Introduction

The apocryphal adventures of Andrew and Matthew are transmitted in a number of Greek and Latin recensions as well as in two Old English prose versions.² While we do not have the direct source of Andreas, it is closest to an extant Greek text found in ninth-century manuscripts, the Πράξεις ’Ανδρέου καὶ Ματθεία εἰς τὴν χώραν τῶν ἀνθρωφάγων (Acts of Andrew and Mathias in the City of the Cannibals), here called the Praxeis. Most scholars, however, assume Andreas is based on a now-lost Latin translation. Other surviving Latin versions relevant for comparison to Andreas include an eleventh-century fragment discovered by Maximilien Bonnet (‘The Bonnet Fragment’) and a complete version from the twelfth-century manuscript Rome, Codex Casanatensis, Nr 1104 (Casanatensis).³ The Old English homiletic prose account is found in two versions: the full text is in CCCC 198, and a shortened version counts among the Blickling Homilies.⁴ Andreas itself is in the Vercelli Book; it is of unknown authorship, and datable roughly from the middle to the end of the ninth century.⁵

The story begins with Matthew, who has had the terrible misfortune of landing in Mermedonia, a legendary place probably near the Black Sea. Its locals have the unpleasant habit of capturing strangers, putting out their eyes, giving them a poisonous drink that will damage their wits and render them beastlike, and after letting them marinate for a while, making them into dinner. When Christ commands Andrew to travel to Mermedonia and save Matthew from the cannibals, Andrew refuses, claiming the task is impossible. Christ rebukes him, and the next day a mysterious boat appears on the seashore ready to convey the apostle and his men to Mermedonia. Little does Andrew know that the young, very intelligent-looking helmsman is Christ in disguise, though the poem’s readers do. When a storm breaks and terrifies Andrew’s companions, the sailor advises Andrew to comfort his men by describing the miracles Jesus performed when he was living.

The helmsman teaches Andrew by having him teach his disciples in turn. In the most unusual miracle Andrew recalls, Jesus addresses an angel carved into the wall of the Jewish temple in the presence of recalcitrant rabbis, commanding it to leave its place and announce his divine lineage to everyone present. The stone proclaims Jesus to be the son of God, and despite the Jews’ accusations of magic, it carries on with its task. It heads to a grave in Mambre where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are buried, awakens them from their deathly sleep, and charges them to proclaim the glory of god to the people. The people are, naturally, terrified.

Over the course of their pedagogic dialogue, the helmsman repeatedly asks Andrew why the Jews did not believe in Jesus’ divinity, if, perhaps, he did not perform enough wonders that would serve as signs of his true nature. Andrew paints the Jews as sinful, poor students of Jesus’ teaching, but he in fact has also faltered in his faith. As a direct witness of the wonders Jesus performed in his lifetime, he should have understood that Christ could bring him to Mermedonia in time to save Matthew. Scholars have noted how ironic it is that Andrew lectures Christ without recognising him,⁶ but one might excuse him for being fooled by a god in disguise. The problem, rather, is that the faith he learned as a disciple of Christ is weak.

While the first part of Andreas is concerned with confusion and mistaken identities, the second part promises recognition and clarity. After a saintly catnap, Andrew and his men awake on the Mermedonian shore, where he realises shamefully that he had been ferried by Christ himself. Christ appears in the form of a boy and instructs Andrew to go into the city and suffer in imitation of him. He tells the apostle that he will convert the Mermedonians by following his own example of heroic endurance. Once in the city, Andrew liberates Matthew and the other prisoners, but the Mermedonians, under the influence of the devil, capture Andrew and torture him. Despite Christ’s promise that Andrew’s tolerance of unbearable pain will teach the heathens, it does not, in fact, convert anyone. Instead, Andrew is put back in prison, where he commands a column to let forth a flood that drowns most of the Mermedonians. This finally seems to impress the cannibals, and they acknowledge the might of God. Andrew brings a number of young people back to life, baptises the Mermedonians, and sets a bishop named Platan over them. Still, Andrew remains an unwilling teacher, and is about to set sail when Christ appears to him again, warning him that he cannot simply abandon the new converts without properly teaching them the faith.

‘The Andreas poet’s cannibalizing of other Old English verse has seemed tasteless, overdone, and, above all, botched,’ writes Roberta Frank, summarising a body of work often dismissive of the poem. ‘His composition serves up a gallimaufry of previously loved formulae, sound bites chewed on, flaunted, but not always fully digested.’⁷ Indeed, much early criticism of Andreas explored the tension between the poem’s narrative source, that is, the story of Andrew’s adventures as the poet probably found it in a Latin text, and its poetic sources, those Old English poems that the Andreas poet plundered for phrases. Already in the nineteenth century, scholars noticed the overlap between Andreas, Beowulf, and the poems of Cynewulf, and attempted to establish whether the cause was common authorship or borrowing.⁸ Faced with the counterargument that phrases or formulas common to Andreas and other poems might simply be part of the inherited stock of early English heroic poetry, those who supported the theory of direct borrowing pointed to the ungainly, even ungrammatical, ways these elements appeared in Andreas. If it seemed logical and natural for the Beowulf poet to say he had never heard of a boat more splendidly laden with treasure when describing the lushly outfitted burial ship of Scyld Scefing, it was obviously nonsensical for the Andreas poet to make nearly the same hyperbolic statement about the boat steered by Christ: his passenger, Andrew, had, after all, just explained that he had no money for the fare.⁹ It was appropriate for Hygelac to offer his men ‘hund þusenda/ landes ond locenra beaga’ (2994b–95a, a hundred thousand’s worth of land and linked rings),¹⁰ but it was surprising when Andrew complained to the ship’s helmsman:

As Krapp and Schaar note, the line ‘landes ne locenra beaga’ is modified from Beowulf but remains ungrammatical in its new context. In the epic, the nouns are in the genitive because they are governed by ‘þusenda’, while in Andreas, they follow a list of nouns in the accusative.¹¹ This type of apparently negligent borrowing led scholars such as Satyendar Das to declare the composer of Andreas ‘a poet of a very low order, who … introduced fine situations and descriptions after the manner of the previous poetry for the mere love of a fine phrase’.¹²

Despite Leonard Peters’ 1951 argument that any similarities between Andreas and Beowulf can be traced back either to the Praxeis or to conventional Anglo-Saxon poetic formulas,¹³ recent scholarship has reinforced the view that Andreas features deliberate borrowings from both Beowulf and the Cynewulfian poems. In several articles, Anita Riedinger strengthens our understanding of the Andreas–Beowulf connection by comparing their shared formulas and formulaic sets to the corpus of Old English poetry. She argues that the poems share many formulas that do not appear elsewhere in the poetic corpus, that Andreas borrowed from Beowulf, and that the pattern of borrowing – adapting heavily from certain sections of Beowulf while ignoring others – suggests a poet working with a written version of the earlier epic.¹⁴ Most thorough and conclusive is Alison Powell’s 2002 unpublished Cambridge dissertation. Using concordance software to isolate significant parallels between the poems, that is, unique parallels between poems and within Andreas featuring verbatim repetition, Powell comes to several conclusions.¹⁵ She demonstrates that the Andreas poet has a ‘tendency to recall phrases, collocations and passages’ from earlier in the poem, that the poet clearly borrows from Beowulf, often in clusters of echoes, and that he borrows heavily from the signed works of Cynewulf too.¹⁶ More interestingly, Powell shows that Andreas borrows in different ways: its parallels with Beowulf tend to attract attention, or in her words, ‘demonstrate a concern with contrast, perspective and irony’, while borrowings from Cynewulf tend to be free of irony, worked more smoothly into the texture of the poetry.¹⁷ The nature of the relationships between Andreas and its poetic sources now seems relatively clear. The question remaining is how to interpret them.

Readers more generous to Andreas than its early critics have seen in the poet’s method a creative reworking of traditional formulas, whether due to a narrative strategy of increasing the drama and tension of certain episodes, as a mode of adapting the so-called Germanic heroic vocabulary to the tenets of Christian faith, or even as a nudge to allegorical interpretation.¹⁸ Likewise, one of the major ways of recovering Andreas from its difficult critical past has been to read its incongruities of plot and diction, the quirky elements it inherited from its apocryphal source along with puzzling alterations that seem to be original to the poem, as elements in a carefully constructed typological narrative. Inspired by Thomas D. Hill’s article on figural narrative in Andreas in 1969, a host of scholars have dug up scriptural and patristic sources, echoes, and explications for cruces large and small in Andreas.¹⁹ At its best, typological criticism illuminates how the poetic craft of Andreas serves its theological message, as in Lisa Kiser’s sensitive reading of how paths and roads depicted in the poem literalise the Christian motif of the via, or ‘way’, of Christ. But such studies also tend to smooth over Andreas’ quirks and interpretative problems in their attempts to recover an orthodox message of devout Christianity.²⁰ They bring Andreas into line with the conventions of other hagiographic and religious writing, portraying the often-maladroit Andrew as an effective saint and imitator of Christ.

