Saint Bartholomew and the devil - the legend of Bartholomew in the Old English Martyrology

Today is the feast of Saint Bartholomew the Apostle, who is famous for his grisly method of execution, namely being flayed alive. For this reason his attribute is a flaying knife, and his saintly patronage extends to tanners and other craftsmen in skin and hide. For the feast of Bartholomew I will here give the legend as it was rendered in the Old English Martyrology, translated and edited by Christine Rauer. Here the date is given as August 25, but that is either a mistake made by the scribe or evidence of a different practice in tenth-century England.

Bartholomew with his knife

MS Harley 2449, prayers for saints' vigils with calendar, Netherlands, c.1276-c.1296

Courtesy of British Library

On the twenty-fifth day of the month is the feast of the apostle St Bartholomew; he was Christ's missionary in the country of India, which is the outermost of all regions, on whose one side lies the dark land, on whose other side lies the world ocean [or 'Oceanus'], that is Garsecg. In this country he cast out idols which they had previously worshipped there. And an angel of God came to them there and revealed to the people what their god was, whom they had worshipped previously. He showed them an enormous Egyptian whose face was blacker than soot, and his beard and hair reached down to his feet, and his eyes were like hot irons, and spakrs came from his mouth, and a foul stench came out of his nostrils, and he had wings like a Thorny broom, and his hands were tied together with fiery chains, and he cried out with a terrible and loathsome voice and fled away and never appeared again anywhere. that was the devil, whom the people had earlier worshipped for themselves as a god, and they alled him Astaroth. Then the king of that people received baptism and his queen too, and all the people who belonged to his kingdom. Then the pagan bishops went and complained about that to the king's Brother; he was in another kingdom, and he was older than he was. He therefore ordered Bartholomew, the servant of Christ, to be flayed alive. Then the believing king came with many people and took his body and transported it away with great splendour, and put it in a fantastically large church. And the king became insane, who wanted him killed, and all the pagan bishops became insane and died, who had reported him.
- From The Old English Martyrology, edited and translated by Christine Rauer, D. S. Brewer 2013

The flaying of Bartholomew

Valenciennes - BM - ms. 0838, f.104, Martyrology, Notre-Dame des Prés de Douai, 13th century

Courtesy of enluminures.cultures.fr

The story of Bartholomew is an exciting and intersting story for many reasons, but perhaps especially its solid portion of exoticism and gore. From an academic point of view, this tale provides another set of details that are worth commenting. To me, for instance, it is interesting to note the geographical setting which places India as the outermost realm, and as a neighbour to the dark land, which is possibly meant to be Ethiopia which was confused with India all they way up to the sixteenth century. Bartholomew is placed in India already by Eusebius and in the Roman martyrology, although the latter gives Armenia as his place of of martyrdom.

Another significant thing here is the appearance and description of the devil. That the devil is said to be worshipped by the Indians as Astoreth harkens back to an old Christian tradition which claims that the old pagan gods were in reality fallen angels who had taken up residence on earth as gods, a treatment which is beautifully summarised in John Milton's Paradise Lost. Although it is an angel of God rather than Bartholomew in person who casts out the devil, he is associated with conquering the devil. This is something we find in the tradition around Saint Guthlac of Croyland, who came to his wild fens and established his hermitage on the feast of Bartholomew and henceforth dedicated himself to Bartholomew's patronage. Guthlac's vita was written by Felix already in the eight century, but the story was expanded by a local tradition at Croyland in the twelfth century which had Guthlac chastise demons with a scourge given to him by Saint Bartholomew.

A final point I want to comment on here is the appearance of the devil, described as a black Egyptian. The portrayal of the devil as a black man as an old tradition in Christian hagiography, and can be found already as early - and perhaps earlier - as Athanasius' Life of Antony, written in the fourth century. Here Antony struggles with his fight against a demon, and after a heavy bout of prayer, the demon finally gives in and materialises for Saint Antony:

he appeared, as was fitting, in a form that revealed his true nature: an ugly black boy prostrated himself at Antony's feet, weeping loudly and saying in a human voice, 'Many have I led astray, many have I deceived, but now I have been defeated by your efforts as I was by other holy people.' When Antony asked him who it was who was saying this, he replied, 'I am the friend of fornication. I have used many different kinds of shameful weapon to attrack young people and that is why I am called the spirit of fornication (...)'.
- Life of Antony, translated by Carolinne White, Penguin Classics, 1998

The flayed Bartholomew

Valenciennes - BM - ms. 0838, f.104, Martyrology, Notre-Dame des Prés de Douai, 13th century

Courtesy of enluminures.cultures.fr

For similar blogposts, see these:

