Emotions of Amazement in Old English Hagiography: Ælfric’s approach to Wonder, Awe and the Sublime 3631872178, 9783631872178, 9783631882481

Table of contents :
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Emotions of 'amazement': What are they? How can they be studied in literary texts?
1.1. Some notes on the study of emotion
1.2. Categorising emotions: Where did the study of aesthetic emotions begin?
1.3. Aesthetic emotions today: Current research and contemporary theories
1.4. Emotions of 'amazement'
2. The study of emotion in literature: Looking into 'amazement' in hagiography
2.1. Cultural and literary models for wonder
2.2. Theoretical and methodological notes on the study of emotion in literature and hagiography in the Middle Ages
2.3. Medieval hagiography in context
3. Old English Hagiography and the lexical field of 'amazement': Sources and resources
3.1. Description of the corpus
3.2. Description of the lexical field of 'amazement' in Old English
3.3. Corpus lookups and data treatment
4. Aesthetic pleasure and the sublime: Ælfric’s approach to pleasant personal experience, the beautiful and 'the sublime'
4.1. Ælfric’s treatment of sensory data in aesthetic experience
4.2. Usage of the lexical domain of 'the sublime'
4.3. Experiencing 'the sublime'
5. Wonderful and miraculous experiences and the lexical domain of 'wonder' in Ælfric’s 'Lives of Saints'
5.1. Earthly, human, and secular experiences of 'wonder'
5.2. Divine and spiritual 'wonder'
5.3. Ælfric’s approach to the miraculous
6. The lexical domain of 'awe' and 'fear': Aesthetic fear in Ælfric’s 'Lives of Saints'
6.1. Utilitarian 'fear' and 'awe' as real-life emotional responses
6.2. Awe and the God-fearing Christian
6.3. 'fear' and 'awe' as pagan responses to the miraculous
Concluding Remarks
Bibliography

Citation preview

This monograph examines three aesthetic emotions in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints. Drawing on recent research on emotional communities, this research combines methods from Cognitive Sciences and other studies on early Medieval English language and literature in order to explore Ælfric’s usage of the terms in the lexical domain of amazement. The main aim of this study is to identify preferred modes of expression that would reveal a series of emotional rules in the context of Ælfric’s emotional community. Looking into Ælfric’s usage of this lexical domain and how he depicts emotion dynamics in these texts, this monograph shows how the emotion family of amazement is central to the hagiographical genre, and it highlights important emotion-regulation scripts that operate in these texts.

Francisco Javier Minaya Gómez is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Letters (Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha), and a teacher of early Medieval English literature. His research focuses on the conceptualization and expression of emotions in Old and Middle English language and literature.

Francisco Javier Minaya Gómez) · Emotions of Amazement in Old English Hagiography

62

STUDIES IN ENGLISH MEDIEVAL LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE Edited by Magdalena Bator

62 Francisco Javier Minaya Gómez

Emotions of Amazement in Old English Hagiography Ælfric’s approach to Wonder, Awe and the Sublime

ISBN 978-3-631-87217-8

www.peterlang.com

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Emotions of Amazement in Old English Hagiography

STUDIES IN ENGLISH MEDIEVAL LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE Edited by Magdalena Bator

Advisory Board: John Anderson (Methoni, Greece), Ulrich Busse (Halle), Isabel de la Cruz-Cabanillas (Alcala, Spain) Olga Fischer (Amsterdam, the Netherlands), Marcin Krygier (Poznań, Poland), Peter Lucas (Cambridge, England), Donka Minkova (Los Angeles, California), Akio Oizumi (Kyoto, Japan), Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe (UC Berkeley, USA), Hans Sauer (Munich, Germany), Liliana Sikorska (Poznań, Poland), Jeremy Smith (Glasgow, Scotland), Jerzy Wełna (Warsaw, Poland)

Volume 62

Francisco Javier Minaya Gómez

Emotions of Amazement in Old English Hagiography Ælfric’s approach to Wonder, Awe and the Sublime

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. This research was carried out in the framework of the research group EMOTCL: Emotions across times, cultures and languages, and this research and the publication of this monograph was funded by the Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha (JCCM) in the research project ‘La expression y la concep­tualización de las emociones estéticas: Variación cultural y lingüística’ (reference SBPLY/17/180501/000267).

ISSN 1436-7521 ISBN 978-3-631-87217-8 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-631-88248-1 (E-PDF) E-ISBN 978-3-631-88259-7 (EPUB) DOI 10.3726/b19885 © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Berlin 2022 All rights reserved. Peter Lang Edition is an Imprint of Peter Lang GmbH. Peter Lang – Berlin ∙ Bern ∙ Bruxelles ∙ New York ∙ Oxford ∙ Warszawa ∙ Wien All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed. www.peterlang.com

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ........................................................................................ 7 Introduction .................................................................................................... 9 1. Emotions of amazement: What are they? How can they be studied in literary texts? ................................ 11

1.1. Some notes on the study of emotion ............................................... 11



1.2. Categorising emotions: Where did the study of aesthetic emotions begin? ............................................................ 19



1.3. Aesthetic emotions today: Current research and contemporary theories ................................................................................................ 27



1.4. Emotions of amazement ................................................................. 34

2. The study of emotion in literature:  Looking into amazement in hagiography .............................. 39

2.1. Cultural and literary models for wonder ...................................... 39



2.2. Theoretical and methodological notes on the study of emotion in literature and hagiography in the Middle Ages ......................... 52



2.3. Medieval hagiography in context ..................................................... 63

3. Old English Hagiography and the lexical field of amazement: Sources and resources ...................................... 69

3.1. Description of the corpus ................................................................. 69



3.2. Description of the lexical field of amazement in Old English ... 75



3.3. Corpus lookups and data treatment ................................................ 84

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Table of Contents

4. Aesthetic pleasure and the sublime: Ælfric’s approach to pleasant personal experience, the beautiful and the sublime .................................................................................................... 87

4.1. Ælfric’s treatment of sensory data in aesthetic experience ........... 88



4.2. Usage of the lexical domain of the sublime ............................... 109

4.3. Experiencing the sublime ............................................................. 116

5. Wonderful and miraculous experiences and the lexical domain of wonder in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints ....................... 125

5.1. Earthly, human, and secular experiences of wonder ................. 126



5.2. Divine and spiritual wonder ........................................................... 139



5.3. Ælfric’s approach to the miraculous .............................................. 157

6. The lexical domain of awe and fear:  Aesthetic fear in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints ................................... 177 6.1. Utilitarian fear and awe as real-​life emotional responses ........ 178

6.2. Awe and the God-​fearing Christian .............................................. 185

6.3. fear and awe as pagan responses to the miraculous ................. 196

Concluding Remarks ............................................................................... 209 Bibliography ................................................................................................ 225 Index of Names .......................................................................................... 235

Acknowledgments This monograph offers the results of my recent incursion into the hagiographical genre. I would like to thank several people whose advice, feedback and suggestions have been extremely helpful in completing this manuscript and in my current studies on Old English hagiography. To begin with, I would like to thank my former PhD supervisor, Professor Javier Díaz-​Vera, for his constant encouragement, bibliography suggestions and overall support. Many thanks to Professor Christine Rauer, for helping me with my research on the Old English Martyrology, which certainly paved the way for the completion of this monograph. I would like to thank my former Medieval English Literature Student as well, Daniel Prado, for helping me out cleaning up and categorising the corpus data for this study. Needless to say, any mistakes or omissions remain my own responsibility. This research was carried out in the framework of the research group EMOTCL: Emotions across times, cultures and languages, and this research and the publication of this monograph was funded by the Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-​La Mancha (JCCM) in the research project ‘La expression y la conceptualización de las emociones estéticas: Variación cultural y lingüística’ (reference SBPLY/​17/​180501/​000267).

Introduction Amazement is part and parcel of human experience. On a daily basis, we are surprised, fascinated and mesmerised by different objects, people, circumstances, and events. A new song may enthral us, entertain us, or move us to tears. The contemplation of a sharp mountain landscape might dazzle and terrify us in equal parts. A person’s intelligence or wit can easily leave us open-​mouthed. Furthermore, wonder and curiosity lie at the heart of important human processes of learning and knowledge acquisition. Wondering about how something works and operates at its very core is behind some of the most remarkable scientific discoveries in the history of humankind. Nowadays, amazement is a fundamentally secular response. We associate it with the arts, the contemplation of natural landscape and phenomena, and with scientific progress. Nevertheless, historically speaking, amazement has a long history, and an important spiritual dimension. For centuries, emotions of amazement have been placed at the very core of religious experience, and they have played an important role in the emotion-​regulation scripts that are at work in Christian literature. More specifically, in the context of one of the most common literary genres in the Middle Ages, hagiography, emotions of amazement are central to the narrative and become important conversion tools inside and outside these stories. During my doctoral research, partially published in a monography by this publisher, titled The lexical domain of beauty and its metaphors in the Anglo-​ Saxon formulaic style (Minaya, 2021), I looked into the role of beauty in the existing poetic production in Old English. During this research project, I also engaged with the study of wonder in these Old English sources. Several texts from the poetic corpus, particularly the verse Lives of Saints, gave me an insight as to how important these emotions were in the hagiographical genre. It was not until I became familiar with the Emotional Communities Theory (Rosenwein, 2007) that I realised the potential that could arise from I bring together the more recent studies in the field of emotion research and some of the most innovative aesthetic emotion theories with research on the role of emotion in monastic or religious contexts. Following this idea, I decided to combine some of the theories and methodologies that I had employed in my doctoral research in the study of a narrower textual corpus. This monograph presents the result of this research project. Its six chapters offer an analysis and an examination of the lexical domain of amazement in the

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Introduction

hagiographical writings of an early Medieval English author, Ælfric of Eynsham. The purposes of this study are more specifically detailed in the first, second and third chapters of this monograph, but, in brief, they include carrying out an examination of the role of the emotions of wonder, awe and the sublime in this author’s Lives of Saints. In other words, combining the most recent research in the fields of Cognitive Science and Literary Studies, this study aims at looking into how this particular author employs emotions of amazement to achieve the goals of his emotional community. Chapter one contains an overview of the most recent studies on the field of emotion research, highlighting, when possible, how these can be applied to the present study, and it details the specific characteristics and properties of the emotion family that is the focus of this study. Chapter two focuses on the more literary and cultural dimension of these emotions, developing and commenting on some the existing cultural and literary models for these emotions. This chapter also delves into some theoretical and methodological considerations in the study of emotion in literary texts, and it offers an examination of the development of the literary genre under analysis in the Middle Ages. Chapter three is more methodologically oriented, and it contains a description of the corpus, of the lexical items that will be analysed in context in this study, and of the methodology that is employed in doing so. Chapters four, five and six explore the aesthetic responses of aesthetic pleasure, the sublime, wonder and awe. In these three chapters, these emotions and the terminology through which they are described are examined, attending to the different contexts in which they occur, with the aims of trying to establish literary and doctrinal strategies behind their usage or emotion-​regulation scripts on the part of the emotional community where these texts were composed. Finally, the final section offers some concluding remarks that summarise, encapsulate, and formulate the main findings from this study. General speaking, this study emphasises the benefits of combining Cognitive Science and Literary Studies, and it also offers an insight into how religious and monastic elites have historically employed emotions of amazement in bringing a human and embodied dimension to the lives and passions of the saints and some of the more abstract and unapproachable ideas of early Medieval Christianity.

1. Emotions ofamazement: What are they? How can they be studied in literary texts? In certain occasions, affective phenomena lie at the core of experiences that are transformative in the life of the individual. Emotions are an important part of our social and individual lives. Experiences like fear, sadness, joy, and happiness give meaning to our lives and condition the ways in which we act and react. Furthermore, specific emotions like fear, wonder, awe and pleasure have always played a fundamental role in the spiritual dimension of the subject. Religious experience is intertwined with the experience of many of these emotions that condition and give shape to how people have interacted with the texts and contexts in which the religious figures that prove to be meaningful in the subject’s relation with the divine. Before delving deeper into the literary and spiritual dimension of hagiographical texts, the purpose of this chapter is to offer an overview of the ongoing and most relevant research in the field of emotion research. The first section of this chapter will offer some preliminary notes on the study of emotion and will define the key concepts that will be employed through this study. The next two sections will examine some of the different ways in which emotions can be divided and categorised, paying special attention to emotions of an aesthetic nature. Finally, the last section will examine the emotion family that is the focus of this study, emotions of amazement. Broadly speaking, the main aim of this chapter is to provide a solid theoretical framework with recent studies from the discipline of Cognitive Science for the study of this emotion family in Ælfric’s hagiography.

1.1. Some notes on the study of emotion In recent years, the study of emotions, particularly in linguistic and literary contexts, has bloomed. The research carried out on the part of scientist, doctors, and psychologists in the field of Cognitive Science and Affective Research (Cupchik, 2016; Damásio, 1999; Roseman and Smith, 2001; or Scherer, 2005, to name a few) has provided with solid models and theoretical frameworks upon which research on emotions, their expression and conceptualisation in other areas can be carried out. These range from in-​depth examinations of emotional responses to recent events in collective contexts (for example, Goldenberg et al., 2020, who analyse the role of emotion in the development of the Black Lives Matter movement) to how metonymy and metaphor influence the etymological development

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Emotions of AMAZEMENT: What are they?

of emotion vocabulary (for example, Díaz-​Vera, 2015, who analyses the role of somatic profiles in the Old English expressions of awe, or Díaz-​Vera, 2011, which details an analysis of the lexical domain of fear). This being so, the purpose of this section is to define and develop several key concepts of the emotion theories that are relevant to the present study of emotions of amazement in the Old English hagiographical text under analysis. Many of the studies that have been thus far published focus on trying to establish and determine the mechanisms through which an emotion is triggered, and these are central, on the one hand, to understand the underlying dynamics of the emotion episode, and, on the other hand, to arrive at a working definition for the term ‘emotion.’ Consequently, one of the most challenging tasks in the research thus far published on the study of emotion and emotion terminology has been defining what exactly an emotion is. Over the last four decades, emotion scholars have extensively debated what qualifies as an emotion and how to define them. As Juslin (2013: 236) explains, the field of emotion research is riddled with conceptual confusion. This study takes as a starting point Damásio’s (1999: 36) basic distinction between feelings, which are “inwardly directed and private,” and emotions, which are “outwardly directed and public.” As such, emotions have to be understood first as phenomena that are, somehow, made apparent. Cupchik (2016) develops on the distinction between emotion and feeling through the introduction of the concept of threshold of awareness: “When bodily changes are above threshold and therefore salient, we deductively search … for situational causes” (Cupchik, 2016: 12). Certainly, understanding and identifying the cause of certain bodily changes triggers an emotion. Damásio (1999) also coined one of the most influential definitions in the field; according to him, emotions can be defined as the representation of the transient change in organism state in terms of neural patterns and ensuing images. When those images are accompanied, one instant later, by a sense of self in the act of knowing, and when they are enhanced, they become conscious (Damásio, 1999: 282).

This definition emphasises the fact that, during the emotion episode, the subject realises a private and inward feeling and, in doing so, it becomes an emotion. Other definitions of the term ‘emotion’ include those proposed by Munteanu (2009: 117), for whom an emotion is “a transaction between the person and the environment,” or by Scherer (2005: 697–​698), who considers an emotion to be “an episode of interrelated, synchronised changes in the states of all or most of the fiver organismic subsystems in response to the evaluation of an external stimulus event as relevant to major concerns of the organism.” Similarly, Juslin

Some notes on the study of emotion

13

(2013: 236) uses the term emotion to “refer to a quite brief but intense affective reaction that usually involves a number of subcomponents … that are more or less ‘synchronized.’” Going over all of the definitions for the term ‘emotion’ is certainly useless and far beyond the scope of this study, above all considering that Kleinginna and Kleinginna (1981) already reviewed more than a hundred definitions in the 1980s. However, these definitions have in common two main factors: one, that emotion is understood as an interaction between the subject and their surrounding reality; two, that emotions are integrated by different interrelated components. In emotion research, this idea is developed under the title of Componential Theory of Emotion (see, for instance, Green, 1992; or Izard 1977). In order to explore further the constituents of the emotion process, this study will adopt Juslin’s (2013: 236) definitions for the different terminology that describes the affective phenomena involved in emotional experience. After his definition of the term ‘emotion,’ Juslin (2013: 236) continues defining the following terms as follows: · ‘affect’ as “an umbrella term that covers all evaluative … states,” acting as a hypernym for ‘emotion,’ ‘mood,’ ‘preference’ or ‘feeling,’ · ‘valence’ as qualities of an emotion, affect, or feeling that can be positive, negative or mixed, · ‘mood’ as a term that is “used to denote such affective states that are lower in intensity than emotions … and are much longer lasting than emotions,” · ‘feeling’ as “the subjective experience of emotions or moods,” · ‘arousal’ as the “physical activation of the autonomic nervous system,” · ‘preference’ as a term that “is used to refer to more long-​term affective evaluations of objects or persons with a low intensity.” These definitions will provide consistent frameworks of reference against the often contradictory definitions of affective terminology that are provided by other authors: for example, Cupchik’s (2016) definition of ‘affect’ is identical to Damásio’s (1999) definition for ‘feeling’. The study on the aesthetics of emotion by Cupchik (2016) establishes a hierarchy between some of these elements that exemplifies how emotional phenomena are best understood under the componential theory of emotion. According to Cupchik (2016: 34) affects evolve into feelings, which might become emotions. What all of these models have in common is that there is a progressive realisation of changes in bodily states that finishes with the subject’s realisation of their own emotion. Scherer (1982 and 2005) further develops this componential theory of emotion, and he goes on to explain the different constituents into

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Emotions of AMAZEMENT: What are they?

which the emotion episode can be broken down. Scherer (2005: 698) points out the existence of ‘appraisals,’ which are cognitive evaluations that are carried out by the central nervous system, ‘bodily symptoms,’ whose function is system regulation, ‘action tendencies,’ executed by the central nervous system, and ‘facial and vocal expressions,’ which are carried out by the somatic nervous system and which manifest physically the emotion that is being realised. These components, Scherer (2005: 698) points out, operate in the different organismic systems: the central nervous, the neuro-​endocrine, the autonomic and the somatic nervous systems. In these different systems, the stimulus input is processed, and according to Juslin (2013: 248) these stimuli can be of three different types: sensory, cognitive or emotional. When these stimuli are processed, they might trigger affects, feelings or emotions, and they result in a “subjective feeling” or an “emotional experience” (Scherer, 2005: 698). Damásio (1999: 68) carries out a similar description of the emotion episode: (1) there is an “engagement of the organism by an inducer of emotion,” (2) “signals consequent to the processing of the object’s image activate all the neural sites that are prepared to respond to the particular class of inducers to which the object belongs,” and, finally, (3) “emotion induction sites give rise to a number of other signals toward other brain sites and towards the body.” These signals move towards the brain and the body and ultimately result in the expression of emotion, which can be verbal or non-​verbal. The emphasis on the corporeal dismisses the idea of emotion as a disembodied phenomenon. Emotions exist only within the self, and it is only in the records of its linguistic, auditory, or visual expression where the emotion can be detached from the subject that originally experienced it. Every emotional experience is unique and unrepeatable: “We can never have the same emotion twice. Nor can two different people have the same emotion twice or at all” (Shibles, 1995: 44). Moreover, every emotion is deeply rooted in the subject’s own perception of their bodies. This idea is emphasised in the Embodiment Theory; as Rosch et al. (1991) state, cognition depends upon the kinds of experiences that come from having a body with various sensorimotor capacities, and second, that these individual capacities are themselves embedded in a more encompassing biological and cultural context (Rosch et al., 1991: 172).

The physicality of the emotion episode accounts for a certain universality and consistency across time and cultures. The fact that human bodies are biologically similar implies that they are bound to share a degree of similarity in how they experience emotions and in how they conceptualise and express them.

Some notes on the study of emotion

15

There is no firm consensus as to whether cognition is a part of emotion or these are, in fact, two separate or even opposed phenomena. As far as the componential theory of emotion is concerned, cognition is a fundamental part of the emotion process. Scherer (2005: 700–​701) points out appraisals as a fundamental cognitive component, and he goes on to identify two types of appraisals. Scherer (2005: 701) identifies “intrinsic appraisals,” which “[evaluate] the features of an object or person independently of the current needs and goals of the appraiser” and “transactional appraisals,” proposed by Lazarus (1968, 1991), which “evaluate events and their consequences with respect to their conduciveness for salient needs, desires, or goals of the appraiser.” The concept of intrinsic, according to Menninghaus et al. (2019: 178–​9), refers to “intrinsic stimulus qualities” and “genetic and learned processing” on the part of the subject. Shibles (1995: 28) also acknowledges this cognitive component by stating that emotion is an instance of cognition that causes a bodily feeling and, by stressing the separation between feeling and emotion, he also stresses the idea that cognition is what separates feeling from emotion. Regarding cognition, there is one decidedly cognitive element in the emotion process that, due to the nature of this study, needs to be examined and developed in this preliminary stage: the appraisal. The appraisal theory, proposed by Arnold (1960) and developed by Lazarus (1966), relies on the claim that emotions are triggered by the cognitive evaluation of people, events, and situations. This type of evaluation is called ‘appraisal,’ defined by Moors et al. (2013: 120) as “a process that detects and assesses the significance of the environment for well-​being.” Following Frijda (1986) this well-​being or lack thereof is structured around satisfaction or obstruction of concern, which “[includes] the individual’s needs, attachments, values, current goals, and beliefs” (Moors et al., 2013: 120). This theory can be summarised in seven main points. In the words of Roseman and Smith (2001: 6–​11): 1) “Emotions are differentiated by appraisals,” different evaluations of the same circumstance will, therefore, trigger different emotions. 2) “Differences in appraisal can account for individual and temporal differences in emotional response.” The fact that the same circumstance or object is experienced differently across time and across individuals is explained in the different nature of the evaluation that precedes the emotion. 3) “All situations to which the same appraisal pattern is assigned will evoke the same emotion.” In theory, it is possible to replicate the same emotion if the conditions of a given evaluation can be emulated. Nevertheless, the appraisal of novelty will not be present in subsequent evaluations of a given object or

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Emotions of AMAZEMENT: What are they?

circumstance (see Menninghaus et al., 2019: 179). As a result, it can be affirmed that one person will not be able to experience the same emotion twice in the same manner. As Shibles (1995:  44) explains, this is due to the fact that the conditions and circumstances around a given event are nearly impossible to recreate. 4) “Appraisals precede and elicit emotions.” In terms of sequence, the evaluation of the object or circumstance under scrutiny will, necessarily, occur before the emotion is triggered. According to Moors et al. (2013: 120), this is so because “[a]ppraisal determines the intensity and quality of action tendencies, physiological responses, behavior, and feelings.” Regarding the connection between the elicitation of emotion and the appraisal that is carried out, Moors et al. (2013: 121) claim that the intensity and the specificity of the emotion felt will depend on the number of appraisals involved:  “Appraisal theories allow variation in the number of appraisals that are made … If only a few appraisals yield results, the emotional experience is relatively undifferentiated and global; if many appraisals are made, the emotional experience is highly differentiated and specific.” 5) “The appraisal process makes it likely that emotions will be appropriate responses to the situations in which they occur.” The subject’s evaluation of a given circumstance will act as a regulation mechanism. 6) “Conflicting, involuntary, or inappropriate appraisal may account for irrational aspects of emotion.” Nevertheless, when this evaluation is not carried out properly, the resulting emotion can be, similarly, inappropriate in the context and manner of its expression. 7) Lastly, “[c]hanges in appraisal may account for developmentally and clinically induced changes in emotion.” Since appraisals condition the emotion that is felt and expressed, variations in the evaluation will result in changes in this emotion that is being experienced. Moors et al. (2013: 119) make similar observations, claiming that “changes in appraisal may lead to changes in physiological and behavioral responses” and that these may “lead to changes in appraisal, either directly or indirectly.” The appraisal theory of emotion, much like the componential theory of emotion, is a scientifically and empirically proven theory. For example, the findings in the study carried out by Frijda et al. (1989) proved that “emotional experience consists both of appraisal and action readiness awareness … and derive their identities from them” (Frijda et al., 1989:  212). Appraisal theories of emotion have diverse implication on the manner in which emotional phenomena should be discussed. According to Moors et al. (2013:  119), within the framework of

Some notes on the study of emotion

17

appraisal theories, emotions are processes rather than states. As such, emotions are linked to other processes like “a motivational component with action tendencies or other forms of action readiness; a somatic component with peripheral physiological responses; a motor component with expressive and instrumental behavior; and a feeling component with subjective experience or feelings.” These remarks highlight two central components in the study of emotion, particularly as far as the present examination of emotions of amazement is concerned: action tendencies and somatic profiles. These two elements will be key in determining if there are any figurative expressions or terms that render amazement in these Old English texts. Bearing in mind the action tendencies and somatic profiles that are typically associated with particular emotions, it can be determined whether a given emotion is more commonly discussed using literal emotion denominators or whether the bodily feelings and actions that it triggers are employed in metonymically referring to the emotion. However, before delving deeper into these matters, it is necessary to establish working definitions for both these ideas. Based on James (1884) and Damásio (1994), Fingerhut and Prinz (2020:  228) define somatic profiles as “patterns of change across a number of physiological dimensions including changes in cardiovascular, respiratory, digestive, endocrine, and musculoskeletal systems, as well as changes in other organs such as the vocal cords and skin.” In other words, somatic profiles refer to how an emotion feels in the different bodily systems, what effect it causes, including “posture and facial expressions” (Fingerhut and Prinz, 2020: 228). Consequently, action tendencies can be defined as the ways in which emotions can cause people to act (Frijda, 1986). “These include expressive behaviors, such as vocalizations, as well as overt actions, such as the flight/​fight/​freezing response.” (Fingerhut and Prinz, 2020: 228). The experience of emotion and its conceptualisation and expression is a process that is heavily influenced by culture. Ibarretxe-​Antuñano (2013: 318) highlights the “intimate relationship between conceptualisation and culture” and she also stresses the fact that, while emotion cannot be dissociated from embodiment, neither can “experience … be disassociated from culture.” Damásio (1999: 35) also acknowledges the role of culture in emotion, stating that “emotions have become connected to complex ideas, values, principles and judgments that only humans can have.” This is to say that the fundamental trait in human emotion is that it has developed in such a way that it has become different from animal emotion precisely in its cultural aspect. Likewise, Lakoff (1987:  216) points out how human categories and emotions vary from culture to culture. If the expression of emotion varies across cultures, its analysis can also yield different insights about how they are conceptualised. The manner in which

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Emotions of AMAZEMENT: What are they?

emotions are expressed across cultures and time can provide information about how these emotions are conceptualised and felt, revealing important data about culture, ideas and experiences. The conceptualisation of an emotion and its linguistic expression are heavily influenced by culture to the point that culture and emotion are so intrinsically woven that the former cannot be understood without considering the latter. Lakoff and Johnson (1980:  57) describe how “we experience our ‘world’ in such a way that our culture is already present in the very experience itself.” It is, therefore, impossible to understand linguistic matters without cultural meanings, because culture and human experience are deeply encoded in language. Ibarretxe-​Antuñano (2013) also establishes a hierarchy between the bodily and the cultural, giving priority to the first over the second, because since all humans share the same body, this first stage should be the same for every human experience, regardless of their background. In the second stage, this bodily-​based experience is purged, adapted, and modified by the cultural information available, and therefore, the result is not universal, but culture specific. … It is in this context that I would like to introduce the concept of a culture sieve. This is defined as an active mediating device that makes our physical, sensorimotor universal experiences shift through the complex and socially acquired particular beliefs, knowledge, and worldview(s) intrinsic to belonging to one or several cultures (Ibarretxe-​Antuñano, 2013: 324).

Ibarretxe-​Antuñano (2013) also alludes to the theory of embodiment, stressing the fact that the emotion episode occurs in bodies that are similar and, therefore, the emotion is processed by the same bodily systems pointed out by Damásio (1999). However, this information is filtered by the culture in which the subject lives or has been raised in, and this can cause a different emotional experience. In her paper, she applies the culture sieve metaphor to the domain of conceptual metaphors, but her remarks can be seamlessly applied to the relationship between culture and emotion. This interaction between the cultural and the corporeal cannot be understood in terms of one or the other but rather as two complementary and inseparable elements in the emotion episode. There is no disembodied emotion, and there is no emotion which is not “filtered” or “impregnated,” using Ibarretxe-​Antuñano’s (2013: 324) terms, by cultural meanings. In terms of the appraisal theory, this cultural difference can be understood in the words of Moors et al. (2013: 121): “Appraisal theories assume that there is a variable relation between stimuli and emotions, but a stable relation between appraisals and emotions. In general, the same appraisals lead to the same emotions; different appraisals lead to different emotions.” In this case, the subject’s culture influences the emotion that is being felt, not because it alters the relationship between emotion and appraisal, but because it conditions the evaluation of

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stimuli depending on some of the factors mentioned previously, that is, on “the individual’s needs, attachments, values, current goals, and beliefs” (Moors et al., 2013: 120). More specifically, and related to the role of amazement in religious contexts, a person’s culture will heavily condition their system of beliefs and, therefore, the exact characteristics of their emotional experiences. In short, the emotion episode, seen as a transaction between the object and the subject, consists in a gradual transition from affects (mediating between mind and body) to feelings (internal and unrealised) towards a threshold of awareness where the realisation of this feeling, filled now with social, cultural, and personal meanings, gives rise to the emotion. If the feeling is below this threshold of awareness, it does not become an emotion and it is not expressed, but it still affects the subject and their mood. This process is cognitive at its core and involves many different bodily systems. Emotions, therefore, stand out as the conscious realisation, categorisation and expression of the bodily changes produced in our systems by external stimuli. Similarly, it becomes clear that the experience of emotions is a culturally and affectively influenced process that operates in different corporeal systems and may drive the subject to action. By emphasising both the corporeality and the cultural dimension of emotion, as well as by breaking down the emotion episode in smaller units, the importance of both the Embodiment Theory and the emerging view of culture as a fundamental part of the emotion episode has been made evident. The former explains the universality of certain emotions across times and cultures. The latter stresses how an analysis of how a given speech (or emotional) community expresses an emotion by means of language can provide information as to how it is conceptualised and experienced and this, ultimately, is bound to result in a better understanding of how this community relates to and understand this emotion.

1.2. Categorising emotions: Where did the study of aesthetic emotions begin? Recently, emotion scholars have tried to suggest ways in which emotions can be categorised or defined according to their defining characteristics. For the purposes of this study, one of the most useful distinctions is that proposed by Scherer (2005: 12) between utilitarian and aesthetic emotions. ‘Utilitarian emotions’ is a term that can be used to define emotions that have a purpose in a person’s life. A very illustrative example of a utilitarian emotion is fear. When the subject experiences this emotion it is because there generally is a threat to the safety of this individual; in this sense, fear has a purpose and a utility. This threat to the individual’s well-​being cannot only be observed in the physical dimension,

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but also in the social. One could argue that shame is similarly a utilitarian emotion in that it is directly related to a person’s social position. As such, shame can also be categorised as a utilitarian emotion, as it has a central purpose in the subject’s life, even if it is not directly oriented towards the preservation of the safety and integrity of the body. Nevertheless, there is a family of emotions that “shows an absence of utilitarian functions” (Scherer, 2005: 12). These are aesthetic emotions, among which the emotions family of amazement can be found. The dichotomy utilitarian/​ aesthetic seems to suggest that aesthetic emotions do not have a purpose, but to say that something does not have utilitarian functions is not to say that it is useless. Aesthetic emotions are typically triggered by non-​pragmatic appraisals of objects, people, situations. It can be said that an aesthetic emotion has been triggered because an object has been appraised not for its value or purpose, but for the feelings and emotions that it causes on the subject who experiences. In fact, the Present-​Day English (henceforth, PDE) term aesthetic, despite having been loaned from the German Ästhetik and the French esthétique, goes back to the Greek term aisthētikós ‘related to perception by the senses.’ As a result, and at first glance, the term ‘aesthetic emotion’ intuitively evokes the notion of emotions that are triggered by sensory information. One of the first thinkers who placed the emphasis on the subjectivity of aesthetic experience as emotional phenomena was the philosopher Immanuel Kant. His works place an emphasis on the subject and on the bodily processes that occur during the aesthetic emotion episode. In one of his most influential works, The Critique of Judgment (Kant, 1781, corresponding to Kant, 1987: 41–​85 in this edition), he initially established the terminology and main assumptions of what is now called aesthetic emotion research. Kant’s (1987) research aimed at finding the common traits within the multiplicity of aesthetic judgments and tastes. According to him, “a judgment of taste is not a cognitive judgment and so is not a logical judgment but an aesthetic one, by which we mean a judgment whose determining basis cannot be other than subjective” (Kant, 1987: 44). This statement implies a departure from classical aesthetic models, which prioritised morality and proportion, towards a more scientific approach to aesthetic experience as rooted in taste and, at large, individual preferences. One of the concepts that is highlighted in his theory is that of pleasure, which is a central feature in certain aesthetic experiences and, in some cases, the result of the aesthetic emotion episode. However, this pleasure does not hold any relation with the object or situation themselves, but it is the result of the processes that occur in the subject: “the presentation is referred only to the subject, namely, to his feeling of life, under the name feeling of pleasure or displeasure” (Kant,

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1987: 44). Kant (1987: 52) points out three “relations” that trigger this feeling of pleasure: the good, the beautiful and the agreeable. Emphasising again subjectivity as the principal feature of aesthetic experience, he elaborates on the notion of ‘taste’ as “the ability to judge an object, or a way of presenting it, by means of a liking or disliking devoid of all interest” [emphasis mine] (Kant, 1987: 53). This lack of “interest” implies that an aesthetic object is not considered or “judged” in terms of its purpose or material value but evaluated as pleasing to the senses (or to cognition, even if Kant (1987) does not include the cognitive as part of the aesthetic). As a result, pragmatic appraisals will not result in aesthetic experience. More specifically, the judgment outcome, as Juslin (2013: 14) also points out, “is devoid of all pragmatic purpose.”1 Kant (1987: 55) highlights three possible outcomes of aesthetic experience: the experience of the good, the beautiful or the agreeable, and what is remarkable about his theory is that it does not consider amazement to be a part of aesthetic experience. Furthermore, the limits of aesthetic experience for him are that of positive aesthetic experience, denying the existence of negative aesthetic emotions like disgust. His work does also discuss the sublime (Kant, 1987: 97), an emotion of amazement, but it does so separately. All things considered, despite the fact that he establishes the foundations of contemporary aesthetic emotion theories, Kant (1987) does not fully develop a theory of aesthetic emotions. Instead, he focuses on taste and on the subjectivity of the aesthetic experience. It would take another hundred years for such a theory to be proposed. In 1894, English philosopher and theorist Bernard Bosanquet developed a theory of aesthetic emotions. He had previously published History of Aesthetics in 1892, concerning how different poets, playwrights, and artists had discussed beauty throughout history, but this previous work qualifies better as a treatise on beauty rather than as a writing on aesthetic emotions. In his article “On the Nature of Aesthetic Emotion,” Bosanquet (1894) adopts a more scientific approach to the experience of beauty and tries to find the elements which are “common throughout the whole range of the beautiful” (Bosanquet, 1894: 153). Bosanquet (1894:  153) begins by stating that “states of pleasure and pain which accompany ease or obstruction of the flow of ideas” can no longer account

1 These assumptions have been empirically proved by Cupchik et al. (2009), who exposed people to images as artworks and images with a more pragmatic function. Their study determined that while artworks activated neural sites traditionally associated with emotion, pragmatic images did not.

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for “the feeling of beauty and the reverse.” In his view, this perspective is simplistic. That beauty triggers pleasure and ugliness pain is to omit a large part of the aesthetic emotion episode. Bosanquet (1894), much like Kant (1987), limits aesthetic emotions to the experience of ugliness and beauty, without acknowledging that other emotional responses like amazement can similarly qualify as aesthetic emotions. Bosanquet (1894: 153) points out a “circle of effects” that is in effect during a given aesthetic experience. His assumption is that each instance of aesthtic emotion is different by nature, an idea that is consistent with the remarks pointed out in the preceding section as to how “[w]e can never have the same emotion twice. Nor can two different people have the same emotion twice or at all” (Shibles, 1995: 44). This also applies to aesthetic emotions, and it presupposes the uniqueness of each aesthetic experience. In other words, there can be no two identical aesthetic emotion episodes, even if they are triggered by the same stimuli. It similarly implies that two different aesthetic objects will never cause the same emotion, even in the same subject. Nevertheless, despite the impossibility of experiencing identical aesthetic emotions, there must be some common traits in their experience that can yield some information to determine the many factors and conditions necessary for aesthetic emotion to be triggered. Consequently, Bosanquet (1894: 154) aims at finding “a common element which somehow attaches to the circle of effects” in aesthetic experience. Traditionally, aesthetic experience had been understood as a passive experience. It is the aesthetic object with its qualities or “power,” in Bosanquet’s (1894) terms, that actively affects the subject. Following this stance, aesthetic emotion research should focus on analysing how the aesthetic object affects the subject, instead of focusing on how the subject elevates the ordinary object to the category of aesthetic object. “This has, as I think, been to a great extent the attitude of British psychologists” (Bosanquet, 1894: 154). Those who view aesthetic emotions in these terms “tend to think of aesthetic science as an analysis of given pleasurable effects” (Bosanquet, 1894: 155). However, Bosanquet (1894: 154) also acknowledges that this is not the only approach to aesthetic experience, as it is possible “to start from a passive or from an active attitude.” The active approach to aesthetic experience fits into the conceptual structure of the aesthetic emotion episode proposed by contemporary scholars, for instance Juslin (2013), Scherer (2005) or Menninghaus et al. (2019), which will be discussed in the next section. However, Bosanquet (1984: 154) points out that the active state of mind is more frequent in aesthetic experience that is triggered by art and literature, because, in his view, it requires the active cooperation of the subject. This establishes a now

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obsolete division of aesthetic objects into different categories.2 On the one hand, there are those of a higher quality; they are more complex and, therefore, the subject needs an active attitude to engage with them. On the other hand, there are those of a lower quality or just ordinary objects, which are simpler and demand less attention from the subject. Because they are simpler, the subject pays less attention to them and is, so to say, struck by their beauty. Another remarkable point in his description of aesthetic experience is not being presented with an object, but rather “[entering] it as something which embodies for us the emotion that craves utterance” (Bosanquet, 1894:  155). Aesthetic emotions, as defined by Scherer (2005: 12), being non-​utilitarian and not as oriented towards action as utilitarian emotions, are chiefly expressed in the utterance, even if they can be physically measurable in bodily changes like goosebumps or a dilated pupil, or other physical symptoms (described at length by Fingerhut and Prinz, 2020). However, what Bosanquet (1894) conveys here is that the object itself is an embodiment of a deeper need to express this emotion: as it shall be seen, amazement invites expression. In consequence, one of the most distinct features of aesthetic emotions as opposed to utilitarian emotions is their expression. At the end of the aesthetic emotion episode, the subject feels the need to manifest the emotion that the object triggers in them. Bosanquet (1894: 156) points out a further characteristic of aesthetic experience: “I suggest therefore as the most fundamental and universal feature, from which all the common characteristics of aesthetic emotion may be deduced, the simple fact that it is expressed.” If the expression of aesthetic emotion is its central feature, it follows that its expression is rooted in the bodily sensations experienced by the subject and their sensory representation of the aesthetic object. In the mind of the subject, the aesthetic object, the bodily feelings, and the expression that connects them are part of a whole. On this relation between emotion and expression, Bosanquet (1894: 158) adds that “an emotion assumes its character, or becomes what it is, through the mode and degree of expression.” Aesthetic emotion does not only lead to expression, but it is also modified by it. There is a change in how this emotion is experienced before and after it is expressed; its mere expression produces an emotional release on the subject.

2 Even if some of these concepts are seen as obsolete in hindsight or they do not agree with contemporary emotion theories, there is some interest in exploring them. As Cupchik (2016: 21) remarks “concepts in psychology should … be considered from a historical perspective to get a sense of how they have evolved.”

