Herebert's 'Holy moder, that bere Cryst'

The Virgin in glory (from a fourteenth-century manuscript, BL Royal MS 6 E VII Part 2, f. 479)

It's a while since we've had any poetry on this blog, and it seems time to correct that. This year I've been paying particular attention to the works of the early fourteenth-century English poet William Herebert, and especially his sensitive, thoughtful versions of Latin hymns; and since we're in Advent, let's take a look at his version of 'Alma Redemptoris Mater', the Compline antiphon for this season. (For another Middle English poetic response to the same text, see this post.) It's a short text; the Latin is:

Alma Redemptoris Mater, quae pervia caeli
Porta manes, et stella maris, succurre cadenti,
Surgere qui curat, populo: tu quae genuisti,
Natura mirante, tuum sanctum Genitorem
Virgo prius ac posterius, Gabrielis ab ore
Sumens illud Ave, peccatorum miserere.

Listen to it here. This is Herebert's version:

Holy moder, that bere Cryst, buggere of monkunde,
Thou art ȝat of hevene blisse that prest wey ȝyfst and bunde.
Thou sterre of se, rer op the folk that rysing haveth in munde.
In thee thou bere thyn holy fader,
That mayden were after and rather,
Wharof so wondreth kunde.
Of Gabrieles mouthe thou fonge thylke "Ave";
Lesne ous of sunne nouthe, so we bisecheth thee. Amen.

Which is:

Holy mother, who bore Christ, buyer of mankind,
You are gate of heaven's bliss, who gives the near and ready way.
You, star of the sea, raise up the folk who intend to rise.
Within you you bore your holy father,
Who maiden were before and after,
At which nature wonders.
From Gabriel's mouth you received the 'Ave';
Release us from sins now, we beseech you. Amen.

That gives you the sense of Herebert's version, but not the poetry. Herebert is a faithful translator but he always adds something to his sources, and close attention to his choice of language is immensely rewarding. I've been thinking recently about how approaching familiar texts through Old and Middle English translations brings to life certain aspects of religious language which have become, in Modern English, so conventional and familiar as to be almost dead metaphors. There's a perfect example here in Herebert's version of redemptor, which is buggere, to be pronounced (I promise!) as buyer - the sense being that Christ has 'bought back' (i.e. redeemed) mankind from the slavery of sin. It's a fairly common Middle English translation of redemptor, giving an English equivalent rather than adopting, as we do now, the Latin word; redeemer turned up late in English, in the fifteenth century, and Herebert's far from the only one to use buyer or again-buyer. (The Wycliffe Bible says: 'I wot that myn aȝeenbiere liueth, and in the laste dai I am to rise fro the erthe...')

The financial metaphor is there in the Latin redemptor, of course - emptor is buyer, as in 'caveat emptor' - but it's probably not alive to most people today who use the word 'redeemer'. (Though other poets have made use of it; compare, perhaps, 'Redemption' by Herebert's namesake, George Herbert...) But it was alive to Herebert, and must have been to a medieval reader of this poem. Herebert's whole first line is only translating three words of the Latin, the opening phrase of the hymn - alma redemptoris mater - and yet he has space not only for that metaphor but also for aural play on buyer and bear, a similarity of sound which links Mary's action ('bearing') to Christ's action ('buying'), and thus underlines the fundamental link between them which motivates the whole poem: the role that Mary plays in salvation, through her choice to become Christ's entry into the world and her acts of love to mankind.

The hymn imagines Mary as the open door to heaven, a road by which Christ enters the world and by which mankind can travel to joy. Herebert's description of that road is again a little more expansive than the Latin, and he plays with a beautiful ambiguity in his language which is not present (I think) in his source. He says that Mary the 'prest wey ȝyfst and bunde'; I translated this above as 'gives the near and ready way', but it's not quite as simple as that. Both prest and bunde mean something like 'ready, prepared, near at hand', and the sense is that the road to heaven is accessible and open (pervia is the Latin word he's building on). However, both words mean a good deal more than 'open'. Both also connote energy, readiness, and eagerness, and in other Middle English texts are more often used of people than of objects or roads: of an army preparing for battle, a servant promptly attending on his lord, a lover eager to do his lady's bidding - of anyone quick, lively, spirited, attentive, ready to spring into action. They're incredibly life-filled words.

And so, perhaps, they suggest the eager, life-bearing, near-at-hand person in an Advent context: Christ, who stands ready to spring into the world through the gate opened by Mary. Herebert's verb ȝyfst offers more than the Latin, too: Mary 'gives' (not only 'remains') the way to heaven, and of course, she gives Christ to the world. The way in this poem is primarily the road to heaven but Christ, too, is 'the way', and the adjectives used to describe the way here could apply equally well - if not rather better - to him.

Herebert's Christ is always an energetic figure, active, determined, and forceful, brimming with physical as well as spiritual vitality. I talked about this earlier in the year in reference to Herebert's poems for Easter and the Ascension, which have Christ climbing onto the cross and then into the skies, and it's most obvious of all in his poem 'What is he, this lordling, that cometh from the fight?' In that poem he imagines Christ as a young knight coming bloodied from battle, who through his strength and douhtynesse has won a hard struggle against evil. This is the Christ whom the medieval church saw in the young man of the Song of Songs, who comes seeking his beloved:

Look, he comes leaping on the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle, or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice. My beloved speaks and says to me, 'Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. For now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone... Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.'

As Gregory the Great wrote (and an Anglo-Saxon poet turned into poetry):

Hence it is that Solomon has put into the mouth of the Church the words: 'Behold, He cometh! leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.' These hills are his lofty and noble achievements. 'Behold, He cometh leaping upon the mountains.'

When He came to redeem us, He came, if I may so say, in leaps. My dearly beloved brethren, would you know what His leaps were? From heaven he leapt into the womb of the Virgin, from the womb into the manger, from the manger on to the Cross, from the Cross into the grave, and from the grave up to heaven.

Lo, how the Truth made manifest in the Flesh did leap for our sakes, that He might draw us to run after Him for this end did He rejoice, as a strong man to run a race.

This isn't the passive, suffering Christ of most medieval poetry about the Crucifixion, nor the grave gentle Jesus of later imaginings; it's something immensely vital, virile and alive, a shape-shifting force of pure energy. Herebert's word prest exactly describes this Christ.

But Christ is only hinted at here; the focus of the hymn is Mary, and her intermediary role. The images of her as 'gate of heaven' and 'star of the sea' are familiar ones, which Herebert also translates in his version of another Marian hymn, 'Ave maris stella'. I'll come back to the 'gate' image in another post this Advent (if I get around to it!) because there's a wonderful Anglo-Saxon poem which does even more, brilliantly, with that image of Mary as the door between the worlds. Here it's only one aspect of her role as mediator. She is implored 'rer op the folk that rysing haveth in munde' ('raise up the folk who want to rise', with a nice alliterative touch), and 'lesne ous of sunne', a more specific petition than the Latin's peccatorum miserere - asking to be 'released' from sin loops back to the opening idea of Christ as 'redeemer'. So the poem comes full circle, and returns to the link between Mary's action and Christ's - the one who bought us and the one who bore him.

'Highest of all kings'

'Aeterne rex altissime', with English gloss, in an Anglo-Saxon hymnal

(BL Cotton Vespasian D XII, f. 78)

On the subject of the Ascension, here's a fourteenth-century English version of the Ascension hymn 'Aeterne rex altissime', by the Franciscan friar William Herebert.

Kyng hexst of alle kynges, that havest non endynge,
Buggere of Cristenemen that beth of ryth levynge,
Thorou thee deth ys fordon and brouth to th'endinge,
And gyven ys ous the overe hond of graces findinge.
Thou styinge op to trone in thy Fadres ryhthond,
Havest, Jesu, fonge mythte that never shaft ne fond.
For hevene and erthe and helle, and al that thrinne ben,
To thee shullen bouwen hem and benden here knen.
Aungles that in hevene beth quaketh for wondringe,
That abouten dedlich mon seth so gret chaunginge,
For flesh sunneth and flesh beteth and flesh ys God regninge.
Thou, Crist, be oure blisse and oure glading,
That wythoute misse in hevene hast wonyng,
That al thys ylke myddelerd havest to yemyng,
And al thys wordles joye hast in forhowyng.
Therefore we byddeth thee oure gultes thou deface,
And oure hertes rer to thee thorouh thy grete grace.
That when thou shalt ferlich comen ous to deme,
Comen yne cloude bryth wyth blowinde beme,
From the pyne of helle, Jesu, thou ous yeme.
And yeld the lorene crounes, God we to thee reme.
Loverd that bove the sterre steye, to thee be wele and blisse,
Wyth the Fader and Holy Gost, ever boute misse. Amen.