Teaching in Andreas

As we might expect from a hagiography, Andreas is deeply interested in the teaching of Christian faith. It is rife with scenes of pedagogy: Christ teaches the Jews, Andrew teaches his men, Christ teaches Andrew, Andrew’s men teach him, the devil teaches the Mermedonians, and finally Andrew teaches them too. What we might not expect is how frequently teaching fails. Critics have recognised Andrew’s less-than-heroic behaviour in the narrative: David Hamilton notes the irony of Andrew talking about how Christ revealed himself through miracles without recognising that he is speaking to Christ himself, Ivan Herbison describes Andrew’s ‘moments of weakness and vulnerability’ but maintains that the saint remains a model, and Edward Irving, Jr remarks on the comic effect of Andrew’s complaints after his torture.²¹ Andrew’s repeated stumbles speak to a nuanced view of baptism and conversion, as Amity Reading has argued, one in which ‘turning’ to Christian faith is an ongoing process rather than a single, completed event.²² Reading’s article convincingly explains much of the poem’s interest in failure: Jews, Mermedonians, and Andrew himself represent varieties of incompletely converted Christian subjects.²³ But Andreas is not only interested in the ends of education; it is also deeply attentive to its methods. Over the course of its many pedagogical moments, the poem introduces several teaching techniques, only to show them founder.

When Andrew first appears, he is presented as a holy teacher; in Achaia he ‘leode lærde on lifes weg’ (170, taught the people the path of life). When God commands him to travel to Mermedonia, Andrew becomes stunningly ignorant, claiming that an angel might know the way to that land, but he does not. He does not know any friends in the strange land (198b, ne synt me winas cuðe), nor does he know the minds of men there (199b–200a, ne þær æniges wat/ hæleða gehygdo), and anyway, he does not even know how to get there the way an angel would. Despite being a teacher who shows others ‘the way’, when asked to save Matthew he claims ignorance and impotence and attempts, quite transparently, to pass the buck.

After establishing that Andrew is ignorant despite being a teacher, the early part of the poem explores the process of teaching through miracles. Christ is depicted as a pedagogue who convinces and comforts by performing wonders; his students continue his teaching by relating the miracles in turn. When a storm breaks out at sea, the helmsman suggests to Andrew that he relate those mysteries (419a, rece þa gerynu) that Christ had performed on earth in order to comfort his men. Andrew relates Jesus’ calming of the storm, and in doing so teaches his retainers (462b, þegnas lærde). Duly soothed, they fall asleep. The helmsman then presses the point, asking Andrew why the Jews did not recognise that Christ was God despite the wonders he performed in their presence. Andrew insists that Jesus performed many miracles, and lists the typical ones: wine out of water, the multiplication of loaves and fish, healing of the dumb, deaf, and sick of limb (573–94). This is how ‘he drew people through teaching to the joyous faith’ (597b–98a, þurh lare speon/ to þam fægeran gefean). Still, despite Andrew’s insistence that Jesus adequately taught through the performance of wonders, the Jews refused to learn:

The apostle seems amazed at this inability to learn on the part of the Jews, describing them as having a ‘tweogende mod’ (771b, a doubting mind). Andrew Scheil has argued that this representation of Jews is typically ‘anti-Judaic rhetoric of spiritual and mental deficiency’.²⁴ While this is true, at this point in the narrative, Andrew has also doubted Christ’s power. His narration of the miracles Jesus performed while alive suggests that he observed them firsthand. Despite having witnessed these wonders, and having seen in them a sign ‘that the living God never abandons a champion on the earth, if his courage avails’ (459–60, þæt næfre forlæteð lifgende God/ eorl on eorðan, gif his ellen deah), when Andrew was asked to obey God’s command, he did not believe in the lord’s omnipotence or support. The poem is anti-Judaic to be sure, but it is more than that, since Christ fails to teach anyone with his miracles, including his own apostle.²⁵ Despite seeming to excoriate the ‘blindness’ of the Jews,²⁶ Andreas throws doubt on the very idea that faith can be taught through miracles.

When Andrew awakens outside Mermedonia, he recognises his error. He prays, describing his failure as a lack of knowledge, perception, and recognition, all concepts denoted by the verb ongietan, a key term in the poem. The word is repeated, emphasising the point that Andrew has suffered from spiritual and intellectual blindness. ‘Nu ic … ongiten hæbbe’ (897, now I … have understood) he states, although when he stepped on the ship he ‘ongitan ne cuðe’ (901b, could not recognise) Christ. Most of all, he claims that he now grasps Christ’s ability to comfort and help his followers. Christ then appears to him, and Andrew once again chastises himself for talking too much and understanding too little, for not being able to recognise the good man on the sea voyage (922–23a, þæt ic þe swa godne ongitan ne meahte/ on wægfære). Andrew’s dramatic recognition of his mistake is interesting in two respects. First, in the poem’s analogues, Jesus comforts Andrew by telling him that he did not sin.²⁷ In Andreas, Jesus claims instead that he did not sin as much as when he refused his original request to travel to Mermedonia. That is, in the Old English poem, Andrew sins twice, first by doubting Christ’s power to help him, then by misrecognising the Lord himself. The second point is that Andrew’s language continues the vocabulary of perception and knowledge so central to the poem as a whole. He was stubborn and ignorant before the sea journey, dense while being catechised on the boat, but now he claims to have learned his lesson. Christ confirms that the miracle of the sea passage has now taught Andrew the extent of divine power. He is now ready to be a teacher to the heathen Mermedonians.

In order to help him do so, Christ introduces a second type of pedagogy: instruction by example. He informs Andrew that he will be tortured and admonishes Andrew to bear his pain by remembering Christ’s travails, in short, to accomplish his mission through imitatio Christi.²⁸ Christ explicitly calls his own suffering a model lesson or bysen for his disciples, promising Andrew that in following his example, he will convert the Mermedonians:

When he comes to be tortured by the Mermedonians, Andrew succeeds in his mission, at least for a while. On the first day of his persecution, Andrew still has faith: ‘Hæfde him on innan/ ellen untweonde’ (1241b–42a, he had inside him courage undoubting). The second day, despite weeping loudly, Andrew delivers a model oration, affirming his belief that Christ will not abandon him as long as he stays true to the lord’s teachings. Even the devil, when he inevitably appears, understands Andrew to be claiming the land by imitating Christ’s passion on the cross, highlighting the pedagogic aspect of imitatio Christi by remarking that Andrew behaves ‘swa dyde lareow þin’ (1321b, as did your teacher).

On the third day, Andrew’s attempt to imitate Christ fails. Torture gets the better of him, and he begins to call to God sad-hearted, or ‘geomormod’ (1398a). His complaint is in one sense evocative, firmly in the tradition of the Anglo-Saxon lament, often the lyric outpourings of speakers who are geomor. Read another way, however, Andrew is petulant, shockingly associating his despair with Christ’s weakness:

The penultimate line of this passage, with its alliteration on ‘þ’ emphasising ‘þry’ (three) and ‘þolian’ (suffering), reveals how Andrew perceives the magnitude of his pain: Christ suffered on the cross for only one day, after all, while Andrew is being put through three days of torture. To put this in context, Tertullian encouraged martyrs to demonstrate both their faith and God’s power by suffering stoically.²⁹ An Anglo-Saxon reader or hearer of Andreas might have thought of Vincent, described by Prudentius in his Peristephanon as ‘tanto laetior/ omni vacantem nubilo/ frontem serenam luminat’ (125–27, all the more cheerful, his serene face beaming without a trace of gloom) even as his torturers became exhausted, or of Bede’s St Alban, who bore his beatings ‘patienter … immo gaudenter’ (patiently … indeed joyfully).³⁰ Not only is Andrew not impassible like most saints, but he goes on to remind Christ that he had promised his disciples that their bodies would not be harmed ‘if we would follow your teaching’ (1424, gif we þine lare læstan woldon). He describes his fallen hair, slit sinews, and spent blood, implying that Christ has not made good on his word. He even twice wishes for death. Unlike other saints, however, he does not ask to die in order to enjoy the crown of martyrdom or to be joined with God in heaven. In Andrew’s case, the pain is simply too much to bear: ‘Is me feorhgedal/ leofre mycle þonne þeos lifcearo!’ (1427b–28, death is dearer to me than this wretched life) he finally exclaims.

This would-be exemplary passion follows a similar strategy to the earlier teaching of faith through miracles. Here, again, is a carefully constructed scene of pedagogy, but one that allows the close reader to see fissure lines. Frederick Biggs sees in Andrew’s passion a perfect imitation of Christ’s. His ‘geomormod’ echoes the dying Jesus’ ‘geomor’, and he even expresses his dejection with the words Christ spoke on the cross.³¹ It is true that, as on his sea voyage, Andrew remembers a scene from the life of Christ, but it remains questionable what he understands from it. For this quote from Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me’, is itself a quotation of the first line of Psalm 22, or Psalm 21 in the Septuagint numbering. It has long been debated whether Christ adopts David’s lament to express despair, or if he is citing the beginning of a psalm because it ends with confidence in God: ‘he hath not slighted nor despised the supplication of the poor man. Neither hath he turned away his face from me: and when I cried to him he heard me.’³² Late antique and medieval commentators on the Gospels and Psalms offered a variety of interpretations: in his commentary on Matthew, Jerome notes that the psalm refers to the Saviour rather than to David or Esther, and argues that the ‘verborum humilitatem et querimonias derelicti’ (the humility of the words and the complaints of the abandoned one) are not to be wondered at, because they demonstrate the sin or ‘scandalum’ of the crucifixion of God.³³ Elsewhere, he claims that Christ recited the entire psalm while on the cross (animaduertimus totum psalmum a Domino in cruce posito decantari).³⁴ Augustine points out that God had not forsaken Christ, since he himself was God (non enim dereliquerat illum Deus, cum ipse esset Deus). Instead, Christ spoke to draw the attention of Christians to the fact that the prophetic psalm was written about him.³⁵ Cassiodorus writes that the lament is meant to express Christ’s humanity, but also suggests that Christ was confused or agitated by his impending death.³⁶ Bede echoes Jerome, adding that Christ showed the fragility of his body, while maintaining the strength and wisdom of God.³⁷ What seems clear is that Andrew ignores the psalm’s promise of divine aid, as well as the fact that Jesus’ call makes good on the messianic prophecy Christians read into the Psalms.

