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E06536: Aldhelm, in his prose On Virginity, names *Elisha (Old Testament prophet, S00239) as an exemplary virgin. Written in Latin in southern Britain, for the nuns at the monastery at Barking (south-east Britain), c. 675/686.

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posted on 2018-09-18, 00:00 authored by bsavill

Aldhelm, prose On Virginity, 20

Heliseus vero eiusdem Heliae duplo ditatus spiritu et gemina praeditus gratia, in cuius exortu aurea quadrupes in Galgalis bombosae vocis mugitum reboasse describitur significans idolatriae lapsum et simulacrorum caeremonias explodendas, nonne propter pudicitiae virginalis infulam magistri fretus melote inormem Iordanis gurgitem dirimit, puberes cum gannaturae ludibrio vati insultantes rabidis ursinae ferocitatis rictibus tradidit, cadaveri gelidae mortis faucibus suffocato etiam ipse leto sopitus vitalem reddidit spiritum?

'But ELISHA, enriched with a double portion of the spirit of Elijah and endowed with a two-fold grace, at whose birth the golden calf is said to have bellowed out a moo with booming voice in Gilgal, signifying the fall of idolatry and the banishment of the veneration of effigies – did he not, because of the distinction of his virginal modesty (and) relying on his master's [i.e. Elijah's] mantle, divide the mighty waters of the Jordan; (did he not) deliver the children (who were) mocking the prophet [i.e. Elisha himself] with yelping derision, to the savage jaws of the bears' ferocity; (and did he not) – though he himself was at peace in death – give back the spirit of life to a corpse crushed in the chill jaws of death?'

Text: Ehwald 1919, 250. Translation: Lapidge and Herren 1979, 76.

History

Evidence ID

E06536

Saint Name

Elisha : S00239

Saint Name in Source

Heliseus

Related Saint Records

https://oxford.figshare.com/articles/Elisha_Old_Testament_prophet/13729768

Type of Evidence

Literary - Other

Language

Latin

Evidence not before

675

Evidence not after

686

Activity not before

679

Activity not after

686

Place of Evidence - Region

Britain and Ireland

Place of evidence - City name in other Language(s)

St Albans St Albans Verulamium

Major author/Major anonymous work

Aldhelm

Cult activities - Non Liturgical Practices and Customs

Composing and translating saint-related texts

Cult Activities - Miracles

Miracle during lifetime Miracle after death Power over elements (fire, earthquakes, floods, weather) Power over life and death

Cult Activities - Protagonists in Cult and Narratives

Ecclesiastics - monks/nuns/hermits

Source

Aldhelm’s prose treatise On Virginity (De Virginitate), for Abbess Hildelith and the nuns of Barking (south-east Britain), survives in twenty manuscripts, the earliest of which are 9th c. Together with its later, poetic counterpart, it forms what Bede described in 731 as a ‘twinned work’ (opus geminatum), although there is a notable difference between the content and style of the two sections, the second part constituting more than a straightforward ‘versification’ of the first (see E06659). Aldhelm (ob. 709/10) appears to have been a son of Centwine, king of the Gewisse or West Saxons (south-west Britain) from 676 until 682/5, when he abdicated and retired to a monastery. We do not know when Aldhelm himself took religious vows, but he definitely attended, perhaps for many years, Archbishop Theodore and Abbot Hadrian’s school at Canterbury (from shortly after 670?), and possibly studied at the Irish foundation of Iona, off the coast of north-west Britain (perhaps in the 660s?). Around 682/6 he became abbot of the West Saxon monastery of Malmesbury, and in 689 probably accompanied King Cædwalla on his pilgrimage to Rome (see E05710 and E06661). In 705/6 he was appointed ‘bishop west of the wood’ in his home kingdom (later identifiable with the diocese of Sherborne). (For all aspects of Aldhelm’s career see now Lapidge, 2007.) At the core of On Virginity is a lengthy catalogue of exemplary virgins, first men (Old Testament prophets; New Testament figures; martyrs and other saints of the Roman Empire), then women (Mary; martyrs and other saints of the Empire), followed by some remarks on a group of non-virginal, Old Testament sancti who in some sense prefigured Christ. As with Bede in his Marytrology (725/31), Aldhelm makes good use of Roman Martyrdoms and Acts in his accounts of many post-Biblical saints. Although he does not seem to have had the same range of hagiographical material at hand as Bede later would at the monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow (north-east Britain), his use of the texts is more creative, and he extensively reworks them in his characteristically florid prose style. The prose On Virginity presents difficulties with dating, but the author’s reference to himself in its preface as only a ‘servant’ (bernaculus) of the Church would seem to place it before his abbacy in 682/6 (ibid., 67-9). Meanwhile – if the twelfth-century chronicler John of Worcester is correct – Aldhelm’s chief dedicatee Hildelith only appears to have taken control over Barking in 675, thus allowing us to date the work cautiously to somewhere within 675/86. This is significant, since it suggests that the many Martyrdoms which Aldhelm used among his sources (including several translated from the Greek) were available to him in southern Britain before his probable visit to Rome in 689.

Discussion

Aldhelm's main sources for this passage are Biblical: 2 Kings 2:2-24 and 13:21 (Lapidge and Herren, 1979, 176).

Bibliography

Edition: Ehwald, R., Aldhelmi opera (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 15; Berlin, 1919). Translation: Lapidge, M., and Herren, M., Aldhelm, The Prose Works (Cambridge, 1979). Further reading: Lapidge, M., "The Career of Aldhelm," Anglo-Saxon England 36 (2007), 15-69.