That is:

King highest of all kings, who hast no ending,
Redeemer of Christians who are of right living,
Through thee death is destroyed and brought to its ending,
And given to us is the upper hand of grace's finding. [i.e. 'the triumph of grace'!]
Thou, rising up to the throne at thy Father's right hand,
Hast, Jesu, received power such as created things never had.
For heaven and earth and hell, and all that therein be,
To thee shall bow and bend the knee.
Angels in heaven quake for wondering,
Who in mortal man see such great changing:
For flesh sins and flesh atones and flesh is God reigning.
Thou, Christ, be our bliss and our gladdening,
Who without doubt in heaven hast dwelling,
Who all this middle-earth hast in keeping,
And all this world's joy hast in thy guarding.
Therefore we pray thee our sins to deface, [blot out, obliterate]
And our hearts raise up to thee through thy great grace.
So that when thou shalt come wondrously to judge us,
Come in clouds bright with trumpets blowing,
From the pains of hell, Jesu, thou wilt protect us,
And restore our lost crowns, God, we cry to thee.
Lord who rose above the stars, to thee be joy and bliss,
With the Father and Holy Ghost, ever without end. Amen.

The original Latin hymn is anonymous, first recorded in the ninth century, and its best-known modern English translation is probably J. M. Neale's 'Eternal Monarch, king most high'. William Herebert, as usual, stays closer to the Latin than modern translators tend to do, though it's interesting to compare his version of the memorable fourth verse to Neale's:

Yea, angels tremble when they see
how changed is our humanity;
that flesh hath purged what flesh had stained,
and God, the flesh of God, hath reigned.

Aungles that in hevene beth quaketh for wondringe,
That abouten dedlich mon seth so gret chaunginge,
For flesh sunneth and flesh beteth and flesh ys God regninge.

Herebert has added to his source a lovely phrase in the second-to-last line: 'Loverd that bove the sterre steye...' I discussed the verb steye in my last post about Herebert, where I talked about it meaning 'ascend' but with connotations of active, powerful movement (like mounting horses and climbing trees), and I said it's a verb which connects Good Friday (when Christ 'steye' upon the cross) and the Ascension. And so it does here, alliteratively: Christ steye above the stars.

The end of the Latin hymn gives a vivid picture of Christ, who ascended into the heavens, returning at Doomsday in a sunset sky: 'when you come to shine forth from your reddening cloud of judgement...' Herebert renders this:

when thou shalt ferlich comen ous to deme,
Comen yne cloudebryth wyth blowinde beme...

'ferlich' is a difficult word to translate into Modern English; it suggests something marvellous and wonderful (in the literal sense of 'causing wonder'), but also terrible and strange. 'Blowing beme' literally refers to blasting trumpets but also evokes rushing winds and beams of light - a world-shaking image of an apocalyptic sky.

Like this, maybe

The imagery in this hymn is cosmic, majestic, mythic: angels quake, the heavens open, and a god who wore human flesh manifests a power beyond any that created things could ever attain ('mythte that never shaft ne fond'). It's impressive stuff. Ascension Day seems to be one of those feasts which the modern imagination struggles to deal with: preachers get embarrassed (I heard a few this week!), and feel the need to start their sermons with an apologetic disclaimer to demonstrate how modern and sophisticated they are: 'well, of course we know that heaven isn't 'up in the sky', and so of course we (unlike childish people in the olden days) know it's silly to talk about Jesus going up. It makes him sound like a rocket, haha!'

This seems to me pretty unimaginative (and, as always, unfair to people in the 'olden days', by which they usually mean the bad old Middle Ages). It's a bit sad, really, for a preacher to have so little poetry in their soul that when they think of the heavens they can only think 'rocket, haha!' As if the skies offer no other objects of mystery and wonder, no images and themes to feed the imagination. Are the starry heights and thunderous clouds of this hymn, for instance, really any less potent symbols of power and majesty for us than they were for William Herebert or the ninth-century author? Here last night, after a week of heat, the clouds amassed for a summer storm, and broke in a sudden torrent of drenching rain which was breathtaking in its force. However modern and sophisticated you imagine yourself to be, at such moments you're still subject to the power of the heavens. And as for the stars - well, if you stop feeling wonder at the stars I can't really imagine what would amaze you...

I wrote on Thursday about two more powerful 'skyey influences' which medieval writers connected with the Ascension: the sun which climbs high in the summer sky (the Ascension is 'the sun rising', as this twelfth-century image has it); and Christ as a bird, as imagined by an Anglo-Saxon poet. This isn't just a nice pretty image - it's one of majesty, liberty, and command. Gerard Manley Hopkins put it even better than Cynewulf, in his poem addressed 'to Christ our Lord':

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume...

'The achieve of, the mastery of the thing.' On Ascension Day, I happened to find myself reading about another legendary hero who 'took to flight': Weland, the great smith of Anglo-Saxon and Norse legend. The story of Weland seems to have been widely known in Anglo-Saxon England, and he is referenced in several Old English poems. He is a fierce, frightening figure, but one of great skill and power, the forger of legendary swords and armour. One of the most famous moments in his legend tells how he was captured and imprisoned on an island, forced to work for his captor, but escaped by making for himself a suit of wings and flying away to freedom. A number of stone carvings from northern England, probably dating from the ninth to tenth centuries, appear to show Weland in his feather-suit.

An example from York Minster (Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture)

In some ways Weland, though a hero, is very far from being a Christ figure: he murders his captor's sons and fashions goblets from their skulls, and he rapes his captor's daughter before he flies away. His power of flight comes from his skill as a smith, his ingenuity in being able to engineer wings (he doesn't transform himself into a bird, as some of the Norse gods, for instance, do - he remains human, though with magical skill). And yet, on the Franks Casket, made in Anglo-Saxon England in the early eighth century, a scene from Weland's story is placed next to one of Christ being adored by the Magi:

There are birds in both scenes; on the left-hand side, birds are being strangled so that Weland can make his wings from their feathers. Does this juxtaposition suggest a contrast or a parallel between Weland and Christ, a focus on how they are alike, or how they are different? No one can answer that for sure, though it's often noted that in Old English Christ, like Weland, is sometimes called a 'smith' or a 'smith's son' (because he was a carpenter). The juxtaposition brings out the common mythic element in both stories - the man human and yet more than human, skilful and of fearsome power, a creature of the skies as well as of the earth. To a modern eye, seeing a very well-known Biblical story in the context of Weland's strange and disturbing tale makes the familiar suddenly unfamiliar, marvellous, in the sense of something too powerful and terrible to comprehend - what Herebert calls ferlich.

The idea that gods dwell in the heights, in the sky and on the mountains, is one of the most ancient religious impulses. It's hardly difficult to see a connection between that and Christ's Ascension, and going on about 'rockets, haha!' feels like a deliberate attempt not to see it. Those silly people of the olden days found poetry in the feast rather more easily than their clever modern descendants do: in Ascension Day folklore there was 'a strong connection between the day and all things pertaining to the sky, such as clouds, rain, and birds' (Roud). Rain which fell on Ascension Day was said to be blessed - 'neither eaves' drip nor tree-drip, but straight from the sky'. The day was connected with holy water in other ways, including the custom of well-dressing and visiting sacred springs. This expresses a sense that the heavens and the earth are interconnected at the most essential level - as of course they are, whether you think of that power as physical or spiritual or both. The kind of preacher who apologises for Ascension Day is likely to call that faith superstitious, but it's infinitely grander, really, than a worldview which finds no wonder in the heavens. We are earthbound, tied to this sublunary world and its many sorrows - but this is one day when the imagination can soar to the sky.

Anglo-Saxon carving of the Ascension (Wirksworth, Derbyshire)

'He stey opon the rode'

Resurrection (BL Yates Thompson MS. 13, f. 125v)

 
Two short fourteenth-century poems for Eastertide, from William Herebert. This single couplet is an English rendering of the verse 'Crucem sanctam subiit':

He stey opon the rode, that barst helle clos;
Ygurd he was wyth strengthe, the thrydde day aros.