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All in all, Bosanquet’s (1894) aesthetic theory analyses aesthetic emotion by looking into the common elements in the chain of effects that cause it, based on the premises that, since two different people cannot feel the same aesthetic emotion and since the same person can never recreate a former aesthetic emotion, there must be some dividable elements in it. His theory was the first to propose a movement from the passive contemplation of aesthetic objects to a more active perspective. This movement is, in fact, what characterises his theory: in moving from the passive to the active the subject enters the object and expresses the aesthetic emotion that it triggers by means of utterances. At the same time, the very action of expressing it, which is the central action resulting from aesthetic experience, modifies the emotion felt by the subject, unifying aesthetic object, aesthetic emotion and the utterance or other manner of expression. The most discordant note in Bosanquet’s (1894) aesthetic theory, at least from a contemporary perspective, is not only that he exclusively considers works of art or literature to qualify aesthetic objects, but that, even within these areas, he establishes a highly subjective and problematic distinction between good and bad art. The next scholar to put forth another theory of emotion was William Thornton. It was not until 1940, almost fifty years after Bosanquet had proposed his own theory, that Thornton published his “Aesthetic emotion: A study in the phenomenology of Aesthetics” (1940). In this article, he proposed a more detailed theory of aesthetic emotion, which gave more importance to what Bosanquet (1894) had called the “circle of effects” that take part in aesthetic experience. Thornton (1940) draws upon the James-​Lange theory (see James, 1884) summarising it as follows: Certain bodily changes follow directly the perception of an exciting fact. The changes stimulate sense organs in the viscera and muscles which give rise to afferent nerve impulses. These latter, upon reaching the sensory projection areas of the cerebral cortex, provide the immediate physiological conditions for the emotion as felt, that is as a phenomenon constituting part of the stream of consciousness at a given moment. The emotions then, upon examination, turn out to be nothing more than complexes of sensations located within the body. Therefore they are called subjective in opposition to colors and sounds, which being located outside the body, are called objective [emphasis mine] (Thornton, 1940: 200).

The description of the emotion process is consistent with those definitions mentioned in the preceding section, but there is a concept that needs to be highlighted because it is pivotal to Thornton’s (1940) theory. Alluding to James’ (1884) depiction of the emotion episode, Thornton (1940) differentiates between emotions as subjective, since they are located inside the subject and they are part of the subject’s bodily awareness, and sensory information as objective because it

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resides outside the subject. “The most important reason for our regarding emotional qualities as subjective is probably their great variation from individual to individual” (Thornton, 1940: 200). Aesthetic emotions, therefore, are highly subjective, as they are heavily filtered by the subject’s experience, which is bodily, cultural, and social, among other possible variations. Taking these remarks into consideration, the similarity between different aesthetic emotions in different subjects is only due to the fact that the objective qualities of the aesthetic object affect different subjects in similar ways. After these theoretical remarks, Thornton goes on to “construct” a theory of aesthetic emotion that can be “psychologically sound and yet true to the widely accepted conceptions of aesthetic experience” (Thornton, 1940:  203), and he bases it on the grounds of three main assumptions: a) “Whatever phenomena are experienced simultaneously are experienced as a unity” (Thornton, 1940:  204). Thornton draws on Gestalt psychologists to justify the importance of organised units. For instance, in works of art, the notions of proportion, symmetry, harmony or colour are individual traits, but they are experienced simultaneously and, therefore, as a whole in the subject consciousness. Thornton (1940: 203) acknowledges that a single mental state can be analysed and divided into smaller parts but, in doing so, the original unity is destroyed, and the object of study disappears. “Consciousness at any given instant remains a unified totality” (Thornton, 1940: 204). These remarks are similar to the idea proposed by Bosanquet (1894) that in aesthetic experience, the aesthetic emotion, the aesthetic object, and the expression of the emotion are experienced by the subject as a whole consisting of different parts. The subject does not differentiate between the outer objective reality, the subjective emotion and how they choose to verbalise it. It is all encompassed under the notion of ‘aesthetic experience.’ b) The second point in Thornton’s theory departs from the concepts of “objective” and “subjective” discussed above and treats “the location of emotions in the phenomenological space” (Thornton, 1940: 205). For Thornton, unless the subject really strains to search where exactly they are feeling these emotions, and they are able to identify sensations in particular bodily sites, the emotion goes spatially unrealised and is experienced objectively. Thus, for Thornton, if an emotion is felt subjectively, it is spatially located and felt objectively if it is not spatially located. Thornton (1940: 206) puts it in more straightforward phrasing: “[a]n emotion which is not the object of attention, or which occurs when the body is neither perceived nor visualized, has no spatial location. It is neither inside nor outside the body. It is nowhere.” This is also echoed in

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Damásio’s (1999) distinction between feelings and emotions. A parallel could be drawn between these theories of emotion:  feelings, which are inwardly directed and private, are bodily unrealised, and therefore non-​spatial; emotions, which are outwardly directed and public, are realised at a bodily level and therefore spatial. In this sense, Thornton (1940) seems to be using the term ‘emotion’ to encompass both ‘emotion’ and ‘feeling’ as defined in the previous section. c) Thornton’s (1940: 206) last proposition concerns the nature of aesthetic experience. He refines his second point and specifies what he understands by aesthetic object: “[i]n an aesthetic experience the work of art (object) is the center of attention, and the experience contains no phenomenological body or subject” (Thornton, 1940: 206). According to Thornton (1940), aesthetic emotion is always non-​spatial, and he denies that it resides in the object, disconnecting thus the subject from the object. In every sense, the object, which is spatial, is independent and detached from the subject. It is the subject who is responsible for “entering” the object, as Bosanquet (1894) proposed, and triggering this emotion. In consequence, aesthetic emotion and aesthetic object cannot be understood as synonymous. Nevertheless, even if the object and the aesthetic emotion are detached, they are experienced as a unity, as proposed in his first postulate. The disconnection between the subject and the object can be salvaged by incorporating two concepts discussed in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781), which can be easily applied to aesthetic emotion theories. Kant (1781/​1998: 369) distinguished between the noumenon, which is the thing itself, and the phaenomenon, which is our mental perception of it. For Kant, the noumenal cannot be known beyond its representations, that is, the phenomenal. In terms of aesthetic emotion theory, this implies that the subject cannot really know the aesthetic object because it is not truly real. What is real is the construct that the subject devises in their mind. Yet, as Zajonc (1998: 24) points out, scholars should not lose sight of the phaenomenon in theorising with it. Cupchik (2016: 26) proposes an alternative way of shortening the gap between the subject and the object, drawing on the concept of empathy. As defined by Lipps (1907: 713), it is the projection of the subject into the aesthetic object in such a way that the subject and object merge and the line between them disappears in the mind of the subject. Likewise, applying the idea of threshold of awareness proposed by Cupchik (2016), and Damásio’s (1999) distinction between ‘feeling’ and ‘emotion’ to Thornton’s (1940) remarks on the realisation of emotion as “objective” or “subjective” can shed some light on the following idea by Thornton (1940: 206): “An

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unscrutinised non-​spatial emotion adds a ‘background,’ ‘color’ or emotional tone to the perceptual content of the experience in which it occurs.” If the subject beholds an aesthetic object and they do not realise this aesthetic feeling (or non-​ spatial subjective aesthetic emotion, following Thornton’s (1940) terminology), and therefore it does not become an emotion, it still alters the aesthetic perspective of the subject and their mood. If the subject becomes aware of this aesthetic feeling (or spatial objective aesthetic emotion), it becomes an emotion which is experienced as a unity along with the aesthetic object and the utterance that connects them. Regardless of small differences in terminology, Thornton’s (1940) aesthetic theory, postulated around three (sometimes interconnected) points, develops further certain ideas previously proposed by emotion scholars (James, 1884) and by aesthetic emotion theorists (Bosanquet, 1894). Nonetheless, at that stage, the focus of aesthetic experience was still placed on the work of art and, even if the line dividing ‘feeling’ and ‘emotion’ was conceptually clear, it was rather blurred in terms of confusing terminology. It would not be until the end of the century, when a renewed interest in emotion theories (for instance, Damásio, 1999) and the conceptualisation of emotion (for instance, Lakoff, 1987) would eventually affect the study of aesthetic emotion and offer new insights into the experience of emotions of an aesthetic nature.

1.3. Aesthetic emotions today: Current research and contemporary theories Without losing sight of the object of study of this monograph, this section will highlight the main ideas, presuppositions, assumptions, and definitions of contemporary aesthetic emotion theories that can illuminate the analysis of the selected emotional responses in Old English hagiography. A similar overview of this field and of the recent research on aesthetic emotions can be found in Minaya (2021: 36–​57), with an emphasis on the aesthetic pleasure and the experience of beauty. This section, therefore, analyses the work of some of the most influential scholars who, in recent years, have looked into the characteristics, phenomenology, appraisals and traits of aesthetic emotions and aesthetic experience, for instance, Menninghaus et al. (2017 and 2019), Scherer (2005), Juslin (2013), Marković (2012), Fingerhut and Prinz (2019 and 2020) or Leder et al. (2004). This section aims at providing the theoretical foundations upon which the analysis of the descriptions and instances of amazement in Old English hagiographical writings will further on be based.

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As it has been mentioned in the preceding pages, Scherer (2005: 705) is the scholar who described aesthetic emotions as not having utilitarian functions, but he also describes in more detail what an aesthetic emotion is: Aesthetic emotions are produced by the appreciation of the intrinsic qualities of the beauty of nature, or the qualities of a work of art or an artistic performance. Examples of such aesthetic emotions are being moved or awe, being full of wonder, admiration, bliss, ecstasy, fascination, harmony, rapture, solemnity (Scherer, 2005: 706).

One of the key ideas in Scherer’s (2005) description is that of intrinsic, which refers to the qualities that are inextricable, inherent, or essential to the object, person or situation that is being appraised: “Belonging to the thing in itself, or by its very nature; inherent, essential, proper” (Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. intrinsic, adj., 3.a.). According to Scherer (2005: 703–​706) all aesthetic emotion is triggered, to a greater or lesser extent, by an appraisal of intrinsic pleasure. That is to say, in the case of positive aesthetic experience, the subject is going to evaluate an object person or situation as pleasant or pleasurable as a result of its essential characteristics. Other researchers like Menninghaus et al. (2019: 179) claim that the appraisal of intrinsic pleasantness will not always trigger aesthetic emotions and will not be a central appraisal in all aesthetic experiences, as it will be discussed further on in the case of amazement: “We therefore propose that the appraisal of intrinsic pleasantness is only a key predictor of perceived aesthetic appeal, and consequently of specific aesthetic emotions.” While intrinsic pleasantness will be the central trait of emotions like aesthetic pleasure, this will not necessarily be the case of wonder or awe. Another remarkable notion in Scherer’s (2005) definition of aesthetic emotion is his inclusion of other natural and real-​life phenomena in the array of objects, people, and situations that can trigger aesthetic experience. While the works mentioned and explored in the previous section held art and literature to be the only possible sources of aesthetic experience, in recent years, scholars have begun to widen the notions of ‘aesthetic object’ and to therefore consider different types of stimulus inputs and diverse contexts in aesthetic experience. Regarding the idea of ‘stimulus input,’ and before moving on to a description of the possible subdivisions and depictions of the aesthetic emotion episode, both Juslin (2013: 248) and Marković (2013: 3) propose different levels in the categorisation of the types of stimuli that can trigger aesthetic experience, and these are closely linked to the key features that can further define what an aesthetic emotion is: a) Juslin (2013:  248) claims that the stimuli that may trigger aesthetic emotions can be of a sensory nature or, in other words, perceptual. They are

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related to how what is pleasant to the senses can trigger aesthetic experience. Juslin (2013: 248) provides some examples as to what constitutes a “perceptual feature” like “symmetry, order, proportion and figure-​ground contrast.” In his view, “sensory impressions” are “based on ‘low-​level features’” (Juslin, 2013: 248). For the purposes of this study, these will be referred to as ‘sensory stimulus input’ or ‘sensory evaluations.’ Juslin (2013: 248) claims that, in aesthetic experience, these are mandatory,3 insofar as the subject will first engage with the aesthetic object through the senses, and this will be the main avenue for further stimulus input, like those which will be discussed in the next two paragraphs. Marković (2012: 3) delves deeper into the sensory dimension of aesthetic experience, claiming that it is responsible for the intensity and the duration of the subject’s interaction with the aesthetic object. Engagement is entirely dependent on sensory perception, as the stimulus input is always first processed by the senses. b) The stimulus input can also be of a cognitive nature. Through the senses, the subject will then perceive different properties in the aesthetic object that are more complex and that will entail a high degree of cognitive appraisal (like appraisals of meaning or symbolism). In fact, Marković (2012: 3) enumerates the several layers in the cognitive side of aesthetic experience, like its “semantic, symbolic, and imaginative aspects.” This will, especially, be the case of the miraculous phenomena that will be discussed in the context of Old English hagiography. c) Finally, the stimulus can also be an emotion. Juslin (2013:  249) explains that “emotional input is not needed for an aesthetic judgment to take place or to produce an outcome.” This type of stimulus is typically found in the cases where a given emotion triggers a subsequent emotional experience. For example, and as Keltner and Haidt (2003: 303) explain in the case of the experience of awe, which will be analysed in the next sections, appraising an object as ‘beautiful’ (or experiencing the emotion of aesthetic pleasure) can trigger awe or wonder. Emotional stimulus inputs are discussed by Marković (2012: 3) as “the affective side of aesthetic experience.” For him, this is, moreover, related to how “a person has a strong and clear feeling of unity with the object of aesthetic fascination” (Marković, 2012: 3), that is to say, to how these emotions

3 This claim is similarly formulated by Jacobsen (2006) and Shimamura (2012).

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transcend the self.4 These remarks also resemble Thornton’s (1940) aesthetic theory, in which he holds that “[w]hatever phenomena are experienced simultaneously are experienced as a unity.” These three different dimensions, both of the stimuli that trigger aesthetic experience and of the judgment outcome, evidence that the nature of the resulting emotion will be conditioned by what triggers it. Based on the first section of this chapter, the concepts of ‘stimulus input’ and ‘appraisal’ can be neatly situated in the larger framework of the emotion episode. However, before moving onto the different aesthetic emotions families and, in particular, onto the emotion family of amazement, special attention needs to be paid to the aesthetic emotion episode, stressing the particularities of these emotional experiences. Comparing the earlier theories of aesthetic emotion proposed by Bosanquet (1894) and Thornton (1940), for whom inspecting the constituents of these emotional experiences caused the object of study to disappear, with contemporary theories of aesthetic emotion like those proposed by Juslin (2013), Marković (2012) or Leder et al. (2004), it becomes clear that there is a need to examine these different elements to further understand aesthetic experience. For Juslin (2013:  246) the first element in the aesthetic emotion episode is what he denominates “aesthetic framing,” that is to say, the subject interprets an object, person or circumstance as potentially having aesthetic qualities. The second element is the processing of this stimulus input, which might be a one-​ time input or might be continuous. In his research, Marković (2012: 5) goes over the research on neuroimaging, empirical aesthetics and aesthetic preferences carried out by Parsons (1987), Chatterjee (2003), Leder et al. (2004), Ognjenović (1991) and Nadal et al. (2008), and, based on these, he proposes a “functional model of aesthetic experience.” In this model, “[t]he initial stage begins with the perceptual and cognitive appraisal of the object’s basic properties, such as complexity, regularity, familiarity and the like,” which is followed by “the detection of more complex compositional regularities and the interpretation of more sophisticated narratives and hidden symbolisms of the object’s structure” (Marković, 2012:  6). This ties in with the diverse types of stimulus inputs that have been discussed in preceding pages.

4 In fact, this phenomenon has recently been discussed in emotion research under the name of ‘self-​transcendent emotions,’ see for instance Stellar et al. (2017), Cappellen et al. (2021), Wlodarczyk et al. (2021), or Pizarro et al. (2021).

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Within the cognitive dimension and appraisal of the aesthetic object, and besides Scherer (2005) proposed appraisal of intrinsic pleasantness, other researchers point out additional appraisals in aesthetic emotion processes. Some of these will not be found in instances of amazement, but others will play a fundamental role in determined contexts. Menninghaus et al. (2019: 179–​181) list five main appraisals: novelty, familiarity, goal relevance, goal conduciveness and coping potential. Novelty refers to how for them to trigger aesthetic emotions, objects “should be novel and unique in one way or another” (Menninghaus et al., 2019: 179). This also implies that on the first encounter with the aesthetic object, because it is entirely novel, it will be more likely to trigger aesthetic emotions than in subsequent episodes. Other appraisals that will be relevant in this analysis of Old English hagiography are the appraisals of goal relevance and goal conduciveness: when the object, event or situation that is being appraised is consistent with the goals and beliefs of the subject, there is a higher likelihood that it will trigger aesthetic experience. In religious contexts, if the figures that are being described act according to the subject’s system of beliefs, their actions will be positively appraised, and vice versa. Finally, the appraisal of coping potential is particularly interesting in hagiographical contexts. It refers to the “top-​down activation of a cognitive framing” that “extends the realm of pleasurability by structurally suspending any concern regarding a threat to ourselves and … our personal chances of coping with this threat” (Menninghaus et al., 2019:  180). This appraisal will operate and not operate in certain cases in the selected textual genre: on the one hand, because the audiences of these texts will assume that the events that are narrated in them are faithful history and as a result the appraisal of threat might take place in evaluating the miraculous phenomena that will trigger amazement; on the other hand, this appraisal will be at play in acknowledging a temporal and geographical divide between the audience and the events narrated in these texts, which will cause certain emotions like awe or fear to be experienced in diverse ways, compared to the emotions that these events would have triggered in real-​life contexts. The sensory, cognitive, and emotional information in the stimulus input is processed by the subject’s aesthetic criteria, and this results in an aesthetic judgement: “an aesthetic experience occurs to the extent that an aesthetic judgment has been made, that ‘an aesthetic attitude’ has been adopted.” (Juslin, 2013: 246). It is worth mentioning that aesthetic judgments, much like aesthetic criteria, have a fundamentally cultural dimension, and they are, as well, evaluative (Juslin, 2013: 247). The distinction between aesthetic judgment and aesthetic emotion is clearly explained through the introduction of the idea of ‘aesthetic threshold’ (Fechner, 1876). If the aesthetic judgment is below the aesthetic threshold, it will

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trigger an aesthetic emotion; if not, it will remain unrealised and could be interpreted as a feeling that, nevertheless, still affects the subject’s mood. Based on Damásio (1999), it would follow the next step in the aesthetic emotion episode would be the expression of said emotion. Scherer (2005: 13) points out core differences in the expression of aesthetic emotion, as compared to utilitarian emotions:  in his view, aesthetic emotions are more directly linked to specific and noticeable action tendencies. This expressiveness, in the words of Bosanquet (1894: 155), can be manifested in different physiological symptoms, motor expressions and action tendencies. These will vary depending on the particular emotion under analysis, and, in fact, they are listed and grouped in sub-​ families by Fingerhut and Prinz (2020). While the precise somatic profiles, action tendencies and motor expressions of emotions of amazement will be analysed in the next section, it is worth bearing in mind the most common symptoms and physical manifestations that usually result from aesthetic experience. Scherer (2005:  707) explains that “[t]he most commonly reported bodily symptoms for intense aesthetic experience are goose pimples, shivers, or moist eyes,” while at the same time acknowledging additional physiological symptoms like feeling cold, shivers, weak limbs, getting pale, heartbeat getting faster, breathing getting faster, feeling warm, perspiring, moist hands. In terms of how these bodily symptoms manifest in the body, Scherer (2005: 707) lists the following: smiling, opening eyes, tears, other changes in the face, trembling voice, moving towards people or things, silence, short utterance, long utterance, speech, melody change, disturbance in speech or changes in speech tempo. The action tendencies of these emotions are easily summarised in what Menninghaus et al. (2019: 186) denominate “motivational tendencies of approach or avoidance,” which include shifting attention towards or away from the event or object, information search, or moving away or towards said object, ultimately depending on whether the emotion that has been triggered is a positive or negative one. These notions will further on be crucial to determine if there are particular terms for amazement that index bodily responses and action tendencies in order to figuratively (metonymically) refer to the emotion that causes them, as Díaz-​Vera (2015) explains for awe, an emotion of amazement. Finally, and drawing on previous research on aesthetic experience and the experience of beauty, the aesthetic emotion episode can be summarised as follows for the purposes of this study: the starting point (1) is the subject’s appreciation of the stimulus or input, which is sometimes pre-​classified as an element of aesthetic interest. This pre-​classification puts the subject into an aesthetic mood in which they are more likely to experience aesthetic emotion. In the next step (2), the object’s basic information is processed by the subject;

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this information can be divided into three subsections: perceptual, cognitive and emotional. The input is subsequently (3) analysed, first perceptually in terms of visible characteristics, then cognitively, in terms of what this sensory information means and how it translates as far as the subject’s cultural background is concerned. Cognitive processing is grounded in former experience and heavily relies on more complex considerations like the subject’s aesthetic criteria (taste), or a given culture’s aesthetic prescriptions. Thereafter (4), there is a response on the part of the subject, a self-​related or art-​related interpretation of the object and the aesthetic judgment, which may or may not give rise to aesthetic emotion. If the emotion is triggered (5), this leads to a decision: the subject may express this emotion in different terms (physiologically, linguistically or by means of visible actions) (Minaya, 2021: 56–​57).

The main assumption upon which this analysis of amazement in Old English hagiography is based is that by looking into, first of all, the existing attestations of Old English terms in the texts under analysis and, second, the emotion regulation scripts (Menninghaus et al., 2019) of this particular literary genre, it is possible to determine not only patterns of conceptualisation for the emotions under scrutiny, but also strategies behind their usage that convey particular doctrinal and theological messages. It is also important to bear in mind that any given emotion, and aesthetic emotions in particular, are considerably influenced by culture. While one culture and/​or one speech community might employ somatic profiles to refer to an aesthetic emotion, others might resort to literal terms for this emotion. Considering, furthermore, the multiplicity of aesthetic tastes that can exist in a given time and place, it is worth bearing the following remarks by Juslin (2013: 247) in mind: Whereas the basic operations of emotion-​induction mechanisms discussed earlier are consistent over time, aesthetic and stylistic norms and ideas change over time in society … making it much more difficult to pin down a definitive account of … aesthetic judgments for all times and places.

In order to build this gap between the phenomena that would have triggered these emotions in a given speech community and the phenomena that are described in the text under analysis, this study will draw upon the idea of ‘emotional communities,’ defined by Rosenwein (2006: 2) as “groups in which people adhere to the same norms of emotional expression and value—​or devalue—​of the same or related emotions.” It will be assumed that the texts under analysis in this study intended to associate the narration of a saint’s life with the emotional responses that it should have triggered in the framework of Christianity and its values, and that, to a certain extent, these texts would have acted as sources of aesthetic and emotional education for their intended readership/​audience.

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1.4. Emotions of amazement After the preceding overview of the research on aesthetic emotions in general, the purpose of this section is to delve into the research that has been carried out on emotions of amazement in general and on the specific emotions of this family. The existence of a group of emotions called ‘emotions of amazement’ was first introduced by Fingerhut and Prinz (2020). In their paper, they reconsider and try to structure the existing positive aesthetic emotions. They categorise aesthetic emotions into the following sub-​families: emotions of pleasure, of contemplation, of amazement, and of respect. Regarding the sub-​family of amazement, they point out three emotions:  wonder, awe, and the experience of the sublime. Fingerhut and Prinz (2020:  233) describe these three emotions under “the umbrella term” of emotions of amazement. In their view, what these emotions have in common is that “their primary mode of engagement is not simply intellectual engagement, but a kind of stupefaction. Amazing things can even arrest inquiry. They stop us in our tracks” (Fingerhut and Prinz, 2020: 233). They begin their exploration of the emotions of amazement by looking into “an emotion without name … that has nevertheless been the subject of intensive inquiry,” that is, “the emotional response to sublimity” (Fingerhut and Prinz, 2020: 233). For the purposes of this study, this emotional response will be referred to as the experience of the sublime or, more briefly, as the sublime. In terms of valence, Fingerhut and Prinz (2020: 233) explain that the sublime is an emotion that is generally positive, although it is flavoured by a sense of threat. Regarding intensity, this emotion is a more powerful sort of surprise:  as “sublimity causes a pattern of responses akin to surprise but more overpowering: widened eyes, arrested respiration, perhaps even trembling” (Fingerhut and Prinz, 2020: 233). This emotion does not have remarkable or characterising action tendencies, as Fingerhut and Prinz (2020: 233) only point out stopping, looking around, and an attempt at reorienting oneself in the presence of something that is more powerful and greater than the subject. Consequently, the key appraisal involved in triggering this emotion is “the recognition of something whose magnitudes are overwhelming along some dimension, without undermining coping potential” (Fingerhut and Prinz, 2020: 233). In other words, the subject will appraise the aesthetic object or the situation that causes this emotion as being far larger than the self, and as potentially threating in some way, shape or form to the individual. Regarding the phenomena that typically trigger it, Fingerhut and Prinz (2020: 233–​234) point out “the infinite, untamed nature, storms, sea, mountains, and volcanoes, as well as depictions of

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these things,” while at the same time acknowledging that “intense beauty experiences” and “terror and fear” may also be involved in the experience of the sublime. Pelowski et al. (2021) focus on this emotional response from a cognitive perspective, and they make an overview of how the different scholars understand the sublime and its related emotional responses, highlighting the work by Keltner and Haidt (2003), Konečni (2011), Kuiken et al. (2012), Skorin-​Kapov (2016) and Pelowski et al. (2021). What all of these academic works on the sublime have in common is its connection to, first of all, the emotion of awe, which will be discussed shortly. For example, for Keltner and Haidt (2003) awe and the sublime refer to the same emotional experience. Furthermore, Pelowski et al. (2021) identify a sub-​type of emotional experience in the sublime that is related to aesthetic pleasure as well. While scholars like Keltner and Haidt (2003) do not make a distinction between the sublime and awe, Fingerhut and Prinz (2020: 234) do analyse them separately, admitting that awe is a “close cousin of the sublimity response.” Regarding this emotion, and based on the research by Keltner and Haidt (2003) and Shiota et al. (2007), Fingerhut and Prinz (2020:  234) explain that the somatic profiles and the embodied characteristics of this emotion overlap with the experience of the sublime. However, in terms of prototypical elicitors, awe causes the subject to “both small and empowered at the same time—​empowered because we are part of something larger than ourselves.” Fingerhut and Prinz (2020: 234) base their discussion of this emotion, fundamentally, on Keltner and Haidt (2003). In fact, the title of this paper, “Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion,” is fairly revealing as far as the characteristics of this emotion are concerned. To begin with, awe is an emotional response that is frequently triggered or found in contexts where the contemplation of God or other religious figures and the miracles that they perform is found. Keltner and Haidt (2003: 304) propose a list of appraisals that precede and elicit its experience. In their prototype of awe, there are two appraisals that they denominate “central features” in the experience of this emotion. That is to say, these two appraisals will have to be present in any given experience of awe. These are the appraisal of vastness and accommodation: “Vastness refers to anything that is experienced as being much larger than the self, or the self ’s ordinary level of experience or frame of reference,” while “Accommodation refers to the Piagetian [Piaget and Inhelder, 1969] process of adjusting mental structures that cannot assimilate a new experience.” (Keltner and Haidt, 2003: 303). Regarding vastness, this idea goes beyond physical size, and “it can also involve social size such as fame, authority, or prestige.” (Keltner and Haidt, 2003: 303). While the sublime could be triggered by objects that are far larger in size than the self, the core difference between

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awe and the sublime can be identified in the following remarks by Keltner and Haidt (2003: 304): “We propose that prototypical awe involves a challenge to or negation of mental structures when they fail to make sense of an experience of something vast,” and it can involve “feelings of enlighten and even rebirth, when mental structures expand to accommodate truths never before known.” In their view, accommodation will not always be successful, but what they stress is that awe causes a “need for accommodation;” when this need is satisfied, the subject will feel positively, when it is not, feelings can potentially be negative. Nevertheless, these two features do not explain why awe can be a positive and a negative (or mixed) aesthetic emotion. Keltner and Haidt (2003: 304–​306) introduce the notion of “peripheral” or “flavouring features” in the experience of awe; these “themes alter or ‘flavour’ an emotional experience, giving rise to the variety and diversity of awe experiences.” Because need for accommodation and vastness are fairly neutral appraisals in terms of valence, the nature of the experience of awe will be determined by these additional appraisals which will be responsible for its valence and for its similarity to other aesthetic emotions like aesthetic pleasure or utilitarian emotions like fear. The first flavouring feature that they point out is related to the appraisal of threat, which can “cause an experience of awe to be flavoured by feelings of fear” (Keltner and Haidt, 2003:  304). Conversely, appraisals of beauty “can produce awe-​related experiences that are flavoured with aesthetic pleasure” (Keltner and Haidt, 2003:  304). In these cases, intense experiences of beauty (or appraisals thereof) act as aesthetic emotions or judgments that trigger an additional aesthetic emotion of a positive valence. A related emotional response will be found in instances where there is an appraisal of virtue in “people who display virtues or strength of character,” which trigger “elevation” as a response to “moral beauty” or “human goodness” (Keltner and Haidt, 2003: 305). Similarly, and in equally cognitive terms, “[p]erceptions of exceptional ability, talent, and skill will flavour an experience with admiration in which the perceiver feels respect for the other person that is not based on dominance and submission within a hierarchy” (Keltner and Haidt, 2003: 305). Finally, and perhaps most directly related with the nature of the material that will be analysed in this study, Keltner and Haidt (2003: 306) point out the appraisal of supernatural causality, whereby “the perception of God or some other supernatural entity … will flavour an experience with an element of the uncanny.” And, in this regard, depending on how this “element of the uncanny” is perceived by the subject, the emotion that it will trigger will be of one valence or another: if this is a benevolent entity, it will cause a positive case of awe; if it is not, a more negatively oriented experience.

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In short, it becomes evident that the models for awe proposed by Fingerhut and Prinz (2020), and Keltner and Haidt (2003), among others, are detailed enough to carry out research on the expression and conceptualisation of these emotions on these theoretical grounds. Nevertheless, as it has been shown above, and as it will be clear from the next paragraphs, this is not the case of the sublime nor of wonder. Fingerhut and Prinz (2020) also claim that their final emotion of amazement, wonder, is closely related and sometimes synonymous with awe and the sublime. Nevertheless, Fingerhut and Prinz (2020: 234) develop on the significant differences between these emotions: “Wonder has a wider intensity span” and it implies “a degree of perplexity, which indicates a cognitive processing not in the same way present in awe.” Fundamentally, wonder is triggered by things that the subject cannot fully comprehend or integrate in their mental structures. As a result, wonder involves contemplation, investigation, and a high degree of cognitive processing. The key difference between these emotions is further stressed by Fingerhut and Prinz (2020: 235): “We may step back win awe but lean in with wonder.” Typical elicitors of wonder include the natural world, without regards to scale. Furthermore, wonder, as well as awe and the sublime, has an important spiritual and moral dimension, as the title of the paper by Keltner and Haidt (2003) implies, as they include “an aspect of reverence with respect to its objects whose powers are beyond our grasp” (Fingerhut and Prinz, 2020:  235). In short, they summarise the main appraisal in the experience of wonder as ‘this is extraordinary.’ It can, therefore, be inferred that wonder will be triggered by appraisals of objects and events as inapprehensible and by evaluations of excellence. In a different paper, Fingerhut and Prinz (2019: 110) also point out ‘beauty’ as an idea that is closely related to wonder, but it will be assumed here that beauty can operate as an ‘excellence’ of shape and appearance. Therefore, this section has emphasised various theoretical angles from which the differences between these three emotional responses become evident. The application of this theories to the analysis of the text in question here will ultimately evidence if, in this particular textual context, such differences between emotions exist or not.

2. The study of emotion in literature:  Looking into amazement in hagiography The preceding chapter has offered an overview of the relevant research on emotions and aesthetic experience that can illuminate the present analysis of amazement in selected Old English hagiographical writings. Nevertheless, the literature analysed in the preceding pages discusses emotion in real-​life contexts, and this can be problematic in the sense that the emotions that will be analysed here should not be taken to be genuine accounts of real people’s emotional experiences. Furthermore, and as the research that has been recently carried out on the emotional dynamics of literature shows, the nature of literary emotion is, at times, radically different from the emotions that are experienced in real-​life contexts. Before moving on to the description of the textual corpus that will be employed in this research and its context of production, the purpose of this chapter is to analyse the nature of literary emotions in more detail, looking into cultural and literary models for wonder that can be applied to the rest of the emotions discussed here. Similarly, this chapter will provide some methodological notes on how and why to study emotions in literature, following some the most recent cognitive approaches to literary texts. The last section of this chapter will further contextualise the role of emotions in the hagiographical genre, and it will detail the ways in which hagiography differs from other literary genres, as well as highlighting some of the most relevant characteristics of these texts that should be taken into consideration before moving on to a more in-​depth analysis of the lexical field and the experiences of amazement in these texts.

2.1. Cultural and literary models for wonder Contrary to other emotions of amazement, there are several works that treat and inspect the emotion of wonder, not from the perspective of psychology or cognitive linguistics, but inspecting the cultural and literary models that are associated with the experience of this emotion. In their paper, Fingerhut and Prinz (2019) delve deeper into the artistic dimension of wonder. Indeed, unlike awe, wonder is an emotion that has been theorised by different authors with relevance to the historical period analysed in this study. Furthermore, while the sublime is an emotional response that has a long literary history, the existing

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writings on it, like Burke’s (1757) treatise or Kant (1790), because they treat later historical periods, cannot illuminate the present analysis on the Old English literary models for emotions of amazement. This being so, the purpose of this section is to look into the existing literary models for wonder in order to discuss the core ideas and main roles of this emotion in texts of a literary nature, highlighting the relationships of their audiences with wonder and the phenomena that typically triggered it in early Medieval culture and society. In this sense, one of the most useful contributions to this study of wonder in Old English hagiography is the influential work by Walker (1997 and 2001), which provides insights into the nature of this emotion and how it is represented in Medieval writings. More recently, and perhaps more interestingly because of the different analyses on the relationship between wonder and other utilitarian and aesthetic emotions, Brewer’s (2016) volume on Wonder and Skepticism in the Middle Ages should be pointed out. It evaluates the phenomenology and social stances on wonder and the miracle in Medieval society, discussing how people reacted in real-​life contexts to stories of apparitions, miracles, and unnatural sightings, phenomena that are frequently narrated and described in Old English hagiography. Both these scholars’ research items are equally interesting and easily translatable into the early Medieval English context and Old English hagiographical texts, despite the fact that they cover a later period (1100–​1300) than the one that will be analysed in this study. These academic works do assess wonder from the perspective of contemporary (aesthetic) emotion theories, but that is not the main focus of their research. Nevertheless, they contribute to our understanding of wonder as an emotion that is frequently found in literary and religious texts and contexts. These theoretical works also pave the way for the discussion that will be presented in the next section, that is, how emotions can, should be analysed in texts of a literary nature. Walker (1997:  3) defines wonder as “a recognition of the singularity and significance of the thing encountered,” explaining that “only that which is really different from the knower can trigger wonder.” These remarks suggest that wonder is a fundamentally positive aesthetic emotion based on the nature of its appraisals. However, Walker’s (1997: 7) additional definition of what wonder is includes ideas that do not necessarily portray a positive aesthetic emotion: “one finds mira (wondrous) again and again in the texts alongside mixta (mixed or composite things), a word that evokes the hybrids and monsters also found in the literature of entertainment.” The mixed nature of wonder is not only evident in the objects that it evaluates, but also in the additional emotions that it elicits or is found in co-​occurrence with.

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In his work, Brewer (2016: 5) defines wonder as “a form of positive affect,” and he explains that wonder has “‘negative affect’ cousins in fear, dread and horror, as well as awe and reverence, suggesting that it defies strict categorisation as a positive feeling.” Generally speaking, Brewer (2016:  5) identifies five distinguishing features that characterise phenomena that elicit wonder: “(1) they are novel; (2) they cause excitement; (3) they are unexplained; (4) they create a desire to understand; and (5) their propensity to induce wonder is dulled with experience.” These evaluations or characteristics that are identified in the object of wonder can operate both at a sensory level (visual and aural, according to Onians, 1997:  11) and also at a cognitive one. As Brewer (2016:  26) explains, “[w]onder is not only caused by external stimuli but can be aroused by cognition, having its genesis within an individual’s thought.” In fact, wonder is a fairly cognitive emotion in the sense that it is targeted towards the acquisition of knowledge. Brewer (2016: 26) justifies this claim in its relation to the novel, an appraisal that is also present in positive aesthetic experience (see Menninghaus et al., 2019) but in a different manner. wonder is to be found both in the aesthetic object’s pleasant sensory qualities and also in more cognitive considerations like origin, form, or purpose, which are ultimately rooted in the subject’s own perspective. Continuing with his definition of wonder, Brewer (2016) explains its evolutionary purpose as well as the importance of wonder as a historically utilitarian emotion: If wonder transforms a new phenomenon into knowledge, then its function is learning. Given that humans are the most intelligent animals on the planet and that intelligence has been a large part of our evolutionary success story, wonder should not be underestimated as a mere aesthetic emotion (Brewer, 2016: 28).

These remarks prove that there is, indeed, more to wonder than the role it plays in aesthetic experience. Instead, definitions of wonder assess this emotion holistically in its utilitarian and aesthetic dimensions. Brewer (2016) also draws on the work by Wierzbicka (1999), who stresses the potential of carrying out research on non-​utilitarian emotions: Anthropologist, Anna Wierzbicka, argued similarly, listing amazement as one of the emotions universal to humans despite cultural differences, although correctly noting wonder’s differences in potential stimulus and expression between different cultural groups. Following this, studying wonder in past societies should prove more useful than studying lower-​order emotions, because the stimuli that elicit wonder and the possible expressions of wonder vary more than the stimuli and expressions for, say, lust or hunger (Brewer, 2016: 28).

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Whether studying diachronic expressions of wonder is more useful or productive than focusing on utilitarian emotions is not for this study to determine, but what remains clear is that, while research on utilitarian emotions is more likely to shed light on how a given subject perceives and conceptualises their body and their surroundings, aesthetic emotions like wonder are bound to speak about a different dimension of the human experience. wonder is related to cognition and the acquisition of knowledge and to how the subject perceives their surroundings as well, but where the most interesting layer of this emotion is revealed is in the areas of perception, experience, and conceptualisation of what deviates from the course of nature and in the experience of that which cannot be fully grasped or apprehended by the subject. Brewer (2016: 26) enumerates a very comprehensive list of what typically caused wonder in the Middle Ages, despite possible variations from individual to individual: “magic, miracles and marvels, and particularly revenants, magical stones, monsters, eclipses, saints’ miracles, demons, magnets and transformations.” In his view, “[t]hese sort of phenomena were particularly wondrous, because they interrupted expected patterns of nature based on the individual’s experience” (Brewer, 2016: 26). Brewer (2016) proceeds to enumerate the common physiological effects that these stimuli cause on the subject: A wondrous phenomenon can invoke bodily feelings of muscular tension, tingling, short-​term paralysis (arresting the responder), feeling dazed, a sensation of warmth in the heart or abdomen, and an increase in heart rate and respiration through the central and autonomic nervous systems (Brewer, 2016: 30).

