. Despite (or perhaps because of) the heaviness of the subject matter explored, this note of lightness is reflected in the tone of other passages (see especially lines 149–53). The poem is related to the riddling genre of the ioca monachorum (monks’ game); see Anlezark, Dialogues, 12–15.
- 5.
Sæge me from ðam lande | ðær nænig fyra ne mæg fotum gestæppan.
- 6.
See Robert J. Menner, ed., The Poetical Dialogues of Solomon and Saturn (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1941), 121–3.
- 7.
On the characterisation of Wulf as a sea-traveller see Daniel Anlezark, “All at Sea: Beowulf’s Marvellous Swimming,” in Myths, Legends and Heroes: Essays on Old Norse and Old English Literature in Honour of John McKinnell, ed. Daniel Anlezark (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 237–9.
- 8.
He on ðam felda ofslog .xxv. | dracena on dægred, ond hine ða deað offeoll.
- 9.
See Anlezark, Dialogues, 123–5; Robert J. Menner, “The Vasa Mortis Passage in the Old English Salomon and Saturn,” in Studies in English Philology: A Miscellany in Honor of Frederick Klaeber, ed. K. Malone and M. B. Ruud (Minneapolis, 1929), 240–53; Menner, ed., Poetical Dialogues, 127–9; Tristan Major, “Saturn’s First Riddle in Solomon and Saturn II: An Orientalist Conflation,” Neophilologus 96 (2012): 301–13. See also Major’s Undoing Babel: The Tower of Babel in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018).
- 10.
Anlezark, Dialogues, 15–30.
- 11.
See T.A. Shippey, Poems of Wisdom and Learning in Old English (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1976), 22–5; Daniel Anlezark, “Poisoned places: the Avernian tradition in Old English poetry,” Anglo-Saxon England 36 (2007): 103–26. Babel is important to the poet, and is referred to again at lines 149–53 (discussed below).
- 12.
Liber monstrorum i.54, ed. and trans. Andy Orchard, in Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf-Manuscript (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 286–7.
- 13.
mid fotum … mæg grund geræcan.
- 14.
Dol bið se ðe gæð on deop wæter.
- 15.
See also lines 252–5. The same interest in books is found Solomon and Saturn I, where Saturn describes his troubled mind line 61 bisi æfter bocum (busy in pursuit of books).
- 16.
See Anlezark, Dialogues, 101, on the poet’s etymological pun on the Latin association of Saturn’s name in Cicero’s De natura deorum (II.24.64) and Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies (VIII.xi.29), centred on the idea of “satisfaction” (Latin satis, OE geseman). See note 22.
- 17.
Menner’s suggestion, “The Vasa Mortis Passage,” 252–4, that the genealogy of the Vasa mortis owes a debt to the demonized Philistine fish-god Ashmodeus-Dagon may have some merit in this connection, though this creature is a bird. The name Vasa mortis is derived from Ps 7.14.
- 18.
wenað ðæs ðe naht is.
- 19.
This kind of abstraction returns later in the dialogue, when Solomon asks Saturn (line 161): Ac sæge me hwæt næren <ð>e wæron. (But tell me what things were not that were.) Both expressions imply an interest in abstraction on the part of a poet informed about debates about nominalism in the Carolingian schools. See Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, “Source, Method, Theory, Practice: On Reading two Old English Verse Texts,” in Textual and Material Culture in Anglo-Saxon England: Thomas Northcote Toller and the Toller Memorial Lectures, ed. D. G. Scragg (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2003), 174–5; Anlezark, Dialogues, 129.
- 20.
At times verbal parallels with the description of the Vasa mortis are very close. See Jude 1.6; 2 Pet 2.4; Rev. 9.7–10; Rev. 9. 15–17; Rev. 20.7.
- 21.