He climbed upon the rood, who burst hell's clos, [enclosure, stronghold]
Girded he was with strength, on the third day arose.

Perhaps the most interesting word here is the verb stey (stien), which I've translated as 'climbed', though it can refer to various kinds of upward movement. It's a dynamic way of describing Christ's ascent of the cross; in medieval poetry of the Crucifixion, that ascent is often (at least, more commonly than today) imagined as an active, energetic movement - Christ springing to mount the cross, rather than passively being lifted up by the hands of others. Herebert's word stey comes from the Old English gestigan, which is the verb used in the same context in the Dream of the Rood: there the cross says of the 'young warrior' gestah he on gealgan heanne, 'he mounted on the high gallows'.

It's a verb which connects Easter and the Ascension, another moment when Christ stey upwards. I don't think we have a word today which quite covers the various meanings of stien - 'ascend' just doesn't do it, since it's altogether too decorous for a word which also refers to mounting horses and scrambling up trees. This is a word for Christ the warrior, going into battle, with the cross imagined as both his weapon and his steed. ('What is he, this lordling, that cometh from the fight...')

This energetic figure recalls Gregory the Great's spirited picture of Christ as the lover in the Song of Songs, who comes 'leaping' towards his beloved:

Hence it is that Solomon has put into the mouth of the Church the words: Behold, He cometh! leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills. These hills are his lofty and noble achievements. “Behold, He cometh leaping upon the mountains.”

When He came to redeem us, He came, if I may so say, in leaps. My dearly beloved brethren, would you know what His leaps were? From heaven he leapt into the womb of the Virgin, from the womb into the manger, from the manger on to the Cross, from the Cross into the grave, and from the grave up to heaven.

The Anglo-Saxon poet Cynewulf turned this image into English poetry, in his poem on the Ascension:

Bi þon Salomon song, sunu Dauiþes,
giedda gearosnottor gæstgerynum,
waldend werþeoda, ond þæt word acwæð:
"Cuð þæt geweorðeð, þætte cyning engla,
meotud meahtum swið, munt gestylleð,
gehleapeð hea dune, hyllas ond cnollas
bewrið mid his wuldre, woruld alyseð,
ealle eorðbuend, þurh þone æþelan styll."
Wæs se forma hlyp þa he on fæmnan astag,
mægeð unmæle, ond þær mennisc hiw
onfeng butan firenum þæt to frofre gewearð
eallum eorðwarum. Wæs se oþer stiell
bearnes gebyrda, þa he in binne wæs
in cildes hiw claþum bewunden,
ealra þrymma þrym. Wæs se þridda hlyp
rodorcyninges ræs þa he on rode astag,
fæder, frofre gæst. Wæs se feorða stiell
in byrgenne, þa he þone beam ofgeaf,
foldærne fæst. Wæs se fifta hlyp
þa he hellwarena heap forbygde
in cwicsusle, cyning inne gebond
feonda foresprecan, fyrnum teagum,
gromhydigne, þær he gen ligeð
in carcerne clommum gefæstnad,
synnum gesæled. Wæs se siexta hlyp,
haliges hyhtplega, þa he to heofonum astag
on his ealdcyððe.

Of this Solomon sang, son of David,
in spiritual mysteries, wise in songs,
ruler of nations, and spoke these words:
“This shall be made known: that the King of angels,
the Lord mighty in strength, will come springing upon the mountain,
leaping the high uplands; hills and downs
he will garland with his glory, and redeem the world,
all earth's inhabitants, by that glorious leap.”
The first leap was when he descended into a woman,
an unblemished virgin, and there took human form
without sin; that became a comfort
to all earth's dwellers. The second bound
was the birth of the boy, when he was in the manger,
wrapped in cloth in the form of a child,
the glory of all glories. The third leap
was the heavenly King's rush when he climbed upon the cross,
Father, Comforting Spirit. The fourth bound
was into the tomb, when he relinquished the tree,
safe in the sepulchre. The fifth leap
when he humbled the host of hell's inhabitants
in living torment; the King bound within
the advocate of the fiends in fetters of fire,
the malignant one, where he still lies
fastened with chains in prison,
bound by sins. The sixth leap,
the Holy One's joyous play, was when he ascended to heaven
into his former home.

rodorcyninges ræs þa he on rode astag  - 'the heavenly King's rush when he climbed upon the cross'. All these verbs of rushing and leaping and bounding are absolutely full of vigour and vitality, as if Christ is the embodiment of life itself - a force of sheer energy, which cannot be contained by any tomb or any clos. They remind me too of those medieval depictions of the Resurrection where Christ has one foot in the tomb and one out - 'bursting from the spiced tomb'...

Christ leaps from the tomb towards Mary (BL Egerton 2781, f. 171)

Along similar lines, here's Herebert's version of the hymn 'Jesu nostra redemptio':

Jesu, oure raunsoun, love, and longynge,
Louerd God almyhti, Wrouhte of alle thinge:
Flesh thou nome and mon bicome in times endinge.
What milsfolnesse awalde thee that oure sunnes bere,
So bitter deth to tholien, from sunne us for t'arere?
Helle cles thou thorledest and bouhtest thine of bondes;
Wyht gret nobleye thou opsteye to thy Fader ryhthonde.
Thylke mylse nede thee t'awelde oure wyckenesse
Wyth thy mercy, and ful us ay wyth thy nebshaftes blisse.
Thou be nou oure ioie, that shalt ben oure mede,
And oure wele ay be in thee, that shalt us wyth thee nede.

Jesu, our ransom, love, and longing,
Lord God almighty, Maker of all things:
Flesh you took and man became at time’s ending.
What compassion so overcame you that you bore our sins,
Such bitter death to suffer, to raise us up from sin?
Hell's stronghold you broke, and saved your own from bondage;
With great majesty you rose up to your Father’s right hand.
By that same compassion, overcome our wickedness
With your mercy, and fill us ever with the bliss of your face.
Be now our joy, you who shall be our reward,
And may our bliss be ever in you, who will keep us with you.

'Jesu nostra redemptio', with an English gloss, in an Anglo-Saxon hymnal

(BL Cotton Vespasian D XII, f. 71v)

'My folk, what have I done to thee?

'Popule meus', in a 13th-century manuscript, BL Add. 18031, f. 174

One of the most dramatic and powerful parts of the traditional Good Friday liturgy is the Improperia, the 'Reproaches' in which Christ is imagined speaking from the cross. Recalling numerous key events of Old Testament history, the text contrasts these moments of God's love and protection of his people with the suffering inflicted on him during his Passion. The Improperia are dramatic in every sense, adopting the voice of Christ as he reproaches his people and draws a series of contrasts between past and present: what he has done for mankind, contrasted with the pain they are now causing him to suffer. Here's the Latin text, and here's a recording of it being sung; in Latin and in translation it's been set by various composers, and this version is one familiar to me.

There are several medieval English translations of this text, which form a sub-genre of a very extensive tradition of poems in which Christ addresses mankind from the cross. ('Unkynde man, give heed to me' is a typical example of that genre.) Perhaps the most memorable of these appeals occurs in the middle of the dramatic re-enactment of the Crucifixion in the York Plays. In this play Christ speaks only twice, silent as he is nailed to the cross; but when he is lifted up he speaks a complete twelve-line verse, calling on 'Al men that walkis by waye or strete' to witness his suffering. In the streets of medieval York, where these plays were performed, these words would be spoken directly to the audience and passersby - just as in the Good Friday liturgy Christ's 'reproaches' are intended to transcend their historical context to speak to every congregation, every soul.

The following poetic translation of the Improperia is by William Herebert, and dates to the early 14th century. The poet-preacher John of Grimestone also wrote a version of this text a few decades later.

My folk, what habbe I do thee?
Other in what thyng toened thee?
Gyn nouthe and onswere thou me.

For from Egypte ich ladde thee,
Thou me ledest to rode tree.
My folk, what habbe I do thee?
Other in what thyng toened thee?
Gyn nouthe and onswere thou me.

Thorou wyldernesse ich ladde thee,
And fourty yer bihedde thee,
And aungeles bred ich yaf to thee,
And into reste ich brouhte thee.
My folk, what habbe I do thee?
Other in what thyng toened thee?
Gyn nouthe and onswere thou me.