Antony and Guthlac compared

Guthlac using liturgy as a weapon against demons

The bearded women of the far East



Bibliography

Farmer, David, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, Oxford University Press, 2004

Rauer, Christine, The Old English Martyrology, D. S. Brewer, 2013

White, Carolinne, Early Christian Lives, Penguin Classics, 1998

Guthlac and the demons - the importance of liturgy in the Middle Ages

The legends about St Guthlac of Crowland and his encounters with demons are well-known to medievalists, and in a previous blogpost I drew the attention to the iconographic similarities between the struggles of Guthlac and the temptations of St Anthony, the latter being a saint whose vita by Anasthasius influenced the eighth-century life of Guthlac written by the monk Felix. In this blogpost I will return to the topic of Guthlac’s encounter with demons. However, while his most famous episode is where the demonic host brings him to the gates of Hell where he is saved by St Bartholomew, this episode takes place in Guthlac’s hermitage at Crowland.

A few prefatory words are, however, needed to put this anecdote in a wider hagiographical context. Guthlac (674-715) was born into the royal dynasty of Mercia, and showed early signs of maturity which foreshadowed his later embrace of the monastic life. As a young man he learned of the martial deeds of his forefathers and decided to emulate them, taking up arms and ravaging the lands of the enemies of his house. The chronicler Felix makes sure, however, to tell the reader that although a heathen soldier, Guthlac never showed signs of greed and always returned a third of what his men had captured. At the age of twenty-four, the young soldier reflected further on his forefathers and found that they had all come to violent ends thanks to their violent lives. He then repented his former life and left for the monastery of Repton in order to receive the tonsure. At Repton he showed such diligent abstemiousness towards alcohol that his fellow brethren began to hate him, an episode reminiscent of Benedict of Nursia as described in Gregory the Great’s Dialogi. Shortly afterwards, after having read about the desert fathers, Guthlac leaves for the fens in order to become a hermit of the desert, and on the remote island of Crowland he establishes his cell. Since he arrives at the island on the feast of St Bartholomew (then celebrated at 25^th of August), Guthlac commends himself to the saint and is later aided by him as mentioned above. It should be noted that Bartholomew’s gift of the scourge does not appear in Felix’ Vita Guthlaci, but is a product of a later local tradition at Crowland Abbey. 

Guthlac receiving the scourge from St Bartholomew

MS Harley Roll Y.6, England, turn of the 12th Century

Courtesy of British Library

Even though Guthlac is brought back from the mouth of Hell, he is still troubled by demons, even in his own hermitage, and in chapter 34 we are told of a trick the demons played on him, pretending to be British marauders:


Now it happened in the days of Cænred King of the Mercians, while the Britons the implacable enemies of the Saxon race, were troubling the English with their attacks, their pillaging, and their devastations of the people, on a certain night about the time of cockcrow, when Guthlac of blessed memory was as usual engaged in vigils and prayers, that he was suddenly overcome by a dream-filled sleep, and it seemed to him that he heard the shouts of a tumultuous crowd. Then, quicker than words, he was aroused from his light sleep and went out of the cell in which he was sitting; standing, with ears alert, he recognized the words that the crowd were saying, and realized that British hosts were approaching his dwelling: for in years gone by he had been an exile among them, so that he was able to understand their sibilant speech. Straightway they strove to approach his dwelling through the marshes, and at almost the same moment he saw all his buildings burning, the flames mounting upwards: indeed they caught him too and began to lift him into the air on the sharp points of their spears. Then at length the man of God, perceiving the thousand-fold forms of this insidious foe and his thousand-fold tricks, sang the first verse of the sixty-seventh psalm as if prophetically, ‘Let God arise’, etc.: when they had heard this, at the same moment, quicker than words, all the hosts of demons vanished like smoke from his presence.
- Felix, Life of Guthlac, translated by Bertram Colgrave (1956: 109-11)

The first two verses of  psalm 67 (68 in the modern numbering) are rendered thus in the Vulgate:

[E]xsurgat Deus et dissipentur inimici eius et fugiant qui oderunt eum a facie eius
sicut deficit fumus deficiant sicut tabescit cera a facie ignis pereant impii a facie Dei

In the English translation:

Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered: and let them that hate him flee from before his face.
As smoke vanisheth, so let them vanish away: as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God.

While Felix tells us that Guthlac only sang the first verse, I have included the second verse here because Felix obviously draws on that verse for his comparison with the demons to vanishing smoke.