While Christ does heal Andrew’s body and transform his blood into flowers, Andrew’s passion remains a scene of failed learning. When Andrew awoke on the beach and realised that he had misrecognised and underestimated Christ, we seemed to have witnessed the successful education of an apostle, one who would then use what he had learned to teach the heathens. Unfortunately, Andrew’s not-quite-brave suffering has no effect on the Mermedonians. In a typical passion, members of the audience – be they individuals or multitudes – are moved by the saint’s miraculous endurance to convert to Christianity. In Andreas, precisely none of the Mermedonians convert. Healed from his wounds, Andrew releases a devastating flood that kills most of them, and the remaining few are terrorised into accepting baptism. Even then, Andrew seems an inadequate teacher, eager to leave his new flock: Christ must appear to him one last time to convince him to spend a week with the former cannibals, teaching them the faith and establishing a bishop to lead them.

Andreas carefully dismantles not only the conventions of hagiography, but also pedagogical commonplaces. The demonstration of miracles fails to convince not only the Jews, which we might expect, but also one of Christ’s disciples and a saint in his own right. Andrew’s careful emulation of Christ’s passion reveals his lack of understanding of Christ’s words. Despite Christ’s prediction that this suffering will teach, it converts no one. Indeed, the only typically medieval pedagogic notion Andreas seems to uphold is the effectiveness of violence and fear. The point, however, is not that teaching is impossible. Rather, Andreas presents education as a dynamic process of forgetting and recollection, doubt and faith. Andrew does not simply know what he has learned, but repeatedly forgets, makes mistakes, misunderstands. Christ appears several times to teach him, and he does so not by presenting new information, but by reminding Andrew of what he has already seen and comprehended.

There is, however, a pedagogical method that accounts for the falters and stumbles we find in Andreas. This is the theory that we learn by recollecting, by answering questions and drawing on knowledge already present. It would be convenient to claim it as the only effective, or at least the most effective, form of teaching in the poem, but that is not so. According to the logic of my reading it fails, just as do miracles and imitatio Christi; only a stunning act of violence succeeds in thoroughly teaching and converting. And yet this is the most important kind of pedagogy represented, at once closely linked to the other forms of teaching in the narrative, a clue to the interpretation of some of the stranger scenes in the poem, and a key to the poetics of Andreas as a whole. Moreover, as a set of ideas about how the human mind works, it accounts for the very failure of teaching and belief.

Learning by Remembering

The doctrine of recollection, or anamnesis, was developed by Plato in three of his dialogues, the Meno, the Phaedo, and the Phaedrus. Dominic Scott explains it succinctly:

In his dialogue De magistro, ‘On the teacher’, Augustine adapts Platonic anamnesis to a theory of Christian teaching. Rather than imagining the student as a blank slate on which the teacher inscribes material to be learned, or as a vessel to be filled up with knowledge – both metaphors for teaching passed down through the ages – Augustine argues that human teachers only draw out knowledge that is already present within the learner. His claim is based on an argument that it is impossible to teach the unknown using language, or more broadly, signs; signs can only point to what is already known. When human teachers use linguistic signs to ‘teach’, they are really only directing the student through a process of introspection.³⁹ The true teacher, the one who placed the wisdom there in the first place, is Christ.

De magistro was not a popular work in Anglo-Saxon England. It appears in a tenth-century manuscript from Canterbury, and the title is cited by Aldhelm.⁴⁰ More likely conduits for the idea were Augustine’s Soliloquies and Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, both attested in multiple Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, and both rendered into Old English as part of King Alfred’s translation programme.⁴¹ The Latin originals of these texts are similar in a number of ways; both are dialogues interested in the power of philosophy to heal and illuminate. Boethius knew the work of Augustine well, and it has been proposed that he wrote the Consolation as a kind of sequel to Augustine’s dialogues Contra academicos, De beata vita, and De ordine, using the form of the Soliloquies.⁴² The Old English translations are even closer. As Thomas Carnicelli and Nicole Discenza have shown, the Old English Consolation shows the influence of the Latin Soliloquies, while the Old English Soliloquies show the influence of both Latin and Old English Consolations. So similar are the two translations in phrasing and translation strategy that most scholars believe them to be the work of a single author.⁴³

Augustine’s ideas about recollection versus divine illumination change throughout his life, but in the Soliloquies at least, he claims that good students of the liberal arts ‘illas … in se oblivione obrutas eruunt discendo’ (in the process of learning, dig up the knowledge buried in oblivion within them).⁴⁴ The Alfredian translation of the Soliloquies is loose – the translator adds a third book to finish the job Augustine left incomplete – but it retains the concept of anamnesis. Reason asks Augustine why he will not believe in the immortality of the soul despite the fact that Christ and his apostles repeatedly taught the doctrine in many words and ‘myd manegum bysnum and tacnum’ (89, with many examples and signs). This pedagogical failure recalls the similar problem in Andreas of teaching by example, or of Augustine’s treatment of teaching in De magistro. Augustinus claims to believe after all, adding ‘æall þis ic wiste þeah ær, ac ic hyt forgeat, swa ic ondrede æac þæt ic ðis do’ (89, yet I knew all of this before, but I forgot it, just as I fear that I will forget this). A few lines later, he repeats a similar idea: ‘eala, ic eom myd earmlicre ofergiotolnesse ofseten, þæt ic hyt ne myhte gemunan swa cuð swa hyt me ær wæs’ (90, alas, I am oppressed by a pitiable forgetfulness, that I cannot remember it, however known it was to me before). Reason’s advice is a turn inward: ‘sec nu on ðe selfum ða bysena and þa tacnu, and þonne gearu witan þe ðu ær woldest witan, þæt ic ðe rehte be ðam uttran bysinum’ (90, seek now those examples and those signs in yourself, and then readily know what you wanted to know before, which I explained to you with external examples).

The doctrine of recollection is also transmitted in Boethius’ Consolation, most notably in Book 3 metrum 11, where it is explicitly ascribed to Plato, and in Book 5 metrum 3.⁴⁵ In 5m3, Boethius describes the incomplete forgetfulness of the embodied soul: ‘nunc membrorum condita nube/ non in totum est oblita sui’ (22–23, now the mind is shrouded in the clouds of the body, but it has not wholly forgotten itself).⁴⁶ In 3m11, the person who searches for the truth with a deep mind (1, Quisquis profunda mente vestigat verum) is advised to turn the light of inner vision on himself (3, in se revolvat intimi lucem visus). The seed of truth within him can be awakened by learning and, as Plato’s Muse reminds, ‘quisque discit immemor recordatur’ (16, whatever is learned is a recollection of something forgotten).

The Boethian metres were first translated into prose Old English, and then partially re-versified; 3m11 is translated into both prose and verse, while 5m3 is left out of both.⁴⁷ In the prose version, Wisdom teaches that truth must be found ‘mid inneweardan mode’ (i.330, with inner mind) comparing intellectual illumination to observing the sun: ‘Þonne mæg he swiðe raþe ongitan ealle þæt yfel and þæt unnet þæt he ær on his mode hæfde, swa sweotole swa ðu miht þa sunnan geseon’ (i.330, then he can very quickly perceive all the evil and vanity that he had in his mind before, as clearly as you can see the sun). Like Augustine, Boethius, and even more so the Old English Boethius, understands the process of introspection to be aided by catechism and teaching:

Through Boethius and Augustine, Anglo-Saxons had access to a theory of pedagogy that assumed truth, wisdom, or knowledge was already within the learner, and could be brought out of him or her through questioning. Of course, this was also widespread practical knowledge among Christians. The tradition of dialogues, especially of those composed of questions and answers, attests to this. The Prose Solomon and Saturn and Adrian and Ritheus are good examples of this catechetical instruction, as is Alcuin’s Disputatio Pippini cum Albino.⁴⁸ Indeed, in the Disputatio de rhetorica et de uirtutibus, Alcuin has Charlemagne declare that ‘interrogare sapienter est docere: et si alter sit qui interrogat, alter qui docet, ex uno tamen, hoc est sapientiae fonte, utrisque sensus procedit’ (to ask questions wisely is to teach. And if one person asks, and the other teaches, still the ideas of both come from the same place, that is, from the font of wisdom).⁴⁹ Even the Anglo-Latin enigmata and Old English Riddles attest to the pedagogical utility of veiling what is known and then encouraging the learner to uncover it.