What more shulde ich haven ydon
That thou ne havest nouth underfon?
My folk, what habbe I do thee?
Other in what thyng toened thee?
Gyn nouthe and onswere thou me.

Ich thee fedde and shrudde thee,
And thou wyth eysyl drinkst to me
And wyth spere styngest me.
My folk, what habbe I do thee?
Other in what thyng toened thee?
Gyn nouthe and onswere thou me.

Ich Egypte beth for thee
And here tem yshlou for thee.
My folk, what habbe I do thee?
Other in what thyng toened thee?
Gyn nouthe and onswere thou me.

Ich delede the see for thee,
And dreynte Pharaon for thee,
And thou to princes sullest me.
My folk, what habbe I do thee?
Other in what thyng toened thee?
Gyn nouthe and onswere thou me.

In bem of cloude ich ladde thee,
And to Pylat thou ledest me.
My folk, what habbe I do thee?
Other in what thyng toened thee?
Gyn nouthe and onswere thou me.

Wyth aungeles mete ich fedde thee,
And thou bufetest and scourgest me.
My folk, what habbe I do thee?
Other in what thyng toened thee?
Gyn nouthe and onswere thou me.

Of the ston ich dronk to thee,
And thou wyth galle drincst to me.
My folk, what habbe I do thee?
Other in what thyng toened thee?
Gyn nouthe and onswere thou me.

Kynges of Chanaan ich for thee bet,
And thou betest myn heved wyth red.
My folk, what habbe I do thee?
Other in what thyng toened thee?
Gyn nouthe and onswere thou me.

Ich gaf thee croune of kynedom,
And thou me gyfst a croune of thorn.
My folk, what habbe I do thee?
Other in what thyng toened thee?
Gyn nouthe and onswere thou me.

Ich muchel worshype dede to the,
And thou me hongest on rode tree.
My folk, what habbe I do thee?
Other in what thyng toened thee?
Gyn nouthe and onswere thou me.

BL Arundel 83, f. 116v (early 14th century)

Here's a (lightly) modernised version of Herebert's poem.

My folk, what have I done to thee?
Or in what thing angered thee?
Speak now, and answer me.

For from Egypt I led thee;
Thou leadest me to rood-tree.
My folk, what have I done to thee?
Or in what thing angered thee?
Speak now, and answer me.

Through the wilderness I led thee,
And forty years I cared for thee,
And angels' bread I gave to thee,
And into rest I brought thee.
My folk, what have I done to thee?
Or in what thing angered thee?
Speak now, and answer me.

What more should I have done
That thou hast not underfon? [received]
My folk, what have I done to thee?
Or in what thing angered thee?
Speak now, and answer me.

I thee fed and clothed thee,
And thou givest vinegar for drink to me
And with spear stingest me.
My folk, what have I done to thee?
Or in what thing angered thee?
Speak now, and answer me.

I Egypt scourged for thee
And their offspring slew for thee.
My folk, what have I done to thee?
Or in what thing angered thee?
Speak now, and answer me.

I divided the sea for thee,
And drowned Pharaoh for thee,
And thou to princes sellest me.
My folk, what have I done to thee?
Or in what thing angered thee?
Speak now, and answer me.

With beam of cloud I led thee,
And to Pilate thou leadest me.
My folk, what have I done to thee?
Or in what thing angered thee?
Speak now, and answer me.

With angels' meat I fed thee,
And thou buffetest and scourgest me.
My folk, what have I done to thee?
Or in what thing angered thee?
Speak now, and answer me.

From the stone I gave drink to thee,
And thou with gall givest drink to me.
My folk, what have I done to thee?
Or in what thing angered thee?
Speak now, and answer me.

Kings of Canaan I for thee beat,
And thou beatest my head with a reed.
My folk, what have I done to thee?
Or in what thing angered thee?
Speak now, and answer me.

I gave thee a crown of kingdom [i.e. kingship],
And thou me givest a crown of thorn.
My folk, what have I done to thee?
Or in what thing angered thee?
Speak now, and answer me.

I great honour gave to thee,
And thou me hangest on rood-tree.
My folk, what have I done to thee?
Or in what thing angered thee?
Speak now, and answer me.

As you can see, Herebert manages to make almost every line of his poem rhyme on either 'me' or 'thee', to highlight the simple but stark contrast which lies at the heart of this text: God's love and man's cruelty. This is a poetic device Herebert has taken from the refrain of the Latin text and carried through into the verses (which don't rhyme in the Latin):

Popule meus, quid feci tibi?
Aut in quo contristavi te?
Responde mihi.

Herebert makes several of his verses rhyme on these same pronouns and the same thematic contrast between the actions of Christ and 'his folk': mihi and tibi, me and thee. Since for Herebert 'I' would also be pronounced more like 'ee', the sound and contrast are there in the repeated refrain too: My folk, what habbe I do thee? Irony is the key to this poem, and it's all in those pronouns.

For another poem by William Herebert for Holy Week, see the wonderful 'What is he, this lordling, which cometh from the fight?'

'Our Lady's Lay'

Annunciation, c.1310 (BL Royal MS 15 D II, f.3)

Today is the feast of the Annunciation, or 'Lady Day in Lent', as it was known in the Middle Ages. As I explored last year, the medieval church considered 25 March to be the single most important date in history: it was both the beginning and the end of Christ's life on earth, the date of his conception at the Annunciation and his death on Good Friday. To underline the harmony and purpose which, in the eyes of medieval Christians, shaped the divinely-written narrative of the history of the world, 25 March was also said to be the date of other significant events: the eighth day of Creation, the crossing of the Red Sea, the sacrifice of Isaac, and other days linked with or prefiguring the story of the world's fall and redemption. The date occurs at a conjunction of solar, lunar, and natural cycles: all these events were understood to have happened in the spring, when life returns to the earth, and at the vernal equinox, once the days begin to grow longer than the nights and light triumphs over the power of darkness. The resonances of 25 March reached even unto Middle Earth, as Tolkien aligned the downfall of the Ring to this most auspicious of dates.

'Lady Day in Lent' is the springtime feast of the Virgin Mary, one of several 'lady days' which marked the seasons of the medieval year. There is a vast amount of medieval poetry and art on the theme of the Annunciation, more than you could read or look at in a lifetime, and much of it is exquisite: I've posted some of my own favourites under this tag. Over and over again, through many centuries, thousands of poets and artists have tried to imagine this scene, where heaven and earth meet and the fate of the universe hangs upon a young woman's word.

For today, here's a lovely little poem about the Annunciation by William Herebert, friar and poet, writing in the early 14th century. It's a poetic retelling of the Gospel for this feast, Luke 1:26-38, and in Herebert's manuscript is headed 'Evangelium: Missus est angelus Gabriel'. It begins with a brief prologue:

Prologus:
Seynt Luke, in hys godspel, bryngeth ous to munde
Hou Godes Sone of hevene com tok oure kunde,
And sayth who was messager and of whom ysend,
Into whuch lond, to what wymman, and yn whuch toun alend.
Of Luk leche, oure levedy prest, lofsom in apryse,
Lustneth lythe oure levedy lay that gynth in thisse wyse.

Missus est:
Ysend was thaungel Gabriel vrom God the Trinite
Into the lond of Galilee, to Nazareth cite,
To a mayde that hedde o mon ykald Joseph to spouse,
That was of grete kunne, of kyng Davides house.
The mayde to whom Gabriel ysend was on hye,
He rediliche to wysse ynemned was Marie.
And when thaungel was in-wend to speke wyth the mayde,
Hendeliche he grette hyre on thys wyse and sayde:
"Hayle be thou, vol of grace, oure Loverd ys wyth the;
Among alle wymmen thou yblessed be."
When he thys herde, a was ystured in thaungles spekynge,
And inwardlyche thouthte whuch was thys gretynge.
Thenne sayde thaungel bryht, "Marye, dred thou nouht.
Thou havest yvounde grace tovore God ysouht.
Lo, in the conceyve thou shalt and sone bere,
Whom thou shalt 'Jesu' nemnen, that Englys ys 'helere.'
Thes shal be muchel, and nemned 'worth,' the alre hextes Sone,'
And oure Loverd hym shal ȝeve hey stoede vor to wone.
Hys oune vadres see, David, and he shal be regnynge
In Jacobes house wythouten ey endynge,
And hys kyneryche shal boen aylastinge."
Thenne spak Marie to thaungel anon,
"Hou may thys ben? vor knoulechyng have ich of no wepmon."
Thaungel hyre onsuerede and sayde to ryhte,
"The Holy Gost vrom bouenuorth in the shal alihte,
And the shal byshadewen the alre hextes myhte.
And lo ther Elyzabeth, thy cosyne on the heelde,
Haveth conceyved ane sone in dawes of hyre eelde,
Vor nothyng impossible nys to God that al may welde."
Thenne spak Marye and mekelyche sayde,
"Lo me her alredy my Lordes hondmayde.
To me be do, vollyche also, ase thou rather saydest."

