Christ I

''Christ I'' (also known as ''Christ A'' or (''The'') ''Advent Lyrics'') is a fragmentary collection of Old English poems on the coming of the Lord, preserved in the Exeter Book. In its present state, the poem comprises 439 lines in twelve distinct sections. In the assessment of Edward B. Irving Jr, "two masterpieces stand out of the mass of Anglo-Saxon religious poetry: '' The Dream of the Rood'' and the sequence of liturgical lyrics in the Exeter Book ... known as ''Christ I''".

The topic of the poem is Advent, the time period in the annual liturgical cycle leading up to the anniversary of the coming of Christ, a period of great spiritual and symbolic significance within the Church — for some in early medieval Europe a time of fasting, and the subject of a sermon by Gregory the Great (AD 590-604). The Old English lyrics of ''Christ I'', playing off the Latin antiphons, reflect on this period of symbolic preparation.

Manuscript and associated texts

''Christ I'' is found on folios 8r-14r of the Exeter Book, a collection of Old English poetry today containing 123 folios. The collection also contains a number of other religious and allegorical poems. Some folios have been lost at the start of the poem, meaning that an indeterminate amount of the original composition is missing.

''Christ I'', concerning the Advent of Jesus, is followed in the Exeter Book by a poem on Jesus's Ascension composed by Cynewulf, generally known in modern scholarship as '' Christ II'', which in turn is followed by '' Christ III'', on the Last Judgment. Together these three poems comprise a total of 1664 lines, and are in turn linked to the poems that follow, '' Guthlac A'' and '' Guthlac B''. The sequence of ''Christ I-III'' is sometimes known simply as ''Christ'', and has at times been thought to be one poem completed by a single author. Linguistic and stylistic differences indicate, however, that ''Christ I-III'' originated as separate compositions (perhaps with ''Christ II'' being composed as a bridge between ''Christ I'' and ''Christ III''). Nevertheless, ''Christ I-III'' stands as an artistically coherent compilation.Roy M. Liuzza,
The Old English ''Christ'' and ''Guthlac'': Texts, Manuscripts, and Critics
, ''The Review of English Studies'', 41 (1990), 1-11.

The text also contains glosses by Laurence Nowell from the sixteenth century or George Hickes from the seventeenth.

Origins

Because ''Christ II'' is signed by Cynewulf, earlier scholarship supposed that ''Christ I'' might also be his work;Edward Burgert,
The Dependence of Part I of Cynewulf's Christ upon the Antiphonary
' (Washington, D. C.: Milans, 1921). but recent research agrees that the authorship is unknown. Claes Schaar suggested that the poem may have been written between the end of the eighth century and the beginning of the ninth.

Sample

The following passage describes the Advent of Christ and is a modern English translation of Lyric 5 (lines 104-29 in the numbering of the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records):

Sources and structure

As presented in the Exeter Book, ''Christ I'' is divided into five sections, each marked by a large capital, a line-break, and punctuation, as follows: lines 1-70, 71-163, 164-272, 275-377, 378-439.

However, researchers have found it helpful to understand ''Christ I'' as comprising twelve sections or 'lyrics'. Each lyric is introduced with a selection from a Latin antiphon (verses from Scripture sung before and after the reading of a psalm chosen to reflect the fundamental ideas presented in the psalm), followed by lines of poetry in Old English which expand on that source. Most of the antiphons used are known as the ''O Antiphons'', which receive their name because they all begin with the Latin interjection ''O'' (rendered in the poem with the Old English interjection ''ēalā''). Medieval manuscripts of the ''O Antiphons'' vary in order and content, meaning that the precise sources for several of the ''Christ I'' lyrics are uncertain.Thomas D. Hill,
The Seraphim's Song: The "Sanctus" in the Old English "Christ I", Lines 403-415
, ''Neuphilologische Mitteilungen'', 83 (1982), 26-30.

Several of the Greater Antiphons are not used in ''Christ I'', leading some scholars speculate that, since we know that the beginning of ''Christ I'' is missing, the missing antiphons ("O Sapientia", "O Adonai", and "O radix Jesse") were originally used in the poem but have been lost.

The following table summarises the content and sources of each of the twelve lyrics. Unless otherwise stated, information on sources comes from Burgert and the antiphon text from Bamberg State Library, MS Misc. Patr. 17/B.11.10, folios 133-62, 10c.

Interpretation of structure

The order of antiphons that the author uses for the lyrics imply that the poet was not concerned about any distinctions between antiphons, or the order that he had found them in his sources. Upon analysis of the position of each poem, no rational order can be found, suggesting that the order of each poem in the sequence is unimportant.

Influence on other writers

J.R.R. Tolkien was influenced by the following lines from ''Christ I'' (lines 104-5), which inspired his portrayal the character Eärendil in his legendarium and is one of many examples of the Old English word '' middangeard'' which partly inspired Tolkien's fantasy world:

Variants of lines inspired by these survived through multiple poetic and prose versions to be published in ''The Silmarillion'' where they appear as the greeting "Hail Eärendil, bearer of light before the Sun and Moon! Splendour of the Children of Earth, star in the darkness, jewel in the sunset, radiant in the morning!"

Tolkien wrote "There was something very remote and strange and beautiful behind those words, if I could grasp it, far beyond ancient English."Day, David. 2003 ''The World of Tolkien''. London: Octopus Publishing Group, p. 8.

Editions and translations

Editions

* , pp. 3–49
online at the Oxford Text Archive
* ''The Advent Lyrics of the Exeter Book'', ed. by Jackson J. Campbell (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959)
* ''The Old English Advent a Typological Commentary'', ed. by R. B. Burlin, Yale Studies in English, 168 (New Haven, CT, 1968)
*
Old English Poetry in Facsimile Project
', ed. by Foys, Martin et al. (Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2019-); poem edited in transcription and digital facsimile edition, with Modern English translation

Translations

* '' The Christ of Cynewulf, A Poem in Three Parts: The Advent, the Ascension, and the Last Judgement'', trans. by Charles Huntington Whitman (Boston: Ginn, 1900)
* Cynewulf,
Christ
', trans. by Charles W. Kennedy (Cambridge, Ontario: In Parentheses, 2000)

Notes

References

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External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Christ 1
Old English poems
Christian poetry
Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England