There are many significant things to comment on here, but my focus now is the martial aspects of the episode, and indeed in the whole text itself. Throughout the work, Felix refers to Guthlac as the soldier of Christ, a sobriquet based on St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians where his listeners are asked to put on the armour of God. This title is not merely a play on Guthlac’s military past, it is also a very apt description of how monks were seen in medieval theology: They were soldiers of God whose weapons were prayer and song, and through their asceticism and their mortification of their own flesh, they kept the devil away. In this episode, Guthlac does not physically drive away the demons as he will do in later traditions using the scourge of St Bartholomew. Nor is he here saved by the apostle’s intervention, but through his faithful incantation of the psalm. Through his arms of faith, the weapons of song and prayer, Guthlac overcomes the phantasmal spears of the demonic army and emerges victorious, a miles Christi faithfully resisting against the soldiers of Satan. When we consider this episode, therefore, we get a better understanding of why the daily performance of the office was such an important aspect of medieval religious life: Not only was it a way of strengthening the religious community through a mystic experience, it was also a feat of spiritual arms that kept the devil’s army away from the soul, and which could allow the faithful to withstand the phantasms coaxing it to fear and loss of faith in God’s protection. Guthlac's struggle with the demons, in other words, allows us to grasp the rationale of medieval liturgy as something more than mere music, and we understand that the office is not just an ornament in the church service, it is part of the arsenal which St Paul included in his letter to the Ephesians.

Wandragesil, the elusive saint

During the research for my MA degree I spent much time perusing the late 14th-century Westminster Missal in order to map the various liturgical items used in the celebration of Edward the Confessor. The missal in question was commissioned by the abbot of Westminster Nicholas Litlyngton (d.1386), and is often referred to as the Litlyngton Missal. It was published in three volumes by John Wickham Legg in 1891, 1893 and 1897 as a part of the Henry Bradshaw Society series of liturgical material, and it was this tripartite work I was working with. As I spent late evenings charting with which saints Edward the Confessor shared liturgical items, I noticed gradually that there were - unsurprisingly - certain recurring saints. Since liturgy - as is the case with hagiography as well - is a genre in which the various saints draws from the a stock of motifs and topoi according to their saint-type, this is only to be expected. However, it was interesting to see how Edward the Confessor, a virgin saint who died from sickness and old age, shared liturgical items with a large number of clerical saints such as Earconwald and Guthlac. One of these recurring saints was listed as Wandragesil, and to my disappointment I could not find any mention of him in the references I had available. It was not until this Tuesday (April 02 2013) that I finally made the connection I should have made two years ago, and finally realised who exactly Saint Wandragesil really is. This minor blogpost is dedicated to explain this difficulty, perhaps for the benefit of others who may encounter the same problem.

Commemorative medal, taken from this website

After some time spent searching the world wide web and consulting a few publications, it turns out Wandragesil is referred to by a number of similar but slightly different names. This plethora of names constitutes the major obstacle in identifying St. Wandragesil. In the course of my research I've come across the following variants: Wandragesil, Wandregisel (both English), Wandregisil (German), Wandrille (French), Wando (unknown, possibly German) and finally Wandregisilius and Wandregisilus (both Latin). There may very well be other variants I have omitted, and I'm curious to learn what he is known as in Belgium, for instance, where his relics were brought in 944 to save them from Viking raiders.

Wandragesil is a Merovingian saint and lived c.600-68. He was brought up at the court of Dagobert I (623-38) and received monastic education after he separated from his wife in 628 by mutual consent. He was ordained by Bishop Ouen of Rouen (in whose church there is currently a modern stained glass representation of Wandragesil, as seen below), and eventually founded his own monastery at Fontenelle, currently known as Saint-Wandrille.

Stained glass window from the south transept of St.Ouen, from wikimedia

Typologically speaking Wandragesil may qualify as a hermit saint, like Guthlac, because he spent some time in solitude in the Swiss mountains - where he is said to have founded a monastery at Saint-Ursanne - before becoming a priest. However, it is as abbot he is best remembered and the major centre of his cult is precisely at Fontenelle, which became a flourishing Benedictine abbey sometime after his death.

During the Viking attacks in the 9th and 10th centuries his relics were brought to other churches, and, as stated, in 944 they came to Ghent. It was from here the cult and feast of Wandragesil were introduced to England, and before the Norman conquest Wandragesil was celebrated in Southern England. Fontenelle Abbey even had three cells in England - the most important of which were Ecclesfield in South Yorkshire and Upavon in Wiltshire - and his feastday of July 22 is included in several of the English liturgical uses. To my knowledge there is insufficient research done on the cult of Wandragesil in England, but it is interesting to note that he was celebrated at important liturgical centres such as York, Hereford and Westminster (each pracitising its own use), and as the Litlyngton Missal indicates, this celebration persisted into the late 14th century. Furthermore, the available liturgical evidence also suggest stability, as his feast features in an early 13th-century antiphoner of the WorcesterUse, a 13th-century antiphoner of the Sarum Use from Barnwell and an early 14th-century antiphoner from a non-monastic Welsh church, also following the Sarum Use.