Who so nule nouht lye that maketh trewe asay,
Of oure levedy Marie thys ys seynt Lukes lay,
To hevene he make ous stye at oure endeday. Amen.

This poem twice identifies itself as a 'lay' - first 'Our Lady's lay', then 'St Luke's lay'. In Middle English this would suggest a song to be sung with accompaniment, which makes this poem a little different from Herebert's other translations. The poem actually does read like a song, with a real musical quality and a smoothness to the rhythm and rhyme which are only apparent when you read it aloud - so here's a recording of it, which aims to convey at least a little of its melodious sound. And a translation:

Prologue:
Saint Luke, in his gospel, brings to our mind
How God's Son from heaven came and took our kind; [nature]
And says who was messenger and from whom he was sent,
Into which land, to what woman, and to which town he came.
From Luke the physician, Our Lady's priest, praiseworthy in renown,
Listen with pleasure to Our Lady's lay, which begins in this manner.

Sent was...
Sent was the angel Gabriel from God the Trinity
Into the land of Galilee, to Nazareth city,
To a maid who had a man called Joseph to spouse, [i.e. as her betrothed]
Who was of great kin, of king David's house.
The maid to whom Gabriel sent was from on high,
He knew very truly was named Mary.
And when the angel had come in to speak with the maid,
Courteously he greeted her in this way and said:
"Hail be thou, full of grace, our Lord is with thee;
Among all women thou blessed be."
When she this heard, she was stirred at the angel's speaking,
And inwardly wondered what was this greeting.
Then said the angel bright, "Mary, dread thou not.
Thou hast found grace before God.
Lo, in thee conceive thou shalt and a son bear,
Whom thou shalt 'Jesu' name, that in English is 'healer.'
Who shall be great, and named 'worth,' 'the Son of the most high,'
And our Lord shall give him a high place to dwell:
His own father's seat, David, and he shall be reigning
In Jacob's house forever without ending,
And his kingdom shall be everlasting."
Then spake Mary to the angel anon,
"How may this be? for knowledge have I of no man."
The angel answered her and said aright,
"The Holy Ghost from above in thee shall alight,
And thee shall beshadow the highest one's might;
And lo, Elizabeth, thy cousin in grace,
Hath conceived a son in the days of her old age,
For nothing impossible is to God who governs all."
Then spake Mary and meekly said,
"Behold me here all ready, my Lord's handmaid.
To me be done, fully also, as thou hast said before."

Whoever tells no lies, proves to tell the truth,
Of our lady Mary this is Saint Luke's lay,
To heaven may she make us rise at our end-day. Amen.

As often with early medieval English religious poetry, part of the charm of the language lies in the mixture of the strange and the familiar. Much of the English vocabulary of devotion to Mary has remained remarkably stable since the Middle Ages (especially considering how forcefully that devotion was suppressed in the post-medieval period). For instance, you can see that the words with which Herebert translates the angel's greeting, in the early 14th century, are still deeply familiar to English-speaking Catholics 700 years later: 'Hayle be thou, vol of grace, oure Loverd ys wyth the.' And yet some words which are familiar to us might have seemed a little less so to Herebert's audience; alongside its homely vocabulary this poem also gives us the first recorded example of the word impossible in English, for 'nothyng impossible nys to God'.

The song-like quality of this poem made me wonder whether Herebert had heard the popular song on the same subject, 'Angelus ad virginem' - according to Chaucer, at least one 'clerk' of fourteenth-century Oxford was accustomed to sing that song for his own amusement, 'so sweetly that the chamber rang'. But this poem is worlds away from the naughty young clerk of the Miller's Tale, and stays much closer to the Biblical text than the other song does. The only real addition, apart from the introduction and conclusion, is an English translation for the name 'Jesus': 'that in English is healer'. In Old English 'healer' (Hælend), meaning 'saviour', was very commonly used in place of the name Jesus - Ælfric, for instance, does this almost all the time (here's a good example). This occurs in Middle English, too, though less frequently, so Herebert's audience probably would have been well acquainted with this interpretation of the name.

There are a few other grace notes, adding little touches of loveliness to the familiar story. Particularly elegant are the two lines which aim to catch the ear of the hearer, and say 'listen to this!':

Of Luk leche, oure levedy prest, lofsom in apryse,
Lustneth lythe oure levedy lay that gynth in thisse wyse.

From Luke the physician, our Lady's priest, praiseworthy in renown,
Listen with pleasure to Our Lady's lay that begins in this manner.

There's some nice play here on pairs of similar-sounding words, heavy with alliteration - Luke and leche (i.e. 'physician', since St Luke was traditionally said to be a doctor); priest and apryse ('price', renown); lady and lay (a little Dylan-esque, that); and lustneth ('listen') and lythe, which means something like 'gladly, with delight'. That last word suggests, I think, that the whole experience of listening to this poem is simply meant to be pleasurable. It's not really trying to do anything clever with this well-known story, but purely intending to make it pleasant, pretty, 'lovesome' to hear - food for glad and loving meditation. And very lovely it is.

BL Add MS 50000, f.7

The Poetry of William Herebert: 'Thou wommon boute fere'

I've written a piece for this week's Catholic Herald on the medieval poet William Herebert:

In early 14th-century Oxford, surrounded by some of the foremost theologians of medieval Europe, a Franciscan friar named William Herebert was writing a precious little collection of poems.

Herebert’s name is not well known today, but his poems, beautiful and distinctive in their own right, also represent an important milestone for English Catholicism: he was one of the first people to turn the Latin hymns of the Church into English poetry.

Read the rest here. I've posted a number of William Herebert's poems on this blog before, and they can be found under this tag - I particularly recommend 'The kynges baneres beth forth ylad', 'Wele, herying and worshipe', and 'Hail, Lady, sea-star bright'.

As I was writing this piece it occurred to me that 2017 happens to be the closest we can get to an anniversary for Herebert: we don't know his exact dates of birth or death (c.1270 to c.1333 is the usual guess), but we do know that he became master of the Franciscan house in Oxford around 1317. This 700-year anniversary seems as good a date to mark as any - and as regular readers will know, I enjoy a good anniversary. So I've decided that over the course of this year I'll post the rest of Herebert's poems here, with translations, and maybe a few audio recordings too - like many Middle English poets, his verses are often better heard than read on the page. A few of Herebert's poems can be found in anthologies of Middle English verse, and there's one edition of his English poems which is available online, but that edition (while very useful) contains no translations or glossing to help the reader unfamiliar with Herebert's rather tricky dialect. I'll do my best to make his poems more accessible, and to highlight some of the qualities which make them so appealing.

Virgin and Child (All Souls, Oxford)

To get us started, here's one of Herebert's longer poems, one of the few which has no known source.

Thou wommon boute fere
Thin owne fader bere!
Gret wonder this was
That on wommon was moder
To fader and hire brother,
So never other nas.

Thou my suster and moder
And thy sone my brother,
Who shulde thenne drede?
Whoso haveth the king to broder
And eek the quene to moder
Well aughte for to spede.

Dame, suster and moder,
Say thy sone, my brother,
That is domesmon,
That for thee that him bere,
To me be debonere;
My robe he haveth opon.

Sethe he my robe tok,
Also ich finde in bok,
He is to me ibounde;
And helpe he wole, ich wot,
For love the chartre wrot,
The enke orn of his wounde.

Ich take to witnessinge
The spere and the crowninge,
The nailes and the rode,
That he that is so cunde
This ever haveth in munde,
That boughte us with his blode.

When thou yeve him my wede,
Dame, help at the nede;
Ich wot thou might fol well,
That for no wreched gult
Ich be to helle ipult,
To thee ich make apel.

Now, Dame, ich thee biseche,
At thilke day of wreche
Be by thy sones trone,
When sunne shall ben sought
In werk, in word, in thought,
And spek for me thou one.