The idea of teaching by asking and learning by remembering was, in other words, a common one in Anglo-Saxon England. The Andreas poet could have discovered it in many places; as a literate Christian he probably was educated to some extent in this fashion. In the following section I intend to argue that he found it articulated in the specific form of anamnesis in Cynewulf’s Elene, a known source for the poem, and in the Latin text of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, which has not to my knowledge been discussed together with Andreas.⁵⁰ He then used his understanding of anamnesis to emphasise the process of learning through recollection also contained in his narrative source, sometimes changing it only slightly, sometimes inserting significant Boethian material. Finally, as further evidence for the Boethianism of recollection in Elene and Andreas, I will suggest that the versifier of the Metres of Boethius drew on their precise phraseology to explain the process of anamnesis.

Cynewulf’s Elene

The Andreas poet borrowed heavily from Elene, a narrative poem about the search for the True Cross.⁵¹ Elene also survives only in the Vercelli Book, and it is ascribed to one of the few named Old English poets, Cynewulf, considered to have been active anywhere from the first half of the ninth century to the tenth century.⁵² Cynewulf’s legendary, and sometimes epic, poem about Helen’s quest for the True Cross is structured around the inquisitive saint’s search for knowledge of a particular sort, namely, the burial place of the Cross. However, the poem is not only concerned with the answer to this question: it also explores the ways individuals seek, gain, and are occasionally kept from knowledge. It is, in other words, a poem about the desire for and process of learning.⁵³

The poem begins with Constantine, who is rescued in the midst of a losing battle by a vision of the Cross. He gathers an assembly of wise men to explain the symbol to him. Their book smarts are of little avail, but those few who had been taught by baptism enlighten the curious king as to the meaning of the sign. Converted to Christianity, he sends his mother, Helen, to search for the relic. Helen, once in Jerusalem, calls together the three thousand Jews who best know the law and the mysteries of the Lord (280–81), then narrows this group to a thousand, then to five hundred, until she finally reaches a man named Judas. Judas really does know something about the Cross, having been told by his father the meaning of Jesus’ crucifixion. Helen threatens the Jews with burning, and, in increasing frustration, imprisons Judas in a well and starves him there until he relents. When God answers his prayer for help in finding the Rood with a well-placed wisp of smoke, he is also converted to the Christian faith. In these stories of three converts eager for Christian truth, Cynewulf repeatedly examines the linked processes of learning and conversion. At the end of Elene, the aged poet-speaker reflects on his own sorrows, on the divine illumination granted to him, and his meditation on the story of the Cross.

The poem is, as many scholars have already remarked, about searching and finding. It is not, however, about looking for something new. Rather, Elene is structured around a quest to find a precious object which had previously been available and now is lost. This much is obvious, but what is less obvious is that the three major scenes of conversion and education in the poem, those of Constantine, Judas, and the poet-speaker, are shaped along similar lines. Each is portrayed as learning the power of the true Cross twice: first through signs, then through experience. It is only through experience that they come to believe or understand what was already in their minds. And although Elene is filled with wise men and teachers, including, in some sense, Helen herself, their role tends to be limited either to intellectual midwifery – they help bring forth what is already within the student – simple ignorance, or outright violence.

The first scene of pedagogy is Constantine’s conversion. The Cross is revealed to him in a dream and described by an angelic messenger; he recognises its efficacy on the battlefield; it is upon returning home that he seeks to learn from wise men what god the Cross symbolises. In one sense, he seeks teachers because of his ignorance; looked at in another way, however, he has earthly instructors explain for him a sign he has already seen, one introduced directly into his mind by divine means.⁵⁴ This much is to be found in Cynewulf’s source text, the Acta Cyriaci.⁵⁵ Helen’s interrogation of Judas is in it too, but Cynewulf elaborates his source at this point a great deal. When Helen threatens Judas with death if he does not reveal where the precious Cross was buried, the Latin version of his response reads:

Judas’ response in the Old English is more loquacious:

Whereas the Latin Judas makes a communal excuse for his people, claiming they cannot know past events, the Old English Judas takes the question personally. He reflects on his age with respect to the historical event of the Crucifixion and burial of the Cross, his own inability even to figure out how long ago it was, and most importantly, on his inability to recall something that is not there. Here we see how Cynewulf takes a theme already present in his source and psychologises it. This is emphatically no longer about the Jewish people hiding the True Cross, but about Judas as an individual – he uses the word ic, or ‘I’, six times in ten lines – and his inner mental process.⁵⁷

If anything, Judas’ elaborate counting and repeated emphasis that he cannot know the distant past only serve to highlight the irony of the situation: he is lying. He already knows from his father the meaning of the Cross, and seems to have a sense of where it was hidden. Despite claiming his youth as an excuse, it was in fact when he was a boy that his father told him of the Crucifixion. Indeed, Judas’ grandfather and father were both baptised, and in a chronological impossibility, his uncle was the martyr Stephen.⁵⁸ Earlier in the poem, Judas has related this story to his fellow Jews, concluding:

In both the Latin and Old English texts, Helen replies by asking how the Jews know about the exploits of the Trojans, since their war also happened long ago, and in both Judas replies that they read about it in books. But Cynewulf wants us to pay attention to the way Judas learns, which is decidedly not through books. He is taught the truth by his father and for some reason he does not follow through on it: perhaps he forgets, or perhaps hearing the truth is simply not enough to believe it. He will, indeed, have to find the truth in his own mind, as the phrase ‘findan on fyrhðe’ (641a) indicates, and he will do so through a direct experience of the Cross.

I propose that Cynewulf recognised that the theme of discovery present in the Acta Cyriaci was echoed in the ways Constantine and Judas learn, rediscovering the Cross they have already been told about, and that he decided to expand the poem to underscore this as part of a personal process of education.⁵⁹ He does so even more obviously in his epilogue, which is a wholly original addition to the text.⁶⁰ Near the end of the poem, the speaker, an old man, reflects on his own sorrow before receiving divine wisdom.

This epilogue has – justly – proven difficult to interpret. The speaker describes, first, not having known the truth clearly until wisdom was opened in his mind ‘Þurh ða mæran miht’ (1241a, through the glorious power). His first illumination involves no books or conversations with other people: it is a wholly internal intellectual process enabled by divine power. A few lines later, he refers to God as bestowing instruction upon him through a lucid or bright form, thus releasing him from his sinful state.

The next part of the process is the recognition of the Cross in books, but the passage describing it is difficult to make sense of without the idea of learning through recollection we have already seen in the poem. Antonina Harbus explains that ‘his own memory of the Cross was revealed through books which comprised the literary tradition of the Cross’.⁶¹ This begs the questions of how the speaker might have a memory of a Cross he never saw, and what it might mean for books to ‘reveal’ it if he already has it in his memory. The narrator’s ambiguous statement can be explained in two ways: first, he may be saying that he had the Cross in mind because of its role in the Passion, and later read of the miracle surrounding its inventio; the other option, and one not necessarily incompatible with the first, is that he remembers the Cross because of the direct instruction he received from the Lord – the signs in books remind him of wisdom he has already been granted.⁶² What Cynewulf adds to the story of the search for the True Cross is another scene of layered, multiple teaching, one in which the individual rediscovers the divinely granted wisdom already present in their memory.⁶³ The signs people use to communicate, in this case in books, do not so much teach wisdom as provoke the learner to search for it.⁶⁴

Anamnesis and Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy

The Andreas poet, who borrowed extensively from the works of Cynewulf, would have been familiar with the idea of learning through recollection as it is presented in Elene. Indeed, a number of echoes of the Christian-Platonic versions of anamnesis are at play in Andreas, namely: the difficulty of teaching through visible signs, the idea of Christ as the ultimate or first teacher, the problem of forgetting, and the focus on teaching by asking questions that prompt the learner to turn into his mind. We begin to see these themes on the sea voyage to Mermedonia. When a storm arises, the men are frightened, and although the helmsman offers to take them ashore, they refuse to leave their ‘leofne lareow’ (404a, dear teacher). Scholars often discuss this scene in terms of loyalty to one’s lord, but it is also explicitly one of teaching.⁶⁵ The helmsman suggests Andrew comfort his disciples by recollecting how Christ taught:

This pedagogical mise en abyme plays out in a few ways. Andrew comforts his men by reminding them of an act of teaching that has already taken place, relating to them the miracle in which Jesus calms the storm.⁶⁶ In doing so, he is also guided to teach himself by remembering the miracle he witnessed. However, this is not really the ultimate teacher of Augustine’s De magistro, nor, obviously, is it a case of the forgotten memory of the soul’s existence before the body. Rather, the Christ of Andrew’s memory is a mortal under lyfte, ‘under the sky’, and if we read reordberend as applying to him, one who is consigned to teaching through verbal signs.⁶⁷

This passage is found in the Praxeis and Casanatensis in very similar terms. While it might have reminded the poet of the doctrine of anamnesis, its inclusion does not prove influence. A slight alteration in another passage, however, does show the poet’s continued interest in pedagogy through catechesis and recollection. When the helmsman keeps on questioning Andrew about Christ’s teaching, Andrew begins to get annoyed:

This passage is present in the other versions of the story, but with a slight difference. In the Greek Praxeis, Andrew asks, ‘O man, I see you have a great spirit of wisdom. How long will you tempt me?’⁶⁸ In the Latin Casanatensis manuscript, Andrew asks, ‘O homo video te habere spiritum magnum sapientie, quam diu temptas me?’⁶⁹ (O man, I see that you have a great spirit of wisdom, how long will you test me?). The focus in both of these versions is on Andrew’s feeling that he is being tested. The Old English strikes a slightly different note: Andrew is not annoyed at being tried, but at being asked questions by someone who already knows the answers. He resembles a student who has begun to suspect he is the object of a subtle pedagogic method. By calling the helmsman’s words wrætlic, a word that appears twenty-one times in the Old English Riddles, he may also be drawing on the tradition of Latin and Old English enigmata, with the pedagogical associations it carried in Anglo-Saxon England.