Stained glass from Eglise de Saint Pierre at Yvetôt

This is only a brief overview of the cult of St. Wandragesil - or whichever of his many names you prefer - and I hope in due course a more comprehensive study of his cult will be undertaken. For now I'll settle for this brief glimpse into a fragment from the medieval sanctorale with the hope that it may solve the difficulties pertaining to his plethora of names.


ReferencesFarmer, David, Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 2004

Harvey, Barbara F., ‘Litlyngton , Nicholas (b. before 1315, d. 1386)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/16775, accessed 3 April 2013]

Legg, John Wickham, Missale Westmonasteriensis, in three volumes (1891, 1893 and 1897)

http://www.cantusdatabase.org/feast/411301/wandregisili

http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/BiographienW/Wandregisil.html

St. Guthlac and St. Anthony

And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil

- Matthew, 6:13

Yesterday I read a piece on the 7th-century saint Guthlac on one of my favourite blogs, where I was made aware of the illuminated life of the saint found in MS. Harley Roll Y.6. The oldest part of this manuscript is known as the Guthlac Roll, and it is illuminated with 18 small roundels containing scenes from the saints life. The MS. is of South-East English provenance and dates to the last quarter of the 12th century, or possibly the first quarter of the 13th century. The illuminations are beautifully rendered in vibrant lines, and I was struck by one in particular - roundel 6 - which depicts Guthlac fighting his demon tormentors who are armed with knotted whips. Aside from the lively facial expressions of the demons and the pleading gestures of Guthlac, there was one aspect in particular that caught my eye, namely how very similar this scene is to the 15th- and 16th-century portrayals of the temptations of St. Anthony.

Roundel 6 - Guthlac tormented by demons (courtesy of British Library)

Guthlac was a hermit saint born in 674 to the royal dynasty of Mercia, son of Penwalh and Tette. From he was fifteen to he was twenty-four he led a band of warriors, most likely fighting and plundering the Welsh, but also other Anglo-Saxons. After years of robbery, he was converted to Christianity and received the tonsure at the double monastery of Repton, under the aegis of Abbess Ælfthryth. After two years at Repton he moved into the fens of East Anglia in the year 700, where he settled on the island of Crowland and remained there for the last fifteen years of his life. Guthlac's life was recorded c.740 by a monk called Felix, and although this proximity in time lifts Guthlac above the muddy waters of myth, his biography is nonetheless so formulaic that it is hard to separate facts from legend. However, the most interesting aspect of this biography is that among its hagiographic models is the life of St. Anthony (251-356), written by Athanasius of Alexandria (c.296-373) and known in 7th-century England through the translation into Latin by Evaristus. The hagiography depicts Anthony's struggle against demons, and this feature gained immense popularity in medieval art. Felix included it in his Life of Guthlac, and wrote about demons who would one night be filthy humans speaking British (as opposed to the native English of Guthlac) and another night appear as terrible beasts. This became a trope of hermit hagiography, and seeing as both Guthlac and Anthony were hermit saints, it is very easy to understand why Felix drew on this particular hagiography for his life of Guthlac.

It appears, however, that it was not only Felix's hagiography that drew on existing models associated with Anthony. The iconographic continuity suggested by the similarities of roundel 6 and painters like Matthias Grünewald and Hieronimus Bosch, hints at a trope connected with Anthony - or at least hermit saints - which was cultivated in art throughout the Middle Ages, and this in turn means that the illuminator of the Guthlac Roll most likely drew on an existing repository pertaining to the tribulations of St. Anthony.

 Mid-15th century engraving by Martin Schongauer

Late-15th century painting by Michelangelo, based on Schongauer

Matthias Grünewald, c.1515, picture taken from this website

Niklas Manuel Deutsch, c.1520

As we see, the similarities are striking. However, due to the lack of the evidence - for instance, I know of now such depictions in the late 13th or 14th centuries - I cannot be too adamant when suggesting an iconographic continuity. It may of course be the case that the renaissance arists and the Guthlac illuminator drew from a common source which was revived in the 15th century, but this can not be asserted either way. It should also be noted, that while both Anthony and Guthlac are depicted being assaulted by demons, only Guthlac - at least to my knowledge - is allowed to subdue his adversary in the end.

Roundel 8 - Guthlac chastises a demon (courtesy of British Library)

Literature

Farmer, David, Oxford Dictionary of Saints

Mayr-Harting, Henry ‘Guthlac [St Guthlac] (674–715)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004

Zuffi, Stefano (ed.), Angels and demons in art