Onians (1997: 11–​12) classifies the responses to wonder into different categories:  “(1) a striking experience, usually visual but sometimes aural; (2) a consequent physical paralysis; (3) a mental reaction resulting in learning; and sometimes (4) a new action.” This process illustrates that wonder is not always an action-​oriented emotion, as well as that its chief focus is on learning and discovering the workings of a previously unexperienced phenomenon. Onians (1997: 12) also explains that some of these physiological responses are encoded in some of the Present-​Day English terms for wonder, like the verb astonish, which goes back to the Latin verb attonare ‘to be thundered at,’ among others. Brewer (2016:  30) further explains that wonder is indeed a moral emotion because “it has implications for the group as well as the individual,” and he compares it to fear or lust in that they are contrastively only focused on the individual. Furthermore, Brewer (2016: 30) explains that the model of a typical response of wonder mentioned in the preceding paragraph “seems to be related to that of fear, disgust, or threat perception, which are built upon similar

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neurological foundations.” Walker (1997: 15) similarly claims that an “[e]xamination of the complex semantic fields for ‘wonder’ and ‘the wonderful’ suggests that the wonder-​reaction ranges from terror and disgust to solemn astonishment and playful delight.” She further justifies this connection between wonder and fear in the Medieval context with a writing by Robert of Basevorn, who glossed Latin admiratio towards the earliest European accounts of werewolf stories as stupor, timor and horror. Only an exhaustive and contextual analysis of these terms for wonder and the appraisals involved in the emotion episode can ultimately determine if, indeed, as she points out, wonder is “understood in its full range of awe and dread” (Walker, 1997: 17). Brewer (2016:  30) defends his claims as to the relation between fear and wonder on the work by Thomas Aquinas: “There is some sense, in the Middle Ages especially, that wonder and fear went hand in hand; indeed, thirteenth century scholastic philosopher and theologian, Thomas Aquinas, characterised wonder as a subspecies of fear.” Yet, his claims do not solely take philosophy and theology as a basis, but also the anatomy of the brain: “His view may have some anatomical grounding: the amygdala is active when a stimulus is novel or evokes uncertainty, be that in a subjectively positive way (wonder) or a subjectively negative way (fear)” (Brewer, 2016: 30). What is important from these remarks is not the bipolar categorisation of fear and wonder as belonging to either side of the valence spectrum, but that the categories of the negative and the positive, as far as affective phenomena are concerned, are entirely dependent on the subject’s perspective. What for one subject may be positive, could perfectly be perceived as negative by another depending on additional appraisals that might modify their emotional experience. In fact, the perspectival nature of wonder is what, in Brewer’s (2016: 30) view, makes of this emotion a collective emotion. Drawing on the Broaden and Build theory (Frederickson et al., 2008), Brewer (2016) explains how positive affect emotions tend to encourage novel, varied and exploratory actions (which increase social cohesion), as opposed to negative affect emotions, which tend to encourage narrow, short-​term and survival-​orientated behaviours (which increase social isolation) (Brewer, 2016: 30).

In this sense, the social cohesion of wonder is seen in some of the typical responses to wonder: “when locals flocked to see conjoined twins and beached whales, or when stories of visions, revenants or monsters were widely traded with enthusiasm” (Brewer, 2016: 30). Brewer also mentions certain well-​known visual representations of the emotion of wonder, for instance in the Bayeux Tapestry, where a group of men stare wide-​eyed at Halley’s Comet (Brewer, 2016: 31), thus

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reinforcing the collective character of wonder. Other researchers, like Díaz-​ Vera (2013:  277), explain that, instead, this scene from the tapestry illustrates the emotion of fear. Díaz-​Vera (2013: 277) draws on research about the visual expression of emotions and more specifically on bodily responses to fear, to justify that “fear can also be indicated by an upper arm emphatically close to the body, whereas the lower arm is slightly separated from it.” This reading of the woven scene is also feasible; it ultimately depends on the individual’s interpretation of the meaning of the comet. The Medieval tendency to associate celestial phenomena with impending disasters would have added the appraisal of threat to the experience of wonder, inclining it towards the negative side of the spectrum, that is, towards the emotions of fear and awe. Another question that is frequently debated in the literature discussing wonder is to what extent the experience of wonder is genuine or, in other words, how often aesthetic objects, or material anchors in the words of Hutchins (2005), are deliberately designed with the aim of triggering these emotions in a potential audience. For Walker (1997: 15), very frequently, wonder is not an organic reaction, but the result of what Menninghaus et al. (2017) denominate emotion-​regulation scripts, which are specific to different genres: “reactions such as wonder, delight, or terror do not simply occur; they are evoked, sometimes even staged.” Brewer (2016) also discusses the intentionality behind triggering wonder or awe in religious sermons: Fearful reverence was in some sense a central part of Christian belief. … sermon theorist, Humbert of Romans, noted that audiences were often bored at sermons and one of the strategies he suggested to overcome this was to make audiences afraid and thereby bring them to God by telling exempla (Brewer, 2016: 46).

These emotions are therefore strategically employed to both avoid boredom (as Menninghaus et al., 2019: 180 suggest in the larger framework of their aesthetic emotion theory) and to create a powerful response in an audience. Brewer (2016:  47) continues explaining the seven topics that, according to Humbert of Romans, were “rightly to be feared:” Hell, Judgment Day, death, sin, present danger, and the devil. These seven elements were purposely included in wondrous and fearful descriptions of the scriptures and the natural world in order to portray God as the only one who could save the subject from these negative figures and situations, but they also provided a sort of entertainment that mirrors contemporary fascination with horror stories. The deliberate triggering of aesthetic emotions in the context of liturgy (or hagiography for that matter) emphasises the two main perspectives in the usage of aesthetic emotion terms. On the one hand, these terms can be used to evoke

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or trigger a reaction of wonder on the subject, or for that matter any other aesthetic emotion; ultimately, this is deliberately done on the part of the writer/​ poet/​artist with clear objectives in mind, and it is not clear to what extent it is effective. On the other hand, they can be found in contexts where the term itself refers to a person’s or a character’s experience of wonder. Walker (1997: 15) concludes that “[f]inding wonder-​words is easy; finding wonder is far more complicated.” As a result, she turns to Church architecture and carries out an analysis of several pieces which, in her view, were intended to trigger wonder during Mass and Eucharistic rituals. Similar research has been recently carried out by Díaz-​Vera (2015) in the field of the Anglo-​Saxon experience of awe as a result of ritualised practices in pilgrimage experience. In exclusively linguistic and historical terms, Walker (1997: 6) makes a distinction on the usage of terms for wonder in the Middle Ages: a) “a theological-​ philosophical understanding of wonder emanating from university intellectuals,” b) “a religious discourse about wonder found in sermons, devotional writing, and above all in the enormously popular genre of saints’ lives” and c) “a literature of entertainment, within which I include travel accounts, history writings, and the collection of odd stories.” Throughout her paper, Walker (1997) develops and discusses these three categories, and she explains what the role of wonder exactly is in each of these categories so that she can further on draw some conclusions as regards both the experience of wonder in the Middle Ages and as regards the nature of wonder as an aesthetic emotion. Furthermore, Dailey (2012) uses this distinction for her analysis of wonder in the Old English riddles. Her paper also yields some interesting remarks as to how the experience of wonder is to be found in each of these three categories in Old English textual equivalents. The first category, the theological and philosophical approach to wonder, is not entirely applicable to early Medieval English writings because there are no surviving writings from this period that theorise about this emotion, either from a philosophical or theological perspective. Indeed, Dailey (2012: 468) agrees on this point, conceding that this category “requires a slight yet significant modification when applied to Anglo-​Saxon England.” According to Walker (1997: 10), in this type of writings from the 12th to the 14th century, scientia ‘science’ is opposed to admiratio ‘wonder,’ but as Dailey (2012: 468) explains, in certain Anglo-​Saxon writings wonder is coupled with a certain process of knowledge acquisition, particularly in the riddles. Walker (1997:  7) explains that these writings were “produced in the schools and universities of the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries,” and “[they] drew on tradition of understanding wonder as perspectival and psychological that went back to … Aristotle and Augustine.”

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However, some remarks from this tradition are applicable to the experience of wonder and the treatment of miracles in the Old English literary context. Walker (1997: 8) explains that these authors “while implying that philosophy might replace wonder, also suggested that human beings wonder at the regularity, structure, and beauty of the universe, and made wonder a situated response to what is unusual or ‘other’ to a particular viewer.” In other words, while science or philosophy can potentially influence what is understood as a miracle, the order of the world in itself is cause of wonder for Medieval audiences. In fact, Walker (1997: 8) points out Anselm of Canterbury’s distinction, in the natural world, of the marvellous, the natural and the voluntary (or human-​made). wonder is experienced in each of these three categories, albeit differently, because the hand-​ made can also be the cause of wonder and the natural world as well. In essence, this connects with the Medieval idea that nature is God’s perfect creation and, in Walker’s (1997: 8) words, it is “objectively wonderful” because it is “produced by God’s power alone.” Regarding miracles, Walker (1997:  17) denies the possibility that the usage of terms for wonder could refer to the genuine experiences of wonder:  “Miracles, for example—​though routinely referred to as ‘marvellous’—​are seldom presented as evoking or intended to evoke wonder … Thus miracles, portents and oddities are sites and stagings of wonder less often than we might suppose.” While a given miracle, if experienced in a real-​life situation, would have triggered wonder, when they are lexically present in a particular text, the intention of the writer is not to cause wonder on the potential readership, but rather to allude to the miracle itself and to describe the experience that the character (or historical figure) is supposed to have experienced. This also explains why, as Díaz-​Vera (2015: 6) points out, terms for wonder are metonymically used to render the cause of wonder or awe: the miracle. Walker’s (1997) second group of writings that contain a different usage of wonder-​related terms includes homilies and hagiographical texts, in which the wonder-​ful was contrasted not with the known, the knowable, or the usual but with imitable. The phrase non imitandum sed admirandum (not to be imitated but to be marvelled at) had been in use since the early church to express the distance between heroes and martyrs, on the one hand, and the ordinary faithful on the other (Walker, 1997: 10).

In this sense, when a Medieval audience heard or read about the stories of the saints, there was a degree of uniqueness, and an evident frustration at their inability to imitate these models that, nevertheless, invited them to strive towards perfect and morally admirable behaviour. In fact, Walker (1997: 12) uses a metaphor originally developed by Bernard of Clairvaux to explain this idea and this

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relationship between wonder and hagiography: “we are offered a golden goblet, we consume, absorb, incorporate the drink (that is, imitate the virtues), but we give back (that is, we wonder at) the goblet. Thus we wonder at what we cannot in any sense incorporate, or consume, or encompass in our mental categories.” In a certain sense, this idea implies that there is a degree of need for adaptation in the mental structures of the subject (or mental categories) that is never fulfilled. This type of wonder, according to Dailey (2012: 465) is “often invoke[d] as a sign of exemplary and inimitable holiness,” and it “marks work that emanates from the saint, in life and beyond, in body and in soul, but clearly originates in the divine itself.” Summing up, wonder in hagiographical and homiletic writings is wound up around these characters’ divinity, and it is not fully processed by the subject, who, in any case, is affected enough to want to imitate these models despite their inability to completely do so. The third category pointed out by Walker (1997: 12), is the approach found in the “literature of entertainment,” which refers to “the collection of oddities (including monster or hybrids, distant races, marvellous lands)” and “antique notions of portents or omens—​that is, unusual events that foreshadow the (usually catastrophic) future and were accompanied by a vague sense of dread.” This type of literature is not usually produced in religious settings, and it is more oriented towards the stories and the lore of a given society, although it could be argued to what extent hagiographical writings constitute, by their very nature, literature of entertainment. According to Walker (1997: 12) these writings also depict “what came to be the separate ontological category of the miracle, about which authors tended to be increasingly skeptical, even cynical.” These writings showcase a very particular type of wonder that is characterised by three main features: “it is a response to facticity; it is a response to the singular; it is deeply perspectival” (Walker, 1997: 13). She develops these three characteristics further. Firstly, Walker (1997: 13) focuses on ‘facticity,’ and she draws on remarks made by Gervais of Tilbury who claimed that “only facts can induce wonder: although you will wonder only at what you cannot explain, you cannot be amazed by what you don’t believe.” Moving on to singularity, Walker (1997: 13) explains that “[i]f admiration is a response to credible though deeply unusual events, it is also a response to singular event.” Finally, for Walker (1997: 14), this wonder is “deeply perspectival” since “[i]t is a reaction of a particular ‘us’ to an ‘other’ that is ‘other’ only relative to the particular ‘us.’” Moreover, the fact that wonder is heavily based on the subject’s own experience causes it to be a fairly broad emotion that varies greatly across cultures and times: “since wonder is perspectival, there is much scope for variation between cultures and individuals within a culture, because of wonder’s relation to the novel, the unexpected and the unknown” (Brewer, 2016: 26). This

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is also supported by Fuller (2006: 29) who argues that “[t]he balance of evidence would suggest that wonder is more amenable to personal and cultural variation than are those emotions typically categorized as primary.” The fact that wonder is an aesthetic emotion (despite originally and occasionally qualifying as a utilitarian emotion) further highlights the relativity of its experience and how it is conditioned to the subject’s aesthetic criteria (which, in turn, is influenced by their culture’s aesthetic paradigms, to a certain extent). In short, the wonder that the literature of entertainment triggers is an emotion that is exclusive to a relationship between a given object and a given subject, and it is based on the premise that the subject believes the existence of said object or its supposed supernatural qualities. Dailey (2012: 466) explains that this form of wonder is “the one most readily associated with the Anglo-​Saxon texts called The Wonders of the East and The Letter of Alexander to Aristotle, both of which precede the poem Beowulf.” However, Beowulf also qualifies literature of entertainment, following Walker’s (1997) terminology, in which oddities and monsters trigger amazement. In it, as Dailey (2012:  476) explains, “the wonder is an end in and of itself; it is not sustained in the ordinary, as it resides ‘elsewhere.’” What is important in the context of these instances of wonder triggered by monsters is how, as Dailey (2012: 467) justifies in the case of The Letter of Alexander, they are measured according to human dimensions. In this sense, the theory of embodiment is found at the core of the emotion episode; because the subject projects the measures and standard workings of their embodied experience on the aesthetic object, some of these creatures are met with a wonder that originates in the subject’s own need for adaptation. Dailey (2012: 464) takes as a base these three forms of wonder in order to analyse the Old English literary experience of wonder. However, choosing to focus on the Old English riddles limits her scope notably. The usage of deliberately figurative language always obscures what each term exactly means. In her view, wonder plays a very distinct and important role in the riddle format: “Wonder initiates the sequence of admiratio, questio, investigatio and inventio (wonder, questioning, investigation and discovery), but once knowledge is ‘achieved,’ wonder is dissolved and replaced by the discovered form of knowing” (Dailey, 2012: 465). The impossibility of initially identifying the object being described in the riddle is momentary and anecdotic, and it is soon replaced by the discovery of an answer that gives sense to the complete poem.1 Clearly, the instrumental use of wonder and wonder-​related terms in these texts cannot fully contribute to an exhaustive analysis of the cultural or literary model for this emotion.

1 For more on the topic of wonder in the Old English riddles, see Minaya (2022 and 2022a).

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Following Walker’s (1997) explanation, Medieval wonder ultimately goes beyond surprise, positing itself as an extremely complex emotion: wonder is induced by the beautiful, the horrible, and the skilfully made, by the bizarre and rare, by that which challenges or suddenly illuminates our expectations, by the range of difference, even the order and regularity, found in the world. But marvelling and astonishment as reactions seem to be triggered most frequently and violently by … events or phenomena in which ontological and moral boundaries are crossed, confused, or erased. Singularity per se, or the absence of a “cause,” is not enough (Walker, 1997: 21).

The unnatural and the morally corrupt are, therefore, the main domains in which the wondrous is experienced and manifests itself more intensely (possibly because of the presence of mixed emotions) but other characteristics like beauty, skill, strangeness, and excellence can also induce the experience of wonder without necessarily entailing negative feelings. What does characterise this experience at its core, however, is the aforementioned inability to fully comprehend the situation, object, person or being that is presented to the subject at a first glance. Walker (1997: 24) summarises this idea in extremely plain terms: “you could wonder only where you knew that you failed to understand.” Brewer (2016: 8) also proposes a division of the phenomena that trigger wonder, which is, to a certain extent, similar to that outlined by Walker (1997): a) Marvels, although secular in name, were often glossed with religious moralisations and explanations, and were often described as subservient to nature, of which God was the architect … Marvels and miracles were in a sense, then, not objective categories; indeed, if wonder is of the novel, then it too is subjective, relating to what is novel to each individual, rather than possessing some sort of universal, objective qualities. b) The miracle … was considered a preternatural act of God working through a saint. c) [M]agic … was a category of wondrous event often associated with demonic forces, based chiefly on the Biblical precedent of the pharaoh’s magicians in Exodus. It will be interesting to determine with what proportion the wonder-​terms that are found in Old English hagiography refer to marvels, miracles or a magic that is associated with demons and pre-​Christian deities. Walker’s (1997) paper also includes certain appreciations of the Medieval experience of wonder that are the result of the textual analysis of a large array of scholarly treatises, saints’ lives, literature, chronicles, and sermons. Walker (1997) elaborates on the presence of wonder in these texts:

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The study of emotion in literature: Looking into AMAZEMENT narrative accounts not only described objects and events that were staged or constructed to produce wonder, they also teemed with complex wonder-​reactions. Hagiographers, for example, detailed in emotional, even sensual, language the extravagant asceticism and para-​mystical manifestations holy women experienced and the amazement such manifestations engendered in others. Beauty—​natural, human and artistic—​was not merely referred to as wonderful, it was also described, in loving and lyrical language, as signalling a deeper pattern or purpose (Walker, 1997: 19).

Her appreciations emphasise yet again the two routes in the usage of aesthetic emotion markers: the rendering of a former experience of wonder and the deliberate evocation of one such emotion. Walker (1997) also highlights the role of beauty in both the experience of wonder and as a metaphor for morality and spirituality.2 Regarding early Medieval English wonder, and focusing on the author here analysed, Walker (1997: 19) also points out the work by “the great Anglo-​ Saxon homilist, Ælfric” who “spoke of the wundra (marvels) of God, who has set all creation in measure, number, and weight.” Because this idea was present in the English religious discourse, certain natural phenomena are expressed as ‘wonders’ or are said to trigger wonder, but this is, to a certain extent, an exaggeration: “it requires no sorcery that the moon waxes and wanes, that the sea agrees with it, that the earth greens in response to its power” (Walker, 1997: 19). These phenomena are, too, marvels of the world, but the religious explanation behind them (a sort of scientia) does overpower admiratio. Brewer (2016: 5–​6) stresses structural factors like “rurality, provinciality and poverty” as limiting the knowledge with which Medieval people faced wonder. In this sense, “[c]ultural narratives like creation stories and unifying explanations like divine causation therefore filled in knowledge gaps by providing overarching explanations for the plurality of existence in all its complexity” (Brewer, 2016: 6). This deliberately general explanation for the portents of the universe opposes the individual inspection of the causes for these wonders: most marvels are a result of divine action or at least they are presented as such in a great percentage of Medieval texts. All things considered, it becomes evident that the available cultural and literary models for wonder regularly mix ideas from theological backgrounds, psychology, art, literature, and history. Part of the reason why this is so is because wonder is an emotion that is mainly found in two contexts: the literature that has entertainment purposes and in religious writings, which have clear moralising

2 For a more in-​depth discussion of these ideas in Old English literature see Minaya (2019, 2020, and 2021).

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purposes. The traits that are consistently associated with this emotion and that are potentially translatable into appraisals are the following: singularity (objects that are different from a given aesthetic standard), novelty (the encounter with a new-​found thing), beauty, mixture of shapes (for those objects that deviate from a given canon), excitement (that is a result of the aesthetic emotion episode) and an apparently compulsory degree of inapprehensibility (as regards the origins, meaning, form or purpose of the object) that awakens a desire to understand, which may or may not result in the acquisition of knowledge (for some scholars, the utilitarian purpose of the emotion of wonder). This being so, wonder is realised as an extremely complex emotion for two reasons: it is involved in both positive and negative evaluations, and it is both a utilitarian and an aesthetic emotion. As such, an analysis of the expressions of wonder in a given literary or cultural context can provide data about how this culture’s individuals faced learning processes and also information regarding more deeply philosophical and ontological ideas held by these subjects like spirituality, imagination, fears or hopes, as well as regards cultural and aesthetic taste. While most academic works emphasise the role of wonder in the learning process, as is the case of Dailey (2016) in the Old English riddles, this is not the main focus of this study, which aims at looking into amazement in a particular literary and religious context, where its role is possibly limited to a) an intentional evocation of wonder for religious purposes, and b) expressions of wonderS that are aimed at entertaining and fascinating the subject. In these two contexts, and as it has been discussed in the preceding pages, the main situations that trigger wonder or contain terms for wonder are related to the divine and the demonic:  miracles, marvels, wondrous events that are often explained by God’s overarching ability, the demon, celestial events and bodies (as connected to creation or as foreshadowing an impending catastrophe), resurrected people and natural phenomena that, in the Middle Ages, did not have a logical or scientific explanation. These often manifest in the three more or less consistent categories that most scholars establish for wondrous phenomena: the marvels of the world, the religious miracle, and the unknown. However, the works mentioned in this section do not contemplate a category that refers to the usage of wonder-​ related terms that describe the positive aesthetic experience that results from the inability to apprehend the skill and craft behind the creation of a given object of beauty. Nevertheless, these descriptions of wonder and its main domains of evaluation illustrate that Medieval amazement includes cognitive and sensory evaluations, as well as emphasising how varied and numerous the phenomena that trigger it can potentially be.

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2.2. Theoretical and methodological notes on the study of emotion in literature and hagiography in the Middle Ages The expression and conceptualisation of emotions across history and, particularly, in texts of a literary nature is a topic that is currently the source of special attention on the part of the academic community. The work by Rosenwein (2016, and especially, 2006), Boquet and Nagy (2018), Reddy (2001) or Plamper (2015) can provide solid theoretical and methodological foundations for the present study of amazement in Old English hagiography. Furthermore, recent research on Old English verse from a cognitive perspective, like Harbus’ (2012) volume on cognitive approaches to Old English poetry or my research on aesthetic emotions in Old English verse (Minaya, 2020, 2021 or 2023), emphasises the benefits of applying cognitive models to the study of literature in that it can offer new insights on the emotional dynamics of these texts and originate different interpretations for these texts. This section will carry out an overview of the main ideas from the theoretical works mentioned above that can illuminate the present analysis of Old English hagiography, while at the same time focusing on how these methodologies can be applied to this case study. Harbus (2012) seminal monograph analysing Old English verse from a Cognitive Science perspective offers observations and theoretical and methodological remarks that can easily be applied to the present study of Old English hagiography. Harbus (2012:  162) acknowledges that, until recently, scholars have not applied research from cognitive disciplines to the study of literature, but that, in recent years, “cognitive scientists have begun to analyse with their own concepts and methods this uncontested capacity of literary texts to represent, simulate and cause emotions” and this originates “a dynamic line of inquiry for the cognitive study of literature.” Prior to this surge in interest in the cognitive approach to literature, Harbus (2012:  165) points out a marked absence of interdisciplinarity in the study of emotions: research on the History of Emotions focused (and focuses) too frequently on theological and philosophical ideas, neglecting research on Cognitive Science, while the scholars from this discipline are relatively uninterested by the historical representation of emotion and emotion concepts in literary texts. In Harbus’ (2012: 165) view, research on the cognitive dimension of literary emotions should “consider how the functioning of the relatively stable evolved biological embodied brain and its emotional life interacts with its culturally contingent set of circumstances,” but the reality of research into the History of Emotion is that it “rarely considers texts as sources of information on the emotional life.” This approach is similarly supported by

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Damásio (1999: 51), whose work has been discussed in the preceding chapter. Emotion and emotion concepts should be, at a theoretical and methodological level, addressed taking into consideration the cultural and contextual dimension of emotion, which in this case is eminently literary and will have indissociable religious and doctrinal associations. For example, Nussbaum (2001) considers literature to be an area in which philosophical and religious views of given emotions are frequently portrayed, and, as a result, these emotions will be preceded by an ethical or moral appraisal. Consequently, in Old English hagiography, the literary context in which the emotional experiences and emotion terms will be found will entail an appraisal of morality that might not have always been present in real-​life experiences of amazement. There are several ways of looking into specific emotions that can be inferred from the works that have been discussed in the previous section and in the preceding chapter, but the research by Harbus (2012) can further help us define the methodological framework and the context for this analysis. This line of inquiry, according to Harbus (2012: 162) has two main perspectives: on the one hand, cognitive scientists can look into how emotion is represented and talked about in literature; on the other hand, they can also study how these literary texts can potentially trigger emotion. This study aims at doing both, with certain limitations. While it is feasible to look into a given text and identify emotion markers and to analyse what the function of these terms is in the larger context of the literary works, it is more complicated to try to determine how these texts would have caused similar emotions in a potential audience. It is similarly important to take into account what Lockett (2011:  8) calls the ‘modernist bias,’ that is, the idea that we as contemporary readers bring “assumptions and predispositions” into our readings. Harbus (2012:  162) further develops this idea, claiming that it cannot be assumed that “the experience being named in these medieval texts [is] the same as similarly named emotions experienced by us today,” and that these emotions can be intelligible at a cross-​ cultural level. This implies that there is a need to understand the context of production of these texts and the emotion-​regulation scripts of a particular genre in order to fully comprehend what emotions these texts might have triggered in a potential audience or readership. Therefore, when analysing the Old English hagiographical texts under scrutiny here, while it will always be possible to identify patterns of conceptualisation for given emotions, and it will certainly be possible to recognise recurring strategies or contexts in which these emotions or the terms that are used to describe them occur, when it comes to sketching a picture of how these texts might have affected an early Medieval English readership one runs into important limitations. Nevertheless, even though there might

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be inherent limitations in this regard, as Harbus (2012: 163) explains, the ability on the part of authors to represent and trigger emotion are two areas that are best approached “through a specifically cognitive approach.” In this sense, the description of the emotion sub-​family of amazement that has been offered in the preceding chapter is fundamental in order to identify the building blocks in representations and evocations of these emotions. As LeVine (2007: 398) explains, despite the fact that the experience of emotional phenomena has a certain universality, this does not imply that emotions are directly and unproblematically translatable from culture to culture and historical period to historical period. The phenomena that would have triggered amazement in the early Medieval English period (and in this particular religious and literary context) might not trigger the same emotion in a contemporary reader. Furthermore, even within the same aesthetic emotion sub-​family, the different constituents and triggers of a given emotion might vary along what Harbus (2012:  162) defines as a very complex emotional web that is “tangled and interconnected with other aspects of being, sensing and interacting.” A clear example of this is the metonymic connection that will be discussed in the next chapter between the Old English noun wundor and the idea of ‘miracle.’ The fact that in a given literary context the emotion term OE wundor, literally ‘wonder,’ is used metonymically to refer to the phenomena that cause it evidences culture-​and genre-​specific characteristics of the emotional experience that is being represented. As a result, in this case, what might be initially recognised as an emotion is, indeed, a tangled web of figurative and literal associations. The work by Harbus (2012) is heavily influenced by cognitive research on the mental processes that take place during the reading act, for example the Text World Theory (Werth, 1999), Stockwell’s (2009) theory of ‘texture’ (the experience of reading a text), or more specific research on fictional emotions, like the work by Vermeule (2010). Harbus (2012) similarly discusses the work by Hogan (2010: 246), who studies the link between cognition and emotion in literature: [Hogan] recruits ideas from Neurobiology to argue that imagination, when engaged in reading or viewing a text, creates a distance between the ‘emotional object’ represented in that text and ‘the egocentric space of direct action’ –​the range of proximity that triggers a direct response. In other words, the reading brain responds to perceived spatial distance, senses a buffer zone, that allows us to experience an emotion, but less directly than in real life, and with some degree of cultural variation (Harbus, 2012: 167).

Therefore, it can be claimed that the experience of textuality, that is, assuming that a story is, precisely, that, a work of fiction, does not necessarily cancel out the emotional experience that can be derived from it (an idea that is also supported

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by Radford and Weston, 1975). Hogan (2010) posits that the emotions that are experienced in fictional contexts are experienced with a lesser degree of intensity, but this is not entirely applicable to Old English hagiography, because in this case the suspension of disbelief goes against the doctrinal framework of these texts. Old English lives of saints, while potentially entertaining for their audiences, would have been automatically appraised by a believer as faithful history (to a certain extent), and, as a result, this ‘buffer zone’ might not been existed. On the other hand, the work by Stockwell (2009: 14) focuses on the idea of texture: “the experiential quality of reading,” which necessarily covers matters of aesthetics, value, attractiveness, utility, and their opposites. The main assumption in Stockwell’s (2009) theory is that through the linguistic examination of any given literary text, it can be possible to determine what the emotional responses to this text would have been. Consequently, and to a certain extent, texts, especially the texts under analysis here, become possible sources of emotional education through which doctrinal messages can be reconstructed. For instance, Vermeule (2010: 104) discusses how fiction “gives people the chance to practice their emotional connections with other people,” and this idea is central to the work by Rosenwein (2006), whose definition and description of Medieval emotional communities is extremely relevant for this research. Moreover, Rosenwein’s (2006) volume on Emotional Communities in the Middle Ages not only contains theoretical ideas that will rise further points to discuss in the context of this study, but she also discusses the methodological limitations that are inherent to studies of this nature and that, in many cases, are mirrored in the limitations that this study will reveal. Rosenwein’s (2006: 2) study postulates “the existence of ‘emotional communities,’” which she defines as “groups in which people adhere to the same norms of emotional expression and value—​or devalue—​the same or related emotions.” Her emphasis is on the existence of not only one but multiple emotional communities for a given place and time. Rosenwein (2006) uses the following metaphor to develop the notion of emotional communities and how these relate to each other and to the larger culture in which all of them can be framed: Imagine, then, a large circle within which are smaller circles, none entirely concentric but rather distributed unevenly within the given space. The large circle is the overarching emotional community, tied together by fundamental assumptions, values, goals, feeling rules, and accepted modes of expression. The smaller circles represent subordinate emotional communities, partaking in the larger one and revealing its possibilities and its limitations. They too may be subdivided. At the same time, other large circles may exist, either entirely isolated from or intersecting with the first at one or more points (Rosenwein, 2006: 24).

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Emotional communities can, therefore, be identified by what “assumptions, values, goals, feeling rules, and accepted modes of expression” they favour or censor. For example, in the case of Ælfric’s Lives of Saints (henceforth, ÆLS), the expression of emotions will generally reflect the views of the early Medieval English world, but they will, more specifically, expose the values, assumptions, goals and modes of expression of early English Christianity and, particularly, those of Ælfric’s monastic (and emotional) community in the monastery of Cerne Abbas. Rosenwein (2006:  25) brings attention to the fact that these communities were sometimes social communities, but very possibly also textual communities, which were “created and reinforced by ideologies, teachings, and common presuppositions.” As such, emotional communities have a common discourse, that is “shared vocabularies and ways of thinking that have a controlling function, a disciplinary function” (Rosenwein, 2006: 25). That is to say, the emotion vocabulary that is employed by a given emotional community, as it has been suggested above, contains implicit associations that may or may not be present in the larger emotional or speech community. Going back to the Old English aesthetic emotion vocabulary, for example, my research on the lexical domain of beauty (Minaya, 2021) established that in Old English verse lexis for beauty had intrinsic moral associations that resulted from the context of production of these texts. In this sense, these “vocabularies, symbols, or codes,” in the words of Eliasoph and Lichterman (2003: 735), which include not only lexical emotion markers, but emotion-​regulation scripts and figurative recourses, evidence “implicit culturally patterned styles of membership” that “filter collective representations” (Rosenwein, 2006: 25). The very existence of these codes, vocabularies, or metaphors evidences a developed model of emotional experience that is homogenised through and after the process of engaging with these textual sources. Another work that is useful to contextualise the influence of Christianism in the modes of expression of emotions in the Middle Ages is a volume by two authors whose early work is, similarly, frequently referenced by Rosenwein (2006), Damien Boquet and Piroska Nagy. Their work on Medieval sensibilities: A history of emotions in the Middle Ages (Boquet and Nagy, 2018), particularly chapters 1 and 3, dealing with the Christianisation of emotion and the emotions of a Christian society, is relevant in the study of emotional communities in the Medieval West. While its scope does not cover historical periods or geographical regions that are of interest in the light of this study, some of their observations, nevertheless, can further illuminate this research. In its introduction, authored by Rosenwein (2018), she discusses a series of events that connect the introduction of Christianity with profound top-​down changes in European society:

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Social and economic changes in themselves brought new sensibilities and needs. These new milieus, drawing on and filtering, but also adding to, the many intellectual traditions increasingly available to an expanding clerical elite, transformed their thoughts about Christ’s Passion. In turn, these new understandings, taught in the schools, proclaimed in the churches, preached on the streets, and acted out by rulers, transformed the feelings and behaviours of Europeans in general (Rosenwein, 2018: ix).

These appreciations can seamlessly be applied to her work on emotional communities, discussing how the perspectives of the ruling ecclesiastical elites on given emotions and ways of behaving permeated everyday spheres and transformed the ways in which people thought and acted. Boquet and Nagy (2018) go over the different approaches to emotion and Christianity that have been proposed throughout history, focusing on different periods and geographical areas, highlighting the fact that “[a] large part of the Western medieval conception of emotion and of the affective life was established between the fifth centuries” (Boquet and Nagy, 2018: 9). One of the ideas that they discuss is how, for early Christian philosophers, God’s wrath was seen as proof of its existence: “Yet the question over the wrath of God remained: how could a God without passions display fits of anger? … The function of such ‘stories’ was to reinforce the faith of mankind by promoting a healthy fear of God” (Boquet and Nagy, 2018: 9). On the one hand, God’s anger at humans who do not act according to his law instils a sort of fear that, in some case, as it will be seen in the next chapters, has an important aesthetic dimension. On the other hand, a parallelism can be established between God’s wrath as proof of its existence and the individual’s experience of amazement as a similar proof and result of God’s existence. Consequently, this study will also aim at determining in which circumstances amazement results from an individual’s first encounter with the divine, thereby confirming the existence of otherwise abstract and unapproachable entities. Another idea that is introduced by Boquet and Nagy (2018:  16–​20) is the place of these emotions in the subject’s life. They begin by pointing out the existence of certain spontaneous emotions, which are defined as those emotions that arise unwillingly. This raises the question as to whether the emotions that are presented in hagiography are always adequate as regards the contexts in which they appear, their modes of expression, the individual’s background, and the phenomena that trigger them. They point out how, for Lactantius, Emotional disturbance was no longer conceived of as a source of poor cognitive reasoning. Rather it was placed on another plane, that of morality: a badly directed emotion could lead to vice. Above all, he stood for the neutrality of emotions: their moral ambivalence was rooted in this. No emotion was good or bad in and of itself. Its value

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This implies that, in certain currents of thought, emotions do not necessarily have an inherently positive or negative valence, but that this will be determined by what triggers these emotions and what action tendencies they exhibit. Therefore, and particularly in the context of hagiography, Augustine remarks that the question is not “whether [the individual] is afraid, but what he fears” (Boquet and Nagy, 2018: 25). Thus, Boquet and Nagy (2018) develop on a paradigm shift that took place between the third and fifth century, the echoes of which can still be found in Old English hagiography: Such a position was entirely in line with what Lactantius had already pronounced. While relying on the ancient terminology of the emotions, the theologians built a new paradigm, one where primacy was given to the examination of conscience and to questioning oneself on the arrival of every new emotional feeling. Whenever an emotion arose, the wise Christian would not seek to moderate it, still less to get rid of it. Rather, he would analyse it. What motivated the fear he experienced? Why did he feel moved by desire? What was the object of his disgust? Emotion called for enquiry and introspection. It was thus recognized as a cognitive aptitude: through emotion, man would understand the world, evaluate his human and material environment, and above all determine the place he wished to take in it (Boquet and Nagy, 2018: 47).

Therefore, this becomes a matter of personal and individual introspection. It is no longer a question of who feels what, but of why. Emotion should be closely linked with enquiry and through the experience of emotions the subject should pose questions about their own nature, the workings of the natural world, and the mysteries of faith. This inspection is not only carried out on the part of the individual, but frequently initiated from these monastic centres and emotional communities: In establishing itself as a social practice, monasticism put in place a programme of conversion which embraced all aspects of daily life, including emotional and spiritual transformation … The grand structures for converting the emotions were perpetuated, summarized, and developed in tools that might seem rudimentary, but which were well-​ known and widely disseminated by the compilations found at the end of this period (Boquet and Nagy, 2018: 47).

This clarifies how emotions that are individual and private become used intentionally as tools of conversion. The representation of certain emotions and their deliberate evocation become ways in which monastic and ecclesiastic elites transmit messages that affect how the individual interacts with the world around them and with their own faith. Boquet and Nagy’s appreciation also point out

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how emotional and spiritual transformation can be achieved through the systematic homogenisation of an emotional style. This discussion will be, further on, be relevant in making sense of the data analysed in this study, that is, discussing to what extent would the materials in the Old English hagiographical texts under analysis here have caused profound emotional and spiritual transformations. With regards to methodology, Rosenwein (2006) sketches several methods through which the study of emotional communities and their texts and vocabularies can be analysed. Based on the work by Reddy (2001), she introduces the idea of ‘emotives,’ which she defines as “emotion talk and emotional gestures” that “alter the states of the speakers from whom they derive” (Rosenwein, 2006: 18). For Reddy (2001: 126), “conventional emotives authorized in a given community” have “extensive power,” insofar as they provide a consensual and, at times, long-​established ways of expressing an emotion, which Rosenwein (2006:  18) describes as “channels” and “emotional conventions.” Rosenwein (2006:  19) holds that “emotives are engines of conversion,” and that “they become important sources for historical change.” The expression and evocation of a given emotion, the manner in which an emotional community talks about an emotion, and the context in which they describe or limit this emotion to, that is, the channels through which these emotions generally flow, fossilise, and homogenise the emotional experience that will be associated with it. For example, by restricting the experience of wonder to the contemplation of saintly beauty or the experience of miraculous phenomena, that is, in establishing these channels in the experience of this emotion of amazement, certain domains of the experience of wonder are censored. Indeed, this is what Rosenwein (2006: 25) broadly refers to when she claims that these textual communities employ emotional vocabulary, and they offer “exemplars of emotions belittled and valorized.” It is expected that certain textual genres will prioritise some emotions over others with specific aims, and this will ultimately reveal something about the goals and values of the elites who composed these texts. In fact, in her study, Rosenwein (2006:  25) details how she employs hagiographical writings with the objective of looking into individual emotional communities. Discussing how texts, which in the Middle Ages were often memorised, or “lived with,” she explains how hagiography “was written so that men and women would have models of behavior and attitude” and that the “readers of these lives took that purpose seriously” (Rosenwein, 2006: 25). Hagiography offers emotional education in the sense that it provides role models, indicating how an emotion should be experienced by an ideal believer. As such, the “normative value of … saints’ lives … must not be overlooked as sources that shaped emotional conventions and norms as surely as family and neighborhood”

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(Rosenwein, 2006: 25). Just as the saints and the figures described in hagiographical writing depicted moral ideals, they also represented emotional role models and proper channels and triggers of emotional experiences. The emotives that are discussed by Rosenwein (2006: 26) do not refer to one emotion only, but to different groups of emotions: “Emotional communities are not constituted by one or two emotions but rather by constellations—​or sets—​of emotions.” It is as a result of this appreciation that she begins to detail the methodology that she followed in her own work, and, which, to a certain extent, can guide the confection of the methodological framework of this research: To discover and analyze these communities I read related texts, noting all the words, gestures, and cries that signify feelings—​or absence of feelings. I am interested in who is feeling what (or is imagined to feel what), when, and why. Are there differences between men and women? I look for narratives within which feelings have place, and I try to find common patterns within and across texts. I also seek implicit theories—​insofar as possible—​of emotions, virtues, and vices (all of which are related in the Western tradition) (Rosenwein, 2006: 26).