Scholars have noted the irony and sophisticated narrative technique of this passage as well as of the entire exchange between Andrew and Christ.⁷⁰ Andrew has spent much of the sea voyage being amazed that the helmsman has never heard of Christ’s miracles, but now he is starting to suspect that the helmsman is not as ignorant as he had seemed. The poet’s change also shows that he understands the story to be fundamentally about recollection of what is already known. The scene plays wittily on the notion of Christ as teacher. Disguised as a regular person, Christ teaches Andrew in the ways that mortals can, prompting him to search his own memory. The lesson his pupil remembers was one performed by Christ, the ultimate teacher, during his time incarnate.

This evidence suggests that the poet recognised the pedagogical use of asking and answering, but this alone need not be specifically Boethian. The Andreas poet did, however, respond to Boethius in direct ways, using the natural imagery of the Consolation to reinforce his argument about the vicissitudes of human cognition in the face of divine power. A distinctly Boethian moment occurs about halfway through the poem, when Andrew and his men fall asleep on the boat and Christ deposits them on the Mermedonian shore. In the analogues closest to Andreas, the transition from sleeping and waking happens quickly: in the Praxeis and the Old English homily there is a brief suggestion that Andrew and his men slept at night, in Casanatensis there is no sense of the time of day whatsoever.⁷¹ The Andreas poet inserts a description of the sunrise:

Immediately after waking, Andrew recognises that he is near Mermedonia, sees his men sleeping on the shore, awakens them, and tells them who had transported them. The word oncneow is used twice: Andrew ‘oncneow’ (perceived) the heathen city, and as he tells his men, he ‘oncneow’ (recognised) the lord’s words on the boat. It is, in other words, a scene of physical and intellectual awakening.

The choice to describe a sunrise at greater length might be considered a poetic flight of fancy. But the details of the description are odd. This is a sunrise that looks like the calming of a storm, with shadows withdrawing, dark under the clouds. Nighttime darkness is not caused by clouds, of course, but the gloom of a storm is. The half-lines describing the clouds are themselves enigmatic, recalling the Dream of the Rood’s moody description of the death of Christ: ‘sceadu forðeode,/ wann under wolcnum’ (54b–55a, the darkness went forth, dark under the clouds), albeit with the contrary meaning.⁷² The phrase ‘wederes blæst’ is most obviously apposed to ‘hador heofonleoma’ and best translated as ‘the sky’s flame’. However, blæst can also mean a ‘gust of wind’, suggesting at a secondary level the breeze that blows clouds away to reveal the sun.

The poet introduces the imagery of sunshine after a storm at this point to highlight Andrew’s sudden lucidity after his spiritual turbulence. Throughout the Consolation of Philosophy, he would have found storm clouds and sunshine employed as metaphors for mental states. In 1p2, Philosophy draws on cloud imagery to describe Boethius’ inability to recognise her or know himself: ‘Sui paulisper oblitus est. Recordabitur facile, si quidem nos ante cognoverit; quod ut possit, paulisper lumina eius mortalium rerum nube caligantia tergamus’ (12–13, He has forgotten himself a little. He will quickly be himself again when he recognises me. To bring him to his senses, I shall quickly wipe the dark cloud of mortal things from his eyes). In the subsequent metrum, 1m3, Boethius lyrically develops the metaphor:

Here we have darkness of night and storm, as in the Andreas passage, a violent, lashing wind that parallels the ambiguous blæst, followed by dazzling sunshine. The poem over, Boethius emphasises in 1p3 that this is a figure of recognition, and as in Andreas, this is recognition of who his teacher is: ‘Haud aliter tristitiae nebulis dissolutis hausi caelum et ad cognoscendam medicantis faciem mentem recepi’ (1–3, In a similar way, I too was able to see the heavens again when the clouds of my sorrow were swept away; I recovered my judgement and recognised the face of my physician).

These are the closest parallels to the sunrise in Andreas, but the metaphor cluster of storm and sunshine occurs frequently enough in the Consolation that the poet may simply be drawing on a remembered motif rather than gesturing to a particular passage. At 1p6, Philosophy notes that men who have lost the truth suffer under ‘perturbationum caligo’ (56, cloud of anxiety), but will use gentle remedies ‘ut dimotis fallacium affectionum tenebris splendorem verae lucis possis agnoscere’ (58–59, so that when the darkness of deceptive feeling is removed you may recognise the splendour of true light). In 3m9, Boethius prays to God that his mind may find light: ‘Dissice terrenae nebulas et pondera molis/ atque tuo splendore mica’ (25–26, Burn off the fogs and clouds of earth and shine through in thy splendour). In one of the metres describing anamnesis, 3m11, the process of recollection is described in similar terms: ‘dudum quod atra texit erroris nubes/ lucebit ipso perspicacius Phoebo’ (7–8, then all that was hidden by the dark cloud of error will shine more clearly than Phoebus). Other examples feature clouds as metaphors for the forgetfulness of the body, as in the passage from 5m3 cited above that begins, ‘nunc membrorum condita nube’ (22, now the mind is shrouded in the clouds of the body). Boethius’ natural imagery is a fitting choice for the Andreas poet: it echoes the earlier sea storm but in a way that incorporates the themes of recognition, recollection, and perception. However, it is also appropriate because illumination in the Consolation is, as in Andreas, a temporary condition, like the rising and setting of the sun, like stormclouds that darken the sky and then are blown away. The individual trapped in a mortal body will forget again, will need to be taught and guided back to himself once more, just as Christ must keep reminding Andrew of his mission even at the end of the poem.

The Andreas poet inserts Boethian imagery at another place in the narrative, although in this case it is not directly linked to a cognitive process. Early in the ship voyage, Andrew asks the helmsman to explain how he steers the boat so smoothly. In the analogues, Jesus replies succinctly that their smooth sailing is due to God’s favouring Andrew, as in the Praxeis: ‘Even we often sail the sea and take a risk; but since you are a disciple of this Jesus, the sea has detected that you are righteous, and it is calm and it did not stir up its waves against the boat.’⁷³ Casanatensis is similar in content, though adding that Andrew is ‘discipulus summe potestatis’ (the disciple of the greatest power).⁷⁴ In Andreas, Christ begins and ends his response to Andrew with the same remarks, but between them he inserts a distinctively Boethian praise-poem to the lord:

Whereas the analogues have Christ tell Andrew that the sea will not harm a disciple of Jesus, the Andreas poet also has him explain why. In the Consolation he would have found frequent celebration of God as creator of heavens, governor of oceans, and judge of men. Metre 1m4 of the Consolation even offers a model for the kind of virtuous man who cannot be affected by stormy seas: ‘non illum rabies minaeque ponti/ versum funditus exagitantis aestum … movebit’ (5–10, The threatening and raging ocean storms which churn the waves cannot shake him). In 1m5, Boethius prays to God, ‘stelliferi conditor orbis’ (1, creator of the star-filled universe), describing how he assigns paths for the stars, moon, and son, controls the seasons, and governs all, ‘Omnia certo fine gubernans’ (25, You govern all things, each according to its destined purpose). At this point, God’s control of the natural world is connected to his government of men, but negatively; Boethius complains that men are left to fortune, and prays:

Philosophy, however, argues at various points for God’s justice over sky, water, and the earth, that is, over human affairs. In 2m8, divine love rules over all three: ‘hanc rerum seriem ligat/ terras ac pelagus regens/ et caelo imperitans amor’ (13–15, all this harmonious order of things is achieved by love which rules the earth and the seas, and commands the heavens) while the Consolation’s best-known metre, 3m9, begins ‘O qui perpetua mundum ratione gubernas/ terrarum caelique sator’ (1–2, O God, Maker of heaven and earth, Who govern the world with eternal reason). Finally, in 4p6, Philosophy argues for divine judgement, an argument which she then expresses lyrically in 4m6:

What makes the Boethianisms of Andreas difficult to spot is the organic way they are incorporated into the story. The source narrative already contains sea storms and divine protective power, but the poet adds details like the creation of the sky and governance over men to flesh out Christ’s speech, thus locating Andrew’s survival of the storm in God’s larger binding of creation. Christ’s declaration of divine omnipotence sounds most like Philosophy’s, appropriate since he, too, teaches a forgetful, fearful disciple.