When ich mot nede apere
For mine gultes here
Tofore the domesmon,
Suster, be ther my fere
And make him debonere
That my robe haveth opon.

For habbe ich thee and him
That markes berth with him,
That charite him tok,
The woundes all blody,
The toknes of mercy,
Ase techeth Holy Bok,
Tharf me nothing drede;
Sathan shall nout spede
With wrenches ne with crok.
Amen.

Here's a translation of the poem (but I like Herebert's use of 'dame' for 'lady', so I've kept that...):

Thou woman without compare,
[Who didst] thine own father bear!
Great wonder this was,
That one woman was mother
To father and her brother,
Such another never was.

Thou my sister and mother,
And thy son my brother;
Who then should dread?
Whoever has the king for brother
And the queen for mother
Well ought to succeed.

Dame, sister and mother,
Say to thy son, my brother,
Who is domesman, [judge]
That for thee who him did bear
To me be debonair; [merciful and gracious]
My robe he hath upon.

Since he my robe took,
As I find in book, [i.e. the Bible]
He is to me bound.
And help he will, I wot, [I know]
For love the charter wrote,
The ink ran from his wounds.

I take to witnessing
The spear and the crowning, [i.e. with thorns]
The nails and the rood,
That he that is so kind [benevolent in nature]
Have ever this in mind,
Who bought us with his blood.

Since thou gave him my weed, [clothing]
Dame, help at the need.
I know thou may full well,
That for no wretched guilt
I may be to hell ypult; [thrust]
To thee I make appeal.

Now, Dame, I thee beseech,
At that day of wreche [Judgement Day]
Be by thy son's throne,
When sins shall be sought [searched through]
In work, in word, in thought,
And speak for me, thou alone.

When I must needs appear
For mine sins here
Before the domesman,
Sister, be there my fere [companion]
And make him debonair
That my robe hath upon.

For if I have thee and him
Whom the marks beareth on him,
Which charity him took - [the marks which love gave him]
The wounds all bloody,
The tokens of mercy,
As teacheth Holy Book,
Nothing need I dread;
Satan shall not succeed
With wrenches nor with crook. [with tricks or guile]
Amen.

This is a fairly simple poem - deliberately simple, I think, perhaps because it's not a translation of a hymn. It aims to be direct, intimate and devotional, a private and meditative kind of prayer, and so it depends for its effect on repetition and more straightforward diction than Herebert tends to use in his hymn translations. This seems appropriate for a poem which so tenderly explores intimate family relationships, leaning on the kinship created when Mary gave her son 'my robe', the clothing of human flesh. Christ is our brother, he wears our clothes, and so how can he not be 'bound' by the bond of love?

The images here are ones traditional in medieval spirituality, including that striking idea that Christ wrote the 'charter' of human liberation with the ink of his own blood. His sufferings are called to be 'witnesses' to the transaction written upon his body. This is a legal image (fitting for a poem where Christ is not only a brother but domesman, 'judge'), but it's also part of a wider tradition of images drawn from books and book-making, common in medieval devotional writing; these speak, for instance, of Christ writing upon the book of the heart, or compare his body stretched upon the cross to stretched-out parchment on which a message of love is written. It's an image drawn from a literate, documentary, book-filled culture, perhaps inspired by the very ink which flowed from the poet's hands as he wrote these words in his manuscript.

It's a metaphor which would have resonated in early fourteenth-century Oxford. This picture, which the Catholic Herald chose to illustrate my piece, is very appropriate for Herebert, though none of the buildings visible here had been built when he lived in Oxford. This is the view from the tower of St Mary's church in the centre of the city, looking over what's now called Radcliffe Square. In Herebert's day, looking out from St Mary's, you would have seen not the elegant towers and spacious quadrangles of All Souls' but a cluster of small, closely-packed residential halls populated by students and teachers, the forerunners of Oxford's colleges. This street was the centre of the book trade in medieval Oxford, where you would have found the scribes, parchment-makers, bookbinders and copyists, all the people making the books and writing implements which the university relied on.

Various places might claim to be the heart of the University of Oxford, but St Mary's has a particularly good right to that title: it was in this church that the first university library was established (around 1320, during Herebert's time in Oxford, and more than 150 years before the founding of the Bodleian) and in the early days of the university lectures, ceremonies, and graduations took place here. We know that Herebert preached at St Mary's on at least one occasion, since his manuscript of his works contains a sermon to be given there on 9 June 1314, the translation feast of St Edmund of Abingdon.

St Edmund, scholar and Archbishop of Canterbury, grew up in Oxford about a century before Herebert was born, and had a strong connection to St Mary's. As a boy St Edmund was educated in a school attached to the church, where he had three miraculous experiences during his childhood (read about them here). On one occasion, a ghostly voice prevented him from running out of the church to play with other boys during Mass. Another time, a stone fell off the church tower while he was listening to a lecture in the churchyard, but Edmund was saved from harm. At twelve years old, Edmund made a vow of chastity which he confirmed by a mystical marriage with the Virgin Mary: he placed a ring on the finger of a statue of the Virgin in St Mary's, from which he then found it could not be removed, and wore another ring himself as a token of his vow. These stories associate Oxford's local saint with the physical spaces inside and outside this church, which you can still walk through today even if most of the buildings around them have changed.

By the west door of St Mary's, where St Edmund was nearly hit by a stone...

As a Franciscan, William Herebert's home in Oxford was not here in the heart of the city but on its outskirts, in the parish of St Ebbe's. The Franciscan house there had been founded in 1224, two years before St Francis' death; it was, of course, demolished at the Reformation, and the site now lies underneath a supermarket. (The area is currently being redeveloped, bringing to light some fascinating glimpses into life at medieval Greyfriars.)

For such a deeply traditional university, Oxford has often been uncomfortable with its medieval roots - for a long time after the Reformation, acknowledging any continuity between the university and the scholarly communities of the monks and friars of medieval Oxford was all too dangerously Catholic. The university's humanist origin myth was established at the expense of people like Edmund of Abingdon and William Herebert, and this attitude has not entirely died out; in official publications it's not uncommon to see something like this short piece which makes the 'history of books in Oxford' begin only in 1478, with the first book printed in the city. Books and their readers and writers go back a long way before that, of course. For Herebert in the early fourteenth century, Edmund of Abingdon was already part of Oxford's history; at St Mary's he might have thought, as Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote of Herebert's Oxford contemporary Duns Scotus, 'this air I gather and I release / He lived on; these weeds and waters, these walls are what / He haunted'...

Edmund of Abingdon too has a place in the history of English poetry, since one of the earliest and most popular devotional poems in Middle English survives embedded in one of his Latin works:

Nou goth sonne under wod,
Me reweth, Marie, thi faire rode.
Nou goth sonne under tre,
Me reweth, Marie, thi sone and thee.

[Now goes the sun under the wood,
I grieve, Mary, for your fair face;
Now goes the sun under the tree,
I grieve, Mary, for thy son and thee.]

We don't know who wrote this (it's just possible it was St Edmund himself) but it dates to the early thirteenth century, and is a reminder that Herebert, though an innovator in some ways, was following in a very well-established tradition of devotional English poetry. Herebert's poems to the Virgin, including 'Thou wommon boute fere', are very much in that tradition.

St Mary's (source)

The Oxford context for Herebert's work appeals to me for obvious reasons, but it's actually an important one: it challenges several popular stereotypes about the medieval period to find a trained theologian in a university city, in the early fourteenth century, spending his time translating Latin hymns into English verse. Firstly, it's a good example of how seriously medieval preachers took their pastoral duties - forget your lazy dark-ages myths about clerics gabbling away in Latin to maliciously hide religion from the unlearned. (I hope no one who reads this blog believes that nonsense, but it's still regularly promulgated to the public by people who should know better.) Part of Herebert's motivation was evidently that he wanted his congregation to understand the hymns of the church in the vernacular, in their language - which was his language too, though he was also thoroughly conversant in Latin and French. That doesn't even make him particularly unusual or controversial for his day; he was part of a very long tradition of pastoral and homiletic writing in the vernacular going back to the Anglo-Saxon period, representing perhaps the longest unbroken strand of continuity in English literature. And since people still go around saying that Chaucer was the 'Father of English poetry', 'one of the first people to write in English', and all that, it's always good to remember that no, he really wasn't...