While the aims in the work of Rosenwein are far broader than the objectives of this study, her methodological sketches raise questions that can be addressed as well in this study, namely: a) what are the most common words for amazement in Old English hagiography, b) what gestures or sounds might indicate this emotion in the absence of lexical emotion markers, c) who feels amazement, d) what triggers amazement, in what contexts and why, e) in what narrative framework are they placed, and f) is there an implicit emotion theory of emotions and does it have a relation with virtue or vice? Rosenwein (2006: 26) continues discussing her practice of gathering a dossier of materials that “belong together” in some way. In the case of Old English, this is relatively straight-​forward. This will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter, but for Old English hagiographical writings there are three distinct groups that belong to three more or less distinguishable emotional communities: the Old English Martyrology (OEM), Ælfric’s Lives of Saints (ÆLS), and the Anonymous Old English Lives of Saints (AOELS). A common point between these sources and the sources that Rosenwein (2006: 26) employs in her study is that these “echo only the voices of the elites—​and the clerical elites at that.” This does not necessarily imply a limitation on the scope of this study, as it is limited to these individual speech and emotional communities, rather than being focused on providing patterns of conceptualisation and expression of amazement that are prevalent across early Medieval English culture, society, and literature.

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Other shortcomings to this methodology are more relevant to this study, as they are described by Rosenwein (2006:  26–​27):  “as composed texts, are they not very far from ‘real’ emotions, communicating them (at best) via a distorting ‘second hand?’,” “do not genres dictate the “emotional tenor” that a text will have, quite independently from any supposed community,” and finally, are these texts not “derived from other places, sources and eras?” In other words, Rosenwein (2006) raises three separate questions: 1) to what extent are the emotions that these texts represent real or are they just second-​hand distorted renditions?, 2) to what extent are these emotions determined by the genre in which they occur?, and 3) in the cases in which these texts are translations or adaptations, to what extent are the emotions genuine? The first question and the second potential limitations do not directly suppose a shortcoming in light of this study: the objectives of this study include looking into these second-​hand representations of emotions with the purpose of determining patterns and strategies behind their representation as well as evidencing semantic connections between the lexical domains that are employed in talking about these emotions. As Rosenwein (2006: 29) notes, artificial or staged representations emotions will reveal information about conventions and habits, albeit in a different manner than real-​life emotions. Furthermore, these remarks also apply to the third question, which is central to this study, since many Old English lives derive from Latin hagiographical texts. Drawing on previous research on aesthetic emotions in Old English verse (Minaya, 2021), it will be assumed here that the process of translation implies an important degree of adaptation, particularly as far as the emotion lexicon and emotion-​regulation scripts are concerned. Despite the textual origins of the text or texts under scrutiny, there are certain implicit values, rules and traditions that come into play in the translation/​adaptation process. Consequently, and as it has been mentioned above, it will be assumed here that the translation, adaptation, and reformulation of these texts implies an additional pedagogic exercise on the part of the writer, who potentially changes the text in accordance with the specific theological and doctrinal message that they wish to convey. The conclusions of Rosenwein’s (2006) study can similarly guide and orient this analysis. Rosenwein (2006: 191) concludes that, with regards to the textual genres that she analyses, among which the lives of saints stand out, there are no ‘pure’ or ‘unmediated’ emotions because they involve “judgments about whether something is good or bad for us.” There is an appraisal of events with regards to how these relate to the community’s goals, values, and presuppositions. This suggests the possibility that the emotions of amazement analysed here will change valence depending on the individual’s appraisal of the situation, object, or person

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that they are presented with. In a similar vein, Rosenwein’s (2006: 201) research evidences how Christianity helped to shape emotion norms in emotional communities through different strategies: “Christianity may be said to have informed emotional styles, but there was no ‘one’ Christianity.” This stresses the fact that every emotional community had different ways of talking about given emotions, and different textual emotion-​regulation scripts. Despite the fact that emotional communities have some sort of cohesion as regards their channels for the expression of emotions, the rules of expression are specific to the individual communities only, and there are no larger consensual and homogeneous emotives or emotion-​regulation scripts. Furthermore, Rosenwein’s (2006:  193) conclusion is that her research on emotions and emotional communities “speaks of norm, codes, and modes of expression rather than feelings,” which ties in with her conclusions as regards the implicit emotion-​regulation scripts of these particular genres: The sources tell us at least what people thought other people would like to hear (or expected to hear). Most do not pretend to be expressions of emotion; they are accounts or descriptions-​imagined and otherwise about human behavior, and that includes the ways in which emotions must be (and to some degree were) expressed (Rosenwein, 2006: 193).

This poses an additional research question that this study will attempt to answer: are the emotions and emotives depicted in the Old English lives of saints genuine or are they simply didactic descriptions through explicit connections between amazement and the phenomena that are supposed to trigger it in this religious context? Further still, this raises a question as to whether the usage of amazement terms and emotives is a formulaic and literary recourse. Moreover, these research questions can be linked with both Rosenwein’s (2006: 201–​202) final conclusions and with further research aims in this study: This leads to the other side of the coin, that emotional communities in turn helped shape religious expression … The Histories were a form of religious expression, but because they recognized such porous borders between the divine and worldly, they might be (and have been) taken to concern the world alone. In effect, I am arguing a very basic and general point: that emotional styles have much to do with modes of religious expression. This has implications beyond a general sort of “feel” in religious writings. It means that new words—​and their attached ideals—​may enter the religious vocabulary as their emotional valence changes (Rosenwein, 2006: 201–​202).

These observations pose additional questions to be answered in the concluding section to this analysis: how much does the genre in which the term for amazement occur influence the overall valence of the emotion? In Minaya (2022a),

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it was discussed how terms for wonder and awe would be used in Beowulf depending on whether there was an appraisal of danger or not. When there is a danger to the retainers described in the poem, Grendel’s footprints are expressed with terms for awe, indicating an emotional experience that is flavoured with fear (or threat, in the words of Keltner and Haidt, 2003), but when this danger is no longer perceived the footprints constitute a wonder, and are said to cause this emotion as well. This study, therefore, aims at looking into how supernatural and miraculous phenomena are appraised in Old English hagiographical writing with regards to their valence: for example, do the figures in the Old English Lives of Saints always appraise miraculous phenomena as positive or do they appraise them negatively when they perceive themselves as sinners and, therefore, threatened with an eternity of torment?

2.3. Medieval hagiography in context Having established that there is a strong connection between hagiography and amazement, stemming from the idiosyncrasies of this literary genre, the purpose of this section is to further delve into the characteristics of hagiographical genre, stressing how it can offer important information as regards early Medieval English emotional communities, placing an emphasis on the reception of saints’ stories, and the ways in which the motifs in them could and would have affected their audiences. One of the most relevant recent publications that provides an in-​depth analysis of Medieval saint stories is Palmer’s (2018) comprehensive monograph, Early Medieval Hagiography. It is worth noting that the Old English tradition of stories about saints can be explained in the evolution of Latin: we should also remember that Latin itself was moving into areas where it was a distinctly foreign language while also evolving into new vernacular forms in Italy and Gaul. For hagiography, these and other factors reinforced regional variation and a decline in the East–​West exchange of stories about saints. New traditions began to emerge slowly, at least in Old Irish and Old English (Palmer, 2018: 5).

In early Medieval Europe, the hagiographical genre was no longer a uniform body of texts that was heavily dependent on Greek and Latin originals. Instead, these texts often developed into distinct and less uniform vernacular creations. Palmer (2018: 20) makes an overview of the different saint stories from this period: Lives (vitae), which were biographical narratives, Suffering (passio), which focused on the suffering and death of the saint; the legal trials involved in the saint’s execution (acta), the discovery of the saint’s body (inventio), the tales of miraculous healings and other miracles that take place at their shrines (miracula), or the

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movement of a saint’s body from one location to another (translatio). According to Palmer (2018: 20) there are no strict rules about these sub-​genres and often hagiographical writings from the period contain different elements from those mentioned above. For Palmer (2018: 4), one of the most remarkable aspects of hagiographical writings across Europe is that they are relatively homogeneous, considering that “Europe was not culturally homogeneous in every way.” Nevertheless, while there are common traits in this genre, it is also true that every collection of lives will provide different information as to what the objectives behind their composition are. One of the main characteristics of this genre that is pointed out by Palmer (2018:  6) is the fact that these “stories are fundamentally about conflict,” that is, “how the hero stood out from the crowd; how they challenged or were challenged by norms, practices, institutions, and people.” Because hagiographies were generally written with certain aims in mind, it can be expected that “the contours of the saints’ ideals and struggles [will reveal] much about the values of the society which created her or him” (Palmer, 2018: 5). Furthermore, Palmer (2018:  46) discusses how, during this period, hagiographical texts were composed and adapted using a variety of sources, and this causes every copy of a given text to be unique. For example, if the political context of composition of ÆLS is considered, it will become evident that this collection of lives is “designed to provide its readers with stirring example of courageous self-​sacrifice, religious orthodoxy, and military victory, at a time of crisis, the troubled reign of King Æthelred II, when such qualities and victories among the English were so often lacking” (Godden, 1994: 133). Even if it is clear that these texts are translation of foreign hagiographical texts, the process of translation implies an adaptation of a given saints’ story to suit the purposes of the elites in charge of their composition. Generally speaking, these saints become people who are expected to be imitated by faithful Christians in one way or another, an idea that is consistent with Walker’s (1997) remarks. Palmer (2018: 5) points out several respects in which saints are expected to be emulated: “sex, marriage, charity, struggles with poverty and wealth, government and corruption, outsiders to the community, and attitudes towards nature and the miraculous.” Of particular relevance to this study are the last two elements: in hagiography, believers and non-​believers are often presented with natural and miraculous phenomena, and their emotional reactions to these are carefully made known in writing, and the ways in which they experience these emotions set examples of what are proper modes of expression and what are not. These topics are, furthermore, explored through the presentation of a conflict or an unjust or painful situation that the saint brilliantly endures. Often, this conflict arises from the clash between the saint and

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their prosecutors, who are people who do not share the same system of beliefs. However, the differences between saints and prosecutors do not limit themselves to beliefs, but also to the emotions that the miraculous evoke on them:  from wonder and positive aesthetic experience on the part of the saint, to disbelief, terror, or awe on the part of non-​believer. The saints generally behave in more or less expected ways, following what is supposed to be ideal conduct on the part of exemplary Christians, and, in this regard, there is some degree of consistency across hagiographies. However, Palmer (2018: 6) points out that, despite an apparent homogeneity in narrative motifs, the world, and circumstances that saints across different hagiographies encounter are “wildly different.” Furhtermore, in Palmer’s (2018: 6) view, this is a result of the process of adaptation (which results from their literary and cultural interpretation and translation): “Standards of sanctity were always adapted to their cultural and environmental settings.” Just as there was no ‘one’ Christianity, in Rosenwein’s (2006: 201) words, the characteristics of these saints and their stores were sometimes adapted in order to fit in the cultural paradigm of the target culture. In that sense, and on a more methodological note, Palmer (2018: 15) provides a starting point in any analysis of hagiographical texts: “Any study of hagiography must start with more or less the same question: what were the people who wrote stories about saints trying to achieve?” There is an overall lack of consistency as to what traits hagiographies should have and how they should be defined, as Van Uytfangeh (1993) discusses. His idea of hagiographical discourse is structured around four elements: a) a person who feels close to God, b) the subjectivity of the story, which often results from an oral tradition origin, c) an idealisation, exaltation and defence that sometimes overrides the matter-​of-​fact character of a biography, and d) an overly simplistic world view that originates from the usage of a fixed repertoire of themes. The second element is particularly interesting, because, as Palmer (2018:  33) explains:  there were lively oral cultures surrounding the telling of the saints’ stories, often with exchanges at churches or saints’ feasts. These exchanges covered a wide spectrum of society, including religious and lay people.” Saints’ stories are not an exclusively written genre, as, for instance, the existence of Old English verse lives of saints that could be considered epic poetry emphasises. As a result, “[k]knowledge about saints spread through a variety of different channels, some textual, some oral” (Palmer, 2018:  42). This is something that, for example, is evident in ÆLS: in detailing the reasons why he wanted to write his collection of lives, Ælfric explains that he wanted to strengthen the faith who would come into contact with these stories, “either by reading or listening” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 3).

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Indeed, this reading and listening of hagiographical stories, according to Palmer (2018:  22), “helped people to remember the saints and their stories, whether or not they had known them and whenever and wherever they lived.” There is an important oral dimension to these stories, not only in their origin, but in the way in which they are received as well. In fact, this also reinforces the collective character of hagiography, which does not hold a relation only with the individual but with the communal. In the words of Palmer (2018: 41), “[t] he writing of sacred biography was only one part of the literary world of saints. Saints, hagiographers, and their audiences all knew that they were participating in a culture that transcended individuals to embrace the faithful collectively.” This is clearly seen in the extant Old English hagiographical production: for example, Ælfric’s lives feature both local and foreign saints, but his narrative practice homogenises the lives and deeds of these saints, to the point that it becomes apparent that they are built using the same narrative motifs. Therefore, it can be assumed that the emotions that will be featured in Old English hagiographical texts will be social emotions, like for example shame or aesthetic emotions whose expression is shared and discussed collectively. Two elements stand at a crossroads, then. On the one hand, hagiography became a genre that had different overlapping purposes: Stories were often the result of someone collecting stories and giving them a coherent form on which people could more or less agree. Reading and listening also helped people to remember the saints and their stories, whether or not they had known them or whenever or wherever they lived (Palmer, 2018: 22).

The oral character and/​or afterlife of these stories caused people who might not have been literate to experience and learn from these hagiographies, and to be emotionally affected by them as well. On the other hand, according to Palmer (2018: 22), people often considered the contents of hagiographies to be faithful history, and so “people valued the literary nature of hagiographies as well as their theological and historical contents,” which also would have caused the emotions triggered by them to be experienced differently. While saints’ stories were certainly sources of entertainment, they also seem to provide individuals with historical accounts. Indeed, in its initial stages, the boundaries between hagiography and history were not clearly drawn, and, according to Palmer (2018: 46) depended on the shape and content of these texts. Nevertheless, the present analysis does not concern itself directly with the historicity or the politics of the lives under scrutiny here, but rather on how they employed the lexical domain of amazement and emotion-​regulation scripts that would have potentially triggered these emotions, and what this ultimately implies as regards the Old

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English hagiographical genre. Furthermore, the purpose of this research is quite different from other research carried on the adaptation of hagiographical texts, like the work by Goullet (2005), who seeks to strip away textual features in order to establish an original text (or urtext). In this case, the purpose is the opposite: using a particular adaptation, this study aims at identifying culture-​specific strategies in the evocation and conceptualisation of a subset of emotions. In line with this, Palmer (2018: 73) points out the work of František Graus, who “is often credited with writing the first sustained effort to use hagiography to study society in early medieval West,” using studies on “mentalities” that can find parallels in the field of Old English in Lockett’s (2011) work, or the ongoing studies on the conceptualisation of emotion and emotional phenomena that will be discussed in the next chapter. For Graus (1965: 28), hagiography should not be taken as a historical source, but, instead, hagiographical texts have a utility as sites where emotion, culture and cognition interact (following the terminology employed by Harbus, 2012). Palmer (2018) further develops this idea, claiming that using hagiography for historiographical purposes would be like trying to reconstruct the twentieth century on the basis of stylized TV biopics—​not impossible, but highly problematic. To ask whether Gregory of Tours’ stories of the miraculous were true or not was to ask an inappropriate question. Rather, one should concentrate on understanding the internal logic of the stories as a way of understanding “magic culture” or other ideas of the time. In such suggestions, Graus envisaged using saints’ Lives to more anthropological ends, to understand what stories reveal about the values and ideas of a society (Palmer, 2019: 74).

Nevertheless, despite all the potential of hagiography as sources that can provide emotion researchers with important accounts and source materials for the study of emotion and its terminology in early Medieval cultures, it is not exempt from limitations. One of the ways in which, in Palmer’s (2018:  74) view, the usage of hagiography as a source for an anthropological study can be problematic is that “too often we are dealing with fragmentary or idiosyncratic perspectives on a narrow range of social issues, which means that the generalizations are not necessarily fully representative of the past societies under analysis.” To avoid these generalisations, Palmer (2018: 75) suggests using these sources critically, and cautions researchers to think of hagiographical texts as “tools for thinking with” rather than “as finalized statements about past realities.” In this regard, the theory on emotional communities in the Middle Ages discussed in previous sections presents a solution to this apparent limitation. Through this approach, the emotional phenomena represented in these texts are not presented as unequivocal and universal representations of how a culture and a society understood,

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conceptualised and experienced a set of emotions, but rather how a very particular group of people thought they should be, in this case representing the ecclesiastical and monastic elites of a given time and place. Conversely, hagiography is an extremely valuable source of information regarding social classes and genders that are underrepresented in other literary genres. Palmer (2018: 77) reinforces this idea by claiming that “there is no other kind of source for the early Middle Ages in which the lives and experiences of women are so central.” This is especially true of the extant Old English production, where women, with the exception of the verse lives and the unknown woman in The Wife’s Lament, play a relatively peripheral role. Palmer (2018) describes how sex and gender are crucial elements in transforming late-​antique and early-​medieval histories so that they are more than just accounts of state formation and kingship, and more than the great deeds of rich white men. Related and essential moves have seen hagiography used to explore other “margins” of the medieval world, such as ethnic, religious, and social differences (Palmer, 2018: 78).

In line with these observations, and following on the research questions outlined in preceding sections, Old English hagiography offers the possibility of contrasting the emotions felt by women to those felt by men, and how differently the emotion that they cause are experienced. All things considered, and having outlined the main characteristics of the hagiographical genre, it becomes clear that this textual genre is relevant in order to carry out research on the expression and conceptualisation of this emotion sub-​family. The works that have been discussed in this chapter have also pointed out several limitations that are inherent in this type of research, and have pointed out ways in which these limitations might be overcome. What follows in the next chapters is an exploration of the lexical domain of amazement in Old English and an analysis of how it is employed in the hagiographical genre, following the theoretical and methodological remarks outlined in this and the preceding chapter.

3. Old English Hagiography and the lexical field of amazement: Sources and resources The works discussed in the preceding two chapters constitute a solid theoretical body upon which the present analysis of amazement in Old English hagiography can be based. These contain different ideas that can be translated into ways in which the expressions of a given emotion family can be analysed. These works have also offered methodological remarks that can be adopted in this research as well. Similarly, these academic works also detail the senses in which these methodologies present limitations, and how these can be avoided or justified. Nevertheless, research into amazement in this particular textual context requires the implementation of additional methodologies and the usage of concrete lexical tools. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the additional sources and resources upon which this study relies. The first section will offer an overview of the corpus employed in this research, which will be prefaced by a description of the different extant hagiographical writings in Old English, as well as a number of reasons why this study focuses on Ælfric’s lives exclusively. The second section will then move on to explain how the available lexical tools on Old English have been employed in order to come up with a working list of potential terms that could render amazement in Old English, and how recent lexical tools like Evoke (Stolk, 2018) can help to identify the terms that occur in a particular group of texts. This section will also provide a preliminary analysis of the terms in the three emotions under analysis in this study, looking into vocabulary of the sublime, wonder and awe. Finally, the closing section to this chapter will detail how the data in this study has been collected, analysed and categorised before moving on the discussion of these results.

3.1. Description of the corpus There are three main collections of extant Old English hagiographical writings: the Old English Martyorology (edited and translated by Rauer, 2013),7 the Old English Anonymous Lives of Saints (partially translated by Kramer et al.,

7 For an analysis of aesthetic experience in the Old English Martyrology, see Minaya (2022b).

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2020), and Ælfric’s Old English Lives of Saints (edited and translated in three volumes by Clayton and Mullins, 2019a, b and c). These three collections have important differences and similarities between them, and the fundamental drawback in either analysing them as belonging to the same or a different emotional community is that there is no consensus in the academic field as to the authorship of the first and the second collection. As a result, this study focuses on the collection whose authorship and, hence, emotional community are more clearly identifiable, Ælfric’s. This will provide with solid data as regards the emotion-​ regulation scrips and stylistic usage of the lexical domain of amazement of this early Medieval English author. In the introduction to the recent edition and translation of this collection of lives, Clayton and Mullins (2019a) detail its most remarkable characteristics, which will be summarised in the following paragraphs in order to contextualise and describe the corpus used here. These lives are “a series of texts written by the Anglo-​Saxon monastic author Ælfric between ca. 994 and 998 CE” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: vii). These lives have varying source texts, but its “model was the monastic legendary, the book containing the Lives of Saints that was designed to be read aloud in the night office and in the refractory while the monks took their meals” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a:  vii). Nevertheless, Clayton and Mullins (2019a) acknowledge that this vernacular collection of lives is a more restricted collection than the Latin legendary upon which it is based, which goes on to underpin what has been mentioned in the preceding chapter with regards to the adaptation of the source material that Ælfric carries out. The context of production of this collection is clearly stated at the beginning of Ælfric’s preface: “it is addressed to Æthelweard and begins by reminding him how he and Æthelmær had both requested translations of saints’ Lives from Ælfric” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: ix). The two men that are named here are Æthelweard, an ealdroman in Southwest England, and his son Æthelmær, a thane. There was a previous relation between these three men, especially between Æthelmær and Ælfric, the former having sent the latter to Cerne. Therefore, this collection has an important didactic purpose, which, to a certain extent, can potentially be emotional as well: Ælfric’s purpose in this collection of lives is to teach his patrons about the lives of these saints, but also to his clergymen. Furthermore, the didactic character of these lives is not limited to patrons and clergy: “Ælfric’s vernacular writings and the pastoral letters that he wrote for Bishop Wulfsige and Archbishop Wulfstan testify to his desire to ensure that the ordinary laity were adequately instructed in their faith” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: x). As it has been mentioned in the preceding chapter, these lives were aimed at providing suiting examples of courage and faith. This is where the context of production

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of these lives is relevant; as Clayton and Mullins (2019a: xi) discuss, after years of peace, Viking raids had begun in 980, but during the 990s, they had become increasingly more frequent and severe. For these reasons, authors like Godden (1994) and Whatley (1996) suggest that these lives are meant to provide examples of courageous men and women during trying times. More precisely, according to Clayton and Mullins (2019a: xii), “Ælfric demonstrates very distinct preferences in his choice of saints for the LS collection,” which is based on the Cotton-​Corpus legendary, proving that Æflric’s intention was to provide a modest vernacular rendition of these lives “to be set alongside the Latin monastic legendaries … and suitable for the laity, either for private devotional reading or for public instruction and edification” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: xiii, quoting Gretsch 2009). Additionally, there is an apparent reason behind the choice of saints included in Ælfric’s collection. According to Whatley (2002: 182), this selection mirrors the hierarchy of “Christian society of secular and clerical nobility,” since it does not feature “repentant prostitutes,” “humble masons,” nor “pregnant heroines.” Instead, these texts narrate the lives of secular kings and military saints that belong to the same social class as Ælfric’s patrons. Other than male saints and bishops, Clayton and Mullins (2019a:  xviii) point out that “another large group is that of virgin martyrs (some of whom are married virgin couples), and there are two saints who were monks and abbots.” In fact, they identify certain recurring patterns in the lives from this collection and they classify them in four different groups according to gender, social class, and occupation: Table 1.  Division of saints in ÆLS based on Clayton and Mullins (2019a: xvii) Royal soldier saints

Sebastian (5), Forty Soldiers (10), George (13), Abdon and Sennes (22), Maurice and his companions (26), two Anglo-​Saxon kings and Oswald (24)

Male lay saints

Gallicanus (7), John and Paul (7), King Abgar (22)

Virgin saints

Eugenia (2), Agnes (7), Agatha (8), Lucy (8), Æthelthryth (19), Julian and Basilissa (4), Cecilia and Valerian (30) and Chrysanthus and Daria (31)

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Old English Hagiography and the lexical field Bishop saints

Basil (3), Swithun (20), Apollinaris (21), Dionysius (27) and Martin (28)

There are additional studies that aim at classifying in more exhaustive detail these lives, for example Hill (2014). In her work on ‘The Context of Ælfric’s Saints’ Lives,’ she arranges the texts in Ælfric’s hagiography in liturgical order. These distinctions are of no use for the present study, since the utility of these categorisations will ultimately lie in trying to establish differences in how social class or gender influence the experience of emotion. Furthermore, it should be mentioned that, while this collection is titled Lives of Saints, it features texts that are not strictly hagiographical, like the texts titled Old English Preface, On the Nativity of Christ, On the Chair of Saint Peter, Shrove Sunday, On the Beginning of Lent, On the Memory of Saints, On Omens, On the Book of Kings, Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Clayton and Mullins’ (2019a, b and c) edition. These texts, despite not being primarily concerned with saints and their miracles, will nevertheless be included as part of the corpus employed in this research. The reason for this is that some of these texts contain as many lexical aesthetic emotion markers as the texts that narrate the lives of saints, and, additionally, some of these texts will provide further evidence as to the nature of the relationship of this textual genre and the emotion sub-​family of amazement. Nevertheless, even though this textual corpus is commonly referred to as Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, the authorship of some of these texts is a matter of controversy in the academic community. Clayton and Mullins (2019a: xii-​xiii) describe the source of these texts, as well as its purpose, scope, and history of transmission, which is “problematic in some very basic ways.” This refers to the fact that this manuscript, London, Bl., Cotton Julius E. vii (W), despite the fact that it is introduced by Ælfric, in Clayton and Mullins’ view (2019a: xii) contains other four anonymous texts (Seven Sleepers, Mary of Egypt, Eustace, and Euphrosyne), and to the fact that this is not exclusively a book on the passions of the martyrs as it is claimed in the Ælfric’s preface, but it also contains sermons and versions of two Old Testament books. For this study, and following the practice of Clayton and Mullins (2019a), these lives have been excluded from the corpus of texts, but, as regards the rest of the textual material, this study relies on Clemoes’ (2000: 221) assumption that this collection does go back to Ælfric, with some degree of adaptation resulting from subsequent scribal practices and manuscript composition. Following Clayton and Mullins’ (2019a, b and c) edition and translation of these lives, I have built a corpus for this study employing the materials from the

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Dictionary of Old English Corpus (henceforth, DOEC). Table 2 details the name given to these texts in the DOEC and the names with which they are titled in the edition mentioned above. Similarly, Table 2 is a comprehensive list of all of the texts loaded in my concordance software. Table 2.  Text number, DOEC nomenclature and edition title Number

DOEC nomenclature

Title in Clayton and Mullins (2019 a, b and c)

Preface

ÆLS (Pref)

Old English Preface

1

ÆLS (Christmas)

Nativity of Christ

2

ÆLS (Eugenia)

Saint Eugenia

3

ÆLS (Basil)

Saint Basil

4

ÆLS (Julian and Basilissa)

Saints Julian and Basilissa

5

ÆLS (Sebastian)

Saint Sebastian

6

ÆLS (Maur)

Saint Maur

7

ÆLS (Agnes)

Saint Agnes and Saints Constantia and Gallicanus

8

ÆLS (Agatha) and ÆLS (Lucy)

Saint Agatha and Saint Lucy

9

ÆLS (Peters Chair)

The Chair of Saint Peter the Apostle

10

ÆLS (Forty Soldiers)

The Forty Soldiers

11

ÆLS (Ash Wed)

Shrove Sunday

12

ÆLS (PR Moses)

On the Prayer of Moses for Mid-​ Lent Sunday

13

ÆLS (George)

Saint George

14

ÆLS (Mark)

Saint Mark and The Four Evangelists

15

ÆLS (Memory of Saints)

Memory of Saints

16

ÆLS (Auguries)

On Omens

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DOEC nomenclature

Title in Clayton and Mullins (2019 a, b and c)

17

ÆLS (Book of Kings)

Kings

18

ÆLS (Alban)

Saint Alban and On the Unjust

19

ÆLS (Æthelthryth)

Saint Æthelthryth

20

ÆLS (Swithun)

Saint Swithun and Saint Macarius and the Sorcerers

21

ÆLS (Apollinaris)

Saint Apollinaris

22

ÆLS (Abdon and Sennes)

Saint Abdon and Sennes and The Letter of Christ to Abgar

23

ÆLS (Maccabees)

The Martyrdom of the Maccabees, their Battles, and The Three Orders of Society

24

ÆLS (Oswald)

Saint Oswald

25

ÆLS (Exalt of Cross)

Exaltation of the Holy Cross

26

ÆLS (Maurice)

Saint Maurice and his Companions

27

ÆLS (Denis)

Saint Dionysius

28

ÆLS (Martin)

Saint Martin

29

ÆLS (Edmund)

Saint Edmund

30

ÆLS (Cecilia)

Saint Cecilia

31

ÆLS (Chrysanthus)

Saints Chrysanthus and Daria

32

ÆLS (Thomas)

Saint Thomas

33

ÆLS (Vincent)

Saint Vincent

Once these texts were located in the larger folder containing the complete DOEC, they were extracted and placed inside a separate folder, and they were renamed according to their name in the DOEC. Thereafter, these files were imported into a concordance software, AntConc. After this point, these texts were scanned performing corpus lookups in order to identify and tag the lexical

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aesthetic emotion markers that make up the Old English lexical domain of amazement, which is the focus of the next section.

3.2. Description of the lexical field of amazement in Old English As it has been mentioned in the first chapter, this research draws on the ongoing research on aesthetic emotions, and, at a conceptual level, it relies on Fingerhut and Prinz’s (2020) description and division of aesthetic emotion sub-​families. For the emotion family of amazement, they identify three main emotions: the sublime, awe and wonder. In order to locate these emotions in the text under analysis, this study follows three complementary strategies. First and foremost, and directly related to the title and purpose of this subsection, I have used several lexical tools (dictionaries, thesauri, and corpora) in order to come up with a list of terms that can be indicative of the experience of these emotions. The purpose of this section is to make an overview of the lexical domain of amazement in Old English sources, using three main Old English lexical tools. The first lexical resource is the Thesaurus of Old English (henceforth, TOE). I have first consulted it to come up with a preliminary list of terms that can be used to refer to the emotions under scrutiny here. Furthermore, I have used the platform Evoke, developed by Stolk (2018) and I have applied the dataset developed by Van Baalen (2021) in order to identify which of the terms that the TOE lists as belonging to the lexical domain of amazement occur in the writings by Ælfric.8 Thereafter, the terms that are tagged in Evoke as belonging to Ælfric’s vocabulary have been introduced in two Old English dictionaries, Bosworth-​Toller Anglo-​Saxon Dictionary (BWT) and the Dictionary of Old English (DOE) in order to further refine and develop the list of terms and their spelling variants that would be, later on, used for corpus lookups. Beginning with the most challenging of the emotions in this emotion family, the experience of the sublime has been an emotional response that has been difficult to identify in terms of vocabulary. In part, this is due to the fact that the 8

The platform Evoke (Stolk, 2018) contains many datasets developed by different researchers, which can be used to filter the information that appears in the TOE, and to identify which terms occur in concrete textual contexts. Examples of this include the datasets developed by Porck (2021) on the Old English poem Andreas, Beowulf or the Old English Martyrology (applied in Minaya, 2022b), or Van Baalen’s (2021) Ælfrican Vocabulary dataset. For more on the usage of Evoke in research on Old English emotion vocabulary see Khan et al. (2021).

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emotion that in contemporary Western societies tends to be associated with the idea of the sublime has its roots in the Romanticism (see Burke, 1575). As a result, looking up the key term ‘sublime’ in Old English dictionaries and thesauri does not yield significant results: the DOE points out several terms that, indeed, do hold a relation with the experience of the sublime, as described by Fingerhut and Prinz (2020). One of these terms is OE beorht, an extremely polysemic and figurative adjective, particularly in literary contexts, meaning ‘bright,’ but also “E. resplendent, beautiful, magnificent; sublime, excellent” (DOE, s.v. beorht, adj., E.).9 Two additional terms pointed out in the DOE as markers of sublimity include the noun OE hēahnes, indicating “sublimity, loftiness, high excellence, the condition or quality of being sublime” (DOE, s.v. hēahnes, hēanes, n., 5), and the adjective OE hēalic, which is defined as follows “of divine beings, heather deities, God: exalted, sublime” (DOE, s.v. hēalic, adj., B.1.a.i.). The fact that these three terms are defined in the DOE, the most comprehensive dictionary of Old English that takes into consideration how a term is used throughout the Old English corpus, as indicators of sublimity hints at the possibility that they are used figuratively, using the source domains of LIGHT and HEIGHT as source domains to describe the target domain of the sublime. This relation could also be understood in metonymic terms: they employ a part of the appraisal in the experience of the sublime to refer to the complete experience. These definitions, nevertheless, can orient further the search for additional lexical aesthetic emotion markers. In the semantic dimensions of these Old English terms, the notions of sublimity are equated with those of excellence. Furthermore, Fingerhut and Prinz (2020: 233) define this emotion as a fundamentally positive one, which might be flavoured by an appraisal of threat, and linked to “intense beauty-​experiences” (Fingerhut and Prinz, 2020: 234). As a result, and in order to broaden the range of lexemes analysed in this part of the study, I have included two additional lexical fields that refer to very similar appraisals: the lexical domains of excellence and beauty. Beginning with excellence, the TOE contains three different subdivisions under 7.2.4 Excellence: 7.2.4.1. Excellence, virtue, goodness; 7.2.4.2. Nobleness, nobility, dignity; and 7.2.4.3 Nobleness, excellence, nobility, magnificence. The terms listed herein are too numerous to include in these pages, but some of the responses that they referred to were similar to the experience of the sublime, and they were included in the preliminary list of

9 For more on the connection between light and aesthetic experience, see my work on the lexical domain of light as a marker of the experience of beauty in Minaya (2021: 199–​212).

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terms that would later on be employed to perform corpus lookups. To the lexical domain of excellence, and drawing on my research on the lexical domain of beauty and its metaphors (Minaya, 2019, 2020, 2021), I added the terms that could have been used to refer to instances of “intense-​beauty experiences,” in the words of Fingerhut and Prinz (2020–​224). The preliminary list of terms referring to the sublime in Old English lexical tools stands as follows: Table 3.  The Old English lexical domain of the sublime Domain

Term

Translation

Sublime

ǣnlic

‘unique’

mǣr

‘excellent’

sellīc

‘excellent’

hēalic

‘high’

hēah

‘highness’

beorht

‘bright’

leoht

‘light’

onlihte

‘light’

scīne

‘shiny’

fæger

‘beautiful’

wlitig

‘beautiful’

wynsum

‘beautiful, pleasant’

Height

Light

Beauty

For space reasons, and considering how large and ambiguous the preliminary list of terms for the sublime originally was, Table 3 excludes the terms that were not attested in the corpus, or found not to refer to this emotional response in context. Moving forward, and as Table 3 details, the terms in the domain of SUBLIME will be taken as literal indicators of the experience of the sublime, while terms in the domains of height, light and beauty will be taken as figurative expressions that allude to the experience of the sublime through one of its characteristics or appraisals. Needless to say, in the context of hagiography, analysing these domains can be challenging. When referring to the deity or to the saints, terms for highness or vastness, generally refer to a conceptual sort of vastness, and terms for beauty allude to the sort of moral beauty described everywhere

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else in the Old English corpus (Minaya, 2019). Nevertheless, the analysis of terms for light is not as straight-​forward in the sense that they will not always be used in cognitive terms, referring to a figurative of light that is indicative of sublimity, but to a literal light with which these figures are depicted. The conceptual gap between these two possibilities, however, is not unsurmountable, as the following chapters will clarify. The second emotion in this family that will be analysed in this study is the experience of awe. For this emotion, the lexical tools on Old English are problematic in several respects. To begin with, the TOE, whose structure and main categories precede the most recent developments on the study of emotional phenomena, does not have a separate category for individual emotions and their vocabulary. Furthermore, the authors of the TOE do not make a difference between the emotions of awe and fear, and, while these emotions are similar in certain respects, they belong to separate categories. Following the distinction proposed by Scherer (2005), fear is a utilitarian emotion, while awe is an aesthetic one. Instead, the relationship between the terms that denote these two emotions should be understood in terms of hypernymy, as Díaz-​Vera (2015: 9) indicates in his analysis of the lexical domain of awe in Old English. Therefore, this calls, on the one hand, for a complete examination of the lexical domain of fear and its attestations in the corpus, and, on the other hand, for a further inspection of the lexical domain of awe in Old English. The next section will how specify the fine-​grained analysis of the attestations of the lexical domain of fear is carried out. Regarding the lexical domain of awe, the preliminary list of terms that refer to this experience has been drawn up using, chiefly, the DOE and the list of lexemes outlined by Díaz-​Vera (2015). This list, therefore, includes as well terms that prototypically and literally refer to the emotion of awe, regardless of the fact that they might be used to refer to utilitarian fear as well, and to other lexemes that might refer to this emotion drawing on some of its characteristics, somatic profiles and/​or action tendencies. Table 4, which is based on Díaz-​Vera (2015), details the terms that integrate the preliminary list of terms for awe: Table 4.  Lexemes for awe selected from Díaz-​Vera (2015) Domain

Term

Translation

Awe

ege

‘awe, fear’

Description of the lexical field of amazement in Old English Domain

Term

Translation

Fear

forhtu

‘fear’

fǣr

‘sudden’

agrīsan

‘dread, greatly fear’

Reverence

fræppigan

‘be afraid of, revere’

Physical sensation

āswārcian

‘confound, fear’

āstīfian

‘become incapable of action from fear’

āwandian

‘turn away with fear’

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In his paper, Díaz-​Vera (2015) mentions more Old English lexemes and lexical roots that are used to describe this emotion, but, in the framework of this study, they will be treated as somatic profiles that can help identify instances of the experience of amazement, rather than fundamental components of the lexical domain of awe. As in the case of the sublime, Table 4 clearly details two types of awe expressions, which differ in semantic terms. In the first row, there is only one term (with its many derivates, like egesful, egesa, and so on) that literally refers to the experience of an aesthetic sort of fear, awe. The rest of the categories refer to either hypernyms, like those in the category of fear and reverence: in these cases there will be a need for the individual assessment of these attestations to determine if they are of an aesthetic nature or not. And, finally, the last category includes terms found in the corpus (though with a relatively low frequency of attestation) that refer to the emotion of awe through one very specific aspect of its experience, like confusion or paralysis, or the action tendency of turning away from the source of this emotion. Furthermore, Díaz-​Vera’s (2015) study proves how most of these awe-​lexemes feature metonymic and metaphoric semantic changes that evidence patterns of conceptual variation. For example, Díaz-​Vera (2015: 8) explains how the verb OE āswārcian ‘be confounded, fear’ derives from the same root as the verb OE swārcian ‘to become dark,’ implying that this confusion caused by the awe experience might materialise through an impairment of vision. This list also offers the possibility of looking into Ælfric’s choices as regards the awe-​lexemes here described, determining whether he had a preference for terms that were associated with specific bodily responses or somatic profiles, determining if these meanings would have been transparent for him and his audience.

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With regards to the lexical domain of wonder, the available lexical tools on Old English prove to be more useful. Even though the TOE does not categorise wonder as an emotional response, but as a matter of ‘Expectation,’ inside 6.1. The head (as seat of thought), making reference to the cardiocentric location of emotions in the mind-​in-​the chest (see Lockett, 2011), the list of wonder-​lexemes that can be extracted from the TOE provides useful information that can help group these terms into different categories, with the help of other Old English dictionaries. Table 5 offers an arrangement of these terms denoting wonder into different categories: Table 5.  Arrangement of wonder lexemes Theme

Term

Translation

Wonder

wundor

‘wonder’

wundrung

‘wonder’

wundrian

‘to wonder’

wāfian

‘to marvel’

wundorlīc

‘wonderful’

wēnan

‘to marvel’

wræclīc

‘wonderful, strange’

āstyltan

‘to be astonished’ (still)

tōþuniende

‘astonishing, amazing’ (swollen)

fǣrstyltnes

‘sudden wonder, amazement’

oferstige

‘astonishment, ecstasy’

forstyltan

‘be overcome with astonishment’

Bodily responses

Strong wonder

Description of the lexical field of amazement in Old English Theme

Term

Translation

Fear

āforhtian

‘become afraid’

āgælwan

‘dismayed, frightened’

brēgan

‘to terrify’

āblycgan

‘to be terrified, struck with amazement’

Intent listening

hlosnian

‘to listen with wonder’

Silence

swīgian

‘be silent with wonder’

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With regards to the poetic lexis of wonder, my work on wonder terminology in Old English verse (Minaya 2022, 2022a) established, on the one hand, that there was a notably different usage of these lexical items depending on the contexts in which they were used and the reality or emotion that they were describing. Furthermore, there are two main domains on which wonder is experienced in the Old English poetic corpus:  a non-​religious approach to wonder that results from the contemplation of either the natural world or human skill, and a wonder that is triggered by a religious appraisal of reality. Considering the textual corpus employed in this research, it is to be expected that the type of wonder found in these texts will be the latter. Moreover, my research on wonder in Old English verse also singled out several of the above aesthetic emotion markers as core constituents of the Old English formulaic style, namely OE wundor, wundorlīc, wundrian, wāfian, and wræclīc. The rest of the terms mentioned in the Table 5 do not occur in verse. Indeed, Table 5 showcases an arrangement of wonder-​lexemes that is, more or less, similar to the tables discussed in the preceding paragraphs. The first block contains the terms that prototypically describe either the emotion of wonder (OE wundor, wundrung), the phenomena that cause it (OE wundor, which can refer to both the experience of wonder or to the miracles or portents that cause it; OE wundorlīc or wræclic), or to an active aesthetic contemplation (OE wundrian, wāfian or wēnan). This group is particularly interesting because it contains some of the terms that, as it has been mentioned above, are the core poetic terms to describe wondrous phenomena. With regards to OE wundor, it is worth mentioning that, while this is the prototypical term for the emotion of wonder in Old English sources, in texts of a religious nature it has a different semantic dimension, in most of the cases. There is an important semantic shift in this noun, and in religious contexts it is, in a great percentage of the cases, used metonymically.

