Christ and Satan

(eighth century)

   The text now known as Christ and Satan is an OLD ENGLISH work in three distinct sections forming the fourth and final poem in the JUNIUS MANUSCRIPT. The poem, probably written in eighth-century Anglia, comprises 730 extant lines in ALLITERATIVE VERSE (some lines are missing from the last section of the poem).

   The unity of the poem is questionable. Certainly the style and language are consistent throughout the text, but there is no continuous narrative,which has led some scholars to suggest that the text is actually made up of three separate poems. The manuscript’s editor, however, has proposed that Christ and Satan is not intended primarily to be a narrative but rather a number of lyrical passages on related biblical and theological themes.

   Part I, the longest section of the text at 364 lines, depicts the lament of Satan after his fall from heaven. Notable in this section is the use of language recalling Old English ELEGAIC POEMS, a vocabulary that speaks of Satan as an outlawed wanderer, bereft of his Lord’s mead hall. Part II of the poem is concerned chiefly with the HARROWING OF HELL, though it also touches on the deeds of the Risen Christ and on Judgment Day. An interesting part of this section is Eve’s prayer to Christ as he enters hell—she laments her part in the Fall and reminds Christ that he was born of one of her own daughters, and so pleads for deliverance from hell. The third and shortest part of the poem retells the story of Satan’s temptation of Christ in the wilderness. This part of the manuscript is apparently incomplete, however, leaving out Satan’s urging of Christ to test God by throwing himself off the tower.

   There is no single source for the Old English poem. The first part is drawn from earlier Christian legends of Lucifer’s fall. The second draws largely from the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus and from the Gospels, and the final part from the temptation stories in the Synoptic Gospels. At one time, it was customary to attribute all of the poems of the Junius manuscript to CAEDMON or his school, but modern scholars make no such claim, though it has been suggested that Christ and Satan has elements of both the Caedmon and Cynewulf “schools” of poetry.

   Bibliography

   ■ Krapp, George Philip. The Junius Manuscript. Anglo- Saxon Poetic Records, I. New York: Columbia University Press, 1931.