Saint Guthlac

For the saint of this name from Glastonbury, see Guthlac of Glastonbury

Saint Guthlac of Croyland (683-714) was a Christian saint from Lincolnshire in England. He is particularly venerated in the Fens.

Life

Guthlac was the son of Penwald, a noble of the English kingdom of Mercia, and his wife Tette. His sister is also venerated as Saint Pega. As a young man, he fought in the army of Aethelred of Mercia and subsequently became a monk at Repton Monastery in Derbyshire at age twenty-four. He sought to live the life of a hermit, and after a long journey landed on the island of Croyland (now Crowland) on St. Bartholomew's Day, 699 CE.

Guthlac, it is reported, hated Croyland. Along with his companions he set up a small oratory and cells to live in, and lived there the rest of his life until his death in 714 AD. Felix, a contemporary, writes that Guthlac dressed in animal skins, and the only nourishment he took was a scrap of barley bread and a small cup of muddy water after sunset. Ague and marsh fever assailed him, and the inhabitants of the island were rough and barbarous, it is written.

His pious and holy life became the talk of the land, and many people visited Guthlac during his life, seeking spiritual guidance from him. One day, he gave sanctuary to Ethelbald, a pretender to the throne of Mercia, fleeing from his cousin Coelred. Guthlac told Ethelbald that he would be king one day, and so Ethelbad promised to build Guthlac an abbey if his prophesy became true. Ethelbad did become king, and even though Guthlac had died two years previously, kept his word and started construction of Croyland Abbey on St. Bartholomew's Day, 716 CE.

The story of Saint Guthlac is told in the Guthlac Roll, a set of detailed illustrations of the 12th century; it is kept in the British Library. Copies of it can be seen on display at Croyland Abbey.

Hagiography

Legends which surround Guthlác present a cultural echo of the world of the Hari-Heruli, a wolf-totem Germanic tribe. Several biographies and poems were written about Guthlác, beginning soon after his death on April 11 (kept as his feast day) 714 CE; and continuing until the 1500s, when the veneration of many traditional English saints was suppressed at the English Reformation.

Of particular interest are the narrative Vita Sancti Guthlaci ("Life of St. Guthlác") in Latin by Felix (probably written in the late 710s to early 720s) and an Old English translation of this same Vita (known from a manuscript, Cotton Vespasian D xxi) made probably in the 9th or 10th century. The Latin text by Felix was also extensively summarized in the Historia Ecclesiastica of Orderic Vitalis, who was writing in the 1100s, during the court of William Rufus and just after Hereward's time. Two other shorter poetical manuscripts exist which tell of Guthlác's death but are so hagiographic and Christian in nature as to only skim over the "pagan possibilities" of his life.

Hagiographic analysis

Both major texts relate legends of a liminal man, straddling two worlds in clash: one of the pagan past and the other the Christian future; and sometimes falling into one camp, and then into the other. The Old English version is insightful, given the specific wording the translator uses to describe his own ideas of Guthlác's life. Digging to the roots of these words gives a very clear indicators of the depth of pagan practice that barred Christianity's initial steps into Britain.

As with most other Christian approaches to paganism, we see a cultural appropriation happen with Guthlác, in which he had the choice to become either an itinerant, consecrated wolf-warrior of Woden or a hermitic, consecrated wolf-warrior of Christ. These two "forces" struggle within him for several years: he opts eventually for the Christian path, but still seems to expend much of his time in guarding against Woden and the pull of pagan traditions (which Guthlác's biographers certainly see as demonic spirits, tempting the pure-souled "puer eternum" — Eternal Boy). Even his most innocent of acts seem permeated with Wodenic cultic practice.

Guthlác's connections with Woden are strong, appearing throughout his biographies. There are also many opportunities for homoerotic (and certainly homosocial) interpretation in these manuscripts. In his early adolescence Guthlác was quite sober and almost precocious; "nor did he practice youthful wantoness" (ne he cnihtlice galnysse næs begangende) the OE text reads.

Let's look at what such cnihtlice galnysse might mean. Woden appears in Guthlác's life long before he is even born. Guthlác is in fact a blood descendant of Woden. We are told in the very beginning of both manuscripts that Guthlác is a descendant of Icel, the king of Mercia (born circa 450 CE), and was "of the oldest and noblest of kin, who were named the Iclings" (waes thæs yldestan and thæs æthelstan cynnes the Iclingas wæron genemnede). The early Old English genealogies of the kings of Mercia then give Icel as the fourth great-grandson of Woden (i.e. the grandfather of Icel's grandfather's grandfather was allegedly and perhaps even historically - Woden).

We are told that Guthlác's father, Penwald (or Penwalh) was very wealthy and married the "fairest and noblest of kin" a young woman named Tette (or Tetta). Guthlác is their firstborn and on the day of his birth, a "token" came "from heaven" as a portent of the importance of his birth. The Old English text records:

"Lo! Men saw one hand of the fairest red hue coming from heaven, and it hefted one golden rod, and was shown to many people, and it was held toward the front of this house's door, where that child was inside, being born. Then all the people that saw hastened thitherward, that they would sweetly see and understand the token."