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Through the term OE wundor Old English authors use the effect (experience of wonder) to allude to the cause (the miracle). Therefore, there is a cause for effect metonymy in the usage of OE wundor to refer to the Christian miracle and other similar supernatural phenomena. In these cases, it will be, at times, difficult to determine whether the author is making an allusion to the experience of wonder that is triggered by this miracle or to the phenomena that trigger it. While the lexis detailed above can potentially make a difference between the miracle (through OE wundor) and the emotion (for example, through OE wundrung), it will be interesting to determine if the Old English author analysed here made use of this lexis to highlight this difference. An additional term that is sometimes employed in Old English verse and prose to describe the physical miracle, but that is not directly linked to the lexical domain of wonder is OE tācn ‘sign, portent, miracle,’ which is etymologically related to PDE token. This term is remarkable for several reasons, and it seems to be especially important in Old English verse. BWT defines this term as “a sign, a significant form,” “an ensign,” and “a token, a credential” (BWT, s.v. tācn, n., I., I.a., and I.b.). However, in a religious context the token goes beyond the simple meaning of the sign, as it often represents something deeper and more complex, and it is generally representative of the connection between God and humankind., Shippey (2017) develops this idea further: The “then” of the promise is inevitably connected with the “now” of its redemption. But there is another moment which is connected, and that is the retrospective moment when all has been made clear, when the promise emerges from its ambiguous state, and even onlookers can see the result. One might call this the moment of soð or “sooth.” And the sign of that moment, one could say, is the tacen or “token” (Shippey, 2017: xlii).

In the cases in which the wonder results from a divine or saintly exercise of power, the token is a manifest physical reality that materialises an abstract belief. The tokens that will be described through this noun will act, in the narrative framework of the text and for the audience and readership who would have recreated it in their minds, as the physical realisation of otherwise intangible and unapproachable spiritual realities. The token, therefore, materialises the power of a saint, whose abilities might have not been believed before, and often this results in changes in the belief systems of the people who behold it. In this group of terms, two terms refer to particular bodily responses that are encoded in the etymology of the term itself. The first is OE āstyltan and its derivates, which according to BWT means “to be amazed, confounded, be at a loss, be doubtful” (BWT, s.v. styltan, vb., I.). This verb shares an etymological connection with Old English verbs denoting stillness, implying that this action

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tendency of the emotion of wonder is coded in the etymology of the emotion word. Because similar terms denoting stillness were still present in Old English, this implies that this metonymy could be transparent to Old English speakers, and that they could use of this term in order to describe an emotional state of amazement that resulted in physical paralysis. Nevertheless, according to the DOE, this term is not very frequently attested (3 attestations, in texts of Northumbrian origin), so this term is not a part of Ælfric’s vocabulary, as the dataset by Van Baalen (2021) corroborates. The second term that features a similar pattern of diachronic semantic and figurative evolution is OE tōþuniende, meaning ‘astonishing, amazing.’ This term is related to OE tōþindan ‘to swell, grow big,’ which implies another cause for effect metonymy, whereby the feeling of growing, figuratively, larger in size is used to refer to the emotion that causes it, wonder. Several terms denote a more intense sort of emotional response thorough the affixation of prefixes to OE styltan. One of this is particularly remarkable, OE fǣrstyltnes, which indicates an immediate and sudden type of wonder. The adjective OE fǣr emphasises how the events or situations that trigger this emotion come about unexpectedly and suddenly, and it will be noteworthy to see in which cases this adjective, or semantically related ones, occur alongside the emotional vocabulary described above. In this category, there is another compound that can be broken down into smaller constituents to understand better the emotional response that it describes: OE oferstige. The OE prefix ofer-​intensifies the response encoded in OE stige, which is related to OE stīgan ‘to ascend, mount.’ As such, the verb OE oferstīgan, implies vertical ascent, while the noun under analysis here refers to a very particular sort of wonder that is experienced as an elevation. BWT defines this noun as ‘astonishment, extasy’ [sic] (BWT, s.v. oferstige, n., I.), but this analysis of its constituents evidences that, at least diachronically, the emotion that it represents is associated with a particular experience of elevation. The next block illustrates what has been discussed above as regards the experience of awe. Several terms are included in the TOE as referring to both wonder and fear, highlighting how thin line between the utilitarian and aesthetic dimension of these emotions is. As it has been mentioned in preceding pages, these terms will be analysed individually and in context in order to determine what type of emotion they represent. Finally, two more terms show how, at times, emotional vocabulary does not derive from metonymies related to bodily reactions, but from action tendencies. In the cases of OE hlosnian and swīgian, the actions that the subject carries out after experiencing the emotion are encoded in the emotion term itself.

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OE hlosnian describes how somebody might lean in closer and try to listen to whatever is causing this emotion; OE swīgian refers to a lack of speech after the experience of something wonderful. The last term could either be considered a cause for effect metonymy, or an action tendency being used to describe the emotion, depending on how being silent is interpreted. What stands out from the vocabulary listed in Table 5 is that the lexical domain of wonder in Old English is one of the most numerous from the family of amazement. Furthermore, this table also emphasises how there is a wide array of terms for wonder that can be used to describe different wonder-​responses, varying in valence and in the bodily responses and action tendencies that they cause. An entirely different matter is whether early Medieval English authors made use of all of these lexical possibilities or not.

3.3. Corpus lookups and data treatment The previous section emphasises how the lexical domain of amazement is composed of many different terms, some of which very distinctly refer to particular emotions, while others encode ambiguous or ambivalent responses that require individual assessment. Following the proposed spellings for these terms in the DOEC, BWT, other Old English lexical resources as well as the RegEx function of the concordance software AntConc, I have tagged all of these terms in the corpus that I have built for this study, so that they would be easily identifiable in the second part of the data retrieval. In the previous section, I have mentioned how I followed three different strategies to identify phenomena that trigger amazement, beginning with identifying these lexical items. I will now move on to the two additional strategies that have been followed in this study to identify phenomena that can be tentatively related to the experience of these emotions. Having tagged all of the terms described in the preceding sections, I moved on to an individual analysis of every text, using the tagged text files from my corpus and Clayton and Mullins’ (2019a, b and c) translation as a guide. This was done in order to, first, identify any other lexical items or attestations that had eluded the first step. Secondly, this allowed me to look for and identify instances where there would have been emotional experiences of amazement that were not lexically described. In order to identify these, I have first analysed the narrative framework of these texts and, secondly, I have looked for specific terms that would describe of any of the appraisals, action tendencies, somatic profiles, and typical elicitors of the emotions of amazement, as described by Fingerhut and Prinz (2020) and Keltner and Haidt (2003), among others. In this sense, I tried to look for terms related to stillness, shock, arrested

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respiration, widened eyes, trembling, surprise, threat, virtue, accommodation, or vastness. Additionally, and delving deeper into the analysis of the narrative of these texts, I looked into the excerpts that narrated supernatural occurrences or other phenomena that would have triggered amazement, like the experience of miracles, or instances of aesthetic contemplation. While doing this, I imported the data onto a separate file, where I have been able to arrange these text passages and lexical occurrences according to the text in which they appear. Using a colour code system, this has allowed me to refine my corpus lookups, deleting those occurrences that did not really represent the emotion in question. In this sense, I have been able to extract a list of figures with the number of attestations for the above lexis, which will be discussed in the closing section to this study. This has also allowed me to analyse exactly how the terms of these lexical domains are used by the author, evidencing how the emotions of amazement are conceptualised and presented in them. Furthermore, this method also allows the possibility of identifying additional instances of amazement that would not have been detectable by means of corpus linguistics methodologies. Finally, this methodology has also allowed me to look into how the phenomena that would have triggered amazement in a potential audience or readership is presented, discussed, and narrated, which allows for a discussion of the emotion-​regulation scripts that are in effect in these texts. What follows is a presentation of the results that the application of this methodology has yielded.

4. Aesthetic pleasure and the sublime: Ælfric’s approach to pleasant personal experience, the beautiful and the sublime Following on some of the observations outlined in the theoretical framework, which established a connection between general positive aesthetic experience and the experience of the sublime, and considering the limited number of lexical items from this lexical domain in Old English, this chapter aims to look into the relation between Ælfric’s treatment of sensory information and positive aesthetic experience. These emotional experiences might range from mild aesthetic pleasure to more intense emotional reactions, categorised as the experience of the sublime. In the text on the Nativity of Christ, Ælfric claims that seo sawul is þas lichoman hlæfdige, and he gewisað þa fif andgitu þæs lichaman, swa swa of cyne sætle and that þas fif andgitu gewisseð seo sawul to hire wyllan (ÆLS (Christmas) 202).10 Indeed, some of these lives are further proof of how the senses play a crucial role in the life of the Christian, leading them towards proper and ideal behaviour, or straying them away from God. In these lives, Ælfric takes on different approaches to the five senses. These approaches will be analysed with the aim of determining how these are employed in descriptions and narrations of the contemplation and experience of the universe and of religious phenomena, evidencing what this ultimately signifies in the life of the Christian. This chapter additionally aims at looking into the usage of some of the lexemes denoting positive experience described in preceding chapter and in previous research (Minaya, 2021), as well as into the usage of the lexical domain of the sublime on the part of Ælfric. Providing textual examples from these lives, this section aims at determining what role pleasant personal experience, aesthetic pleasure, and the experience of the sublime play in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, clarifying how the terms in these lexical domains are employed to trigger and describe these emotions. Additional aims include identifying further instances of sublime-​related experiences that are not lexically marked in order to pinpoint further emotion-​regulation scripts in Ælfric’s hagiography.

10 “The soul is the body’s ruling lady, and it directs the five senses of the body, as if from a royal throne” and “the soul directs these five senses according to its will” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 37).

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4.1. Ælfric’s treatment of sensory data in aesthetic experience Ælfric claims that the soul is in charge of directing the five senses in accordance to its will, and he devotes an important part of that same text to discuss the role of the senses in the life of the Christian, and how memory and other mental faculties are abilities of the soul, not necessarily of the mind. Consider the following excerpt, from the same life quoted above: Uton nu behealden þa wundorlican swyftnysse þære sawle: heo hæfð swa mycele swyftnysse þæt heo on anre tide gif heo swa wyle, besceawað heofonan and ofer sæ flyhð, land and burga geondfærð. And ealle þas þing mid geþohte on hire sihðe gesæt; and swa hraðe swa heo gehyrð þære burge naman þe heo ær cuðe, swa hraðe heo mæg þa burh on hire geþohte gescyppan hwylc heo bið. Eal swa be gehwylcum oðrum þingum þe heo ær cuðe oððe ne cuðe, heo mæg on hire mode gescyppan þonne heo gehyrð be þam spræcan.And swa styrigende is seo sawul þæt heo furðon on slæpe ne gestylþ; ac ðonne he smeað be rome byrig ne mæg heo þa hwile smeagen be hierusalem, oððe þonne heo smeað be anum þing ne mæg heo þa hwyle be oðrum þinge smeagen, ac biþ gebysgod mid þam anum ðinge oðþæt þæt geþoht gewyte and oðer cume (ÆLS (Christmas) 124)11

According to Ælfric, one of the miraculous and wonderful properties of the soul is that it can summon anything that it wants through the sense of sight. This type of mental vision emphasises the predominance of sight over the rest of the senses in the early English world. Several authors working on Old English literature and early Medieval English culture stress the importance of sight over other senses. For instance, Díaz-​Vera (2016: 54) points out how, despite the universal character of human experience, “different cultures may rely on different senses to gather information.” Kern-​Stähler and Scheuchzer (2016: 1) describe the Fuller Brooch, considered to be one of the earliest English representations of the five

11 “Let us now consider the wonderful swiftness of the soul: it possesses such great swiftness that at one point of time, if it so wishes, it looks at the heavens and flies over the sea, passes through countries and towns, and by means of thinking it constitutes all these things in its sight. And as quickly as it hears the name of a city that it once knew, just as quickly can it create in its thought whatever it is. Likewise with respect to all other things that it knew before or did not know, it can create them in its mind when it hears them spoken about. And the soul is so active that even in sleep it is not still, but when it thinks of the city of Rome, it cannot at the same time think about Jerusalem, or when it thinks about one thing it cannot at the same time think about another thing, but is busy with the one thing until that thought departs and another comes” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 33).

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senses, and they comment on how the central sense does not only refer to sight, but also to the mind’s eye, that is to say, this faculty of mental vision and ability to envision things and situations that Ælfric alludes to on the life on the Nativity of Christ, where he also categorises the sense of sight as the first one in a hierarchy of the senses. Fera (2012:  730) discusses how in the early Medieval English period, sight was the foremost sense due to “the relationship between sight with its powerful cognitive potential, and the acquisition of knowledge.” Consequently, sight was understood as a bodily sense, like the rest of the senses, but it had an important cognitive dimension that other senses did not have. This idea is consistent with Díaz-​Vera’s (2016: 36) remarks that “vision plays a hegemonic role in cognition, whereas the other senses (and, especially, touch, taste and smell) have relatively marginal cognitive functions.” In his work on the Wonders of the East, another Old English text, Hindley (2016: 21) develops on how “sight was understood as a bodily sense” that was used to “metaphorically … discuss the workings of the mind.” It is clear that, in Old English literature and culture, sight will, therefore, be one of the fundamental senses through which Old English authors will try to establish a connection between the emotions under scrutiny here and those that would have experienced them. In that sense, the faculties of mental vision (or “mental seeing” in the words of Carruthers, 2013: 36) and imagination that are described above are essential for these emotions to be effectively triggered. The cognitive dimension of sight does not only operate in the process of knowledge acquisition, but it also has an important spiritual aspect. According to Kern-​Stähler and Scheuchzer (2016:  4), “[t]he higher senses of vision and hearing … were often connected with spirituality and enlightenment.” This is, on the one hand, rooted on the Medieval association between the light of the sun and the deity (Eco, 2004: 102). On the other hand, this is due to an association of sight with the ability of the believer to apprehend and access the divine: “the Middle Ages associated vision with the perception of the light of God and it followed that bad eyesight presented a significant disadvantage in the engagement of believers with the divine” (Wheatley, 2010: 187–​188, quoted in Kern-​Stähler and Scheuchzer, 2016: 4). Through the sense of sight and the faculty of mental vision, Christians are able to envision those images and scenes that will trigger specific emotional responses in them, and these narratives will ultimately be associated with particular doctrinal messages. Hindley (2016:  21) further develops this connection between the sensory and the cognitive in early Medieval England: “sight and knowledge were seen as parallel processes.” This suggests that the distinction between sensory and cognitive was not as evident in Old English times as it is now. In order to further

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prove this point, Hindley (2016:  23) gives the example of the term OE gleāw, used to designate wisdom but also clarity of vision. In this sense, several terms in Old English seem to “transfer from a meaning of physical vision to one of mental vision,” for example “behealdan, locian, sceawian, beseon, all with a literal meaning of look at, gaze, and a metaphorical one of observe, regard, scrutinise” (Kay, 2000: 283). Therefore, at a lexical level, Old English features an important degree of hybridity between the sensory and the cognitive, which is evident as well on aesthetic appreciations (since they, at least at a literary level, seem to frequently index moral, cognitive evaluations), and, in literary texts, this hybridity will revolve around the inner workings of the sense of sight and what this can mean in the life of the Christian. One of these examples can be found in the same life. Ælfric continues to discuss the role of the senses and the strength of the soul. In it, he comments that: þære sawle wlyte is þæt heo hæbbe mihte, swa þæt heo leahtres forbuge; and heo bið atelic þurh leahtras gif he him underlið (ÆLS (Christmas) 155) “The beauty of the soul is that it has the power to shun vice, but it is deformed by vices if it submits to them” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 35).

In this excerpt, Ælfric employs the noun OE wlite ‘appearance, beauty,’ a term that is related to OE wlitig, one of the most important constituents of the lexical domain of beauty in the Old English formulaic style. This term for beauty does not allude to a beauty that is physically observable, but to the connection between beauty and morality, which is materialised through the figurative recourse the external is an index of the internal (Harbus, 2012: 61), through which Old English authors discuss and portray morality using lexical domains that relate to appearance and beauty, as is the case of the following example: On lichaman bið bleoh, and seo sawul bið swa gewlitegod swa heo on worulde geearnode (ÆLS (Christmas) 211) ‘There is color in a body, but the soul will be made beautiful according to what it has earned on earth” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 39).

The soul is made beautiful according to a person’s deeds on Earth, but, as in the example above, this beauty cannot be measured physically, but spiritually. A similar circumstance can be observed in the following passage: Ic geseah soðlice mid þam þe hi ofslagene wurdon, Godes englas scinende on sunnan gelicnysse fleogende him to, and underfengon heora sawla, and þa sawla ic geseah swiðe wlitig faran forð mid þam englum on heora fiðerum to heofonum. þa þa Maximus sæde swa soðlice ðas word weopendum eagum, þe gewendon þa hæþenan manega to geleafan fram heora leasum godum (ÆLS (Cecilia) 267)

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“‘I truly saw God’s angels shining like the sun, flying toward them when they were killed, and they received their souls, and I saw the souls depart with great beauty on the wings of the angels to heaven.’ When Maximus said these words so truly, with weeping eyes, then many of the heathens converted to the Christian faith from their false gods” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 227).

In this excerpt from Saint Cecilia’s life, Maximus, a soldier, is describing what he sees after he kills Valerian, Cecilia’s husband, and Tiburtius, his brother. Through the sense of sight, he is able to apprehend God’s angels, surrounded by a light that is metaphorical for and indicative of a sublime experience, but he also sees the soul of these men that he has just executed, and through the lexical choice of the author, he deems them beautiful through OE wlitig, a lexeme that refers to beauty as well as morality in this particular religious context. This excerpt is similarly noteworthy in that it is one of the very few examples of experiences of the sublime in which there are actions and bodily changes that result from this emotion. The sight of the angels and of these men’s beautiful souls causes him to cry, and to convert to Christianity as well. Therefore, the experience of THE SUBLME in this particular hagiographical context is presented as something that inspires conversion. Frequently, there are references in ÆLS to saints and other characters that are beautiful, not only inside, but outside as well. Take the following example: Heo wæs wlitig on ansyne, and wlitigre on geleafan (ÆLS (Agnes) 13) “She was beautiful in countenance and more beautiful in faith” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 219).

In this excerpt, two different terms are used in order to render the idea of beauty. OE wlitig is equally applied to Saint Agnes’ physical beauty as it is to her beautiful belief. OE ansȳn, which can mean appearance but also beauty, is equated to OE geleāfa, which is, above all, a cognitive quality. What this excerpt emphasises is that, because of her faith, Agnes is much more beautiful. Furthemore, when Saint Agnes is wooed by Symphronius, Ælfric tells us that she is given many precious things, but, in this instance, the author does not describe them with aesthetic emotion markers, only with terms that emphasise the fact that they are costly: þa budon ða magas þam mædene sona deorwurðe gyrlan, and deorwurðran beheton, ac seo eadige Agnes þæt eall forseah, and þæra maðma ne rohte þe ma þe reocendes meoxes (ÆLS (Agnes) 17) “Then immediately his relatives offered the virgin precious clothes and promised her more precious ones, but the blessed Agnes rejected all that and cared no more about the treasures than about stinking dung” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 219–​221).

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OE deōrwyrþe describes what is “of great worth or value” (BWT, s.v. deōrwyrþe, adj., I.), but these precious objects do not cause a significant emotional reaction in Agnes, nor are they presented in such a way that they should cause an emotional reaction of the part of the readership. Nevertheless, when Agnes rejects her suitor, she describes God’s love conceptualised as a series of material objects, and it becomes clear that the author’s objective here is a different one. Consider these two excerpts: Gewit ðu fram me synne ontendnys, leahtras foda, and deaðes bigleafa, gewit fram me. Ic hæbbe oðerne lufiend, þinne ungelican on æðelborennysse, seðe me bead bæteran frætegunga, and his geleafan hring me let to wedde, and me gefrætewode mid unasmeagendlicra wurðfulnysse. He befeng minne swiðran and eac minne swuran mid deorwurðum stanum and mid scinendum gimmum. He gesette his tacn on minum nebbe þæt ic nænne oðerne ofer hine ne lufige. He geglængde me mid orle of golde awefen, and mid ormettum mynum me gefretewode. He æteowde me eac his ænlican hordas, ða he me gehet gif ic him gelæste. Ne mæg ic him to teonan oðerne geceosan, and hine forlætan þe me mid lufe beweddode. His ansyn is wlitigre and his lufu wynsumre, his brydbedd me is gearo nu iu mid dreamum. His mædenu me singað mid geswegum stemnum. Of his muðe ic underfeng meoluc and hunig, nu iu ic eom beclypt mid his clænum earmum. His fægera lichama is minum geferlæht, and his blod geglende mine eahhringas. (ÆLS (Agnes) 24)12 His wlites wundriað þa wynsumum tunglan, sunne and mona þe middaneard onlihtað. þurh his spæc geedcuciað eac ða deadan, and þurh his hrepunge beoð gestrangode þa unstrangan seocan (ÆLS (Agnes) 51) “The delightful heavenly bodies, the sun and the moon that give light to the world, marvel at his beauty. The dead moreover are restored to life through his scent, and weak and sick people are strengthened by his touch” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 223).

12 “Go away from me, inflamer of sin, food of vice and fodder of death, depart from me! I have: another lover, unlike you in his noble birth, who has offered me better adornments and has left me the ring of his faith as his pledge and has adorned me with unimaginable honor. He has encircled my right hand and also my neck with precious stones and with shining gems. He has set his sign on my face, so that I may love no other man over him. He has adorned me with a garment woven from gold and has ornamented me with immensely large necklaces. He has also shown me his incomparable treasures, which he has promised to me if I do not fail him. I cannot insult him by choosing another and forsaking him who has betrothed me with love. His countenance is more beautiful and his love more delightful; his marriage bed is now already prepared for me with melodies. His virgins sing to me with harmonious voices. From his mouth I have received milk and honey. Now I am already clasped in his pure arms; his beautiful body is united with mine and his blood has adorned my cheeks” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 221–​223).

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The author tries to engage the different senses in order to trigger an aesthetic experience that is intrinsically woven with the experience of the love that the saints feel towards God, which is a notably abstract emotion. Agnes makes reference to adornments (OE gefrætwian), and shining gems (OE scinendum gimmmum). This excerpt also features a term discussed in the preceding chapter, OE tācn, but in this case it is not indicative of aesthetic experience, but simply refers to the sign of the cross. The idea of physical beauty is constantly equated with that of material worth, linking thus the visual with the cognitive. God’s countenance is said to be pleasant to sight (OE wlitig), his body handsome (OE fæger), and his love to trigger pleasant personal experience (OE wynsum). Furthermore, the author adds more senses to this aesthetic experience: hearing, in the voices of the virgins, and smell and taste of the honey and milk with which she equates with his love. As it will be seen through this chapter, such rich sensory detail is fairly uncommon in this author’s lives, but this example illustrates how the different senses are engaged in the recreation of an intense aesthetic experience that is symbolic of the experience of God’s love and of Christianity on a more general note. Interestingly enough, this text also narrates the bodily response of Agnes’ suitor to this speech: Se cniht wearð geancsumod and wiðinnan ablend æfter þæs mædenes spræce, þe hine spearn mid wordum. He wearð þa gesicelod, and siccetunga teah of niwellicum breoste, on bedde licgende (ÆLS (Agnes) 63) “The young man became distressed and inwardly blinded after the speech of the virgin, who had spurned him with her words. He then became ill and sighed from the depths of his breast, lying on his bed” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 223).

After Agnes describes in such rich and intense detail how she experiences and conceptualizes Christ’s love, Symphronius becomes blind. This blindness might refer to a genuine case of blindness that results from a person’s negative emotional experiences, but at a symbolic level it represents Symphronius’ lack of connection with God. He is blind, therefore, he is physically impaired to reach the deity. This same life introduces a motif that recurs throughout different lives:  the beauty or lack thereof of pagan idols, and references to their blindness. Consider the following excerpt: þine godas syndon agotene of are of þam ðe man wyrcð wynsume fate, Oððe hi synd stænene mid þam þe man stræta wyrcð (ÆLS (Agnes) 132). “Your gods are cast from brass, from which lovely pots are made, or they are made of stone, with which streets are made” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 227).

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Agnes scorns Symphronius’ worship of pagan idols, claiming that they are simply ornamental figures made of clay or stone. The usage of OE wynsum here is remarkable in that it is employed to describe a mundane clay pot, when in preceding lines in this same life it is used to describe Christ’s love. Furthermore, throughout this collection, similar aesthetic emotion markers are applied to pagan temples as well, for instance in the life of Saint George: æfter ðisum bebead se ablenda Datianus þæt mann his deadan godas deorwurðlice frætewode, and þæt deofles templ mid deorwurðan seolfre; and het þider lædan þone geleaffullan martyr, wende þæt he wolde wurðian his godas, and his lac geoffrian ðam lifleasum godum (ÆLS (George) 128) “After this the deluded Datianus commanded that his dead gods and the devil’s temple be splendidly adorned with precious silver, and he ordered that the faithful martyr should be brought there” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 61).

The author’s lexical choices in this excerpt as applied to the pagan temple are similar to those found in the life on Saint Agnes: the temple is decorated and ornamented, but the description that is carried out of it does not include any of the lexemes seen above that can indicate morality, only material worth. Throughout the corpus there are many different references to blindness with varying figurative meanings. Consider, for example, the following fragment from the life of Saint Sebastian: Wod bið se ðe bit æt blindum stanum ænigne fultum on his frecednyssum (ÆLS (Sebastian) 419) “he is insane who prays to blind stones for any help when he is in danger” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 185).

The adjective OE blind is frequently used as a term that describes these pagan deities, as it is used, for example, in ÆLS (Maccabees) 217, where pagan gods are referred to as blindum godum. While the Christian God is constantly designated through lexical constructions that refer to him as ‘the living god,’ the blindness on the part of pagan idols is recurrently emphasised by the narrator. On the one hand, this is a figurative recourse that plainly evidences the fact that the images and sculptures that are supposed to represent these deities do not link or connect with any higher conscience. As such, blindness is indicative of a lack of mental activity or sentience. On the other hand, this blindness is also representative of how these figures are far from the Christian God and his teachings. Furthermore, this blindness speaks of an inability to effect miracles, which is discussed in the life on Saint Julian and Saint Basilissa: Iulianus þa cwæð to þam welhreowan þus, Clypiað to eowrum godum and to eallum gydenum þæt hi nu gehælan þises hæðenan eage, and gif hi ne magon, ic hine gehæle þurh

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Crist. þa eoden þa hæðengyldan into heora temple, clypigende hlude to ðam leasan gode. ða andwerdan þa deofla of þam dædan anlicnyssum, Gewitað fram us we synd wraðe geswæncte and mid fyre fornumene for Iulianes intingan, æfre fram ðam dæge þe ge hine ærest dræhton. Hu mage we blinde þone blindan gehælan? þa cwæð Iulianus þe þæt eal wyste to Martiane mid micelre blisse, Gang into þinum godum þe hi clypiað to him. þa eode se ehtere into ðam temple, and geseah þa anlicnyssa ealle tocwysede gyldena and sylfrena and sume of smyltinga, sume of cristallan tobrytte mid ealle (ÆLS (Julian and Basilissa) 149)13

The narrative context to this fragment is Saint Julian’s persecution, when he manages to blind one of the people who is beating him. In the middle of his discussion of the Christian faith, he tells his prosecutors to ask their pagan gods to heal his eye, and if they are not able to do so, he will do it himself, corroborating God’s existence and manifesting his power. In this excerpt, the blindness of these unnamed pagan idols is further discussed. These idols speak from within the images, and they themselves admit to being blind and being unable to heal or perform the miracles that Saint Julian or God might. Blindness is, therefore, equated with a lack of power here. Furthermore, what is noteworthy about this episode is that the fact that these pagan idols speak does not seem to cause wonder, awe, or amazement in general in these characters, nor does this seem to be aimed at causing negative aesthetic emotions in a potential audience. The message behind this excerpt is clear: it stresses the fact that pagan gods are subsumed to God’s power. They are not deities, but demons, and they are presented as powerless and relatively harmless. It is also frequent in this corpus to find many different references to pagan men and women being blind. In these cases, it is also clear how this blindness represents their lack of faith, an inability to connect with the Christian deity. In many of these lives, the saints or God and Jesus themselves frequently heal blind people, and this ultimately brings these non-​believers closer to God, causing

13 Julian then spoke to the bloodthirsty man thus: “Call out to your gods and to all the goddesses so that they may heal this heathen man’s eye now and, if they cannot, I will heal him through Christ.” Then the heathen priests went into their temple, calling loudly to the false god. Then the devils answered from those dead images: “Go away from us! We are cruelly tormented and devoured by fire on account of Julian, all the time since that day when you first persecuted him. How can we blind ones heal the blind?” Then Julian, who knew all this, said to Martianus with great joy: “Go to your gods! They are calling you to them!” Then the persecutor went into the temple and saw the images all crushed, gold and silver ones, and some of amber, some of crystal, completely broken into pieces” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 135).

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them to believe. For example, in the same life, Saint Julian carries out the miracle of healing the blind man that was being discussed in the preceding passage. The miracle is narrated as follows: þa mærcode Iulianus þæs mannes eage mid Cristes rodetacne and se cniht wearð gehæled, swylce his eage nære næfre ær gederod. ða clypode se cniht and cwæð to Martiane, Se god is to gelyfanne þe ða Cristenan ongelyfað, and þine godas synd soðlice deoflu. Martianus þa het hine beheafdian forðan þe he gelyfde on þone lyfigendan God þe his eage onlihte and eac his heortan. (ÆLS (Julian and Basilissa) 172) “Then Julian marked the man’s eye with the sign of Christ’s cross and the young man was healed, as if his eye had never been injured. Then the young man called out and said to Martianus: “The God in whom the Christians believe is to be believed and your gods are truly devils!” Martianus then commanded him to be beheaded because he believed in the living God who had given light to his eye and also to his heart” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 137).

This fragment is quite straight-​forward in explaining the symbolic dimension of blindness, sight, and light inside the Christian hagiographical framework. To believe in God implies being able to see, and this faculty of sight is unlike any other special mode of vision in that it materialises in a light that resides in the chest. To be healed, therefore, implies being given light to the eyes, which is, as it has been discussed before, a metaphor for God in the Christian doctrine. Other examples in this corpus include Saint Sebastian’s healing of blind men, Saint Maur’s healing of another blind man, Saint Mark, who healed several blind people as well, Saint Alban’s executioner being blinded after his execution, the three blind women who are healed at Saint Swithun’s grave or the blind man who is abandoned by his guide in this same life, only to be healed as well at his grave, or Taurus’ son, who is blind and healed by Saint Apollinaris. One of the metaphors that is relatively common in Present-​Day English when discussing somebody’s intelligence employs the source domain of light (see the Master Metaphor List proposed by Lakoff et al., 1991: 137, where the metaphor intelligence is a light source is discussed). This metaphor can also be found in certain Old English texts, as it was discussed in Minaya (2021: 209). In the metrical epilogue to the Pastoral Care, Alfred develops the metaphor knowledge is light, a knowledge that refers to Christian scriptures and teachings. This metaphor can also be identified in the life on Saint Mark: ðas feower godspelleras syndon Gode gecorene, and hi ealne middaneard mid heora lare onlihton (ÆLS (Mark) 174) “These four evangelists are chosen by God and they illuminated all the world with their teaching” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 81).

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Intelligence and wisdom are figuratively described as a light that illuminates mankind. A similar metaphor operates in the following excerpt from the life of Saint Sebastian: þa cwæð Zoe to Sebastiane eft, Eadige synd þa þe þinum wordum gelyfað, and þa beoð awyrigde þe þises twyniað. Swa swa dægred todræfð þa dimlican þystra, and manna eagan onlyht þe blinde wæron on niht, swa adræfde þin lar þa geleafleaste fram me, and minne muð geopenode and min mod onlihte. (ÆLS (Sebastian) 105) “Then Zoe spoke again to Sebastian:  ‘Blessed are those who believe your words, and those who doubt this will be cursed. Just as dawn drives out the gloomy darkness and illuminates the eyes of people who were blind in the night, so your teaching drove the disbelief out of me and opened my mouth and illuminated my spirit’” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 163–​165).

Saint Sebastian’s teachings about Christianity are conceptualised as a light that figuratively illuminates the eyes of people who were in the dark about who the true God is, people who did not understand the extent of his power. This knowledge illuminates Zoe’s spirit (OE mōd, which can mean ‘mind,’ but also ‘spirit’ or ‘heart’), and there is also mention to how it affects her. It is said to, on the one hand, cause her to believe, and, on the other hand, there is a reference to an action tendency on the part of this character: an open mouth as a result of amazement. While, in this case, the blindness is not literal, but figurative, this excerpt does exemplify and further stresses the role of blindness as a figurative symbol for those who do not believe in God, and how the movement from blindness to seeing implies a radical spiritual transformation. The following examples illustrate how this blindness is sometimes figurative for a lack of spirituality, but they also prove that the motif of the blind person who is healed plays an important role in Ælfric’s narrative strategies. As far as the sense of sight is concerned, it is postulated as the foremost sense in aesthetic and religious experiences. This is one of the reasons why in Saint Thomas’ life, when Syntyche, the woman who had been blind for 6 years, regains her sight, Migdonia, her relative, describes this process as follows: þine eagan onlihte swa butan læcecræfte (ÆLS (Thomas) 267) ‘he brought light to your eyes without medicine.’ One final instance that further reinforces this point can be found in the life of Saint Martin. One of the characters in this life is Anatolius, a man who lies about frequently speaking with God and the angels, when in fact he is being deceived by a devil by means of a garment that is supposed to be of divine origin: Hwæt þa on middre nihte wearð þæt mynster astyrod, and wearð micel gehlyd hlihhendra deofla, and þæs muneces cyte mid leohte wearþ afylled, and he eode sylf ut mid þam scinendan reafe, and anum oþrum munece þa mærþa æteowde; þær comon þa ma, and Clarus æt nextan, and sceawodon mid leohte þone scinendan gyrlan. Hit wæs swiðe

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Aesthetic pleasure and the sublime: Ælfric’s approach hnesce, scinende swa swa purpura, ac hi ne mihton tocnawan hwilces cynnes hit wære, ne hi ne mihton undergitan buton hit wære reaf, ne mid heora grapunge, ne mid heora sceawunge. (ÆLS (Martin) 810)14 þa gewearð him on mergen þæt hi þone munuc læddon to þam halgan Martine, ac se munuc nolde, cwæð þæt he ne moste to Martine cuman, forþanðe he wiste þæt he mid feondlicum cræfte ne mihte bedydrian Martines gesihðe. Hi þa hine tugon unþances þiderweard, and þæt reaf sona of heora gesihþe fordwan, and wæs ða geswutelod his scincræft and hiwung. þas mihta we tellað to Martines geearnungum, þæt se deofol ne mihte his gedwimor bediglian gif he become ætforan his gesihþe (ÆLS (Martin) 820)15

The garment that Anatolius is wearing, which is extremely appealing and luminous, is presented by him as an indicator of his intimate connection with God, symbolising his favour and Anatolius’ spirituality. Nevertheless, when the monks approach this item of clothing, amidst the unpleasant noise made by these laughing devils, they are unable to determine through touch or sight what type of fabric it is. Furthermore, Anatolius is perfectly aware of the fact that Saint Martin’s sight will not be fooled by this demon’s trick, and so when he is dragged to go to see Martin the garment vanishes in the sight of the other monks. This further reinforces the central role of sight in the life of the Christian in discerning what is holy from what is not. Going back to the idea of beauty, most texts include aesthetic pleasure triggered via sight in one way or another. In some cases, this beauty is symbolic for something else, but there are some selected instances where it is not indicative of divinity or moral qualities. For example:

14 “Well then, in the middle of the night the monastery was roused, and there was a terrible clamor of laughing devils, and the monk’s cell was filled with light, and he himself emerged with the shining garment and displayed its splendor to one of the other monks. Then more of them arrived, and last of all Clarus, and they examined the shining garment with a light. It was very soft, shining like purple, but they could not determine what kind of thing it was, nor could they understand more than that it was a garment, either by their touch or by their sight” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 137–​139). 15 “And so in the morning they agreed that they would bring the monk to Saint Martin, but the monk refused to go: he said that he could not approach Martin because he knew that he could not deceive Martin’s sight by diabolic treachery. They then dragged him there against his will, and the garment immediately vanished from their sight, and his sorcery and deception were then revealed. We ascribe these powers to Martin’s merits: that the devil could not conceal his delusion if he came into his sight” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 139).

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[Heliseus] wende þa to Gezabel þe wæs on þære byrig and stod uppon anre upflora ænlice geglencged, and gehiwode hire eagan and hire neb mid rude togeanes Hieu, and beheold his tocyme (ÆLS (Book of Kings) 338) “He went then to Jezebel, who was in the city and was standing upon an upper floor, splendidly adorned, and she had colored her eyes and her face with red to meet Jehu, and she was watching his arrival” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 163).

In this fragment, Jezebel, a Biblical figure that is known for her loose morals, is described with a term for beauty, OE ǣnlīc, which refers to notions of uniqueness, beauty, and excellence. In this case, the maxim the external is an index of the internal (Harbus, 2012: 61) is not observed. The women that are presented to Chrysanthus so that he might be tempted with bodily pleasure to abandon the Chrstian faith are described by the author through OE wlitig (ÆLS (Chrysanthus) 51), a term that is everywhere else used to describe beauty in connection to morality. Nevertheless, it should also be mentioned that, while the narrator does emphasise their outer beauty, Chrysanthus himself does not appraise them thus, and he describes these women as snakes (OE næddran). In the text about Saint Cecilia, there is a non-​religious appraisal of her beauty, when the heathens evaluate Cecilia’s appearance without any regards to her morality, only to her youth, nobility, and wisdom: þa weopon þa hæðenan þæt swa wlitig fæmne, and swa æþelboren wimman mid wisdome afylled, wolde deað þrowian on witum, swa iung (ÆLS (Cecilia) 290) “Then the heathers wept that a young woman so beautiful, and a woman so noble born and filled with wisdom, intended to suffer death by torture when so young” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 227–​229).

The evaluation is carried out according to visual and cognitive parameters, but it does not index an evaluation of morality, since it is carried out from the perspective of non-​believers. Other instances include the appraisal of objects based exclusively on how these look on the outside, for example: and het hi astigan up to anre sticolre dune, on þære wæs gefyrn foremære tæmpl sancte Marian gehalgod mid healicum wurðmynte (ÆLS (Basil) 234) “[he] ordered them to climb up a high mountain on which there was long ago a renowned temple, consecrated to saint Mary and with high honor” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 93).