The influence of the Consolation of Philosophy on Andreas suggests that an often-overlooked detail may be more significant than previously thought. After Andrew converts the Mermedonians, he establishes ‘Platan’ as their bishop, ‘ond þriste bebead/ þæt hie his lare læston georne’ (1652b–53, and earnestly commanded them to follow his teaching eagerly). Brooks proposes that the bishop’s name is derived from the stem ‘Platon-’, but I have found no suggestions in Andreas scholarship that the poet could have had the philosopher in mind.⁷⁵ After all, a bishop named Plato appears in a rhythmical retelling of the story found in the Italian manuscript Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 1274 (Vaticanus), and is also featured in Greek and Latin recensions of the Martyrium Matthaei, another apocryphal adventure about an apostolic mission to a cannibal land.⁷⁶ But if Plato is not original to Andreas, he may still be there as the result of a choice on the poet’s part. His name appears in none of the poem’s close analogues: not in the Praxeis or Casanetensis, and not in the Old English homilies. Moreover, the Vaticanus is an eleventh-century manuscript, its narrative quite different from Andreas. Certainly, a bishop named Plato seems to have been part of the wider tradition of apostolic apocrypha, but Andreas’ use of it still stands out in its immediate context. I propose that the Andreas poet includes the bishop’s name knowing that Boethius ascribed the theory of anamnesis to Plato in 3m11 and in 3p12. He also explicitly makes his Plato an authority to be learned from, which is not the case in Vaticanus. In this, too, he follows the Consolation, where Philosophy tells Boethius that he has learned with Plato as a confirming authority: ‘cum Platone sanciente didiceris’ (96). As with his treatment of the storm imagery, the poet takes material already part of the Andrew tradition and adds a small twist. His change reveals the greater philosophical and didactic relevance of what seems, at first, a banal detail.

The Andreas poet found in Boethius (and possibly also in Augustine) an explanation for Andrew’s stumbles in faith. He found a theory of learning as dynamic process that spans forgetting, remembering, erring, and once again being prodded to learn and recollect. He understood learning as self-examination, a process of analysing one’s own perception and memory that echoed Andrew’s repeated moments of enlightenment. Even the structuring metaphor of the ‘way’ or ‘path’ in Andreas may have been influenced by the Consolation’s rich use of uia and semita as figures for philosophical method and moral path.⁷⁷ He did not, however, simply add light Boethian touches to the story. Rather, he created a poem that enacts the very pedagogy Andrew undergoes, one that prompts its readers and listeners to ask: Where is this from? Do I recognise it? Do I understand it?

After Andrew undergoes three days of torture and is healed by Christ, the narrator’s voice breaks into the poem. This is the only authorial interruption in the Old English poetic corpus, and is based on nothing in the source material. It is an enigmatic passage, but one that, I argue, connects the notion of anamnesis to the poetics of Andreas.

In this address, the poet reflects on his poetic craft; I read the ‘lytlum sticcum’ as referring to lines or half-lines of poetry, perhaps the ones he borrowed from other works. If we are right about how he wrote Andreas, the narrator here reflects on the piecemeal nature of his composition, and in doing so, draws the audience’s attention to it. He emphasises his interest in sources, origins, and the retelling of old and well-known stories such as Andrew’s. He also offers a typical modesty topos, but it contains a telling detail. The wiser man may know the story of Andrew from the source used by the Andreas poet, or even from his poem, but in order to tell it he will have to find it in his mind, ‘findan on ferðe’.

The cognitive process the poet describes is much like the one Andrew undergoes on the ship: recollecting what was already learned, then retelling it to continue a narrative tradition. Appropriately, the half-line that encapsulates this, ‘findan on ferðe’, is recollected from Elene. Judas used it in a modesty topos of his own, when he deceptively claimed he could not find in his mind knowledge that was not there. If we accept the suggestion that the Andreas poet’s discussion of little bits of poetry is a meta-reflection on his practice of textual recycling, what we have in this passage is a model for literary invention that parallels the process of teaching depicted in the poem.

‘Findan on ferðe’ sounds like it should be a common Anglo-Saxon poetic formula. From the perspective of modern English, it also sounds as if it should be an idiom for having an impression or opinion, as in ‘I found it good’, rather than a description of recollection. The Corpus of Old English reveals that it appears in only two texts other than Andreas, and in a third with a different form. It is identical in Andreas and Elene, which are both in the Vercelli Book; the poem Soul and Body I in the same manuscript has a version of the line ‘funden on ferhðe’, which in that context does seem to indicate an emotional reaction. It also appears twice in the Boethian Metre corresponding to 3m11, which describes Platonic anamensis:⁷⁸

When the poet of Metre 22 sought to express the idea of Platonic recollection in English verse, he used a line perfect for the concept, one that described finding in the mind.⁷⁹ It is not unlikely that he found it in either Elene or Andreas – though the dates make it unlikely that he found it in the Vercelli Book itself – and he recognised in the use of the phrase that it did not refer simply to an impression, but to active searching within one’s self for a forgotten truth.

A Rhetoric of Riddling

The Andreas poet found in his narrative source a story replete with scenes of pedagogy and recollection, which he interpreted in light of Platonic Christian anamnesis. He was not necessarily interested in the doctrine, for when he tells it, he tells it slant, but in the cognitive processes it implies. By extension, Andreas is a poem filled with traces of the past in the present, prompting the reader to recognise and decipher them. This obsession with survivals, relics, and leavings manifests itself in several thematic strands; I propose that each one trains the reader or listener to interpret the poetry of Andreas in a mode consistent with the pedagogy of recollection. The first issue is that of Christ’s origin, the key to his identity as the son of God. The emphasis on provenance is new to Andreas, the result of alterations and additions to the source material, and it would have primed the poem’s audience to reflect on the sources and origins of its poetic images and formulas. Closely related to Christ’s divine identity is cannibalism, a major theme in Andreas and a source for delicious puns.⁸⁰ Besides its Eucharistic echoes and suggestions of heathen barbarism and Jewish error, cannibalism serves as a figure for the poem’s textual practice of cannibalising and regurgitating the tradition.

Andreas’ use of objects also models a relationship to the past. As Denis Ferhatović has shown, the landscape of Andreas is dotted with spolia, historical objects incorporated into new physical contexts in a way that preserves their charged difference.⁸¹ Not only are there things in the story that come from the past to act in the present – a stone angel, revivified corpses, an inscribed marble column – but the very language used to describe them is often spoliated from Beowulf. Finally, light use of scriptural citation and heavy use of Cynewulfian and Beowulfian borrowings spur the reader to identify and interpret textual echoes. The reader is thus aware of the poem’s multiple origins: the apocryphal source narrative, the Bible, and Old English poetic tradition. One might describe these objects, processes, and textual citations as enigmas, and indeed, both Nathan Breen and Ferhatović have noted the poet’s use of cognitive gaps and riddles inviting confusion, rumination, and wonder.⁸² It is most accurate to say that the poet found a source narrative already replete with miniature riddles, and he made them even more puzzling and thought-provoking when he rendered them into verse. Andreas is not a poem to be absorbed passively. Even enjoying its clever wordplay or typological patterning is not enough. Andreas is a poem that calls upon its audience to reflect, question, and ruminate. It teaches its audience through dynamic recollection, just as Philosophy teaches Boethius.

One way Andreas’ interest in remembering and decoding presents itself is as an obsession with sources, beginnings, and origins. This fascination is discernible in a number of scenes, often cued by the word hwanon, or ‘whence’. For example, when Andrew describes the Jews’ disbelief in Christ’s divine descent, one rabbi points out that they have already asked whence this man comes, and his parents are the quite earthly Maria and Joseph: ‘Þæt is duguðum cuð,/ hwanon þam ordfruman æðelu onwocon’ (682b–83, that is known to the warriors, whence the lineage of that leader sprang). The Andreas poet cannot resist a pun, not when it allows him to make his point even more emphatically. The word denoting Christ here, ordfruma, can mean ‘chief, head, prince’ when applied to persons, but can also mean ‘source’ or ‘origin’. In fact, both ord and fruma can be translated as ‘beginning’ or ‘origin’ depending on context, making Christ a ‘beginning-origin’ as well as a prince, and giving the lie to the rabbi’s argument.⁸³ Just a little later, Christ commands the stone angel to speak the truth about his descent, ‘hwæt min æðelo sien’ (734b, what my lineage is). In the Praxeis and Casanatensis, Christ requests the stone to declare whether he is God or man; in Andreas, he asks it to say where he comes from.⁸⁴

The innovations in Andreas emphasise not only Christ’s parentage, but also his geographic origins. One of the Andreas poet’s strangest alterations to his source material can be found in the first seaside encounter between Andrew and the mysterious helmsman. In the Praxeis, Casanatensis, and Old English homily, Andrew asks the disguised Christ where the ship is going, and the answer is conveniently Mermedonia.⁸⁵ The phrasing of the Old English homily makes the direction explicit, with Andrew asking, ‘hwider wille ge faran’ (where do you intend to travel?). In Andreas, the direction is also clear, but surprising:

The repetition of hwanon reveals that this is no mistranslation:⁸⁶ the poet asks us to think about sources and origins of movement rather than their goals. Christ’s answer is even more surprising: ‘We of Marmedonia mægðe syndon/ feorran geferede’ (264–65a, we have travelled from afar, of/from the tribe of the Mermedonians). As Robert Boenig has pointed out, this is a momentary suggestion that Christ is, himself, a Mermedonian and even a cannibal.⁸⁷ Boenig reads this as an inversion of the normal Eucharistic relationship between Christ and his follower: Andrew might have the chance to imitate Christ by being consumed by him.⁸⁸ We might, however, intepret it another way. The horror of the Mermedonians is that they are sylfætan (175b), ‘self-eaters’.⁸⁹ They consume their own species and, when pressed, even their own countrymen and relatives. But the poem Andreas is also a sylfæta, having borrowed extensively from Beowulf and from Cynewulf’s The Fates of the Apostles, Christ II, Elene, and Juliana. We can call this mode of versification a cento, but I argue – with Aaron Hostetter – the poet is also playing with the notion of a cannibal poetics, one that regurgitates the tradition.⁹⁰ If Christ is a cannibal, even for a flickering moment, it may be because the Jesus of the Gospels is also an inveterate citer, a sylfæta of the Old Testament.⁹¹ The theme of consumption in Andreas is not only a joke, a comment on the Eucharist, or a way of establishing the Mermedonians’ monstrosity, but also the flip side of the poem’s interest in origins, memory, riddling, and the ruins of the past.

Andreas is filled with ruins and revenants. Its ancient objects and bodies texture the poem’s landscapes and take part in its actions. Whether speaking or quiet, agential or passive, these figures prompt reflection on the past and its uses. Both objects and bodies might be described as spolia, a sixteenth-century art historical term for ‘reused antiquities’, ‘borrowed … from the semantic field of war’.⁹² Spolia were originally the spoils of battle, plundered weaponry and art, but the word is now also used to describe recycled building materials and ornamentation. Ferhatović has argued that Andreas uses these manmade artifacts to reflect on divine and poetic creation. According to him, the poet deliberately leaves narratives open-ended, even confusing, to challenge readers to ‘play the game, to fill out “the blank spaces in the map”’⁹³ of Andrew’s travels and Christ’s miracles. Building on Ferhatović’s analysis, I argue that the poet uses spolia in its broader sense not just as a locus of reflection on the process of crafting, but also as a prompt to recollection.

Andrew’s movement towards Mermedonia is paralleled by his mental move backwards in time, into his own memory. Appropriately, the heathen city is inscribed with pastness. Lori Ann Garner has suggested that the tesselated buildings of Mermedonia, ‘tigelfagan trafu’ (842a), may have recalled Roman stone temples.⁹⁴ Even Andrew’s torture is partly carried out against the backdrop of ancient buildings, as he is dragged through Mermedonia along the ‘enta ærgeweorc … stræte stanfage’ (1235a, 1236a, old work of giants … streets paved with stones). These objects have occasionally confounded critics and editors. Without a trace of irony, Brooks points out that the roads in lines 1235–36 seem to be ‘Roman tesselated pavements, examples of which might have still been seen in the England of his time’, but adds that ‘the idea is foreign to the context here; the poet is perhaps using a formula inappropriately, if not consciously echoing Beowulf’.⁹⁵ Aside from the fact that an ancient city on the Black Sea is at least as good a place to find Roman roads as legendary Denmark, Brooks, I think, misses the point. The ancient objects that capture our attention in Andreas, either because they act in fantastic ways or because they ring at once familiar and foreign, are among the poem’s visual leftovers, cueing us to their sources both in the story of Andrew and in Old English verse.

The poet has chosen a narrative source that features various scenes in which the past intrudes into the present, and he uses them to explore the workings of imagination and memory. Take the stone angel, a ‘frod fyrngeweorc’ (737a, wise ancient work) that rips itself from the temple wall, speaks and walks and calls dead things to life. It can serve as a figure for the way memory works: once bidden, what was at rest becomes active, travels along various paths, and pulls even more out of the past, just as the stone angel enlivens the dead patriarchs. The revenant patriarchs are even more interesting. On the one hand, they can serve as a figure for the Jewish past of Christianity, dead but lying in wait for a command to rise again and serve a new narrative. This is one reason why figural analyses of Andreas, dated as they are methodologically, make so much sense: the poem itself imagines the text of the Old Testament as a dead letter waiting to be filled with spirit, a long-closed mouth ready to talk again upon command. This much is in the source narrative, but the Andreas poet troubles such an easy allegorisation. As Ferhatović points out, in the Praxeis, which features both the talking statue (in this case, a sphinx) and the vivified Patriarchs, Christ commands all these monstrous figures to return to their places, and they explicitly do. But in Andreas the Patriarchs are only commanded to seek heaven, and it is not clear where they or the stone angel wind up.⁹⁶ Andreas offers us a version of the past that is useable, but not easily solveable. Like the Old English Riddles, which open up multiple possible interpretations without settling on one, the spolia of Andreas are unbiddable, things to think with, but not to explain away.

The stone column that releases the genocidal flood is also a riddle with multiple solutions. As Ferhatović has noted, the fact that the prison columns seem to be inside the building but are ‘storme bedrifene’ (1494b, battered by the storm) has posed a problem for commentators. But it need not be a crux if we think of them as Roman spolia that were once outdoors, but were reused by the Mermedonians when they built their prison.⁹⁷ These columns are described as ‘eald enta geweorc’ (1495a, old work of giants), language used in Anglo-Saxon poetry to denote found objects and ruined structures. But one of the columns also bears language. Andrew addresses it and reminds it that God wrote upon it, and apparently what he inscribed was the ten-fold law he gave to Moses:

He asks the column to show whether it has understanding of any of the words God inscribed on it (1521, gif ðu his ondgitan ænige hæbbe). This pedagogical touch is original to Andreas, as is the inscription of the column itself; in the Praxeis, we are meant to understand that stone was inscribed with Moses’ laws, not the particular column in Andrew’s prison.⁹⁸ Andrew, who earlier recollected how Christ taught a carved stone to teach, uses the same method now in Mermedonia. Moreover, he imitates Christ’s pedagogy even further, asking the column whether it can understand or perceive what was already written on it by God. The word he uses for ‘understanding’ is ‘ondgite’, echoing the verb ongitan used earlier to describe both Andrew’s and the Jews’ inability to recognise Christ.

The marble column thus becomes another model for learning by recollection: like the Consolation of Philosophy’s Boethius, Elene’s Judas, and Andrew, it has forgotten itself. There are two important differences, however. What God wrote on the marble were ‘recene geryno’ (1511a, marvellous mysteries). Andrew is not simply asking the column to recall something it used to know but has forgotten, but to interpret what is inscribed on itself. This is an Anglo-Saxon twist on the pedagogy of anamnesis, suggesting that the self is a riddle to be decoded. The other innovation is the violent result of this education: a deluge that drowns many Mermedonians and terrifies the rest: ‘duguð wearð afyrhted/ þurh þæs flodes fær’ (1529b–30a, the people became frightened through the fear of the flood).

Indeed, if spolia in a broader sense represent a relationship to the past that draws things from it and sets them free in the present, they also represent a return that is frightening even as it is fascinating. When the stone angel leaps from the side of the temple and speaks, it seems wondrous, or wrætlic (740b), to the stubborn rabbis. The angel tries to use this moment of wonder to teach them the way Christ does: ‘Septe sacerdas sweotolum tacnum’ (742, it taught the priests with clear signs). But their first response after listening to the angel’s speech is silence: ‘swigodon ealle’ (762b, they were all silent). Perhaps they are overwhelmed by the stone’s argumentation, but given that they do not agree with it, this might be rather an excess of wonder, a paralysing stupor in the face of what cannot be comprehended. The Jews’ reaction to the zombie Patriarchs is even stronger. When they leave their grave:

The poet of Andreas shows us how teaching is performed by entering the memory and excavating things from the past, by asking things petrified to move and speak. But he also models possible audience reactions to these living recollections, and those reactions can be stupor and terror.

The Andreas poet’s fascination with old things that speak, or simply stand out because they are intricately crafted and a touch out of place, offers a new way of understanding his ‘cannibalising’ of Old English verse. Indeed, Andreas uses various themes – origins, cannibalism, spoliation, citation – to train its audience to reflect on the sources and meanings of things. It teaches its readers and listeners to ‘answer’ its verse the way they would an enigma, decoding but also remaining open to multiple interpretations. One might think of it as a poem composed of small riddles, metaphorically speaking, but in fact some passages function as riddles in a more concrete fashion. Alison Powell has identified multiple passages in Andreas that feature clusters of borrowings and echoes from Beowulf.⁹⁹ I propose that such clusters are deliberately composed puzzles, provocations to readers and listeners of Andreas to insert Beowulfian scenes and characters into the hagiographic narrative.