I emphasise the Englishness of Herebert's verse in part because there's been a little flurry of writing about 'Englishness' lately. In the rather frantic journalistic search for historical analogies for Brexit, Norman Conquest parallels are all very last year - it's all about the Reformation now. Witness this, and this, and this, all of which depend on the idea that 'English identity' is absolutely and inextricably Protestant, constituted in large part by opposition to the medieval, Catholic, pre-Reformation past. This is hardly a new argument (far from it!) but it's a pretty awful one for all kinds of reasons. Quite apart from the dangers inherent in declaring any particular minority religion or denomination to be not English, it involves repeating popular myths about medieval England and its relationship to the rest of Catholic Europe which most historians stopped even bothering to refute decades ago, so simplistic and caricatured are they. Imagine thinking that for the nine hundred years (!) between the Synod of Whitby and the Reformation, England was 'subservient to Rome' and tied to the 'conformist Continent', only capable of innovation, liberty and creativity once free of those wicked foreigners and their Catholic shackles. It's such an ignorant and old-fashioned view - and a very limited and (ironically) constricting way of talking about how other people might understand their own overlapping ethnic, national and religious identities.

So now seems a good time to celebrate someone like Herebert and his very English Catholicism - his very Catholic Englishness - which was perfectly compatible for him with both scholarly Latin learning and fluency in French and Anglo-Norman literature. His manuscript is trilingual, representing a very catholic (with a small c) range of interests, and revealing the thoughtful creativity of his poetry and the sensitivity of his pastoral care. These make him appealing, but not at all unique; he was a man of his time. He was a product of the lively and dynamic culture of medieval England and Catholic Europe, which educated and nurtured Herebert and many more like him - and which deserves to be taken seriously in its own right, and not just as a prop in a lazy rhetorical argument.

'Com, Shuppere, Holy Gost'

BL Arundel 157, f.12v

Com, Shuppere, Holy Gost, ofsech oure thouhtes;
Ful wyth grace of hevene heortes that thou wrouhtest.

Thou, that art cleped forspekere and gyft from God ysend,
Welle of lyf, fur, charite, and gostlych oynement,

Thou gyfst the sevene gyftes, thou finger of Godes honde,
Thou makest tonge of fleshe speke leodene of uche londe.

Tend lyht in oure wyttes, in oure heortes love,
Ther oure body is leothewok gyf strengthe from above.

Shyld ous from the feonde, and gyf ous gryth anon,
That we wyten ous from sunne thorou the lodesmon.

Of the Fader and the Sone thou gyf ous knoulechinge,
To leve that of bothe thou ever be lovinge.

Wele to the Fader and to the Sone, that from deth aros,
And also to the Holy Gost ay be worshipe and los.

This is a translation of Veni, Creator Spiritus by the Franciscan William Herebert (d.1333). I posted it some years ago here along with some other translations of the hymn, but I thought I'd give it its own post today. It could be rendered thus:

Come, Creator, Holy Ghost, search our thoughts;
Fill with grace of heaven the hearts which thou hast wrought.

Thou who art called For-speaker and gift from God sent,
Well of life, fire, charity, and spiritual ointment,

Thou givest the seven gifts, thou finger of God's hand,
Thou makest tongues of flesh speak languages of every land.

Kindle light in our wits, in our hearts love,
Where our body is weak, give strength from above.

Shield us from the fiend, and give us peace anon,
That we may keep ourselves from sin through the Guardian.

Of the Father and the Son give us knowledge,
To believe that thou ever art of both praising.

Glory to the Father and to the Son, who from death arose,
And to the Holy Ghost also be ever worship and praise.

One of the pleasures of reading Herebert's translations is how familiar the vocabulary is; that's one of the reasons I like blogging about them, because to me they give a clearer sense than almost any other texts of the line of continuity in English religious writing beginning in the Anglo-Saxon period, and running in some ways up to the present day. There's only a few words here which present any difficulties to a speaker of Modern English: the occasional rare word like leothewok (which means 'pliant in body, weak') and words now obsolete like leodene 'languages', gryth 'peace', los 'praise'. Otherwise there's the odd poetic touch like lodesmon, which is translating Latin ductore and means 'leader, guardian' but also 'steersman, pilot of a ship', and Shuppere, 'Creator' - descended from one of the first words many people learn when studying Old English, 'scyppend'. There's actually an Old English gloss of this hymn which begins Cum, þu scyppend gast - not very different from Herebert.

BL Lansdowne 383, f.14

In fact Herebert, writing seven centuries ago, seems hardly less far away than the world in which this version of the hymn was recorded:

Packing for the Next Life

A pilgrim prepares for his journey (BL Harley 4399, f.24v)

This is a poem by the Franciscan friar William Herebert (d.1333), with something of a Lenten tone. It's based on an Anglo-Norman verse sermon by Nicholas Bozon which begins 'Pus ke homme deit morir'. I've posted various poems by Herebert before - all come from the manuscript (British Library, Additional 46919) where he wrote down his own poems and translations alongside his sermons and an assortment of other texts. This poem is headed 'Byseth ȝou in þys ylke lyf / Of lyflode in þat oþer lyf', 'Equip yourself in this present life / With means of living in that other life.'

Sethþe mon shal henne wende
And nede deȝen at þen ende
And wonyen he not whare,
God ys þat he trusse hys pak,
And tymliche pute hys stor in sak,
Þat not when henne vare.

Euch mon þenche uor to spede
Þat he ne lese þe grete mede
Þat God ous dythte ȝare.

Þys lyf nys bote sorewe away,
Ounneþe ys mon gladuol o day
Vor sorewe and tene and kare;
Mon wyth sorewe is uurst ybore,
And eft wyth sorewe rend and tore,
Ȝyf he ryth þencþ of hys ware.

What ys lordshype and heynesse,
What helpth katel and rychesse?
Gold and seluer awey shal uare.
Þy gost shal wonye þou ne wost nout where,
Þy body worth wounde in grete oþer here;
Of oþer þyng þou worst al bare.

Byþench, mon, ȝerne on euche wyse
Er þou be brouht to þylke asyse,
On what þou shalt truste þare.
What god þou hauest, mon, here ydon
Prest þer þou shalt ounderuon
Elles euer þou worst in kare.

Be mon ȝong oþer be he old,
Non so strong ne wel ytold
Þat hennes ne mot fare.
Deth is hud, mon, in þy gloue,
Wyth derne dunt þat shal he proue
And smyte þou nost whare.

Touore þe deth ys betere o dede
Þen after tene, and more of mede
And more quencheth kare.
Be monnes wyttes hym byreued,
Hys eȝen blynd, hys eren deued,
Þe cofres beth al bare.

Be þe gost urom body reued,
Þe bernes sone shulle ben sheued,
Ne shal me noþyng spare.
Be þe body wyth greth byweued,
Þe soule sone shal be leued,
Alas, of frendes bare.

That is:

Since each man shall from hence wend
And must needs die, at the end,
And dwell he knows not where,
Good it is that he truss his pack,
And in good time put his store in sack,
Knowing not when he shall from hence fare.

Let each man think so to speed [act]
That he lose not the great meed [reward]
Which God prepares for us there.

This life is nothing but sorrow alway;
Hardly is man glad one day
For sorrow and pain and care;
Man with sorrow is first born,
And ever with sorrow is rent and torn,
If he thinks truly of his wares.

What is lordship and highness,
What helpeth goods and richness?
Gold and silver away shall fare.
Thy soul shall dwell thou knowest not where,
Thy body be wound in earth or hair [i.e. haircloth, shroud];
Of all other things thou shalt be bare.

Consider, man, earnestly in every way
Before thou be brought to that estate,
To what thou shalt trust there.
What good that thou hast, man, here done
Swiftly there thou shalt receive,
Or else ever thou shalt suffer care.

Be a man young or be he old,
There is none so strong or well ytold [considered]
Who shall not from hence fare.
Death is hid, man, in thy glove,
With secret strike he shall that prove
And smite thou knowest not where.

Before thy death better is one deed
Than ten thereafter, and more of meed
And more quencheth care.
When a man's wits are from him bereft, [taken]
His eyes blind, his ears made deaf,
His coffers are all bare.

When the soul is from the body taken,
The barns shall soon be emptied,
Nor shall anything be spared.
When the body is in earth laid,
The soul soon shall be left,
Alas, of friends bare.