The OE Boethius transforms the figure of Philosophia into Wisdom, and omits the Latin’s (1pr1) description of her towering stature. The editions cited are Boethius, Theological Tractates: The Consolation of Philosophy, ed. and trans. H.F. Stewart, E.K. Rand, and S.J. Tester (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973); Malcolm Godden and Susan Irvine, eds, The Old English Boethius: An Edition of the Old English Versions of Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
- 22.
Haec ubi continuato dolore delatravi.
- 23.
OE Boethius (C text), Prose 2.1–2, “geomriende asungen hæfde … min murnende mod” (had sung sorrowing … my mourning mind).
- 24.
See lines 247–64, 166–9, 181–3.
- 25.
See Daniel Anlezark, “Drawing Alfredian Waters: The Old English Metrical Epilogue to the Pastoral Care, Boethian Metre 20, and Solomon and Saturn II,” in Water in Early Medieval England, ed. Carolyn Twomey and Daniel Anlezark (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), 250–61. The Old English translation also associates Saturn with Nimrod and the Babel story; see Godden and Irvine, eds., Old English Boethius (B text), Chapter 35, lines 116–40.
- 26.
OE Boethius (C text), Pr33: “Ge habbað micle nedðearfe þæt ge symle wel don, forðæm ge symle beforan þam ecan ond þæm ælmihtgan Gode doð eall þæt þæt ge doð; eall he hit gesihð, ond eall he hit forgilt.” (You have the great necessity that you always do well because you always do all that you do before the almighty and eternal God. He sees and all and repays all.)
- 27.
Magna vobis est, si dissimulare non vultis, necessitas indicta probitatis, cum, ante oculos agitis iudicis cuncta cernentis.
- 28.
For example, the poem reveals no nostalgia for the lost Golden Age (De Consolatione 2m5, Felix nimium prior aetas, How happy that earlier age), but rather, with its allusions to Babel and the Fall of the Angels (see below), constructs a more pessimistic earlier age. The OE Boethius (Metre 5) is neither as enthusiastic about the early ages of the world as the Latin source, nor as pessimistic as Solomon and Saturn II.
- 29.
Dic mihi quae est illa res quae coelum totamque terram repleuit, siluas et surculos confringit, omniaque fundamenta concutit: sed nec oculis uideri, aut manibus tangi potest?.
- 30.
The third part of the sequence (81, in die iudicii) demonstrates the implicit association of the riddle with the Last Judgement; see Anlezark, Dialogues, 20.
- 31.
See Dictionary of Old English: A to I online, ed. Angus Cameron, Ashley Crandell Amos, Antonette diPaolo Healey et al. (Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project, 2018), s.v. eald.
- 32.
bewrihð wyrta cið, wæstmas getigeð,| geðyð hie ond geðreatað.
- 33.
Full oft he gecostað eac | wildeora worn.
- 34.
Nieht bið wedera ðiestrost, ned bið wyrda heardost, | sorg bið swarost byrðen, slæp bið deaðe gelicost.
- 35.
On humour in the poem, see T.A. Shippey, “‘Grim Wordplay’: Folly and Wisdom in Anglo-Saxon Humor,” in Humour in Anglo-Saxon Literature, ed. Jonathan Wilcox (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2000), 35, 38.
- 36.
There is evidence that the Anglo-Saxons believed in a type of genetic determinism in national character; see Daniel Anlezark, “Understanding Numbers in MS London, British Library Harley 3271,” Anglo-Saxon England 38 (2009): 137–55.
- 37.
See O’Neill, “Date, Provenance,” 145–50.
- 38.
Gewurdene wyrda | ðæt beoð ða feowere fæges rapas.
- 39.
De consolatione Book 3 approaches the question of material wealth from various perspectives.
- 40.
The unusual adjective weorðgeorn is found only in Solomon and Saturn II and the Old English Boethius (4x).
- 41.
Ac forhwan beoð ða gesiðas somod ætgædre, |wop ond hleahtor? Full oft hie weorðgeornra |sælða toslitað. Hu gesæleð ðæt?.
- 42.
See Marcia L. Colish, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the early Middle Ages. Volume 2: Stoicism in Christian Latin Thought through the Sixth Century (Leiden: Brill, 1985).