This hand, almost always interpreted as being of the Christian god, actually seems to be that of Woden! The Old English version above makes this more clear than the Latin, although both agree that the hand was "fair" and reddish. This does not sound like the hand of a god from the Middle East, but rather the hand of a red-headed, northern god. Felix (in Latin) does say that the hand bore a "cross" while the Old English word used, róde, can mean either "rod (or rood), pole" or "^* cross".

At sight of the hand and golden rod, the people knelt on the earth and invoked "God" to understand the token they had seen. At that moment, a woman came running out of the house and said to them, "Be steadfast and heartened, for a man of future glory here is born on this middle-earth" (middaneard is a common OE phrase referring to this world).

Baptism and naming

Guthlác was baptized after "about eight nights" (counting time by nights rather than days was a pagan custom) and then given a name "of the kin and the nation there, Guthlác, as though it were done of godly arrangement, that he was so named". Both Felix and the OE author report the custom that "the wise learners say in England that the name stands on two terms" and then give the Latin translation of his name as belli munus "war-reward" (although a better translation from the Anglo-Saxon would be "battle-offering", "battle-games", or "battle-play"). Much is made in legend of the Latin etymologizing of his name, that despite his warring against many troubles, his conversion to Christianity has ensured for him the gift of "eternal happiness prosperity with the sige cf. S the rune Sowilo, the victory rune of eternal life" (ecan eadignysse mid sige eces lifes). His reward for being a warrior of "god" would be eternal life with that god (and in this case the authors mean Christ).

This name also might have extra significance to our domain. One scholar has proposed that the name Guthlac is actually another version of one of the legendary sons of Woden, Wihtlæg. Tatlock (quoted in Jane Roberts' Guthlac Poems, p. 3) connects a Danish king named Guichtlacus of Latin legend with the Wihtlæg who appears in the Mercian genealogies as the son of Woden, and as their ancestral hero-king. Thus to bear the name of Woden's own son (not to mention being his descendant) must have been very important to the boy as he grew up. And the two Lives are explicit that he was quite aware of the adventures of his heroic ancestors. (However, Wihtlæg and Guthlac mean very different things. Wiht can mean "wight" (being, creature), whit, aught (i.e. all, anything), or weight. The suffix læg possibly means lays or lies. (Thus we have "lays-anything" as one possible meaning for his name!) Saxo Grammaticus gives the name Wigelecus instead of Wihtlæg, in which case it is synonymous with Guthlac (war-offering), as Wigelec means battle-offering.

We are next told how sober Guthlác was during his childhood. "He was no whit heavy grave-minded, nor unhearing to the words of his elders, nor to those who fed him, either older or younger. Nor did he practice youthful gayness, nor the idle talking of common people, nor unlikely fawning, nor loose-tongues."

Guthlac is also described here as "pleasant of form and pure and clean in his disposition, and innocent in his ways". After growing into a strong youth (he was about 15 years old at the time), something totally strange and out of character happens to young Guthlac:

"Then he remembered the strong deeds of 'supermen' and those of the archaic world. Then, as though he awoke from sleep, his mind converted, and he gathered a great band "school" of his companions and of his equals and took to himself weapons. Then wreaked he his insults on his enemies and burned their burg and over-harried ^* their towns; and widely across the earth he made manifold slaughter and slew and took of people their goods."

Then, if this isn't odd enough, in the midst of his harrying the countryside with his band, he "suddenly received" an inward, "godly prompting" godcundlice (and we are not told from which god), which he passes on to his band: "of all that" which he had taken, he was to give back one third to those from whom it had been taken in the first place. And ostensibly, he continued this practice of only taking two-thirds from those he "over-harries". And this is exactly what we would expect of a consecrated wolf-warrior of Woden: plunder what is needed, leave some for the villagers, and then move on (so as not to over-burden the population). Oddly, the older Latin version written by Felix downplays this event, stating only that "as if instructed by divine counsel," Guthlac returned a third part of his plunder, whereas the Anglo-Saxon translator certainly saw this as divine imperative.

Now Guthlac participated in this harrying for some nine years, during which, Felix informs us, Guthlac's companions came from "various races and directions". While most scholars interpret this to mean that he had a good reputation as a warrior, there is another possible interpretation - the Hari warriors, although called a tribe, actually drew upon young noble men from all tribes, to train and educate them.

We are told later in the story that Guthlac had spent some time (and it must have been during this time of harrying the towns of Mercia) as an "exile" among a people where he learned to speak "bryttisc" ("British" was the Brythonic tongue of pre-Anglo-Saxon England); this probably refers to his harrying of the Welsh on the Mercian border with Wales (Felix, ch. XXXIV and OE version, ch. VI). The marches were a frontier between Mercia and Wales (see Colgrave's introduction).

External link

Sources

Colgrave, Bertram. 1956. Felix's Life of Saint Guthlac. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Roberts, Jane. 1979. The Guthlac Poems of the Exeter Book. Oxford: Clarendon Press