In this excerpt, there are two examples of lexemes rendering the sublime, OE mǣre and heālīc. The temple is so exquisite, and it often causes such strong emotions that it is labelled sublime without further assessing what it symbolises. Similar remarks can be found in the life of Saint Julian, where he comments on the former beauty of the pagan temple:

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þa cwæð Iulianus to þam cwellere þus, Hwær is nu seo fægernys þines gefrætowodan temple? Hwær synd þa anlicnyssa þe þu onwuldrodest? (ÆLS (Julian and Basilissa) 380) “Then Julian Spoke to the killer thus: “Where is the beauty of your ornamented temple now? Where are the images in which you gloried?” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 149).

Even if this is a pagan temple, Julian refers to its sensory beauty, which he might have beheld in the past. With regards to the natural world, there are also several instances in this corpus in which natural beauty is appreciated in its own right, without linking it to God’s powers of creation: ða wæs ðær gehende þam halgan wære an myrige dun mid wyrtum amet, mid eallre fægernysse and eac ful smeð (ÆLS (Alban) 107) “There near to the holy man there was a pleasant hill adorned with plants, with every beauty, and very smooth also” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 183) Hwilon þæs middaneard teah menn fram Gode, mid his fægernyssum (ÆLS (Maurice) 157) “Once this earth drew people away from God with its beauty” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 55).

In both these cases, the noun OE fægernys is chosen to refer to a beauty that triggers aesthetic experience on its own, not because it is indicative of any other cognitive evaluations. With regards to other material objects that are described through terms for beauty or the sublime, there is a life that is particularly relevant to this effect, the text on Saint Thomas. Even though, throughout this life, the objects that are described have a larger figurative significance, initially they are presented and pictured, through the sense of sight, as appealing objects in their own right. In the following passage, Thomas is describing the buildings that he is able to build (which are symbolic for the deeds that a person does on Earth): Ic arære þa getimbrunge, þæt hire hrof oferstihð ealle gebytlu, and bið utan fæger, and swaþeah wlitigre þæt weorc wiðinnan. Swa hwæt swa bið on marmstane, oþþe on mærlicre getimbrunge, ic soþlice wyrce (ÆLS (Thomas) 71) “I construct the building so that i1ts roof towers over all buildings, and it will be attractive on the outside, and yet the work inside will be even more beautiful. Whatever there is made in marble or handsomely constructed, truly I will make it” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 269–​271).

Three different lexical items denoting positive aesthetic experience can be identified in this excerpt:  OE fæger, wlitig and mærlice, all of them describing the beauty and excellence of the buildings that Thomas is able to construct, as he describes them to Abbanes. Abbanes, as a result, claims that Thomas posseses ænlic speech, and that, if he is able to do so, he is ænlic as well. Throughout

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this life, several more adjectives are employed to describe Thomas’ constructions: wynsum, mǣre, wundorlīc, scīn, and a repetition of fæger and fægernys. It is after all of these descriptions that the greater symbolism of these buildings and what they really mean is revealed. This corpus contains many more examples of the figurative recourse the external is an index of the internal. Discussing all of them would be redundant, as there is already a large body of publications discussing the spiritual and moral dimension of beauty in Old English literature. Nevertheless, there are several examples that are remarkable in how they exemplify this maxim. In the text on Saint Chrysanthus, he approaches Daria, a beautiful and learned woman who lives in his same city. This is how Daria is introduced, described, and what she is promised as regards her spiritual beauty: þa wæs sum mæden wundorlice cræftig on þære ylcan byrig æþelborenre mægðe, Daria gehaten, on hæðenscipe wunigende, wlitig on wæstme and on uðwitegunge snoter. Polemius þa sona sende his frynd to þam mædene Darian and micclum wæs biddende, þæt heo Chrisantum gewemde fram Criste mid spræce, and þæt heo hæfde hine hire to were syððan. Him gewearð þa æt nextan þæt heo wolde swa don, and com þa geglenged mid golde to þam cnihte, and scinendum gymstanum swilce sunbeam færlice, and hine frefrode mid hire fægerum wordum. þa cwæð Crisantus hire to mid clænum mode þus, swyðe þu geglengdest mid golde þe sylfe þæt þu mid þinre wlite mine willan aidlige, ac þu mihtest habban þone Hælend to brydguman gif þu hine lufodest, and heolde þe clænlice on ungewemmedum mægðhade, and þu wurde swa wlitig wiþinnan on mode, swa swa þu wiðutan eart (ÆLS (Chrysanthus) 67)16

Before her conversion, Daria is presented as a woman who is beautiful in appearance (OE witig on wæstme, a phrase that reinforces the fact that her beauty is not a spiritual one in this context). Furthermore, she dresses herself appealingly, and

16 “There was a marvelously learned young woman of noble parentage in the same city called Daria, who was living in heathenism, beautiful in appearance, and wise in philosophy. Then Polemius immediately sent his friend to the young woman Daria, and entreated her passionately to lure Chyrsanthus from Christ by her speech, and she could afterward have him as her husband. Then they finally agreed that she was willing to do this, and she approached the young man unexpectedly, adorned with gold and with brightly shining gemstones like a sunbeam, and she comforted him with her beautiful rhetoric. Then Chrysanthus spoke to her with a chaste heart in this way: “You have adorned yourself very much with gold so as to frustrate my intentions with your beauty, but if you loved him, you could have the savior as a bridegroom and keep yourself chaste in unblemished virginity, and you would be as beautiful within your heart as you are on the outside” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 243).

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speaks with fægerum wordum ‘a beautiful eloquence.’ In more than one sense, Daria is beautiful in both appearance and demeanour. Nevertheless, Chrysanthus, who is unaffected by this vision and unmoved by sexual desire, goes on to preach to her about beauty and chastity, ultimately claiming that only her virginity would make her as beautiful inside as she is outside, employing again OE wlitig. All of the examples mentioned above illustrate the predominance of sight in the aesthetic experiences described in ÆLS. Some of them also hint at what will be discussed in the following sections, how terms that, at a prototypical level, refer to visual appraisals frequently refer, in truth, to exclusively cognitive or emotional phenomena. Nevertheless, in Ælfric’s hagiography there is also room for the engagement of other senses as well. In Minaya (2022b), it was discussed how the OEM featured an abnormally large number of smell-​related miracles, whereby the divinity or morality of a given saint is made evident in the miraculous emission of a pleasant smell by one of their body parts or by their relics. While this is not the case of the corpus analysed here, there are several instances that describe miraculous phenomena that engage the senses of smell, hearing, and touch. In the life of Saint Julian and Saint Basilissa, Saint Julian prays to God for guidance. He wants to know what he should do, whether to remain a virgin or to take up a wife. God appears to him in a dream, and he tells him that he should do both: he ought to marry a woman and both of them should remain virgins. When they finally get married, the following scene takes places in their wedding night: Hwæt ða Iulianus hine georne gebæd to ðam hælende Criste, þæt he hine geheolde wið ealla ontendnysse and yfele costnunga. ða wearð þæt brydbed mid bræðe afylled swylce þær lægon lilie and rose. ða cwæð Basilissa to þam clænan brydguman, Hit is wintertid nu and ic wundrie þearle hwanon þes wyrtbræð þus wynsumlice steme; and me nu ne lyst nanes synscipes, ac þæs Hælendes geþeodnysse mid gehealdenre clennisse. Iulianus andwyrde þam æðelan mædene, þes wynsuman bræð þe ðu wundrast þearle næfð nan angin ne eac nænne ænde. þes bræð is of Criste seðe is clænnysse lufigend, gif wit þurhwuniað on ansundum mægðhade, and hine clænlice lufiað, þonne cume wit to his rice and wit ne beoð totwæmede, ac a to worulde blyssiað. Basilissa cwæð þæt heo on clænum mægðhade þurhwunian wolde for ðam wynsuman behate, and habban þæt ece lif and ðone Hælend to brydguman. (ÆLS (Julian and Basilissa) 29)17

17 “Well then, Julian eagerly prayed to the savior Christ to preserve him from all burning desires and evil temptations. The marriage bed was then filled with fragrance, as if a lily and a rose were lying there. Then Basilissa said to the pure bridegroom: “It is now wintertime, and I wonder very much what is giving off this scent of flowers so delightfully. And now I do not desire marriage at all, but rather union with the savior while

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Julian continues to pray, because he feels that his desire for his wife is too intense. God, in order to save him from his bodily desires, intercedes. The bedroom of the newlyweds is filled with an extremely pleasant smell that resembles that of lilies and roses, a smell that is described as OE wynsum, a term that is frequently employed to describe pleasant personal experience triggered via proximity senses, and that, at least in the poetic corpus, is found in contexts where it describes the odour of sanctity. These aesthetic emotion markers alone (OE wynsum and wynsumlice) indicate that this smell triggers positive aesthetic emotions, but there are additional terms that indicate that the miraculous framework of this smell triggers amazement. Basilissa claims that she finds it strange that there should be such a smell during wintertime, and she expresses this through OE wundrian ‘to wonder, to marvel.’ In this case, OE wundrian does not directly translate as PDE to wonder, in the sense that the Old English verb implies “to wonder at, to regard with surprise or admiration” (BWT, s.v. wundrian, vb., I.). Basilissa, therefore, does certainly wonder where this smell is coming from, but more than wonder at its provenance, she is amazed at this, unlike Saint Julian, for whom this smell comes as no surprise. In the context of this excerpt and of this text, it is remarkable that OE wynsum is literally used to describe this pleasant smell, but it is also used in the description of virginity as a pleasant promise, employing, therefore, a term that literally describes what is pleasant to the senses in a figurative description of a more abstract and conceptual circumstance, as is the case of virginity. In this same life, there are two further instances in which miraculous smells are also described through some of the terms analysed in this study. Later on in the narrative, Saint Julian is brought into a prison alongside Celsus, Martianus’ son. This is how this prison is described: þa halgan wurdon gebrohte on blindum cwearterne syððan be Martianes hæse þær manna lic lagon, þe wæran ær acwealde on ðam cwearterne gefyrn, þa weollon eall maðon and egeslice stuncon (ÆLS (Julian and Basilissa) 209)

remaining chaste.” Julian answered the noble virgin: ‘This delightful fragrance at which you wonder very much has no beginning nor any end. This fragrance is from Christ, who is a lover of chastity. If the two of us continue in uncorrupted virginity and love him chastely, then the two of us will come to his kingdom and we will not be separated but will rejoice eternally.’ Basilissa said that she wished to continue in pure virginity for the sake of that delightful promise and to have the eternal life and the savior as her bridegroom” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 127).

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“The saints were then brought into a dark prison at Martianus’s command, where the bodies of people were lying who had previously been killed in the prison; they all swarmed with maggots and stank terribly” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 139).

The above excerpt is clearly aimed at triggering the emotion of disgust,18 through descriptions of dead bodies and smells that trigger negative aesthetic responses (in this case, through OE egeslīc, a term that describes many different negative utilitarian and aesthetic responses). Nevertheless, through divine intervention, this extremely unpleasant smell changes: þa foresceawode Godes gifu þæt þær scean mycel leoht and se stenc wearð awend to wynsumum bræðe, and eall se unwynsumnyss him wearð to blysse (ÆLS (Julian and Basilissa) 213) “Then God’s grace saw to it that a great light shone there, and the stench was changed into a delightful fragrance, and all the unpleasantness turned into joy for them” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 139).

Divine intervention in this episode is symbolised through the apparition of an intense luminous current, which causes the smell to change from OE egeslīc to OE wynsum. The terms that accompany these adjectives are not indicative of further pleasantness or unpleasantness, as both the noun OE brǣðe and the verb OE gestincan can be used in describing both pleasant and unpleasant smells. However, what is remarkable about the preceding passage is that it narrates in relatively plain terms how this change is met by the two men in the prison. Unpleasant personal experience is marked through OE unwynsumnes, a negation of OE wynsumnes, the prototypical term that describes pleasant personal experience, and this sensory experience then, as a result of the experience of the pleasant smell, morphs into bliss (OE blis). This evidences how aesthetic pleasure, in this excerpt, acts as an emotional input in the emotion process, triggering a second-​hand utilitarian emotion. Similar circumstances can be found in the life on Chrysanthus and Daria, where, as in the example above, these pleasant smells have an important role in the narrative in the sense that they exempt the saints from experiencing the unpleasantness of the circumstances of their incarceration or martyrdom: þa wendon þa cempan þæt he cuðe drycræft, and beguton hine ealne mid ealdum miggan, wendon þæt se migga mihte aidlian ealne his scincræft; ac hi swuncon on idel, forðanþe se migga þurh Godes mihte wearð to swetum stence sona awend (ÆLS (Chrysanthus) 152)

18 For an analysis of DISGUST and other negative aesthetic responses in Old English literature, see Minaya (2021a).

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“Then the soldiers believed that he was skilled in magic, and they completely drenched him in stale urine: they thought that the urine might frustrate all his magic. But they worked in vain, because through God’s power the urine was immediately turned to a sweet smell” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 247). þæt anþræce cweartern þe Crisantus on wæs, wearð onliht sona wundorlice þurh God, and þær wynsum bræð werodlice stemde (ÆLS (Chrysanthus) 250) “Suddenly the horrible prison which Chrysanthus was in was miraculously illuminated through the power of God, and a beautiful fragrance was emitted sweetly there” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 253).

In the first example, the unpleasantness of human urine turns into a sweet and pleasant smell through divine intervention. In this case, this miracle is not explicitly described as triggering positive aesthetic experience, but the notion of pleasantness is implicit in the usage of OE swēte. The second example is similar in this regard, since the prison that is being described as OE onþræc ‘horrible, terrible’ (related to OE onþracung ‘fear’) becomes illuminated and filled with a pleasant smell. There is another instance where smell is involved in miraculous phenomena. In the following passage, Celsus and Saint Julian are about to be burned alive. Celsus is confident that the fire will not harm them, and when they emerge unscathed from the fire, he visits her mother. This is how this visit is narrated: ða wearð þær eorðstyrung, and eall seo stow byfode, and þær scean mycel leoht and mære bræð þær stanc, swa þæt þæt wif wundrode þæs wynsuman bræþes, and cwæð þæt heo næfre ær naht swilces ne gestunce. þa gelyfde heo sona on þone lifigendan God, and wearð gefullod æt þam foresædan preoste, and fullice gecyrred to ðam soðan geleafan (ÆLS (Julian and Basilissa) 346). “There was an earthquake there then and the whole place shook and a great light shone there and a glorious fragrance rose up there, so that the woman was amazed at the delightful fragrance and said that she had never before smelled anything like it. Then she immediately believed in the living God and was baptized by the priest whom we have already mentioned and was fully converted to the true faith” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 147).

This miracle is similarly marked by the presence of a light that is a symbol of divine intervention, and it is described with exactly the same terminology as in the preceding passage (OE mycel leoht ‘great, abundant light’). Another similarity between the preceding excerpt and this one is the apparition of a miraculous smell. However, in this case, the smell is described as a pleasant one through OE wynsum, but also with a term form the lexical domain of the sublime, OE mǣre ‘sublime, excellent,’ translated by Clayton and Mullins (2019a: 147) as glorious. There is no further description of what it smells like, but it can be assumed that

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it would be a pleasant and sweet fragrance, as it is the case everywhere else in the corpus. Furthermore, in this passage, the emotional reaction to this smell is also described. Celsisus’ mother is amazed at this pleasant smell, and it causes a radical change in her belief system, to the point that she believes in God and asks to be instantly baptized. One final instance that involves positive aesthetic experience triggered via smell can be found in the text on the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. When Heraclius defeats Chosroes’ son, and he is able to get hold of one of the relics made from Jesus’ cross, he decides to take it back to Jerusalem. Once he is able to cross the gates of the city, this is how the miracle is narrated: Wæs eac oþer wundor, swa þæt wynsum bræð stemde of þære halgan rode þa þa heo hamwerd wæs geond þæt land, and þa lyfte afylde; and þæt folc þæs fægnode, afylde mid þam bræðe. Ne mihte nan wyrtbræð swa wynsumlice steman, and se casere þa clypode mid blysse, Eala þu wundorlice rod, on þære ðe Crist wolde þrowian, and ure wita adwescan mid his deorwurþan blode; Eala þu scinende rod swiþor þonne tungla, mære on middanearde, micclum to lufigenne, halig treow and wynsum, þe wurþe wære to berenne ealles middaneardes wurþ, gemunde þisne heap, þe her gegaderod is Gode to wurðmynte. þa ahof se casere þa halgan rode up on þære ylcan stowe, þe heo on stod æt fruman, ærþan þe se arleasa cynincg Cosdrue hi gename (ÆLS (Exalt of Cross) 109)19

As it is the case of the episodes narrated in the OEM, the relics of the saints and, in this case, of Jesus’ cross emit pleasant smells from time to time. Here, the miraculous emission of smell is deemed a miracle, a wonderful event (OE wundor) that is manifested through pleasant personal experience (OE wynsum). This aesthetic experience triggers an additional emotional response, described through OE fægnian ‘rejoice, be delighted,’ and it also causes very evident action tendencies, like the expression of this emotion in the words of the emperor, which employs an aesthetic emotion marker, like OE wynsum, or expressions of worth (OE weorþ).

19 “There was also a second miracle, as a beautiful scent radiated throughout the land from the holy cross and permeated the air when it made its way home, and, filled with the aroma, the people rejoiced. Nor could the perfume from any plant release so beautiful a smell, and the emperor called out with joy: “Oh marvelous cross, on which Christ was willing to suffer and put an end to our punishment with his precious blood! Oh cross shining brighter than the stars, glorious on earth, greatly to be loved, holy tree and beautiful, you were worthy to carry the treasure of all the earth! Be mindful of this congregation, which is gathered here in honor to God!” Then the emperor elevated the cross in the same place in which it had stood at first, before the wicked king Chosroes had taken it” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 31–​33).

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Regarding sound, only one instance in the corpus describes what is pleasant from an aural perspective. It concerns Saint Denis’ death and the circumstances and phenomena that take place when he rises from the dead to pick up his head: þær com þa micel leoht to þæra martyra lice, and þæs bisceopes lic mid þam leohte aras, and nam his agen heafod þe ofaheawen wæs uppan ðære dune, and eode him forð þanon ofer twa mila, þam mannum onlocigendum, his Drihten herigende mid halgum lofsangum; and engla werod eac þær wynsumlice sungon, oð þæt þæt lic becom þær ðær he licgan wolde, mid heafde mid ealle, and þa halgan englas singallice sungon, swa swa us secgað bec. Hwæt ða hæþenan, þa þe gehyrdon þone sang and þæt wundor gesawon, awurpon heora gedwyld, and gelyfdon on Crist, and eac þa cwelleras sume; and þær nan ne belaf þe gelyfan nolde, ac gewendon him aweg, for þam wundrum afyrhte. þæt wæs syllic wundor þæt se soðfæsta martyr heafodleas mihte gan, God ælmihtigne herigende, and eac swylce yrnan mid engla heapum; ac God wolde geswutelian þurh þæt syllice tacn þæt his sawl leofode þeah þe se lichama wære ofslagen, and wolde mannum æteowian hu micelne geleafan se halga wer hæfde to þam Hælende on life (ÆLS (Denis) 291)20

Though the stimulus input in this narrative excerpt does not feature exclusively miraculous sounds, it is clear that aural evaluation is an important part of this multifactorial aesthetic experience. As in the preceding examples, divine intervention is represented by an abundance of light (OE leōht), and, while the saint is picking up his head, the narrator explains that the angels are singing pleasantly. In this case, the adjective OE wynsum describes how this sound was (or would have been) appraised hypothetically by listeners. Furthermore, the narrator also speculates as to what effect this vision and sound would have cause: non-​ believers would have instantly believed in God. Furthermore, the fact that Denis is able to come back from the dead and pick up his head is described as a miracle

20 “A great light descended upon the bodies of the martyrs there, and the body of the bishop rose with the light, and he took his own head, which had been cut off upon the hill, and went forth from there over a distance of two miles, with the people looking on, praising his Lord with holy hymns. And a troop of angels also sang beautifully there, until the body came to the place where he intended to lie with the head and all, and the holy angels sang continuously, as books tell us. Well, those heathens who had heard the song and had seen the miracle cast aside their false belief and believed in Christ, as did some of the executioners also. And no one remained there who refused to believe, but they went away, frightened by the miracles. That was an extraordinary miracle: that the righteous martyr could walk headless, praising God almighty, and likewise move among troops of angels. But through this extraordinary sign God wished to reveal that his soul lived, though his body was slain, and he wished to demonstrate to people what great faith the holy man had in the savior during his life” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 77–​79).

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or wonder (OE wundor) that triggers fear (OE afyrhtan), in this case an emotion that swings between the utilitarian and the aesthetic. Furthermore, this miracle is described with many different aesthetic emotion terms, not only those described above, OE wundor and wynsum, but also terms from the lexical domain of excellence, like OE sellīc and OE tācn, denoting excellence and wonder, respectively. Finally, and regarding another proximity sense, two instances describe what is sublime or extremely pleasant to the touch, a pathway of evaluation that is fairly uncommon in Ælfric’s hagiographical production: and þær wearð þa geworden micel wundor þurh God, swa þæt hine forbeah on ælce healfe þæt fyr, and he orsorh abad on þam bryne middan, þurh Drihtnes mihte, swilce he on deawe wære … and Martinum gelæhton of þam lige middan, hi wendon þæt he wære witodlice forbærnd on swa langsumum bryne þonne þæt brastligende fyr on slæpe hi awrehte, and he sæde syððan þæt he þæs fyres bryne gefredde him onbutan swa lange swa he wan wið þære dura scyttelsas; sona swa he hine bletsode, and gebæd hine to Gode, þa beah eall se lig abutan him aweg and him þuhte swilce he wære on wynsumum deawe (ÆLS (Martin) 870)21

Saint Martin finds himself caught in the middle of a great fire that starts by accident. Martin struggles with the bolt in the door, being trapped inside the room, and it is not until he surrenders and starts to pray to God that he ceases to feel the unpleasant heat of the flames around him. Thereafter, these flames turn away from him, and he describes the sensations on his skin through OE wynsum, claiming that, instead of the burning flames, he felt a pleasant dew. This is more consistent with the prototypical meaning and usage of OE wynsum in other Old English texts, as referring to pleasant personal experience triggered via proximity senses. A similar circumstance can be found in the life on the Forty Soldiers: Hwæt ða færlice wearð mycel wundor ðurh God; þær com heofonlic leoht to þam halgum martyrum, swa hat swa sunne scinende on sumere, and þæt is formealt on eallum þam mere and þæt wæter wearð awend to wynsumum baðe (ÆLS (Forty Soldiers) 195) “Well then, suddenly there was a great miracle by God’s agency. A heavenly light came there to the holy martyrs, as hot as the sun shining in summer, and the ice melted away

21 “And a great miracle was performed there by God, so that the fire turned away from him on each side, and through the Lord’s power he remained untroubled in the middle of the fire, as if he were in dew … And he said afterward that he had felt the burning of the fire around him for as long as he had struggled with the bolts of the door. But as soon as he blessed himself and prayed to God, then all the flames around him turned away from him, and it seemed to him as if he were in a pleasant dew” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 141–​143).

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in all of the lake and the water was changed into a delightful bath” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 315–​317).

The Forty Soldiers are put inside a lake that starts to freeze in the evening, as a punishment for not renouncing God with the hope that they would do so after experiencing the cold all night long. A heavenly light is mentioned again, signifying divine intervention, and the ice in the lake melts so that it turns into a pleasant bath. This tactile experience is, again, described through OE wynsum, and, in this case, it is presented as a reward for enduring the pain that comes with martyrdom. All things considered, it becomes clear that there are several strategies that Ælfric employs when discussing the senses and when narrating miraculous phenomena that are supposed to trigger or narrate aesthetic experience by means of different sensory cues. On the one hand, there is a predominance of the sense of sight over the rest of the senses, and, as this section has emphasised, there are strong associations between sight, intelligence and spirituality that impregnate the meanings of vision references in this corpus. On the other hand, Ælfric does refer to aesthetic experience triggered via proximity sense, but in a notably inferior proportion. Pleasant sounds, smells and tactile sensations are indicative of divinity or sanctity, or result from its experience, but this is never the case of the sense of taste in this particular corpus.

4.2. Usage of the lexical domain of the sublime The preceding section has examined several instances from the corpus in which the lexical domain of aesthetic pleasure is involved in evaluations of what is pleasant to the senses, ultimately undercovering preferences on the part of this Old English author to describe and narrate sensory experience. Nevertheless, while, to a certain extent, most of these instances do indeed showcase the features of what Fingerhut and Prinz (2020) describe as the experience of the sublime, what is remarkable is that the examples that explicitly describe what is pleasant to the senses rarely include the terminology from this Old English lexical domain. The purpose of this section is to look into the attestations of this lexical domain in Ælfric’s lives in order to determine to what extent the experiences described by these two domains are different in nature, and in the senses and cognitive process upon which they draw. There are several instances in which terms from this lexical domain evaluate objects at a visual level, placing the emphasis on the connection between their beauty and their material worth. Consider the following excerpts:

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Ic hire bead gymmas and gyrlan of golde, and oðre mærða and mære gebytlu, hamas and hyred, and heo þæt eall forseah on meoxes gelicnysse þe lið under fotum (ÆLS (Agatha) 35) “I offered her jewels and clothing of gold and other wonderful things and splendid houses, estates, and servants, and she scorned all that like dung that lies underfoot” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 253). Mid þam þe he wolde hi to wæfersyne tucian, þa gewat se Gad of worulde to helle. Man heold þa þæt lic on þa hæðenan wisan, and se broðor wolde wurðlice hine bestandan, and kynelice macian mid mærðum his byrgene (ÆLS (Thomas) 123) “When he intended to torture them as a spectacle, Gad departed from this world to hell. The body was kept in the heathen fashion, and his brother wanted to perform his funeral rites honorably and to construct his tomb royally with glorious things.” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 273–​274)

The first example concerns the material objects that are offered to Agatha so that she might choose to relinquish Christianity and marry Quintianus: these objects are described as OE mǣre, a term that everywhere else is reserved for people who lead extremely pious and virtuous lifestyles. In the second example, taken from the life on Saint Thomas, the arrangements for the funeral of the pagan Gad, king Gundoforus’ brother, are discussed. The jewels and other precious objects that they intend to put in his tomb are categorized as OE mærð, in this case indicating aesthetic pleasure through terms for sublimity without a larger symbolic or spiritual dimension. Similar remarks are also found on this life, when Thomas is offered healice agylt (ÆLS (Thomas) 142) ‘sublime clothes,’ when they find out that he is an apostle. In line with this last example, in other cases, the sublimity that these material objects trigger results from the additional symbolism that is ascribed to these objects: Hi hreowan þa to Grantanceastre, and God hi sona gehradode, swa þæt hi þær gemetton ane mære þruh wið þone weall standende, geworht of marmstane eall hwites bleos bufan þære eorðan, and þæt hlyd ðærto gelimplice gefeged, eac of hwitum marmstane swa swa hit macode God (ÆLS (Æthelthryth) 78) “Then they rowed to Grantchester, and God straightaway made it happen, so that they found there a splendid sarcophagus standing by the wall, made of marble, all white in color, above the ground, and the lid for it, suitably fitted, also of white marble, just as God had made it” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 201). and bereafode Godes templ goldes and seolfres, and fela goldhordas forð mid him gelæhte, and ða halgan maðmfatu and þæt mære weofod (ÆLS (Maccabees) 6) “God’s temple of gold and silver, and took many treasures away with him, both the holly treasure-​vessels and the great altar” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 281)

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In the first excerpt from the life of Æthelthryth, Seaxburg is rowing to Grantchester to look for stones to build a sarcophagus for the saint’s remains. Instead of finding a stone, what they find is an excellent sarcophagus of marble, already made and fashioned with a lid. This sarcophagus is not described through the terms for beauty or aesthetic pleasure analysed in the preceding section, but through OE mǣre, a term denoting sublime experience. The second example refers to God’s temple in Jerusalem, which is worthy, pleasant, and sublime at a sensory level, but it also represents an equally sublime entity. With the exceptions that can be found in the preceding section, these five examples are the only ones in Ælfric’s corpus in which terms from the lexical domain of the sublime are employed in exclusively sensory evaluations. Drawing on ideas from the field of lexical semantics (Gries and Otani, 2010), the contexts in which these occurrences take place will provide more information about the semantic dimension of these terms. Consider, for example, the following excerpts: Hwæt is god butan gode anum se þe is healic godnisse, butan þam ne mæg nan man nan þing godes habban (ÆLS (Christmas) 91) “What is good but God alone, who is sublime goodness, without whom no person can have anything that is good?” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 29). and het hi astigan up to anre sticolre dune, on þære wæs gefyrn foremære tæmpl sancte Marian gehalgod mid healicum wurðmynte (ÆLS (Basil) 234) “and [he] ordered them to climb up a high mountain on which there was long ago a renowned temple, consecrated to saint Mary and with high honor” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 93)

The adjective OE heālic, which has been discussed in the preceding chapter, evaluates in these two excerpts the terms OE gōdnes and wurðmynte, goodness and worth, respectively. In ÆLS (Eugenia) 406, Eugenia honours God sublimely (OE healice wurðost), in the life on Peter’s Chair, God is referred to as þam healican Gode (ÆLS (Peter’s Chair) 136) ‘the sublime God,’ and, in ÆLS (Sebastian) 415, he is said to have sublime majesty (OE healicum mægenþrymme). These attestations of the term OE heālic are representative of their complete usage in this corpus, and they emphasise the fact that the lexical domain of the sublime is reserved for more cognitive considerations. In these cases, what triggers this sublimity is not a pleasant experience that is triggered via the senses, but a cognitive appraisal of how good, worthy, or divine the deity and these other figures are. The previous chapter pointed out another important term that could potentially be used to describe the experience of the sublime, OE mære. To a certain

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extent, the usage of this term is similar to that of OE heālic, with some reservations. Consider the following instances: Basilius se mæra wearð mycclum onbryrd, and mid godcundre beorhtnysse geblyssod forþearle (ÆLS (Basil) 462) “Basil the Great was much inspired and very much gladdened by divine radiance” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 107). Mid þam wunode an mæden mærlice drohtnigende, geond feowertig geare fec fægre gehealden (ÆLS (Basil) 468) “With him lived a virgin leading her life in an excellent manner having conducted herself virtuously for a period of forty years; it seemed to people that she was his wife” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 107). Hi hæfdon ænne mæssepreost swiðe mæres lifes, Antonius gehaten, þe him mæssan gesang (ÆLS (Julian and Basilissa) 229) “They had a priest whose way of life was excellent, called Antonius, who sang masses for them” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 139).

These three attestations of the term OE mǣre exemplify how it is prototypically used in references to these saints and their companions when there is a need to stress their excellent and morally pure way of living. Sometimes, this adjective complements nouns referring to their behaviour, but in other cases it is used after a definite article as an epithet that follows somebody’s name. This is also the case of the lives of Saint Maur and Saint Martin, or Saint Swithun, who is referred to as OE mǣre on five separate occasions by means of this epithet. All in all, these examples and attestations of the terms in the lexical domain of the sublime do not truly provide any information as to the nature of this emotion in this corpus. In this sense, the terms for aesthetic pleasure that have been discussed in the preceding pages are much more precise in the description that they carry out of religious experiences that can clearly be categorized as sublime, even if they are not described through the terms in this lexical domain. Therefore, it seems that the Old English terms for the sublime, more often than not, are found in cognitive evaluations in this textual corpus. A more in-​ depth and fine-​grained analysis of these attestations will evidence what ideas and notions are most typically described or referred to as ‘sublime’ in Ælfric’s hagiography. In terms of cognitive evaluations, the idea of virginity recurs throughout the corpus, and in certain cases it is referred to as a sublime condition: Mæg gehyran se ðe wyle be þam halgan mædene Eugenian, Philyppus dæhter; hu heo ðurh mægðhad mærlice þeah, and þurh martyrdom þisne middaneard oferswað (ÆLS (Eugenia)1)

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“Anyone who wishes can hear about the holy virgin, Eugenia, Philip’s daughter:  how she flourished gloriously be means of virginity and overcame this world by martyrdom” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 45).

In this life, the notion of virginity is closely related to that of moral purity. The translator renders here OE þeāh as ‘flourish.’ This term is the past form of the verb OE þeōn, which refers to “either physical or moral growth” (BWT, s.v. þeōn, vb., I.). Here, the phrase mærlice þeah conveys that, through virginity, Saint Eugenia reaches a level of moral purity and spiritual growth that causes her to be experienced as a sublime phenomenon. Intellectual activity is as well described through the term OE mǣrlīc in two excerpts from the corpus: Swa dyde Iohannes se drihtwurða writere; he fleah feor upp, swylce mid earnes fyðerum, and beheold gleawlice hu he be Gode mihte mærlicost writan (ÆLS (Mark) 200) “So did John, the divine writer: he flew far up, as if with the feathers of an eagle, and considered wisely how he could write most gloriously about God” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 83) æfter ðyssere bodunge bead se cyning þam bydele goldes and seolfres godne dæl to lace, ac he nolde niman nan ðingc to medes his wunderlicre mihte oððe his mærlican bodunge (ÆLS (Abdon and Sennes) 183) “After this preaching, the king offered the preacher a good deal of gold and silver as a gift, but he refused to take anything as a reward for his wondrous power or his glorious preaching” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 277).

The apostle John, or, more specifically, his gospel is referred to as a writing of a sublime quality: while this sublimity could refer to the contents of the gospel, the fact that OE mǣrlīce here operates as an adverb that complements OE gewritan indicates that this also refers to his ability as a writer. The next example contains what Abgar says to Thaddeus. The wonderful power that it is mentioned in the text refers to Thaddeus ability to heal Abgar, and the glorious preaching alludes to Thaddeus’ ability to convey eloquently the words of Jesus. Similarly, while there is an appraisal of content, there is also an emotional response and cognitive appraisal of these people’s eloquence. The three examples from the preceding paragraph allude to specific qualities that make these people sublime, but, in the context of Ælfric’s hagiography, these are rarities in the sense that his usage of terms for the sublime are far more unspecific. Consider the following excerpts: Marcellus wæs gehaten sum mære Godes þegn (ÆLS (Peter’s Chair) 195) “Marcellus was the name of an illustrious servant of God” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 293).

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þa cwædon þa halgan þæt hi ðone Hælend wurðodon, and nænne oðerne swa healicne ne tealdon (ÆLS (Forty Soldiers) 96) “Then the saints said that they honored the savior and did not consider anyone else as exalted” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 309). He wæs forði mære on micclum geðincþum, forðan þe he cepte symle hu he cwemde Gode (ÆLS (Book of Kings) 35) “For this reason he was distinguished with great honors, because he always heeded how he might please God” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 143).

The excerpt from Peter’s Chair does not provide any other reasons why Marcellus is a sublime servant of God, other than Marcellus’ obedience of God’s commandments, which is similar to the last excerpt, where King David is said to worthy of sublime honours because he obeyed God until he died. The forty soldiers do not specify, either, why they consider God to be more sublime than any other deities. The reasons for these saints, kings, and deities to be alluded to as sublime are, nevertheless, relatively clear in the framework of these hagiographical texts. However, other examples do employ these terms and contain explanations of why these people would trigger positive emotional responses: Hundeahtatig muneca on þam mynstre wunodon under Martines lareowdome mærlice drohtnigende; and ealle heora þincg him wæron gemæne, and þær nan man næfde nan þing synderlices, ne hi cepes ne gymdon, ne naht syllan ne moston, buta þam anum þe heora bigleofan forð dydon (ÆLS (Martin) 320) “Eighty monks lived in that monastery, living gloriously under Martin’s instruction, and all had anything individually, nor were they concerned about buying, nor could they sell anything, except those things that provided for their sustenance” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 105–​107).

The monks that live in Saint Martin’s monastery exhibit a behaviour that can be categorised as sublime, because they have abandoned all earthly goods and live a frugal life. Furthermore, there are other excerpts in the corpus that convey similar messages without employing terms from the lexical domain of the sublime: He wæs swiðe snotor wer and soðfæst on spræce, rihtwis on dome and on ræde foregleaw, getreowe on neode and strang foreþingere, on godnysse scinende and on eallum þeawum arwurðful (ÆLS (Sebastian) 4) “He was a very wise man and truthful in speech, just in judgment and with foresight in counsel, trustworthy in matters requiring action and a vigorous intercessor, shining in goodness and honorable in all his habits” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 157). þa com seo burhwaru, and bebyrigde hire lic mid mycelre arwurðnysse on eallniwere þryh (ÆLS (Agatha) 197) “Then the citizens came and buried her body with great reverence in an entirely new tomb” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 263).

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Saint Agatha’s body is buried with great reverence, another aesthetic emotion, and a similar expression is also found in a equivalent context in the life on Saint Maur, where the consecration of the finished monastery is said to be carried out with high solemnity: healicum wurðmynte (ÆLS (Maur) 214). The first example, from the text on Saint Sebastian, rather than explicitly alluding to reverence, the emotion that results from the cognitive appraisal of somebody’s virtue, employs a term from the lexical domain of light, which is figuratively applied to goodness, giving a visual dimension to an otherwise abstract notion. Closing on the usage of the lexical domain of the sublime on the part of Ælfric, there is one more category in which these terms are employed, and it is in referring to the miracles that take place in the narrative framework of these lives: þa wurðode he Maurum for þam mærlicum tacne þe he on ðære hwile gefremede þe he on fyrlenum wæs (ÆLS (Maur) 44) “he honored Maur for the glorious miracle that he had performed during the time when he was far away” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 193).

In this excerpt, the miracle that Maur performs is described as a sublime token. The idea that OE tācn alludes to has been discussed in the preceding section, and, as it can be seen here, it perfectly illustrates how the more abstract notions and promises of Christianity materialise in the physical world. The miracle that this excerpt mentions is narrated several lines before this: Hwilon ær we sædon on sumere oðre stowe hu se ylca Maurus, þurh godes mihte eode uppon yrnendum wætere on anum widgyllan pole, þa þa Benedictus hine het gehelpan þæs cnapan þe on þære stream befeol þa ða he wæter fette (ÆLS (Maur) 10) “Some time ago we told in another place about how this same Maur through the power of God walked on running water in a wide pool, when Benedict ordered him to help the young man who had fallen into the stream when he was fetching water” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 191).

Maur had the miraculous ability to walk on water, an ability that Jesus had as well, and, through it and God’s power, he was able to save a man who was drowning in water. While this tācn is not as symbolic as, for example, the pilar of light that guides the Israelites in the Old English poem Exodus, where it is also described through OE tācn, Maur’s ability is a materialisation and physically observable token of God’s power, and, in this case, it fits neatly into the phenomena that trigger intense emotional response, namely, the experience of the sublime. One of the main functions and purposes of miracles is that they evidence a saint’s power, which God grants them. Consider, for instance, these two excerpts from the life on Saint Swithun:

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On Eadgares dagum ðæs æðelan cynincges, þaða se Cristendom wæs wel ðeonde þurh God on Angelcynne under ðam ylcan cynincge, þa geswutelode God þone sanct Swyðun mid manegum wundrum, þæt he mære is (ÆLS (Swithun) 1) “In the days of Edgar the noble king, when with the aid of God Christianity was successfully flourishing among the English people under this very king, then God made known that Swithun the saint is glorious, by many miracles” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 207). þæt wæs þæra gymeleast þe on life hine cuþon, þæt hi noldon awritan his weorc and drohtnunge þam towerdum mannum ðe his mihte ne cuðon; ac God hæfð swa þeah his lif geswutelod, mid swutelum wundrum and syllicum tacnum (ÆLS (Swithun) 9) “It was negligence on the part of those who knew him in life that they were not willing to write down his deeds and his way of life for future people who did not know his. power, but God has nevertheless made his life known by visible miracles and wonderful signs” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 207).

