Elene: Introduction

Elene is one of four poems attributed with some confidence to Cynewulf, a poet whose name is only deduced through a runic signature embedded in the concluding lines of the poem. Nothing more specific is known about him, and there is much disagreement about what evidence does exist. He is thought to have been composing in the early 9th century.

Elene is the fifth poetic text in the Vercelli Book (found on fol. 121a-133b), a mid- to late tenth-century religious miscellany currently located in Vercelli Cathedral in northern Italy. The story is a dramatic retelling of the legend of St. Helena, the British mother of Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome, who is reputed to have found the True Cross.

The poem is a eclectic combination of battles, miracles and legal procedure, rife with the virulent anti-Semitism that often accompanied medieval stories of the Crucifixion or the miracles of the Virgin (see for instance, Chaucer's Prioress's Tale or the plays in the York Mystery Cycle). Elene is nonetheless a compelling story of the power of religious women and provides an important picture of the relations between the Christian, Jewish and pagan worlds, as well as an image of Old English ideals of empire and the passage of history, as well as providing an unsettling glance at the use of force and torture in pursuit of ideological truth that is all-too relevant in our time.

Elene I

When there had passed in the circuit of years two hundred
and three winters of this world, plus thirty more, accounted
by numbers, in the reckoning of time, since the Sovereign
God was born, the King of Glory, in middle-earth in mannish
shape, the Light Sooth-Fast. Then was the sixth year of Emperor
Constantine’s reign, battle-first, who had been elevated
into the rule of the Romans to be their leader.
That man-valiant shield-protector was mercy-fast to his earls
and thus the reign of that noble increased beneath the heavens.
He was the rightful king, the war-guard of his men. God strengthened
him with great works and power, so that he become a comfort
to many men throughout middle-earth and a scourge to nations
when he brandished a blade against his enemies. (1-18a)

To him was proclaimed war, the shout of warriors: the warlike
Franks and Hugas had come and gathered an army of Hunnish men
and the Hrethgoths. These men were stout, ready for war:
their spears were glittering, wound with linked slaughter.
With words and shield-boards, the martial signal was raised.
Then those hardy men were apparently united and all gathered
in concord into a company of nations. The wolf in the wold chanted
his war-song, not concealing the signs of slaughter. The wet-winged
eagle heaved up his own song in the track of the hateful. (18b-30a)

Quickly the greatest of war-hosts hastened to the city of giants,
with an army to battle, such as the king of the neighboring Huns
could have commanded into combat anywhere before the greatest
army of city-fighters. His infantry was augmented by bands of horsemen
and it had encamped on the foreign shore of the Danube, beyond
the surging water, stark-hearted and spear-playing. The army’s tumult
was meant to oppress the realm of the Romans, despoiling them with harriers.
There the Huns’ arrival became known to the city-dwellers. (30b-42a)

[more to come]

Translation notes

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