The most prominent such ‘source’ riddle occurs, appropriately enough, just as the narrator reflects on his own compositional method and then segues back into the narrative:

In the passage above, the words emphasised echo one or more formulations in Beowulf identified by Powell.¹⁰⁰ Most interesting are the multiple borrowings from the end of the epic, first, from Beowulf’s entrance into the dragon’s hall:

Second, from the passage describing how the dying hero gazes at the dragon’s hall:

I suggested earlier that ‘lytlum sticcum leoðworda dæl’ (And. 1488) may refer not simply to verse in general, but to formulas and half-lines borrowed from other poems; the thick references to Beowulf in the passage immediately following the authorial interruption are evidence for this. But more is happening here. The narrator introduces the notion of finding a story within one’s mind, and then describes his own cento-like mode of composition. Then he begins to tell an old story, or fyrnsægen, about a hero who underwent battles in a heathen city before looking upon ancient and majestic columns in a hall. Until Andrew begins to speak to one of the columns, the description of this hero and his adventures remains vague. It is an embedded riddle with two solutions. The hero may be Beowulf, who fought grim battles in a heathen city in Denmark and then gazed at the ancient ruins inside the dragon’s hall, or, of course, Andrew.

Like some of the Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book, this riddle in Andreas calls for its solution and gives hints as to how to find it. The narrator’s exclamation, ‘þæt scell æglæwra/ mann on moldan þonne ic me tælige/ findan on ferðe’ (1483b–85a, a man more learned in the law on earth than I consider myself must find that in his mind), has generally been read as a modesty topos. It is, rather, an oblique challenge to the reader wise enough to solve the riddle that follows by identifying its elements and going back to the source. It loosely resembles the beginning of Exeter Riddle 1, ‘Hwylc is hæleþa þæs horsc ond þæs hygecræftig/ þæt þæt mæge asecgan’ (1–2a, which of the men is so sharp and so sage, that he may proclaim that), the ending of Riddle 28, ‘Micel is to hycganne/ wisfæstum menn, hwæt seo wiht sy’ (12b–13, much there is to meditate on for wise men, what that creature might be), and similar phrases in Riddles 31, 32, 35, 41, 43, and 67.¹⁰¹ Furthermore, while the implication of the narrator’s interruption seems to be that the wiser man should tell the story given the author’s inability, in fact the wiser man has only one task: to find the story in his mind, that is, to recollect it. Likewise, the narrator’s meta-reflection on the composition of Andreas echoes those riddles that provide clues to their own decoding, such as Riddle 23’s ‘Agof is min noma eft onhwyrfed’ (1, ‘Agof’ is my name, turned around backwards), as well as Riddles 24 and 58. The complex literary effects intended by Andreas’ many allusions to Beowulf have yet to be substantially analysed. The riddling structure of the interruption reveals, however, that the audience was expected to recognise Beowulf as a hypotext for Andreas, and that Andreas’ echoes of the epic are part and parcel of its broader pedagogical programme.

The cognitive process behind this pedagogy is, as I have argued, recollection. There is an emotional component to it too, however, one shared by Anglo-Saxon riddles and Boethian philosophy: wonder. This is a slightly different kind of ‘wonder’ than what is usually meant today. The modern English noun ‘wonder’ has a congenial meaning, denoting curiosity, amazement, marvelling, awe, surprise. Even the verb ‘wonder’ is primarily positive, except when it means ‘to doubt’, which means discounting the truth of the thing perceived, not necessarily having a negative reaction to it. Caroline Walker Bynum has described the varieties of medieval wonder, noting that ‘the wonder-reaction ranges from terror and disgust to solemn astonishment and playful delight’, later adding ‘dread’ to the list.¹⁰² Dennis Quinn describes this richer notion of wonder in more detail in his essay on the role of wonder in the Consolation of Philosophy. He notes that one of the most prominent Greek words for wonder, thambos, derives from the idea of being struck by something … there is an exact Latin equivalent in stupor, which also has in its root the idea of being struck. The thambos–stupor words tend to stress the mental and physical manifestations of wonder – bewilderment, confusion, stupor, paralysis, silence, trembling. In this sense wonder may be associated with other emotions, especially fear, joy, love, and even shame.¹⁰³ Quinn shows that wonder, especially in the Consolation, serves as a stimulus to meditation and the search for truth. Patricia Dailey has also explored this pedagogical use of wonder in the Old English riddles, which ‘exemplify an approach to knowledge and wisdom characteristic of Anglo-Saxon England that invokes wonder to effect a salutary ordering of the relation of a person (and this person’s mind) to the surrounding world, as is the case in the Old English Boethius’.¹⁰⁴ This older sense of ‘wonder’, one that includes awe and fear in the emotional response to something surprising and amazing, is implied by the word wrætlic.

Bosworth-Toller glosses wrætlic as ‘wondrous, curious’, ‘of wondrous excellence, beautiful, noble, excellent, elegant’.¹⁰⁵ In other words, it defines it as a wholly positive aesthetic term, and this is, indeed, the way the word tends to be translated. Joshua Davies has argued that the word connotes ‘impressive workmanship or scale, audacious technical skill or great age’, stressing its aesthetic qualities.¹⁰⁶ To see wrætlic as a wholly positive term, however, is both to modernise the medieval and to ignore the nuances of its use in Old English poetry. In Andreas, wrætlic or a form of it appears five times: first, to describe God’s voice addressing Matthew from the heavens, ‘wrætlic under wolcnum’ (93a, ‘wrætlic’ under the clouds), then by Andrew when he complains about Christ’s ‘wordum wrætlicum’ (630a, ‘wrætlic’ words) in questioning him. It is used twice to describe the stone angel that Christ addresses: first, both of the angels are ‘wrætlice’ (712a), then, after one of them has detached itself from the wall of the temple and begun to speak, we learn that ‘wrætlic þuhte/ stiðhycgendum stanes ongin’ (740b–41, the stone’s action seemed ‘wrætlic’ to the stubborn ones). Finally, in an ironic echo of language earlier used to describe God’s speech, the devil denigrates Andrew in the eyes of the Mermedonians by saying that Andrew argues in ‘wordum wrætlicum’ (1200a). These uses of the word are simply not adequately glossed by Bosworth-Toller’s definition, nor can their effects be explained as aesthetic in an approving sense. The Jews are stunned by the stone angel, and although it is a crafted, aesthetic object, it is also something they consider deceitful and likely terrifying. The devil means to characterise Andrew as a trickster or deceiver when he calls his speech wrætlic. Even Andrew’s use of ‘wordum wrætlicum’ occurs when he is frustrated with Christ’s questions; yes, he admires the mysterious helmsman’s intelligence, but he also feels uncertain, caught in a situation he no longer understands.

Anglo-Saxons understood teaching to be a positive process that often happened through negative or difficult emotions. We miss this, because our ideal pedagogies do not frighten or traumatise students; we prefer to inspire, nourish, and comfort them. Anglo-Saxons understood negative emotions as tools that could be used in teaching, or in mental work more broadly, but not uncritically: like the wrætlic stone angel, wondrous, terrifying things were liable to go their own way once you had called them to do your bidding. We understand wrætlic to be a positive aesthetic term, when it can, and often should, bear negative emotional charge. A good example for this misreading can be found in the way the first few lines of The Ruin are translated. Here is the Old English:

Here is Roy Liuzza’s translation:

Burton Raffel’s rendition also maintains a sense of positive aesthetic response to a grippingly awful scene:

These are both beautiful translations, but they make a pleasant aesthetic experience out of what should, in this context, be awe tinged with horror. Joshua Davies argues that this wealstan is wrætlic ‘despite being broken’.¹¹⁰ I argue it is wrætlic because it is broken. The speaker not only admires the skill with which the old work was crafted and its massive scale, but is also astounded at the level of destruction in view. We may not have a perfect word to gloss it, but ‘astonishing’, ‘striking’, ‘staggering’, or ‘stupefying’ would all be closer to the emotion evoked here by wrætlic. Perhaps best of all would be ‘awful’, like Grendel’s head or the dragon Sigemund kills in Beowulf, both of which are wrætlic.¹¹¹ Wrætlic represents a mixture of horror and admiration that provokes reflection. It is also a word that occurs twenty times among the riddles of the Exeter Book, suggesting that it denotes not only passive amazement, but wonder that leads to active thinking. Moreover, salutary wonder is not a thoughtless reaction but a trained intellectual skill. In Quinn’s description of the role of wonder in premodern thinking, wonder is not ‘an instinctive response that could be taken for granted but … an appetite hard to keep, easily dulled, and sometimes altogether lost, even by the wisest of men’.¹¹² Riddles awaken wonder, as do the many embedded enigmas of Andreas.

Andreas draws on the tradition of teaching through riddles as well as on Boethius’ explorations of forgetfulness, wonder, and recollection to craft a pedagogic programme for its audience. Just as wrætlic combines admiration with disquiet, the teaching in Andreas can be troubling, frightening, challenging to the senses and imagination. (It can also, like the riddles, be funny.) Put differently, the teaching dialogue that takes place between Christ and Andrew on their sea voyage serves as a model for the poem’s dialogue with its readers and listeners. Like Andrew, they find themselves presented with things and characters they know, but veiled, and invited to identify them. Like Andrew, they are provoked to amazement, terror, and confusion. Like Andrew, they are guided to wonder, remember, and ruminate. The poem’s many discomforts – awkward borrowings from Beowulf, strange adjustments to the source narrative, a disappointing hero – are wrætlicu word, with all the startling wondrousness that implies.