In the second excerpt, it can be seen how OE sellīc and mǣre refer to similar aesthetic evaluations, and, indeed, the formula sellīc tācn recurs in other lives. These ideas will be further on inspected in the chapter on the lexical domain of wonder and how it applies to the theology of the miracle in this corpus, but in these two excerpts the connection between wonder and the sublime is evident. The saint’s miracles reveal how excellent, wonderful and sublime they are, and this revelation occurs at a physically observable level, which brings together the cognitive and the sensory. In short, this section has offered an analysis of the different attestations of the terms in the lexical domain of the sublime. While there exist occurrences in which the terms in this lexical domain evaluate what is exceedingly pleasing to the senses in experiences that parallel the experience of aesthetic pleasure, this section has also shown how this is not its most common usage in this corpus. More commonly, terms for the sublime are found in cognitive evaluations of the saints and other figures in these lives, alluding to their goodness and ability, and describing the wonderful tokens with which they trigger amazement.

4.3. Experiencing the sublime Broadly speaking, the preceding two sections have analysed the usage of the terms in the lexical domains of aesthetic pleasure and of the sublime in order to determine how they are employed in particular episodes of Ælfric’s hagiography in relation to the emotions that they might trigger and that they represent. Nevertheless, there are other instances in the corpus that refer to similar emotional responses and that do not necessarily include the terms discussed before. The purpose of this section is to look into the phenomena in this corpus

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that might have triggered or have been experienced with the feeling of the sublime, with the aim of determining what role they play in the larger narratives of the lives analysed here. An important part of the narrative motifs that are associated with the experience of the sublime in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints involves, in one way or another, the saint’s deliverance from martyrdom through instances of divine intervention that involve an aesthetic evaluation. Consider, for example, the following excerpt from the life of Saint Eugenia: Heo wearð þa gebroht into blindum cwearterne, and geond twæntig daga hyre næs getyðod æniges bigleofan binnan ðam þeostrum. Ac se Hælend com mid heofonlicum leohte, and brohte ðam mædene mærne bigleofon, snawhwitne hlaf, and onlihte ðæt cweartern (ÆLS (Eugenia) 400) “Then she was brought into a dark prison and for twenty days was not allowed any food in the darkness. But the savior came with a heavenly light and brought the virgin glorious food, a snow-​white loaf, and illuminated the prison” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 71).

Before this scene, the emperor had ordered Eugenia to be first thrown into an oven, to be scalded alive, and second to be sunk into the river, but none of this had been successful in killing her or causing her to renounce her faith. As a result, she is incarcerated and deprived of food and light, with the hopes that this would suffice to break her spirit. Nevertheless, she is witness to a sublime experience through which God provides her with what she has been denied on earth: an intense heavenly light and the food that she had been denied. The food is described through OE mǣre, indicating its exceedingly good quality, but, in this fragment, the experience of the sublime originates, not from a gustatory appraisal of the snow-​white loaf, but from the experience of something greater than themselves that causes them to be forced to reorient themselves in the face of greatness. A similar scene takes place in the life on Saint Denis, where the presence of light and divine intervention are described as having a particular emotional effect on the saint who beholds it: þa mid þam þe he tobræc þæt halige husel þa com þær heofonlic leoht ofer ealle þa meniu, swilc swa hi ær ne gesawon. þær com eac se Hælend mid þam heofonlican leohte, and fela engla mid him, þær menn onlocodon, and nam þæt husel þe ðær gehalgod wæs, and cwæð to þam bisceope mid blyðre ansyne (ÆLS (Denis) 259) “When he broke the holy communion wafer, a heavenly light descended there over all the crowd, such as they had never seen before. The savior also appeared there with that heavenly light, and a multitude of angels with him, where the people looked on, and he

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took the communion wafer that had been consecrated, and with a happy face said to the bishop” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 75–​77).

In this scene, Saint Denis is holding mass inside his cell, and, in the middle of the rite, Jesus himself appears accompanied with a host of angels. In this aesthetic emotion episode, there is an emphasis on visual contemplation as a result of this apparition (OE geseōn, (on)lōcian), coinciding with one of the action tendencies of the aesthetic emotion episodes described in the first chapter. This excerpt also points out one of the few instances in which there is an explicit mention to the emotion that results from a given aesthetic experience: in this case, Denis experiences happiness, an additional utilitarian emotion that takes as an emotional input the experience of the sublime. In more general terms, similar symbols can be identified not only when there are divine apparitions in the prisons where the saints are incarcerated, but also when the saints are delivered from their martyrdom. Consider the following passage from the life of Saint Agnes: Hi tugon ða þæt mæden to þæra myltestrena huse, ac heo gemette þær sona scinende Godes encgel, swa þæt nan man ne mihte for ðam mycclum leohte hire on beseon oððe hi hreppan, for þan þe ðet hus eall scean, swa swa sunne on dæg; and swa hi hi gearnlicor sceawodon, swa scimodon heora eagon swiðor. Agnes hi þa astrehte þone ælmihtigan biddende, and God hyre þa asende scinende tunecan. Heo þancode ða Criste, and ðone clað hire onadyde, and wæs swiðe gemæte hire micelnysse, beorhte scinende, swa þæt men geseon mihton þæt God hire sende þone scinende clað. þa wearð þæra myltestrena hus mannum to gebædhuse, and ælc seðe inneode arwurðode God for þam heofonlican leohte þe on ðam huse scean (ÆLS (Agnes) 148)22

Agnes, whose beauty, goodness and spirituality are emphasised before in this text, is being taken to a brothel to be sexually defiled. God prevents this from happening by sending an angel to the brothel, an angel that shines so brightly that prevents people from seeing and feeling desire for Agnes. This causes

22 “Then they dragged the virgin to the brothel, but immediately she met with an angel of God shining there, so that because of the great light no one could look at her or touch her, because all the house shone like the sun in the daytime, and the more eagerly they looked, the more bleary their eyes became. Agnes then prostrated herself, praying to the Almighty, and God sent her a shining tunic. Then she thanked Christ and put on the garment, and it was very suitable for her size, shining brightly, so that people could see that God had sent her the shining garment. Then the house of prostitutes became a house of prayer for people, and each person who went in worshiped God on account of the heavenly light that shone in the house” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 229).

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different responses on the onlookers, who quickly abandon their lust on the one hand, and they feel an eagerness to apprehend what is taking place in that house. On the other hand, this vision also triggers a disposition to learn more about the God through which these miracles are being performed. The emphasis on perception can also be seen in this fragment, as OE sceāwian ‘to look’ and eāge ‘eye’ attest, and, what is interesting from this discussion of sight is that it connects with what has been discussed in the first section of this chapter. Because the people at the brothel are not morally pure believers, regardless of the brightness and sublimity of this miracle, their eyes are unable to perceive this light, and this is inferred in the excerpt through the verb OE scimian ‘to grow dark.’ Thereafter, Agnes herself becomes one of these sublime heavenly figures, when she is given a shining tunic that confirms that God is on her side and that she is his saint. As a result of all of these miraculous phenomena, the people who are in the brothel, despite their initial condition of sinners and despite the fact that they were not believers, are led to believe in God and start to worship him:  in other words, sublime experiences motivate belief. More detailed emotional reactions to this episode are found later on in this life: þa com þæs gerefan suna to þære scinendan stowe, mid his sceandlicum gegadum, wolde þa godes þinene gebysmrian, and sende him sona ætforan sume into hire. Ac hi wundrodon swiðe þæs wynsuman leohtes, and ablicgede cyrdon to heora bysmorfullum hlaforde. þa ðreade he hi þearle forðan þe hi þæs scinendan leohtes swa swiðe wundrodon, and hi gewemman ne dorston. Arn þa him sylf inn mid sceandlicum willan, ac he feol astreht ætforan þam mædene adyd, þurh ðone deofol þe he dwollice gehyrsumede (ÆLS (Agnes) 163)23

Symphronius’ son then sends several of his soldiers ahead of him. The emotional reaction that the supernatural luminosity of the brothel causes in them is described through three different aesthetic emotion terms. The act of aesthetic contemplation, of regarding something with wonder trying to establish what it is or why it behaves like that is described through OE wundrian ‘to marvel at,’ and intensified through the adverb OE swiðe ‘exceedingly.’ The light that these

23 “Then the prefect’s son came to that shining place with his vile companions: he intended to insult the handmaid of God and at once he sent some of them ahead of him to her. But they marveled greatly at the delightful light and returned, astonished, to their shameful lord. Then he rebuked them severely because they marveled so greatly at the shining light and did not dare to defile her. He himself ran in then with shameful intent, but he fell prostrate, killed in front of the virgin by the devil whom he had stupidly obeyed” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 229–​231).

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soldiers find there is described through OE wynsum, indicating pleasant personal experience. Finally, the emotional reaction to this episode is described through one of the terms that will be analysed in the next chapter, OE āblycgan, which here translates as “experiencing astonishment.” In this case, the line between the negative and positive dimensions of these emotions of amazement is not clearly drawn, but this will be further on discussed in the next chapters in the context of one emotion of this sub-​family that is more ambiguous in valence. What is clear from the excerpt above is the progression from the experience of aesthetic pleasure to the experience of a wider range of emotions of amazement. It has first been discussed how the emotion that it depicts or would have triggered is the feeling of the sublime, but further on in the narrative the characters experience a similar emotional response, in this case, that of wonder. This further highlights how emotion varies from individual to individual, depending on their emotional background, and, as the next chapters will emphasise, phenomena that are prototypically met with wonder or that trigger the sublime in saints or their companions sometimes generate aesthetic responses that have an opposite valence in those who persecute them. In this particular literary context, as it has been mentioned and shown throughout this chapter, sublime-​experiences are often marked by the presence of light. In most of the preceding examples, the source of this light was the deity itself, or it was the deity who gave these saints some sort of divine luminosity. This light potentially symbolises that their saintly status has been achieved, and, for instance, in the life of Julian and Basilissa, this takes place after they manage to escape unscathed from their martyrdom: ða stodan þa halgan hale of þam fyre glitiniende swa swa gold, þus herigende God (ÆLS (Julian and Basilissa) 337) “Then the saints emerged uninjured out of the fire, glittering like gold, praising God thus” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 147).

In this excerpt, the saints escape the fire and, in doing so, they become beautiful figures that shine bright like gold. This is a motif that typically occurs in Ælfric’s hagiography, saints who become beacons of light and that are presented in such a way that they might trigger positive aesthetic responses, but it is normally in a different context. Take the following excerpt from the life of Saint Eugenia: ða weop seo modor mid mycelre sarnysse æt hyre byrgene, oþ þæt heo hi geseah on gastlicre gesihðe mid golde gefrætewode mid ðam heofonlicum werode (ÆLS (Eugenia) 415) “Then her mother wept with great grief at her tomb until she saw her in a spiritual vision, adorned with gold, with the heavenly host, comforting her thus” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 71).

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This passage narrates how Eugenia’s mother is mourning the death of her daughter at her grave, and she is witness to a supernatural vision. After Eugenia has died, she is presented as an awe-​inspiring vision, a spirit adorned in gold, surrounded by angels. In the edition, this is translated as a spiritual vision (OE gastlicre gesihðe), but the excerpt places the emphasis on visual perception through two different terms that are etymologically related, OE gesēon ‘to see’ and gesiht “sight, power of seeing, vision, something seen” (BWT, s.v. gesiht, n., I.). If it were not for these terms, the vision of Eugenia’s mother could be taken to be a dream, but the emphasis on perception verbs indicates that this is genuine vision, not a spiritual one, but one of a spirit. The spirit of Eugenia is portrayed with a light of its own and depicted in such a way that it seems to be aimed at triggering positive responses in a potential audience. An remarkably similar episode can be found in Ælfric’s life of Saint Agnes: þa on sumere nihte gesawon hi cuman mycel mædenlic werod, and Agnes tomiddes. Hi wæron ealle geglengede mid gyldenum gyrlum, and mid ormætum leohte arwurðlice ferdon. þa cwæð seo halige Agnes to hire magum ðus, Warniað þæt ge ne wepon me swa swa deade, ac blyssiað mid me. Ic eom þysum mædenum geferlæht, and ic mid him underfeng swiðe fægere wununga, and ðam ic eom on heofonum geþeodd, þe ic her on eorðan lufode. æfter þysum wordum heo gewende forð mid þam mædenum. þa wearð þeos gesihþ swiðe gewidmærsod (ÆLS (Agnes) 250)24

Similarly, after Agnes’ death, she appears to her parents, a vision that is also described through OE gesēon. This vision consists of a group of virgins that surround Agnes, and these virgins are all dressed the same in golden clothes, and they are bathed in a light that is indicative of sublime experience. Referring to this light, the author chooses to describe it as ormǣte ‘excessively, without measure,’ indicating an inability on the part of the beholders to fit this vision in their mental schemes. Agnes tries to comfort her parents, claiming that she has beautiful dwellings in heaven, and in doing so she uses earthly structures to conceptualise the Christian afterlife. Finally, the vision of Agnes and the virgins stops, and this vision is again referred to through a term reinforcing the

24 “Then one night they saw a great company of virgins coming and Agnes in their midst. They were all adorned with golden garments and made their way solemnly with a light beyond measure. Then the holy Agnes spoke thus to her parents: ‘Take heed that you do not weep for me as if I were dead, but rejoice with me! I am united with these virgins, and with them I have received very beautiful dwellings, and I am joined in the heavens with him whom I loved here on earth.’ After these words she departed with the virgins. Then this vision was reported very widely” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 235–​237).

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idea of visual perception OE gesihþ. This excerpt also points out a frequent action tendency that results from aesthetic experience and, particularly, from the contemplation and experience of miracles: the vision is told and retold widely, emphasising the collective character of saint stories. A corresponding aesthetic experience occurs in the life of Saint Lucy, which is related in this collection to the text on Saint Agatha. Lucy is praying with her mother at Saint Agatha’s tomb, when the following takes place: þa wearð Lucia on slæpe, and geseah Agathen betwux engla werodum, ænlice gefretewode, and clypode hyre þus to, clypigende ufenne (ÆLS (Lucy) 22) “Lucy fell asleep and saw Agatha among hosts of angels, splendidly adorned, and she called to her thus, calling from above” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 269).

This vision of Saint Agatha is different from those analysed before in that the narrator clarifies that this is a dream that Lucy is dreaming (OE slǣpe). Nevertheless, though this is something that Lucy experiences in her sleep, the treatment of sensory data is the same, and we are told that she sees Agatha (through OE gesēon, again), describing the type of perception that takes place during sleep as just another type of human vision, or in the words of Díaz-​Vera (2016: 37) as “particular modes of vision (such as, for example, imagination, dreams and religious visions).” The experience of the sublime in this case it is conveyed contextually, but also by means of one of the terms belonging to the lexical domain of EXCELLENCE, OE ǣnlīc. Agatha’s spirit then talks with Lucy in her sleep. The following two excerpt describe the contents of Agatha’s speech and Lucy’s reaction to it: And swa swa þeos burh is gemærsod þurh me fram Criste, swa bið Siracusa burh þurh þe gewlitegod, forðan þe þu gearcodest Criste, on þinum clænan mægðhade, wynsume wununge (ÆLS (Lucy) 30) “And just as this city is glorified by Christ through me, so the city of Syracuse will be adorned through you, because you have prepared for Christ, in your pure virginity, a delightful dwelling” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 269). And ða awoc Lucia. Heo aras ða bifigende for ðære beorhtan gesihðe (ÆLS (Lucy) 33) “Then she got up, shaking on account of the radiant vision” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 269).

In the vision, Agatha describes heaven again using material structures taken from life on earth, causing Lucy to conceptualise it as human dwellings, and these are said to be beautiful and pleasant, just as she deserves because of her purity. More interestingly, when Lucy awakes, her experience is described as bright vision, indicating again sublimity, and what is remarkable from this fragment is that, even though there is no mention of specific emotions being triggered,

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there is a somatic profile that is indicative of wonder and awe: shaking, described through OE bifian. All things considered, this section has shown how, in these texts, the experience of the sublime is not only constructed through lexical aesthetic emotion markers, but through motifs and images that recur in different texts. The role that these motifs play in the narrative becomes clear after the analysis of the texts that has been carried in the preceding pages. In the narrative, these sublime experiences are a way for the author to try to convey the positive feelings and emotions that the saints and their companions feel when they are visited by God or Jesus or when there is some degree of divine intervention. This divine intervention, which is almost always materialised in the form of an intense and pleasant light, frequently takes place to stop the saints’ torture or to liberate them from their imprisonment. In that sense, these sublime experiences act as an emotion regulation script, both in the framework of the narrative and for these texts’ readership, through which the narrator adds an intense positive dimension to an otherwise negative experience, as is the case of the saints’ torture and imprisonment. Furthermore, these unnamed experiences of the sublime are also found after the saints’ passing, when they appear to their loved ones, and they are triggered through descriptions of their exquisite physical appearance, which symbolise their morality and saintly status, and they are carried out through commonplace perception lexis, evidencing a conceptual hybridity between the earthly and the divine.

5. Wonderful and miraculous experiences and the lexical domain of wonder in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints In the preface to these lives, Ælfric introduces these saint stories referring to them as stories in which the wonderful has a central role: Sum witega clypode þurh þone halgan gast and cwæð, Mirabilis deus in sanctis suis, et cet: Wundorlic is god on his halgum; he sylf forgifð mihte and strengðe his folce; gebletsod is he god. We awritað fela wundra on þissere bec, forþan þe god is wundorlic on his halgum swa swa we ær sædon, and his halgena wundra wurðiað hine, forþan þe he worhte þa wundra þurh hi (ÆLS Pref 19). 25 A common trait that these lives share is that, in them, God is presented as an unfathomable and unapproachable entity.26 On the other hand, in these lives, the saints bring believers closer to God through a process that can be defined following Carruthers’ (2013: 36) terminology as the domestication of divinity. Ælfric prefaces this collection by acknowledging the fact that, thorough the saints, God is able to perform some of the many miracles and wonderful phenomena that are narrated in this collection. Ælfric also admits that the miracles that God’s saints perform are far too numerous for him to be able to describe all of them with exactitude: according to him, hy sind ungeryme (ÆLS Pref 11) ‘they are countless.’ This chapter discusses as a whole Ælfric’s usage of the lexical domain of wonder, the experiences of wonder narrated in these lives, and the phenomena

25 “A certain prophet cried out through the Holy Spirit and said: God is wonderful in his saints et cetera. ‘God is wonderful in his saints; he himself will give power and strength to his people; God is blessed.’ We will write down many wonderful things in this book, because God is wonderful in his saints, as we said before, and the wonders of his saints honor him, because he worked wonders through them” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 11). 26 Consider, for example, the following excerpt: þæs an scyppend wat ealle þing and gesihð ge þæt gedon is, ge þæt þe nu is, ge þæt ðe toweard is; ne he nan þing ne forgit, ne him nan þing ætfleon ne mæg … Ne ondret he him nanes þinges, forðan þe he næfð nenne riccran, ne furðon nanne him gelicne (ÆLS (Christmas) 43) “This one creator knows all things and sees both what has been done, and what is now, and also what is in the future. He does not forget anything, nor can anything escape him. He fears nothing, because he has no one more powerful, nor even anyone equal to him” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 27).

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that is supposed to trigger these experiences in the Christian framework. In Old English hagiography, the miraculous and the emotion of wonder are intertwined at their very core, even at a lexical level. Without going any further, the main denominator of wonder in Old English, OE wundor, refers to both the emotion of wonder (BWT, s.v. wundor, n., III.) and to its most common elicitors, that is, “works of Divine power, a wonder, miracle” (BWT, s.v. wundor, n., I.3.). The semantic relation between these two senses of OE wundor is clearly a metonymical one: the original sense of OE wundor refers to this emotion of amazement, and, through metonymisation processes, the term becomes used figuratively as a descriptor of the miracle. In other words, when Old English authors are using the term OE wundor, they are referring to the cause by describing the effect it should create. As a result, and in this study, the idea of the miraculous is conceptually inseparable from the emotion of wonder, or at least this is case of the textual corpus under scrutiny here. Through an analysis of the attestations of the lexical domain of wonder in Ælfric’s lives and through an inspection of the episodes where wonder-​experiences and supernatural and miraculous phenomena are narrated, the purpose of this chapter is to look into how this Old English author describes and aims at triggering this emotion in his readership. This will evidence particular literary strategies behind his usage of the terms in this lexical domain and literary motifs, which will provide important information as to the relation between this emotional community and this emotion of amazement.

5.1. Earthly, human, and secular experiences of wonder Even though most of the attestations of wonder terms and the wonder experiences that Ælfric narrates have a direct relation with the contemplation of miraculous phenomena, there is an important number of examples that describe a type of wonder that is more intense and genuine compared to the usage of Old English terms for wonder to describe the miracle. In fact, in many of these cases, the wonder that these examples depict is an intense emotional reaction. It expresses an apparent perplexity and inability to understand the objects, abilities, and situations that the characters in these lives behold and experience, as well as the phenomena that human beings unequivocally perceive as puzzling, surprising or amazing. One of the areas in which a genuine sort of wonder seems to be implicit and explicit in the words of Ælfric is in the conceptualisation of the body, the soul and the world. In the life on the Nativity of Christ, Ælfric discusses with a certain degree of perplexity the nature of human souls:

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Uton nu behealden þa wundorlican swyftnysse þære sawle: heo hæfð swa mycele swyftnysse þæt heo on anre tide gif heo swa wyle, besceawað heofonan and ofer sæ flyhð, land and burga geondfærð. And ealle þas þing mid geþohte on hire sihðe gesæt; and swa hraðe swa heo gehyrð þære burge naman þe heo ær cuðe, swa hraðe heo mæg þa burh on hire geþohte gescyppan hwylc heo bið. Eal swa be gehwylcum oðrum þingum þe heo ær cuðe oððe ne cuðe, heo mæg on hire mode gescyppan þonne heo gehyrð be þam spræcan. And swa styrigende is seo sawul þæt heo furðon on slæpe ne gestylþ; ac ðonne he smeað be rome byrig ne mæg heo þa hwile smeagen be hierusalem, oððe þonne heo smeað be anum þing ne mæg heo þa hwyle be oðrum þinge smeagen, ac biþ gebysgod mid þam anum ðinge oðþæt þæt geþoht gewyte and oðer cume. (ÆLS (Christmas) 124)27

In this excerpt, Ælfric expresses perplexity at the human faculty of imagination, a faculty that he ascribes to the soul, not to the mind, hinting at the conceptualisation of a mind-​in-​the-​chest that shares functions with the soul, an idea that is described by Lockett (2011). Rather than talking about imagination or intelligence, Ælfric describes this capability as a wonderful swiftness (OE wundorlican swyftnysse), which shows a conceptualisation of cognitive processes through the notion of speed. Ælfric’s knowledge of the human body and the mind do not suffice to disperse this perplexity and puzzlement at the capability of imagination, and he develops further what he considers miraculous about it. He goes over how the mind is able to conjure up an image just by thinking about it. Ælfric describes this process through the verbs OE gescippan ‘create, give shape’ and, more interestingly, OE gesittan, which refers to the action of sitting down, but, in this excerpt, it refers to the possession of an object, conceptualising memories as objects inside the mind. The lexis through which this is expressed is the same that has been discussed in the previous chapter:  regardless of the fact that Ælfric here is discussing mental processes, he still uses verbs related to visual perception (OE (ge)siht) and auditory phenomena (OE sprecan ‘speak,’ gehȳran ‘to hear’). Ultimately, this 27 “Let us now consider the wonderful swiftness of the soul: it possesses such great swiftness that at one point of time, if it so wishes, it looks at the heavens and flies over the sea, passes through countries and towns, and by means of thinking it constitutes all these things in its sight. And as quickly as it hears the name of a city that it once knew, just as quickly can it create in its thought whatever it is. Likewise with respect to all other things that it knew before or did not know, it can create them in its mind when it hears them spoken about. And the soul is so active that even in sleep it is not still, but when it thinks of the city of Rome, it cannot at the same time think about Jerusalem, or when it thinks about one thing it cannot at the same time think about another thing, but is busy with the one thing until that thought departs and another comes” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 33).

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evidences the usage of the metaphor the mind is a body (see Lakoff, 2014: 1). Indeed, the qualities that are attributed to the soul are those that one can find in a body: possession of senses, possession of objects and speed. All of this reinforces the notion that the soul is much more active than the body. Ælfric discusses the soul’s intellectual activity through the usage of OE styrigende (related to OE styrian ‘to stir, move’), implying that cognitive processes are conceptualised through movement. All of these characteristics of the mind/​soul are cause for wonder, not only because they are given by God, but because human beings are unable to apprehend them in their totality or fully explain them, evidencing perplexity as one of the causes for wonder outside strictly religious domains. In another text from this collection, which does not deal with a particular saint, Ælfric addresses a paradox that might have been problematic for his readership, and which is connected to the nature of the soul, evilness and goodness. In the text On Omens, Ælfric explains: Gif hwa nu wundrige hwi god wolde forgifan þam yfelum mannum agenne freodom, þone he wat on ær þæt hi yfel don willað, Nu cweðe we þæt hit ne gerist nanum ricum cynincge þæt hi ealle beon þeowe menn ðe him þenian sceolon, and on his anwealde ne beo furðon an frig man. Swa eac ne gedafnode þam ælmihtigan Drihtne þæt on eallum his rice nære ænig gesceaft þe nære on þeowte þearle genyrwed. Nu behofað ure freodom æfre Godes fultumes, forþan ðe we ne doð nan god butan Godes fultume. Se us gewissige a on ðysre worulde, and to þam ecan life gelæde þurh hine sylfne, swa swa he þam eallum behet þe hine lufiað (ÆLS (Auguries) 257)28

Even though this explanation is relatively obscure in the sense that it does not plainly explain the nature of good and evil, but includes the notions of freedom and servitude to establish a parallelism, what is interesting from this excerpt is the usage of OE wundrian, not as related to aesthetic or visual contemplation, but more closely related to the PDE meaning of to wonder as synonymous with to ask oneself. This excerpt does not evidence any degree of aesthetic appreciation or contemplation, simply acknowledges the existence of people who question the nature of the soul and human goodness, a question that is posed through a

28 “If anyone should wonder now why God would be willing to give evil people their own freedom, when he knows in advance that they intend to do evil, we say now that it is not fitting for any powerful king that they who must serve him should all be slaves, and that there should not be even one free person in his realm. So also it would not be fitting for the almighty Lord that in all his kingdom there would not be any creature who was not strictly confined in servitude. Now our freedom always needs God’s help because we do no good without God’s grace” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 137).

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lexeme that, in other parts of the Ælfrican corpus, is used to describe active aesthetic contemplation. Consider, for example, the following excerpt: He wæs æfre ungeworht, and æfre wunað ungeendod. His we magon wundrian, and we ne magon ne ne motan na furðor embe þis smeagan, gif we nellað us sylfe forpæran (ÆLS (Christmas) 47) “He was eternally uncreated and lives eternally without end. We can marvel at this but we cannot nor may we think further about this, if we do not wish to bring about our own destruction” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 29).

This excerpt is significant in a number of ways. Firstly, it describes God’s own nature, claiming that he was never created and that he is eternal, two ideas which would have been and are difficult to envision or conceptualise on the part of humans. The author here understands and does not censor the fact that this inability to understand at a basic conceptual level God’s nature will inevitably be met with wonder. What Ælfric does in this excerpt is to present the emotion of wonder as a justified emotional response that can be triggered after pondering what exactly God is, but he claims that Christians should not dwell on this issue for long, as it would be considered sinful. Prototypically, OE wundrian refers to an active sort of aesthetic contemplation, whereby the subject intently tries to establish the inner workings of a given object or circumstance, or it refers to a character’s experience of wonder triggered after actively beholding something. This example is more consistent with other usages of OE wundrian in this corpus: Eft he gehælde on oðre stowe anre wydewan sunu þe unwene ða læg, and gefrefrode þa modor, and men þæs wundrodon (ÆLS (Maur) 102) “Another time in a different place he healed a widow’s son who lay there despairing, and he comforted the mother, and people marveled at that” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 197).

In this excerpt from the life of Saint Maur, the term wundrodon (plural past form of OE wundrian) is used to express how people experience wonder as a result of the supernatural causality that is implicit in Maur’s healing of the widow’s son. In this case, OE wundrian does not refer to somebody who plays an active role in the process of aesthetic contemplation; instead, it renders the emotional experience of someone who passively beholds or hears about miraculous phenomena. Despite the eminently religious character of the textual corpus under analysis, there are, nevertheless, several instances in which terms for wonder express emotional responses that are not triggered by religious phenomena, and, in that sense, they depict a more original or realistic type of wonder. Consider, for example, the instrument that is described in the life of Saint Sebastian:

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Chromatius hæfde behydd on his digolnysse an wurðlic weorc on mechanisc geweorc, of glæse and of golde and of glitiniendum cristallan. Se cræft sceolde wissian gewisslice be steorrum hwæt gehwilcum menn gelumpe on his lifes endebyrdnysse, ac hit wæs swa gehiwod æfter hæðenum gedwylde. þa com Sebastianus and se sacerd Policarpus æft to Chromatie, and gemetton hine untrumne, and cwædon þæt he sum þing hæfde untobrocen, þe his hæle hremde þurh reðe wiglunga. He cwæð þa, ic hæbbe on minum hordcleofan an wundorlic weorc me to gewissunge, æfter steorrena gesetnyssum swa swa hi standað on heofonum. (ÆLS (Sebastian) 260)29

The instrument that is being described in this excerpt is the astrolabe, which indicates the motion of the stars and planets and with which a person’s natal chart can be calculated. While divination through astrological methods would have been something that would have triggered wonder, as most other supernatural phenomena in this corpus do, in this excerpt, and in the words of Chromatius, the emotion is not triggered by the discipline of astrology, but rather by the craftmanship employed in creating the astrolabe. This instrument is categorised as a wonderful instrument, because there is an impressive skill behind its creation. As such, the emotion, on the one hand, has an important cognitive dimension, as it appraises the astrolabe according to cognitive considerations, and, on the other hand, it is more consistent with how other objects of beauty which are the result of somebody’s impressive artistic or artisanal skill are described in the Old English poetic corpus (as it is discussed in Minaya, 2022). In the Old English poetic corpus, wonder is triggered by many different types of objects, people, and situations, and, in some cases, it results from appraising the skill behind the creation of an object and/​or its resulting beauty. Therefore, in these cases, the appraisal of beauty is closely connected with the appraisal of skill, because the former is understood as a result of the latter. While the nature of the corpus employed in this study limits the number of instances that can be found of this type of emotional experience, the example above emphasises that

29 “Chromatius had hidden in a place of concealment a wonderful piece of workmanship of mechanical construction, made of glass and of gold and of gleaming crystal. This ingenious instrument was supposed to show truly by the stars what would happen to each person in the course of his life, but it was made in this way in accordance with heathen error. Then Sebastian and the priest Polycarp came again to Chromatius and found him sick, and they said that he had something that had not been broken, that hindered his healing though cruel sorcery. Then he said: “I have in my treasure chamber a wonderful piece of workmanship to guide me according to the positions of the stars as they stand in the heavens” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 173–​175).

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this emotional community does not fully censor the expression of wonder as a non-​religious emotion. The following example can serve as further proof of this: He wæs swa up ahafen and swa arleas brega, þæt he wolde beon god, and worhte þa of seolfre ænne heahne stypel, on stanweorces gelicnysse, and mid scinendum gymmum besette eall þæt hus, and on þære upflora eall mid readum golde his cynestol geworhte, and wundorlice mid þeotum wæter ut ateah wolde renas wyrcan, swylce he sylf god wære (ÆLS (Exalt of Cross) 27) “He was so proud and so wicked a ruler that he wished to be a god, and made a high tower out of silver, in the likeness of stonework, and covered the whole building with shining gems, and on the top floor he made his throne all of red gold, and miraculously drew water through pipes: he intended to create rain as if he himself were a god” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 27).

This excerpt describes the royal palace of king Chosroes, the man who takes the relic of the cross from the place where Saint Helena had placed it. In this description of his palace, the narrator chooses one term for wonder that is reserved everywhere else in the corpus for description of supernatural and miraculous phenomena, and he employs it in a description of the palace’s plumbing system, a system whose technical characteristics would have been short of miraculous for early Medieval English audiences. Also consistent with the types of material objects that are appraised as wonderful in the Old English poetic corpus (by means of OE wundor, and related terms, and also by means of OE wrǣtlīc) are three of the existing aesthetic evaluations of stonemasonry and architecture in the corpus: Sum deofolgild wæs swiðe fæste getimbrod, and mid wundorlicum weorcstanum geworht cræftlice, and þær manega gebroðra bogodan syþþan on Martines timan. þa bead he anum mæssepreoste Marcellus gehaten þe þær wununge hæfde þæt he sceolde towurpan þæt wundorlice deofolgild. (ÆLS (Martin) 1229) “There was a sturdily built pagan temple, skilfully made with marvelous masonry, and many brothers inhabited it afterward in Martin’s time. Then he ordered a priest called Marcellus, who had his accommodation there, to destroy the remarkable temple” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 165). He wolde eac towurpan ænne wundorlicne swer ormætes hefes þe þæt hæþengild on stod, ac he næfde þæs cræftes þæt he hine tocwysan mihte (ÆLS (Martin) 1245) “He also wished to topple an amazing pillar of enormous weight on which the idol stood, but he did not have the strength to destroy it” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 167) Eft þa se halga wer com and þæt weorc stod gehal, þa cidde he þam mæssepreoste, and he him cwæð to andsware þæt naht eaðe ne mihte ænig camplic meniu swilc weorc tobrecan mid swa wundorlicum hefe (ÆLS (Martin) 1235)

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“When the holy man arrived later, and the construction stood all in one piece, then he rebuked the priest, and he replied in answer that no military company could easily destroy such a construction with such amazing weight, nor could priests who were weak, or feeble monks, break apart so large a construction” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 165–​167).

These three excerpts from the life of Saint Martin describe and evaluate pre-​ Christian places of worship, placing the emphasis on the skill entailed in their creation. The first excerpt emphasises the process of construction of the temple, through OE fæste getimbrod ‘firmly built,’ and the second and third examples stress the heaviness of the pillars that uphold it (OE hefe). In the first example, wonder originates in the aesthetic contemplation and cognitive appraisal of the temple and its properties, but in the second and third passages it is triggered partly as a result of the evaluation of the skill that is necessary to create and arrange the architecture of the temple. Furthermore, it is also triggered by an appraisal of the vastness of the pillars that sustain the temple, an emotion that is similar to what somebody from the twenty-​first century would feel at beholding big columns in a cathedral. What is additionally remarkable is that, in the first passage, the term OE wundorlīc is applied to pagan deities (OE deōfolgild) and their places of worship, directly linking (and not censoring or cautioning against) the experience of wonder as an acceptable response to pagan practices. Regarding experiences of wonder that result from the contemplation of pagan places or deities, there is one additional instance in this same life that employs the same wonder-​term in a description of a devil’s behaviour: Swa oft swa he wolde adræfan deofla of þam witseocum, swa astrehte he hine sylfne on þære cyrcan flora, mid hæran gescryd, and mid axum bestreowod, licgende on his gebedum belocenum durum, and þa deofla siþþan of þam geswenctum mannum mid wundorlicum gebærum wurdon him sona fram, þæt se cwyde mihte beon on Martine gefylled, þæt halige menn sceolon englum deman (ÆLS (Martin) 1207) “Whenever he intended to drive devils from lunatics he laid himself prostrate on the church floor, clothed with haircloth and covered with ashes, lying at his prayers with the doors locked, and afterward the devils, behaving in a most extraordinary manner, were immediately driven from the afflicted, that in Martin the saying might be fulfilled, that holy men shall judge angels” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 163–​165).

This excerpt contains a detail explanation of the ritual that Saint Martin followed when he wanted to expel a devil from the body of a person. The procedure in itself, though curious, is not expressed as causing any sort of emotional reaction, nor does the fact that Martin is indeed able to expel devils from people’s bodies trigger amazement. Instead, what in this excerpt is cause for wonder is the behaviour of these devils when they are finally driven out of the people that they

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had previously possessed. There is no detail here as to how the devils behave, but their demeanour, and the ways in which they move and act (OE gebǣru) are said to be extraordinary. In this case, the emotion does not result from an appraisal of their morality or excellence but because they are out of the ordinary. As such, this wonder is as well consistent with other descriptions of wonderful creatures in the Old English literary corpus, like the visual evaluations of Grendel in Beowulf or the creatures in the Wonders of the East. Indeed, Saint Martin’s life seems to be one of the texts in Ælfric’s hagiography that employs these terms for wonder in an unconventional manner. Consider the following passage: Martinus hwilon ferde mid micelre meniu to Parisian byrig, and þa þa he binnan þæt get com, þa wæs þær sum hreofla wundorlice tohroren eallum mannum anþræclic, ac Martinus hine cyste, and his bletsunge hine sealde, and he sona wearð hal, and com þæs on mergen to Martine blyðe mid gehalre hyde, his hæle ðancigende (ÆLS (Martin) 562) “Once Martin traveled with a great crowd to the city of Paris, and as he entered the gate there was a leper who was extraordinarily diseased, dreadful to all people, but Martin kissed him and gave him his blessing and he was immediately healed, and in the morning he happily approached Martin with his skin healed, thanking him for his healing” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 121–​123).

The evaluation of the lepper and his visual appearance that the narrator carries out employs OE wundorlīc to emphasise its unusual character. In this excerpt, OE wundorlīc could also be taken to mean ‘greatly’ or ‘extraordinarily,’ as Clayton and Mullins (2019c) suggest. This appraisal does not take any religious or moral connotations, and it simply describes the diseased person in relation to the emotion that their disease triggers. While OE wundorlīc hints at the possibility that this emotion could be the experience of wonder, the usage of OE anþræclīc “horrible, terrible, fearful” (BWT, s.v. anþræclīc, adj., I.) clarifies that this emotion is not entirely positive in valence. Furthermore, this goes on to show that, in certain contexts, emotions of amazement might acquire a different valence, and that the terminology through which they are expressed might be misleading. The Ælfrican hagiographical corpus contains additional instances of genuine, non-​religious wonder. One of these can be found in the life of Saint Maur. Consider the following excerpt, which narrates the emotional reaction of a priest who falls down from a building, after he wakes up in a different place: He aras þa gesund, swylce of slæpe awreht and began to wundrigenne hu he wurde ðider gebroht þa cwæð se halga wer, ne wurde ðu hider geferod on þinum agenum fotum, ac ðe feredon oþre; ac gang nu ardlice eft to þinum weorce, þelæs þe hit beo gelet to lange þurh ðe. ða eode se preost eft to his weorce, and Florus hine astrehte to Maures fotum and cwæð, þu eart soðlice Maure þæs mæran Benedictes folgere on wundrum, be ðam we for wel oft

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gehyrdon þyllice gereccan, and he þearle siððan Maurum wurðode and on wundrunge hæfde (ÆLS (Maur) 174)30

After his fall, the priest had lain on the floor almost dead until Maur had ordered him to be brought inside and had healed his wounds. When Maur orders the priest to wake up, the priest does not have any recollection of his fall and does not know that he had been close to dying, so the first emotional reaction that he has to waking up in a different place after having been working on the wall is surprise, a surprise that is so strong that he expresses it as wonder through OE wundrian. Furthermore, this excerpt is significant in that it contains three different terms for wonder, OE wundrian, wundor and wundrung, all of which are etymologically and semantically related. Nevertheless, in this passage it is fairly evident how they describe three very different types of wonder: firstly, wonder as surprise and perplexity; secondly, wonder as synonymous of ‘miracle;’ thirdly, wonder as an intense emotional experience that is triggered by somebody’s virtue, goodness and divinity. In the translation to this example, it can be seen how Clayton and Mullins (2019a: 203) translate the phrase on wundrunge hæfde, which literally refers to how these people always feel amazed at Maur’s deeds, as “admired him,” which makes sense in the context of this excerpt, as ADMIRATION and wonder are two similar aesthetic responses. One more instance in which terms for wonder are used in a non-​prototypical way, as compared to the rest of the attestations that will be discussed in the next sections, can be found in the life of Saint Denis: þa wolde Dionisius, gif hit gewurðan mihte, þrowian martyrdom mid þam apostolum, and gewende þa ham mid wundorlicum ofste, betæhte his bisceopstol oþrum bisceope sona, and ferde fram Greclande mid geferum to Rome, ofer langne wæg, æfre geleafan bodigende (ÆLS (Denis) 109) “Then Dionysius hoped to suffer martyrdom with the apostles, if it could come to pass, and he then returned home with amazing speed, immediately committed his episcopal see to another bishop, and traveled with companions from Greece to Rome by a long route, always preaching the faith” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 65–​67).