- 43.
Unlæde bið ond ormod se ðe a wile | geomrian on gihðe; se bið Gode fracoðast.
- 44.
On medieval discussion of twins and determinism, see Menner, ed. Poetical Dialogues, 135; Thomas D. Hill, “Wise Words: Old English Sapiential Poetry,” in Readings in Medieval Texts: Interpreting Old and Middle English Literature, ed. David F. Johnson and Elaine Treharne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 176–7.
- 45.
Ac forhwan nele monn him on giogoðe georne gewyrcan | deores dryhtscipes ond dædfruman, | wadan on wisdom, winnan æfter snytro?.
- 46.
Hwæt! Him mæg eadig eorl eaðe geceosan | on his modsefan mildne hlaford, | anne æðeling. Ne mæg don unlæde swa.
- 47.
ðæt nære nænig manna middangeardes |ðæt meahte ðara twega tuion aspyrian.
- 48.
See J. Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898), s.v. wise.
- 49.
The classic study on the variety of meanings of wyrd is B. J. Timmer, “Wyrd in Anglo-Saxon Prose and Poetry,” Neophilologus 26 (1941): 24–33.
- 50.
See Ian Buchanan, A Dictionary of Critical Theory, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 2018), s.v. habitus.
- 51.
Similar advice is offer in The Wanderer, lines 65–69.
- 52.
See Daniel Anlezark, “The Fall of the Angels in Solomon and Saturn II,” in Apocryphal Texts and Traditions in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. D. G. Scragg, Manchester Studies in Anglo-Saxon 1 (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2003), 121–33.
- 53.
See also lines 181–85.
- 54.
See Daniel Anlezark, “The Stray Ending in the Solomonic Anthology in MS CCCC 422,” Medium Ævum 80 (2011): 201–16.
- 55.
The fate of unlæd man is also referred to in Solomon and Saturn I, lines 21–35, where he is also damned solitary figure.
- 56.
Hwæðre was on sælum se ðe of siðe cwom | feorran gefered. Næfre ær his ferhð ahlog.
- 57.
See Simo Knuuttila, Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), 141–42.
Bibliography
Manuscript
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 422.
Primary Sources
Anlezark, Daniel, ed. The Old English Dialogues of Solomon and Saturn. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2009a.
Boethius. Theological Tractates: The Consolation of Philosophy. Edited and translated by H.F. Stewart, E.K. Rand, and S.J. Tester. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973.
Godden, Malcolm R. and Susan Irvine, eds. The Old English Boethius: An Edition of the Old English Versions of Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae, 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Liber monstrorum. Edited and translated by Andy Orchard. In Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf-Manuscript, 255–317. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003.
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Anlezark, Daniel. “All at Sea: Beowulf’s Marvellous Swimming.” In Myths, Legends and Heroes: Essays on Old Norse and Old English Literature in Honour of John McKinnell, edited by Daniel Anlezark, 225–41. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011.
Anlezark, Daniel. “Drawing Alfredian Waters: The Old English Metrical Epilogue to the Pastoral Care, Boethian Metre 20, and Solomon and Saturn II.” In Water in Early Medieval England, edited by Carolyn Twomey and Daniel Anlezark, 241–66. Turnhout: Brepols, 2021.
Anlezark, Daniel. “The Fall of the Angels in Solomon and Saturn II.” In Apocryphal Texts and Traditions in Anglo-Saxon England, edited by D. G. Scragg. Manchester Studies in Anglo-Saxon 1, 121–33. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2003.
Anlezark, Daniel. “Poisoned Places: The Avernian Tradition in Old English poetry,” Anglo-Saxon England 36 (2007): 103–26.
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Anlezark, D. (2023). The Vasa Mortis and Misery in Solomon and Saturn II. In: Sebo, E., Firth, M., Anlezark, D. (eds) Emotional Alterity in the Medieval North Sea World. Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33965-3_6
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