"The Fates of the Apostles" (
Vercelli Book
The Vercelli Book is one of the oldest of the four Old English Poetic Codices (the others being the Junius manuscript in the Bodleian Library, the Exeter Book in Exeter Cathedral Library, and the Nowell Codex in the British Library). It is an ant ...
, fol. 52b–54a) is the shortest of
Cynewulf
Cynewulf (, ; also spelled Cynwulf or Kynewulf) is one of twelve Old English poets known by name, and one of four whose work is known to survive today. He presumably flourished in the 9th century, with possible dates extending into the late 8th ...
’s known canon at 122 lines long. It is a brief
martyrology
A martyrology is a catalogue or list of martyrs and other saints and beati arranged in the calendar order of their anniversaries or feasts. Local martyrologies record exclusively the custom of a particular Church. Local lists were enriched by n ...
of the
Twelve Apostles
In Christian theology and ecclesiology, the apostles, particularly the Twelve Apostles (also known as the Twelve Disciples or simply the Twelve), were the primary disciples of Jesus according to the New Testament. During the life and minist ...
written in the standard
alliterative verse
In prosody, alliterative verse is a form of verse that uses alliteration as the principal ornamental device to help indicate the underlying metrical structure, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. The most commonly studied traditions of ...
. ''The Fates'' recites the key events that subsequently befell each apostle after the
Ascension of Jesus
The Ascension of Jesus (anglicized from the Vulgate la, ascensio Iesu, lit=ascent of Jesus) is the Christian teaching that Christ physically departed from Earth by rising to Heaven, in the presence of eleven of his apostles. According to th ...
. It is possible that ''The Fates'' was composed as a learning aid to the monasteries.
Cynewulf speaks in the first-person throughout the poem, and besides explaining the fate of each disciple, he provides “advice” and “consolation” to the reader. Cynewulf’s
runic
Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised ...
signature is scrambled in this poem so that the meaning of the runes become a riddle with no unequivocal meaning.
[See Bradley 1982, p.154]
:"Wealth (
F) shall be at it end there. Men enjoy this on earth, but not for ever will they be allowed to remain together :abiding in the world. The pleasure (
W) which is ours (
U) in this native place will fail and then the body’s borrowed fineries will crumble away, even as the sea (
L) will vanish away when the fire (
C) and trumpet (
Y) exercise their strength in the straits of the night; coercion (
N) will lie upon them—their thraldom to the King."
Notes
References
* Bradley, S.A.J, ed. and tr. 1982. ''Anglo-Saxon Poetry''. London: Everyman's Library.
External links
* "The Fates of the Apostles" is edited and annotated to digital images of its manuscript pages in the ''Old English Poetry in Facsimile Project'': https://oepoetryfacsimile.org/
Cynewulf: The Fates of the Apostles(Modern English translation by Charles Kennedy)
* George Philip Krapp
''Andreas and The Fates of the Apostles, two Anglo-Saxon narrative poems''(1906)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fates of the Apostles
Old English poems