both poet and poetry as communal and therefore neces-
sarily anonymous.
Scholars in the 19th and early 20th centuries favored
four candidates for being the poet: Cynewulf, bishop
of Lindisfarne in Northumbria (d. ca. 783); Cynulf, a
priest of Dunwich in East Anglia (fl. 803); Cynewulf,
the father of Bishop Cyneweard of Wells in Wessex (d.
ca. 975); and Cenwulf or Kenulf, abbot of Peterborough
in Mercia (d. 1006). Historical and linguistic evidence
is far too meager to support any of these identifi cations.
Furthermore nonliterary sources make clear that a large
number of ecclesiastics named Cynewulf and theoreti-
cally capable of writing poetry lived during the period
when the poet may have fl ourished. His identity remains
a mystery.
Lacking historical data, scholars depend primarily
on Cynewulf s name for determining when he may
have lived. The form “Cynewulf” derives from an ear-
lier form, “Cyniwulf.” The spelling change from -i- to
-e- refl ects a sound change that took place because
of the weak stress on the syllable in which the vowel
appears, and philologists have shown that that change
could have occurred as early as 750. Scholars have also
found that the particular order of apostles in The Fates
of the Apostles does not appear in comparable texts
until after the early 9th century. Cynewulf was thought
most probably active, therefore, around the late 8th and
early 9th centuries. Recent research on a later source for
The Fates of the Apostles, however, strongly supports
the possibility that he fl ourished between the late 9th
century and the late 10th, when the Exeter and Vercelli
books were composed.
Scholars know that Cynewulf wrote in the Anglian
dialect, although they still dispute whether it was Nor-
thumbrian or Mercian within that broad category. The
scribes of the Exeter and Vercelli books both wrote in
West Saxon, and the two imperfect leonine (internal)
rhymes in Christ II and the four in the epilogue to
Elene can be corrected by translating those rhymes into
Anglian. Compare, for example, West Saxon hienþu
I mærþu of Christ II, line 591, with Anglian hænþu I
mærþu, or West Saxon riht I geþeaht of Elene, line 1240,
with Anglian reht l geþeht.
Works
When Cynewulf was first discovered in 1840, one
editor attributed all poems in the Exeter and Vercelli
books to him. Other scholars subsequently asserted
that Cynewulf wrote every OE poem that Cædmon did
not and was perhaps even the fi nal redactor of Beowulf.
Later 19th-century scholars argued more conservatively,
eventually claiming that in addition to his four signed
poems Cynewulf wrote just eight others that resemble
them in subject matter or style: Guthlac A, Guthlac B,
Christ I, Christ III, Physiologus (or The Panther, The
Whale, and The Partridge), and The Phoenix from the
Exeter Book; Andreas and The Dream of the Rood from
the Vercelli Book. These twelve poems constitute “the
Cynewulf Group.” Largely because of studies by Das,
Schaar, and Diamond in the 1940s and 1950s, however,
scholars now recognize only the four signed poems as
Cynewulf’s own. The question of the order in which
Cynewulf composed his poems remains vexed, but most
scholars currently feel that he wrote Elene last.
The Fates of the Apostles, a 122-line poem, fol-
lows Andreas in the Vercelli Book and was therefore
once counted part of that poem; it is perhaps the least
appreciated of Cynewulf’s works. Deriving from the
martyrology with no single Latin source and classifi ed
primarily as a catalogue poem, it offers the barest detail
about the missions and deaths of the twelve apostles.
It consequently has been placed either fi rst or last in
Cynewulf’s canon, the product of a clumsy novice
or a feeble old man. Recent critics have treated the
poem more sympathetically, arguing, for example, for
a sophisticated numerical structure or for Cynewulf’s
establishing an implicit comparison between himself
and the apostles, between their work and his, while
simultaneously creating an ironic distance between him-
self as a fallible human being and them as transcendent
followers of Christ. Notable in this poem is the unique
arrangement of Cynewulf’s signature: F, W, U, L, C, Y,
N. The letters’ dislocation and placement of the last fi rst
may refl ect both the poet’s sense of personal dislocation
at being a sinner and personal joy in the biblical promise
that the last shall be fi rst.
Cynewulf’s 426-line, meditative poem about Christ’s
Ascension into heaven is known as Christ II or The
Ascension. It is the second of three poems in the Ex-
eter Book about Christ. The poem’s source is the fi nal
three sections of Gregory the Greats 29th homily on
the Gospels, in which Gregory asks why angels did not
wear white robes at the Incarnation while they did at
the Ascension. Cynewulf draws mainly on that homily
but mines passages of scripture as well, including the
23rd Psalm, and seems indebted to Bede’s hymn on the
Ascension, some patristic texts, and iconographic items.
In the course of this loosely structured, reiterative poem
Cynewulf describes the Ascension and human beings’
and angels’ reaction to it; admonishes his audience
to be grateful for all God’s gifts, especially salvation
granted to humankind through the Ascension; likens
Christ’s mission on earth to the fl ight of a bird; praises
Christ for his dignifying both angels and humankind
by his actions and for granting intellectual gifts to
men; thanks Christ for his six “leaps” (the Incarnation,
Nativity, Crucifi xion, Burial, Descent into Hell, and
Ascension); encourages his audience to prepare for the
Last Judgment; and concludes with a conventional butCYNEWULF