The opening of this poem (and 'Tu rex gloriae') in BL Add. 46919, f. 208v

Ave Maris Stella: Hail, Lady, sea-star bright

Clerks singing 'Ave Maris Stella' (BL Add. 49999, f. 58)

The Vespers hymn often sung on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (8 December) is 'Ave Maris Stella', which in the early fourteenth century was translated into English by the Franciscan William Herebert as follows:

Hayl, Levedy, se-sterre bryht,
Godes moder, edy wyht,
Mayden euer vurst and late,
Of heveneriche sely gate.
Thylk "Aue" that thou vonge in spel
Of the aungeles mouhth kald Gabriel;
In gryht ous sette and shyld vrom shome,
That turnst abakward Eves nome.
Gulty monnes bond vnbynd,
Bryng lyht tyl hem that beth blynd.
Put vrom ous oure sunne
And ern ous alle wynne.
Shou that thou art moder one,
And he vor the take oure bone,
Þat vor ous thy chyld by com,
And of the oure kunde nom.
Mayde one, thou were myd chylde,
Among alle so mylde;
Of sinne ous quite on haste,
And make ous meoke and chaste.
Lyf thou gyf ous clene;
Wey syker ous ȝarke and lene
That we Jesus yse,
And ever blythe be.
To Vader, Cryst, and Holy Gost beo thonk and heryinge;
To threo persones and o God, o menske and worshypinge.

This is one of the loveliest hymns in praise of Mary, though there is plenty of competition for that title - Mary has probably inspired more poetry than any other woman who ever lived. This hymn, though so short, is both beautiful and theologically ambitious: there are a lot of ideas and images packed into these concise lines. We have the image of Mary as 'sea-star', the guide to all of us travelling through the waves of this world, as 'gate of heaven', the woman who opens for humanity the door to another world, and as liberator of prisoners and healer of the spiritually blind. The hymn also alludes to the widespread medieval idea of a link between humanity's two mothers, Mary and Eve: Mary's consent to God, represented by her 'Ave' to the angel, reverses Eve's very name (Eva, in Latin), and begins to undo all the loss, grief and sin it symbolises.

I find Herebert's version utterly charming, and it has a lovely sound when read aloud (try it - you'll understand more than you expect - or listen here). It uses some of my favourite words from early English religious vocabulary, most of which did not make it into Modern English: edy (from Old English eadig, 'blessed'), sely (from sælig, 'blessed, fortunate', which in its later sense 'harmless, innocent' gave us Modern English 'silly'), wynne ('joy', also the name of an Old English rune and letter), blythe ('joyful'), and gryht (from Old English grið, 'peace, truce', which came into English from Old Norse, one can only assume in the context of Vikings negotiating peace-treaties!). Even the compound 'sea-star' translating the Virgin's title stella maris is attested in Old English, from a text of c.1050:

Sæsteorra heo is gecweden, forðan þe se steorra on niht gecyþeð scypliðendum mannum hwyder bið east and west, hwyder suð and norð. Swa þonne wearð þurh ða halgan fæmnan Sancta Marian gecyþed se rihte siðfæt to ðam ecan life þam ðe lange ær sæton on þeostrum and on deaþes scuan and on þam unstillum yðum þære sæ þises middaneardes.

[Sea-star she is called, because a star in the night shows to seafaring men where is east and west, where south and north; and just in this way through the holy maiden St Mary the right path to eternal life was shown to those who long had sat in darkness and in the shadow of death and among the troubled waves of the sea of this world.]

Because of this thoroughly English vocabulary there's hardly a word in Herebert's translation which would not have been understood three centuries before he wrote, around the time when the Feast of the Conception of the Virgin was first being celebrated in late Anglo-Saxon England. The Canterbury monk and historian Eadmer, staunch defender of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception and author of an influential treatise on the subject, would have found this recognisably his own language - perhaps appropriately for a feast he regarded as peculiarly English. (There actually is a surviving Old English gloss of this hymn in an eleventh-century Canterbury manuscript, if you'd like to compare them.) To remove these words takes away the character of Herebert's translation, so I've kept them here, at the risk of archaism:

Hail, lady, sea-star bright,
God's mother, edy wight [creature]
Maiden ever, first and late,
Of heaven's realm the sely gate.
The 'Ave' thou received in spell [message]
From the angel's mouth called Gabriel
In grith us set and shielded from shame,
And turneth backward Eva's name.
Guilty men's bonds unbind,
Bring light to them who are blind.
Put from us our sin
And earn for us all wynne. [joy]
Show that thou art mother alone
And before him take thou our bone [petition]
Who for us thy child became
And of thee our kind name. [took our nature]
Maid alone, thou wert with child,
Among all so mild;
Of sin release us in haste,
And make us meek and chaste.
Life give thou us clean, [pure]
A safe way prepare, and lene [grant]
That we Jesus see
And ever blithe be.
To Father, Christ and Holy Ghost be thanks and praising,
To three persons and one God, one honour and worshipping.

British Library, Royal 6 E VII f.484v

It's interesting to compare Herebert's 'sea-star bright' to this very different poem in praise of the Virgin:

All haile, lady, mother, and virgyn immaculate,
Haile, Mary most precious, that bare our savyour Jesu;
Haile, clarified cristall, haile, wife mundificate,
Haile, rote of grace, our joy thow did renewe,
For the Holy Gost did clerely in the yssue.
Our soles for lacke had ells perresshed sore
Nere throgh the helpe of our highe redemptour.

All haile, whose solempne glorious concepcioun,
Full of glorie and hye joye tryumphaunte,
Bothe celestyall and terrestriall gif laude with jubilacioun
Of new joy and gladnesse with solace incessaunte.
Alhaile, whose nativité to us is solempnysaunte
Ferens lucem ut Lucyfer, lux oriens,
Dyademe angelicall, verum solem preveniens.

Alhaile be thy mekenes, sine viro fecunditas
Whose amyable Annunciacioun to us was redempcion.
Joye therfore be to thee, tu summa suavitas,
And glorified be the houre of thy incarnacioun,
By whome we advoyde the infernall dampnacioun.
So dulcour was the ground in whom Crist hym planted
O mater most illuminate, we myght not the have wanted.

Haile, true chast virgyn and mother immaculate,
Whose pure purificacion to us was purgacion:
Haile, replete with all virtue angelicate,
Whose celestiall hye ascendaunte Assumpcion
Was oure gret joye and glorificacion.
Wherfore, dere lady, solistrice be for grace,
That we with thy son in heyven may have a place.

This poem is fifteenth-century high style at its grandest, very different from Herebert's homely language - all those polysyllabic Latinate words, as if the longer a word is the more meaningful! It's impressive stuff, a tour-de-force of its genre. It comes from the manuscript British Library, Additional 20059, and like most Middle English lyrics is anonymous. Again, to turn the Latinized language into modern equivalents loses some of the spirit, so I hope you'll forgive a little more archaism:

All hail, lady, mother, and virgin immaculate,
Hail, Mary most precious, that bare our Saviour Jesu;
Hail, clarified crystal, hail, wife mundificate, [pure woman]
Hail, root of grace; our joy thou didst renew,
For the Holy Ghost did clearly in thee issue.
Our souls for lack had else perished sore
If not for the help of our high redemptor.

All hail, whose solemn glorious Conception,
Full of glory and high joy triumphant,
Both celestial and terrestrial give laud with jubilation
Of new joy and gladness with solace incessant.
All hail, whose Nativity to us is solempnysaunte [a solemn festival]
Ferens lucem ut Lucyfer, lux oriens, [Bearing light like Lucifer, light of the east]
Diadem angelical, verum solem preveniens. [going before the true sun]

All hail be thy meekness, sine viro fecunditas [fruitful without man]
Whose amiable Annunciation to us was redemption.
Joy therefore be to thee, tu summa suavitas, [thou, most sweet]
And glorified be the hour of thy Incarnation,
By which we avoid the infernal damnation.
So sweet was the ground in whom Christ himself planted
O mater most illuminate, we might not thee have wanted. [we could not have done without thee]

Hail, true chaste virgin and mother immaculate,
Whose pure Purification to us was purgation:
Hail, replete with all virtue angelicate,
Whose celestial high ascending Assumption
Was our great joy and glorification.
Wherefore, dear lady, solicitress be for grace,
That we with thy son in heaven may have a place.

The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, being observed by Henry VII (BL Royal 2 A XIX)