30 “He got up uninjured, as if awoken from sleep, and began to marvel at how he had been brought there. Then the holy man said: ‘You were not brought here on your own feet, but others brought you. But return now quickly to your work, so that it not be stopped for too long on account of you.’ Then the priest went back to his work, and Florus prostrated himself at Maur’s feet and said: ‘You are truly, Maur, the glorious Benedict’s disciple in miracles, about whom we very often heard such things told.’ And after that he greatly honored Maur and admired him” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 203).

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The speed with which Saint Denis manages to return home after he finds out that Peter and Paul are imprisoned in Rome is described through OE wundorlīc, but, in this case, there is nothing supernatural or divine about his travel conditions. Therefore, in this case, this term for wonder is used in the sense of ‘extraordinary,’ ‘amazing’ or, plainly, ‘surprising,’ even if, in the story, Denis does not manage to see Peter and Paul before they are martyred, despite his extraordinary haste. One of the ideas that was discussed in preceding chapters regarding Rosenwein (2006: 2) and her claims about “the existence of ‘emotional communities’” was that these could be defined as “groups in which people adhere to the same norms of emotional expression and value—​or devalue—​the same or related emotions.” This idea is interesting in that, in this context, it would be expected that Ælfric’s usage of wonder terminology would imply some sort of moral judgment that would give some indication as regards the norms of emotional expression in his emotional community. Yet, this is not so clear in the following excerpt: þa ongunnon þa cwelleras clypian þone ealdan to heora gereorde, ac he hraðe axode for hwilcum intingum hi wæron swa wundorlice bliðe, oððe hu hi mihton ænigne mete þicgan betwux þam ofslagenum (ÆLS (Maurice) 92) “Then the executioners summoned the old man to their feast, but he quickly asked for what reason were they so marvelously happy, or how they could eat any food, sitting among the slain” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 49).

In this passage from the life of Saint Maurice, a group of pagan people have just killed Maurice and his companions, and there is an old man called Victor who goes to the place where they have been killed. He rides there and sees the executioners feasting and eating, and they invite him to partake in their celebratory meal. Nevertheless, the old man refuses and wants to know why these people are so happy after having killed so many people and how they can be sitting and eating around their corpses. In the passage, Victor’s question is phrased in the words of the narrator through wundorlice bliðe ‘wonderfully happy.’ In this case, this phrase, though it contains an element from the lexical domain of wonder, it does not refer to any of these characters’ aesthetic experiences. OE wundorlīce here does not take a positive note, but instead it comes closer to mean ‘surprisingly’ or ‘extraordinarily’ in the sense that it is evaluating an emotional response that is far from being appropriate in the context where it is observed. The next area in which terms for wonder are often found in non-​religious appraisals of objects or situations is in the evaluation of a person’s wisdom, intelligence or learning abilities. Even though in some of these cases the evaluation will be, to a certain extent, moral, because the wisdom that these terms evaluate

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is of a religious nature, the focus is not on whether this person is holy or divine, but rather on their mental capabilities. Consider the following excerpt: þa wunode se cnæplingc on Cappadoniscre byrig fif gear on lare, and færde to Grecum, to Atheniscre byrig, seo wæs þa bremost on lare. And Eubolus se uðwyta, þe þær yldost wæs on wysdome, underfæng þonne cnapan, swa swa he frymdig wæs, to larlicre scole. And he leornode þa swa þæt ða uðwytan his andgytes wundrodon (ÆLS (Basil) 9) “Then the boy lived in a Cappadocian city for five years at his studies, and went to the Greeks, to the city of Athens, which was most renowned for learning and Eubolus the philosopher, who was most advanced in wisdom there, received the young man into his learned school, as he desired, and then he learned so well that the philosophers marveled at his understanding” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 77).

This excerpt refers to Saint Basil, who started studying secular wisdom (OE woruldwisdome) when he was seven years old. This life recounts how his parents insisted on him studying because, in the mindset of the time, somebody was not truly noble unless they had learned and studied under the supervision of learned philosophers. The passage above narrates how Saint Basil indeed studies in Greece under the philosopher Ebolus. Basil’s intelligence and learning capabilities cause him to learn so quickly that this causes people to wonder at his ability. The phrase his andgytes wundrodon ‘marvel at his understanding/​knowledge’ makes it clear that the faculty that causes many people to experience wonder at Basil is a purely intellectual one. The next excerpt further clarifies what triggers this emotional response: Basilius ða wunode mid þam uþwytan on lare ealles fiftyne gær, and eallne þone wysdom wundorlice asmeade, þe grecisce larewas him læran cuðan. Ac seo lar ne mihte þe butan geleafan wæs þam cneorðlæcendum cnihte cyðan be his scyppende, þonne þe he sohte, þeah þe heo him secgan ne cuðe. Him becom þa on mod þurh mynegunge godes þæt heo sceolde secan þa soðan lare on cristenum bocum be his scyppende (ÆLS (Basil) 19).31

We are told again that Basil’s learning revolves around secular authors and philosophers, and, though in this area Basil shows awe-​inspiring learning abilities that reveal an above-​average intelligence, this secular knowledge is, in the view

31 “Basil then remained studying with the philosopher for fifteen years in all and wonderfully comprehended all the wisdom that Greek teachers were able to teach him. But that learning, which was without faith, could not speak to the studious young man about his creator, whom he was seeking even though the learning was not able to give him an account of him. It came into his mind by the prompting of God that he must seek the true teaching concerning his creator in Christian books” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 79).

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of the author, insufficient. Nevertheless, regardless of his mental abilities, Basil is spiritually inspired to read about the Christian God in the relevant books, which cause the people who meet him to marvel even more: Hi wurdon ða underfangene mid fulre estfulnesse, and seo halga bisceop hi heold arwurðlice, þearle wundriende heora wysdomes deopnysse(ÆLS (Basil) 96) “They were then received with complete devotion and the holy bishop treated them honorably, greatly marveling at the depth of their wisdom” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 83)

The terminology through which Basil’s and Eusebius’ wisdom is described is the same as in one of the preceding excerpts. In both cases, the emotional reaction that it causes is described through OE wundrian, a verb for aesthetic contemplation that also details intense experiences of wonder. Nevertheless, there is a considerable difference between these two passages. In the first one, Basil is not yet a Christian, and he is in the dark about the Christian doctrine; in the second, he has already become a Christian through baptism, and he has studied the Christian doctrine and its authors in depth. The only lexical differences in how these two types of knowledge, the secular and the spiritual, are met is through an intensifier in the second case, OE þearle ‘severely.’ This evidences how there is not a significant change in appraisals, and how the writer does not feel the need to employ a different term because, in his view, these two types of knowledge are impressive and merit amazement. Even though secular wisdom is not a very frequently discussed topic in this corpus, there is one additional scene that discusses these saints’ wit and intelligence, and it can be found in the life of Saint Sebastian. This saint is debating extensively about the causality of the events in people’s lives and how there are laws in place for people who are just to be praised and people who are unjust to be humbled. At this speech, the narrator comments: þa wundrode Chromatius heora wisera worda (ÆLS (Sebastian) 285) ‘then Chromatius was amazed at his wise words.’ In this case, the wonder is being experienced by Chromatius, a character who is not a Christian, and he experiences the this emotion mainly as a result of the Sebastian’s intellect and eloquence. The rest of the instances in which the Old English terms for wonder are applied to somebody’s mental abilities are found in contexts where the appraisal is exclusively of a religious nature. Consider the following excerpt: Fela halige menn fram frymðe middaneardes wæron beforan us wundorlice geþogene, þam we nu endemenn geefenlæcan ne magon, ne ða þing gefyllan þe hi gefremodon on life; forði we sceolan habban huru eadmodnysse (ÆLS (Ash Wed) 279) “Many holy people before us, from the beginning of the world, were wonderfully advanced in spirit, whom we, people of the last age, cannot emulate, nor can we carry out

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the things that they performed in their lives therefore we ought at least to have humility” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 21–​23).

In the text on Ash Wednesday, Ælfric reflects on how, through the ages, there have been many men and women who have had great intellectual and spiritual wisdom, and how this should be a cause for humbleness, but also for wonder. What is remarkable in this excerpt is that Ælfric describes this sort of intelligence or spirituality by means of OE geþeōn, which means ‘to grow up,’ but, in this context, it can be taken to mean ‘thrive, flourish, prosper.’ Without further description, this except would not be specific enough as to what type of intelligence or spiritual or academic development these men and women would have undergone, but the second term in the passage, OE hālig ‘holy,’ clarifies that this wisdom is of a religious nature. Other excerpts are more explicit as to the emotions that somebody’s intellectual ability might trigger: He gebigde þa þa burhware to Gode, and þone mæstan dæl þæs mancynnes to geleafan and fela bec gesette be ðam soðan geleafan, and be engla werodum mid wundorlicre smeagunge, and to oþrum bisceopum þa bec asende, þa ðe Paulus gehadode, and se halga Iohannes (ÆLS (Denis) 85) He converted the citizens to God then and the majority of the people to faith and wrote many books about the true faith and with marvelous scrutiny about the orders of angels and sent these books to other bishops whom Paul and Saint John had consecrated (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 65).

This excerpt describes Saint Denis literary production after he is baptised by Paul and becomes a bishop in Athens. The emotion in this excerpt does not result from somebody being amazed at the orders of angels that Denis writes about, but from the detail with which he writes about them. Similar remarks can be found on the life on Saint Mark, where the four evangelists and their works are discussed: Se feorða godspellere is Iohannes Cristes moddrian sunu, se wæs Criste swa leof þæt he hlynode uppan his breoste, on ðam þe wæs behyd se heofonlica wisdom, swylce he of ðam drunce þa deopan lare, þe he siððan awrat on wundorlicor gesetnyssa, swa þæt he oferstah ealle gesceafta, and þa word geopenade þe englas ne dorston (ÆLS (Mark) 159)32

32 “The fourth evangelist is John, the son of Christ’s mother’s sister, who was so dear to Christ that he leaned on his breast, in which all the heavenly wisdom was hidden, as if he might drink from there the profound doctrine that he subsequently wrote down in a wonderful work, so that he rose above all created things and disclosed the words that the angels did not dare to” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 79–​81).

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This excerpt is significant in a number of ways. To begin with, it describes The Gospel of John as a wonderful composition (OE gesetnes ‘writing, work, narrative’), making reference to how an emotion of amazement is triggered as a result of a literary experience. More interestingly, the description of knowledge and heavenly wisdom that this excerpt features fits neatly into Lockett’s (2011) hydraulic model. In this passage, wisdom and, therefore, thinking ability are located in the chest (OE breōst), as Lockett (2011) suggests. Furthermore, cognitive processes as well as emotions are conceptualised, in this model, as liquids that fill the chest cavity. In this instance, it can be seen how the author, rather than using a more conceptual term like ‘learning’ or ‘borrowing,’ employs the verb OE drincan, through which he establishes the figurative connection between learning and drinking. This yields the following metaphors: knowledge is a liquid and learning is drinking, which are complementary to the figurative renditions of the chest as the seat of the mind and the hydraulic conceptualisation of the mind. All things considered, and closing off on the discussion of the more secular side of Ælfrican wonder, this section has shown several examples and instances in which aesthetic appraisal is carried out on the basis of properties and characteristics that are not directly related to a moral evaluation. These include the conceptualisation of the world, the soul, and God’s own nature. Additionally, the people in Ælfric’s lives experience wonder at earthly things and affairs, like impressive architectural designs and constructions, or gadgets, illnesses and extraordinary or uncommon phenomena. Earthly wonder also speaks about emotions that are out of place in given contexts, emphasising the uncommon, the novel, and also the uncanny. Yet, there are also instances in Ælfric’s lives where the lexical domain of wonder is used to discuss wisdom, intelligence and spiritual learning and how these often merge into one, triggering a type of wonder that markedly differs from more religiously oriented experiences of wonder that involve the experience and contemplation of supernatural phenomena, which is the focus of the next subsection.

5.2. Divine and spiritual wonder More commonly, Ælfric’s hagiographical writings feature a usage of the Old English lexical domain of wonder as a marker of an emotional response that results from the experience of supernatural and miraculous phenomena, or from spiritual experiences. The purpose of this section is to look into these experiences of wonder and to analyse them following the subcomponents of the emotion episode, as it has been discussed in chapter one of this study. Therefore, this section aims at examining selected instances of wonder in Ælfric’s lives with the aim of

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establishing the different ways in which this emotion could be conceptualised by Old English speakers and writers. Additional aims include looking into these episodes so as to determine if there are any consistent somatic profiles and action tendencies through which this emotion is commonly referred to, with or without the presence of other wonder terminology. Finally, this section also discusses the connection between wonder and other emotions with the purpose of determining whether wonder acts as an emotional input in additional emotion episodes (or the other way around). This will, ultimately, reveal important information as regards the role lexical domain of amazement and the experiences of wonder that are narrated and described in this collection. Some of the excerpts that have been discussed in the preceding sections feature terms from this lexical domain in passages that describe emotional episodes that are portrayed as being fairly intense judging by the accompanying lexis. This is a tendency that is also observed in the wonder that results from the miracles and actions that are performed by the saints in this collection, and by the saints themselves. In the previous chapter, the life of Saint Eugenia has been discussed from several points of view. It is an interesting life as well in the sense that it contains important lexical evidence for the conceptualisation of the emotion of wonder. Consider the following passage, which describes her parents’ emotional reaction when they see their daughter after they believe her to be dead: þis wearð sona gecyd Claudian þære mæder, and heo mid wundrunge wearð befangen, and to Eugenian com mid ealre blysse. (ÆLS (Eugenia) 250) “This was immediately announced to her mother Claudia and she was gripped by amazement and came to Eugenia with all happiness” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 61).

After Eugenia’s mother, Claudia, realises that she is alive, the narrator describes two different emotional responses that stem from this realisation. The first response is to feel an instance of amazement that mediates between surprise and wonder at the fact that her daughter is alive, and the second emotional response that follows is the experience of happiness. The first emotion is described through the term OE wundrung, a term that is used in this collection when the author wants to refer unequivocally to the emotion of wonder, as opposed to OE wundor, which might refer to the emotion but also to the phenomena that trigger it. More interestingly, the phrase wearð befangen indicates a conceptualisation of wonder following the metaphor emotion is a force. This is evident judging by the semantics of OE befangen (past participle of OE befōn ‘to grasp, seize, take hold of ’), which alongside OE wearþ (past participle of OE weorþan ‘to be, become’) implies that wonder acts as a force that overpowers the person who feels it. There are just two more instances of this metaphor in Ælfric’s lives,

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but it is not entirely clear whether this could serve to observe a trend and that would confirm a more prevailing conceptualisation of wonder in those terms. As discussed above, there are several examples of the conceptualisation of emotions as something that grips, overpowers and takes hold of the person who experiences them. Consider these two excerpts from the life of Saint Maur: Maurus þa sona mycclum wearð astyred and wepende eode into þæra cyrcan (ÆLS (Maur) 198) “Then Maur was immediately very moved and went to the church weeping” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019: 203). æfter þisum wordum wurdon þa munecas mycclum abryrde and heora gebeda sungon, and hi sylfe gearcodon to þam soðan life, and hi sylfe betæhton ðam soðfæstan scyppende (ÆLS (Maur) 343) “After these words the monks were greatly spurred on and sang their prayers and prepared themselves for the true life, and devoted themselves to the true creator” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 213).

In the first example, there were several workmen who had been speaking ill of Saint Maur, claiming that he really did not work his miracles through divine power but rather by means of spells. Through divine intervention, they become insane and start to act erratically, showing signs of demonic possession. When Maur beholds this, his emotional reaction is an intense one, but the narrator does not specify or name the emotion. There are two action tendencies to this emotion, weeping and going into the church to pray, but they do not suffice to further pinpoint the exact emotion that this saint experiences, though it would be safe to assume that it comes close to the experience of fear. Nevertheless, the way in which Maur’s emotional response is described further supports the prevalence of the metaphor emotion is a force inside this corpus. It is described through OE astyrian ‘to remove, move, stir violently.’ In this case, the object of the movement is the saint, and the agent is the emotion that is conceptualised as a larger force or power. A similar metaphor can be identified in the second excerpt. The emotional reaction that is narrated in that passage is the result of Maur telling the monks that live with them that it has been revealed to him that all of them are going to die within a short space of time. Similarly, there is no lexis in this example that can clarify what emotion these monks experience, no term that clearly pinpoints a specific emotion. Nevertheless, the way in which these words emotionally affect them is described through the term OE abryrdan. In BWT, this action verb is defined as “to prick, sting, to prick in the heart” (BWT, s.v. abryrdan, vb., I.), and this would indicate that the emotion of being moved is conceptualised as a being pierced (in the heart), a metaphor that

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is, to a certain extent, similar to emotion is a force. Indeed, the DOE supports these claims, to a certain extent. In the entry for OE abryrdan, this excerpt form ÆLS (Maur) 343, is listed as an example to the first sense “to spur on, prod, stimulate” (DOE, s.v. abryrdan, vb., I). What is interesting is that this same lexical entry also contemplates the possibility of finding this term in contexts where it can refer to a specific emotion, conceptualised as above: “specifically: to incite (with fear)” (DOE, s.v. abryrdan, vb., I.b.). This yields the conceptual metaphor fear is being pierced in the heart, which is remarkable because it can be considered as a metaphor, but also as a metonymy, in the sense that it employs the somatic profile of an emotion to refer to the emotion that cause it. In line with this, there is a large group of attestations in Ælfric’s hagiographical corpus in which emotions of amazement, and, more particularly, the character’s reactions to the miraculous and supernatural phenomena that are narrated in these lives are expressed through the action tendencies that result from these emotions. These passages may or may not include additionally terms for wonder that could further clarify that this is, indeed, an instance of the experience wonder. For instance: On þam lande wæs sum man, Leofstan gehaten, rice for worulde and unwittig for Gode, se rad to þam halgan mid riccetere swiðe, and het him æteowian orhlice swiðe þone halgan sanct hwæþer he gesund wære, ac swa hraðe swa he geseah þæs sanctes lichaman, þa awedde he sona and wælhreowlice grymetede, and earmlice geendode yfelum deaðe. þis is ðam gelic þe se geleaffulla papa Gregorius sæde on his gesetnysse be ðam halgan Laurentie ðe lið on Romebyrig, þæt menn woldon sceawian symle hu he lage, ge gode ge yfele, ac God hi gestilde, swa þæt þær swulton on þære sceawunge ane seofon menn ætgædere (ÆLS (Edmund) 231)33

After Saint Edmund dies and he is given a proper burial, a certain Leofstan wanted to see his body to check whether he was incorrupt or not. When he sees that this is the case, the sight of the saint’s body causes such a strong emotional reaction that he goes mad and starts to scream. The narrator claims that this is 33 “There was a man in the area called Leofstan, who was rich in worldly things but: ignorant in the eyes of God, who rode to the saint fiercely with arrogance and very insolently ordered them to reveal the holy saint to him and whether he was incorrupt. But as soon as he saw the saint’s body, he immediately became insane and roared savagely, and wretchedly came to an end with an evil death. This is like the story that the faithful Pope Gregory recorded in writing about Saint Laurence, who lies at rest in the city of Rome: people were always wanting to see how he lay, both the good and the evil, but God stilled them, so that a band of seven men together died by viewing him” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 203).

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not exclusive to Leofstan, and that other men who had seen Saint Lawrence’s body had had the same fate. In this case, it can be seen how these people who behold the uncorrupted remains of the saints experience (or are said to experience) a strong emotion of amazement, which might have been wonder, awe or fear. It would be expected that the people who are proper Christians would have appraised this phenomenon differently, but the narrator claims that both those that are good and those that evil are struck by the same emotions. What this excerpt reveals is that screaming is a possible action tendency in intense experiences of wonder and awe. Even if there are no other passages that include the action tendencies that result from different people beholding the incorrupt remains of the saints, there are three more examples that describe these experiences and that, to a certain extent, negate the claims made in this life. The narrator in the life of Saint Edmund, makes the following observations, before claiming that all those who behold the uncorrupted bodies of the saints go mad: Eft þa on fyrste, æfter fela gearum, þa seo hergung geswac and sibb wearð forgifen þam geswenctan folce, þa fengon hi togædere and worhton ane cyrcan wurðlice þam halgan, forþanðe gelome wundra wurdon æt his byrgene, æt þam gebædhuse þær he bebyrged wæs. Hi woldon þa ferian mid folclicum wurðmynte þone halgan lichaman, and læcgan innan þære cyrcan. þa wæs micel wundor þæt he wæs eall swa gehal swylce he cucu wære mid clænum lichaman, and his swura wæs gehalod þe ær wæs forslagen, and wæs swylce an seolcen þræd embe his swuran ræd, mannum to sweotelunge hu he ofslagen wæs. Eac swilce þa wunda þe þa wælhreowan hæþenan mid gelomum scotungum on his lice macodon, wæron gehælede þurh þone heofonlican God, and he liþ swa ansund oþ þisne andwerdan dæg, andbidigende æristes, and þæs ecan wuldres. His lichaman us cyð, þe lið unformolsnod, þæt he butan forligre her on worulde leofode, and mid clænum life to Criste siþode (ÆLS (Edmund) 168)34

34 “Some time later, after many years, when the raiding had stopped and peace was restored to the oppressed people, then they joined together and built a church in magnificent fashion for the saint, because miracles frequently occurred at his tomb, in the chapel where he had been buried. Then they intended to carry the saint’s body with public honor and lay it to rest within the church. Then it was a great miracle that he was as uncorrupt as if he were alive, with an undecayed body; and his neck, which had been cut through, was healed, and it was as if there was a red silken thread around his neck to reveal. to people how he had been killed. Also, the wounds that the cruel heathens had inflicted on his body with repeated shots had been healed by heavenly God, and he lies just as uncorrupt until this present day, awaiting the resurrection and eternal glory. His body, which lies undecayed, shows us that he lived without

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On the one hand, the purpose of the preceding excerpt seems to be to deter people from potentially trying to see these remains, adding a sinful connotation to the human curiosity of actively seeking that particular aesthetic experience. On the other hand, the author here satisfies this morbid curiosity with a meticulous description of what the uncorrupted body of Saint Edmund looks like. Notwithstanding, in the example above, the description that is carried out of Saint Edmund’s body has a more objective tone. Even if the fact that he is uncorrupted is described through OE wundor, there are no other emotional cues in this passage, and it does not describe the experience of those who first realised that he was incorrupt. Other examples of uncorrupted bodies in Ælfric’s hagiography include that of Saint Oswald’s hand, which is extremely similar to the example discussed in the preceding paragraph in that it does not carry out a description of how this miracle makes people feel: þa wearð gefylled swa we her foresædon þæt his swiðre hand wunað hal mid þam flæsce, butan ælcere brosnunge, swa se bisceop gecwæð (ÆLS (Oswald) 169) “Then the prophecy was fulfilled, as we said earlier, that his right hand remains whole in the flesh, without any decay, as the bishop had proclaimed” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 13).

The life of Saint Oswald describes how this saint was extremely generous, giving and modest, and it narrates an encounter between Oswald and the bishop Aidan. When king Oswald’s officials tell him that many people are counting on him to give them alms, he immediately gives them the silver dish from which they are eating. At seeing this, Aidan takes the king’s right hand and prophesies that, when he eventually dies, that hand will remain incorrupt. Then, when Oswald does die and his dismembered body is retrieved, the narrator details how this hand did, indeed, not decay. Furthermore, this hand is taken to a shrine in Bamborough, and, while the text emphasises that it is placed there with reverence (OE ārwurþlīce ‘honourable, reverently’), this being one instance of aesthetic emotion, there is no mention to the emotions that the sight of this uncorrupted hand triggers. One more instance discusses the incorrupt bodies of saints, and, in this case, it is as well an English saint, Saint Æthelthryth, whose sarcophagus and its miraculous discovery have been discussed in the preceding chapter. Furthermore,

fornication here in the world, and with a chaste life departed to Christ” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 199).

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in this case, as opposed to the examples mentioned above, the emotions that surround the discovery of Æthelthryth’s uncorrupted body are described in detail through wonder terminology: Hi sungon ða ealle sealmas, and licsang þa hwile þe man ða byrgene bufan geopenode. þa læg heo on ðære cyste, swilce heo læge on slæpe hal eallum limum, and se læce wæs ðær ðe þæt geswell geopenode, and hi sceawode georne. þa wæs seo wund gehæled, þe se læce worhte ær; eac swilce þa gewæda þe heo bewunden wæs mid wæron swa ansunde, swylce hi eall niwe wæron. Sexburh þa hyre swuster swiðe þæs fægnode, and hi þwogon ða syððan þone sawlleasan lichaman, and mid niwum gewædum bewundon arwurðlice, and bæron into ðære cyrcan, blyssigende mid sangum, and ledon hi on ðære þryh, þær ðær heo lið oð þis on mycelre arwurðnysse, mannum to wundrunge. Wæs eac wundorlic, þæt seo ðruh wæs geworht þurh godes foresceawunge hire swa gemæte, swylce heo hyre sylfre swa gesceapen wære, and æt hire hæfde wæs aheawen se stan, gemæte þam heafde þæs halgan mædenes. Hit is swutol þæt heo wæs ungewemmed mæden, þonne hire lichama ne mihte formolsnian on eorðan, and Godes miht is geswutelod soðlice þurh hi, þæt he mæg aræran ða formolsnodon lichaman, seðe hire lic heold hal on ðære byrgene git oð þisne dæg; sy him ðæs a wuldor. (ÆLS (Æthelthryth) 88)35

This longer passage contains three different elements which are related to the lexical domain of wonder and the experience of this emotion. Before this scene, the narrator details how eight years after the saint had become abbess, she had fallen sick and had discovered a tumour growing under her jaw. Immediately, she interprets this tumour as a divine punishment for having worn necklaces often, showcasing vanity. A doctor pierces this tumour, hoping that this would be enough for her to recover, but, in the end, she dies. She is buried and Seaxburg,

35 “Then they all sang psalms and a lament while the grave was being opened at the top. There she lay in the coffin as if she were lying asleep, sound in all her limbs, and the doctor was there who had lanced the tumor, and he examined her intently. The wound had been healed then, which the doctor had made previously. Likewise the garments in which she had been wrapped were as flawless as if they were all new. Then her sister Seaxburg rejoiced very much at this, and then afterward they washed the soulless body and wrapped it reverently in new clothes and carried it into the church, rejoicing with songs, and they laid her in the sarcophagus, where she lies until now in great honor, to the astonishment of people. It was also astonishing that the sarcophagus was made to fit her so exactly, by God’s providence, as if it had been made like this for her, and at her head the stone had been shaped by cutting, made to fit the head of the holy virgin. It is clear that she was an unblemished virgin when her body could not decay in the ground, and God’s power is truly revealed through her, that he can raise up decayed bodies, he who preserved her body uncorrupt in the grave even to this day. Glory be to him eternally for that!” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 201–​203).

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her sister, becomes abbess. After sixteen years, Seaxburg thinks that it is time for her to move the bones of her sister from her grave and into the church. Therefore, they go to unearth her remains, expecting to retrieve only her bones, and just as they are singing psalms and proceed to open her grave, they discover that Æthelthryth’s body has not decayed, and she appears to simply be sleeping. In fact, there is a relatively detailed description of what the neck area that had been lanced before her death looks like, as well as of the state her clothes are in. Nevertheless, this passage does not specify what emotions are experienced by those who behold this exhumation: there are no mentions to Seaxburg, the doctor or those present at the scene feeling amazement. In fact, Seaxburg’s emotional state is an entirely different one: when she beholds her sister’s body, she actively rejoices (OE fægnian ‘to rejoice, be glad, be delighted with’) and takes care of the body reverently (OE ārwurþlīce). Indeed, there is a marked difference in how a more religious person, an abbess, experiences this, and what emotions this phenomenon triggers in common people. Seaxburg, a woman of God, is strong enough in her faith and her convictions, and so she feels a more subtle and entirely positive emotion. This response goes in line with the doctrinal approach to incorruptibility that can be read in the closing lines to this excerpt, which states that the fact that these saints’ bodies remain incorrupt is a sign of their holiness and, in this case, of Æthelthryth’s virginity. Nevertheless, the common people who behold Æthelthryth’s body once it is enshrined feel, rightly so, amazement, unambiguously rendered by OE wundrung. Furthermore, this passage also makes a case to state that, not only is it miraculous that her body was found uncorrupted, but that the astonishing discovery of the sarcophagus (which has been described in the preceding chapter) is also a circumstance that triggers an emotion of amazement. Continuing the above discussion of intense emotional experiences and how the characters in these lives express them, there is an example from the life of Saint Martin that includes both a figurative expression for emotion and an action tendency: Sona swa his fers wæs ætforan him geræd þa wearð þæt folc astyrod onswiðlicum hreame, þæt Godes sylfes seðung þær geswutelod wære, and Defensor mihte his man þær tocnawan, and þæt God wolde wyrcan his lof on þam unscæððigan Martine, and gescyndan Defensor (ÆLS (Martin) 280) “As soon as this verse was read out to them, the people were moved to cry out powerfully that God’s own testimony had been revealed there, and that Defensor had to acknowledge his guilt, and that God wanted to bring about praise of himself in the person of the innocent Martin and shame Defensor” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 103).

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This excerpt can be found at a point in the narrative where there is a debate as to whether Saint Martin should have a bishopric or not, after some bishops claimed that Martin was not worthy of such an appointment. A priest randomly opens a psalter and reads the first verse that he finds, one which, in their view, reveals that it is God’s will that Martin should indeed be bishop. The excerpt above describes the congregation’s emotional response at this phenomenon. The term OE astyrian ‘to remove, move, stir violently’ is employed again, alluding to the emotion that this causes in the people who witness this event, but there is also reference to the action tendencies that result from this emotion, in this case crying out, rendered through onswiðlicum hreame. OE swīþlīce emphasises the intensity of the sound that these people emit, and OE hrȳman describes the characteristics of this people’s shouting: “to call, cry out, to cry out [with exultation or in lamentation]” (BWT, s.v. hrȳman, vb., I.). This implies that this term can be used both in positive and negative contexts, and, in this case, alongside the figurative usage of the term OE astyrian, the verb describes how an intense emotion of amazement (conceptualised again as a force) is expressed through a sound, like a cry or a scream. As it can be seen in the preceding two examples, none of these emotions are explicitly named by Ælfric as belonging to the family of amazement, or to any other emotion family for that matter, but their elicitors and action tendencies are consistent with the emotions described here. In this corpus, there are, nevertheless, other examples in which the same action tendencies (namely, screaming, shouting and crying) can be found alongside wonder terminology. Consider this example from the life of Saint Agnes: þa arn seo burhwaru ablycged þider sona, and se fæder eac com, clypigende mid gehlyde, þu wælhreowasta wimman, woldest ðu geswutelian þinne feondlican drycræft swa þæt ðu minne sunu adyddest? (ÆLS (Agnes) 180) “Then the townspeople ran there at once, astonished, and his father came also, calling out with a great cry: “You cruelest of women, did you wish to demonstrate your hostile sorcery by killing my son?” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 231).

In this excerpt, the Romans believe that Agnes had killed Symphronius (when in fact he had been killed, according to Ælfric’s explanation, by the devil whom he obeyed), and their emotional reaction at this fact is expressed through OE āblycgan, a term that denotes the experience of an intense emotion of amazement, which can range from wonder to awe or even fear. Moreover, this emotional reaction is accompanied by its expression in the form of a loud cry (OE gehlȳd ‘a cry, clamour, noise’), which implies that the words uttered by Symphronius’ father express suprise and reverence at the fact that Agnes would have killed Symphronius.

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Other instances that involve people crying out after beholding something miraculous do not necessarily have a negative valence. There is an episode in the life of Saint Martin where the saint is arguing with a group of pagans whose temple he had destroyed. Nevertheless, Martin had not destroyed the sacred tree that the temple was supposed to shelter. In their exchange, they agree to cut down this tree if Martin agrees to stand in the place where the tree is expected to fall. If Martin is not hit by the tree, this would imply that his God would have saved him, revealing its existence to these pagans. This is how this episode is narrated: and se beam þa feallende beah to Martine. Martinus þa unforht ongean þæt feallende treow worhte rodetacn, and hit wende þa ongean, swilce hit sum færlic þoden þydde underbæc, swa þæt hit offeol fornean þæs folces micelne dæl, þe þær orsorge stodon (ÆLS (Martin) 411). “And as it fell, the tree leaned toward Martin; unafraid, Martin made the sign of the cross against the falling tree, and it turned backward, as if some sudden whirlwind thrust it back, so that it very nearly fell on a large number of the people who were standing there without a care” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 113).

This excerpt features the supernatural occurrence of the tree that changes direction as it falls after Martin makes the sign of the cross, and the following passage details how this miracle is experienced by both the heathens and the monks: þa hrymdon þa hæþenan mid healicre wunðrunge, and þa munecas weopan for þære wundorlican blysse; and hi ealle Cristes naman clypodon mid herunge, and eall se leodscipe to geleafan þa beah. To þam swiðe hi wurdon þurh þæt wundor gecyrrede, þæt hi geond eall þæt land mid geleafan arærdon cyrcan and mynstra; and Martinus æfre swa hwær swa he þa deofolgild towearp, swa worhte he cyrcan (ÆLS (Martin) 419). “Then the heathens shouted in great astonishment, and the monks wept in astonishing joy, and they all shouted out the name of Christ with praise, and all the people then turned to faith. They were so fully converted by that miracle that throughout all the region they established churches and monasteries with faith, and wherever Martin destroyed a heathen temple, he always erected a church” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 113).

This excerpt contains three different terms from the lexical domain wonder, which, once again, refer to three different emotional responses. The first term is OE wunðrunge, which, as it has been discussed before, designates in a non-​ ambiguous manner the emotion of wonder. This term is used to name explicitly the emotion that the non-​believing heathens experience when they behold the miracle of the tree. Furthermore, the experience of this emotion is further detailed using OE heālīc. According to the DOE, this occurence of the frequently attested adjective should be taken to mean “the greatest in degree, intensity or extent; profound, intense, extreme, utter, utmost” (DOE, s.v., heālīc, adj., B.5.a.), in which case it would serve as an intensifier to the emotion that the pagans feel

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after beholding this supernatural and divine occurrence. Yet, going back to what has been discussed in the preceding chapter, in this excerpt OE heālīc could also be taken to mean ‘sublime.’ In this case, two case-​scenarios emerge. One would imply that the experience of this emotion fuses together characteristics of the feeling of the sublime and the emotion of wonder. In the second scenario, the miracle of the tree would trigger such a strong instance of wonder that it would, additionally, trigger the feeling of the sublime, not at the miracle of the tree, but at the intense instance of wonder that they experience, evidencing how the stimulus input of certain emotion episodes can be of an emotional nature as well, as suggested by Juslin (2013: 249). The second wonder-​term in this excerpt also exemplifies how a first emotion might trigger an additional emotional experience. The emotional reaction on the part of the monks who behold this miracle is differentiated by the author from the emotion that the heathens feel. The monks experience another wonderful emotion, but, in this case, it is happiness. Furthermore, the intensity of this emotion is such that it causes a profound transformation in the system of belief of these pagans:  they are converted to Christianity through this miracle (a miracle that is named using the third term for wonder in this excerpt).36 In this corpus, there are three more action tendencies that result from beholding miraculous phenomena. The first one goes in line with what has been discussed in the preceding paragraph: wanting to convert to Christianity. One of these examples can be found in the life of Saint Basil. The saint has foreknowledge that he is going to die, but he is told that his last mission on Earth is to convert an extremely skilled doctor to Christianity. This doctor tells Basil that he is to die within the day, and Basil replies that he will not, because it is God’s will that he should die the next day so that it can act as a token of his existence. The doctor agrees that, if he finds him alive the next day, he will convert to Christianity. The following takes place the next day when the doctor sees that he is alive: Se iudeisca þa com, and cwæð mid wundrunge, mid ealre heortan Ic sæcge þæt Crist is soð God (ÆLS (Basil) 602) “Then the Jewish man came and said with amazement, with all his heart: ‘I say that Christ is the true God’” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019: 116).

At realizing that, indeed, Basil is alive, the Jewish man is able to behold a token of the existence of the God of whom Basil speaks, and this prompts him to utter a

36 For more on this, see next section, where the role of wonder and of miracles in converting people to Christianity is discussed.

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sentence that acknowledges this. Furthermore, Ælfric emphasises the fact that he makes this concession mid wundrunge ‘with wonder,’ making it clear that seeing physical proof of God’s existence triggers an experience of wonder that causes a change in his system of beliefs. A similar circumstance can be observed in the following example, which contains a larger number of aesthetic emotion markers for wonder: hi gemetton þa þone apostol micclum gebysgod ofer þa untruman men þe he ealne dæg gehælde þurh his handa hrepunge on þæs Hælendes naman. þa ða seo cwen geseah swilce wundra æt him, þa cwæð heo ofwundrod, Awyrgede synd þa men þe nellað gelyfan þyllicum weorcum. þa stod þær an hreofla tohrorenum lichaman, atelic on hiwe, and hine gehælde Thomas, and hine gefullode ætforan þære cwene. Heo feol þa to his fotum, fulluhtes biddende, and þæs ecan lifes mid geleafan gewilnode, and cwæð þæt heo gelyfde on þone lifigendan God (ÆLS (Thomas) 327)37

This is a passage from the life of Saint Thomas. In this text, there are several women who play an important role in Thomas’ fate, ultimately leading to his martyrdom. The queen in this excerpt is queen Triptia, king Misdeus’ wife, who had been introduced to Thomas through her sister Migdonia, after he had healed a relative of hers. Triptia had gone to visit Migdonia, after her husband had claimed that she had become insane, when in fact she simply started to believe in God after beholding Thomas’ miracles. Migdonia takes her to see Thomas when he is performing miracles, an episode that is narrated in the excerpt above. When Triptia first sees Thomas healing sick people in the name of Jesus, this action is instantly categorised as a miracle (OE wundor), but her reaction at this is also defined unmistakably as the emotion of wonder through the term OE ofwundrian. This term is a compound made of OE wundrian, which has been singled out before as a term that denotes aesthetic contemplation as well as the emotion of wonder, and the prefix OE of-​, which modifies this verb and “its intensive force” (BWT, s.v. of-​, prefix., I.). Instantly, she expresses her emotion, not through a cry or a shout, but by stating that she believes in God and that so should everybody else. Then, Triptia beholds another instance of miraculous healing when Thomas

37 “They found the apostle then very occupied with the sick people that he had been healing all day through the touch of his hands in the name of the savior. When the queen saw such miracles performed by him, then, astounded, she said: ‘Cursed are those who, refuse to believe in such actions!’ A leper stood there with a decayed body, terrible in appearance, and Thomas healed him and baptized him in front of the queen. Then she fell to his feet, asking for baptism, and longed for the eternal life with faith, and said that she believed in the living God” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 287).

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heals a lepper. In this excerpt, the lepper is described through OE atol, a term that is remarkable because, as it was discussed in Minaya (2023), it describes ugliness and the resulting emotional response of aesthetic horror in poetic sources, as well as being an index of morality. This would imply that Triptia, additionally, experiences aesthetic horror at beholding the lepper, an emotion that she ceases to feel when this person is healed and baptised. When she sees this, Triptia experiences another emotion that is so strong that it is manifested through the action tendency of falling to his feet (heo feol þa to his fotum), an action tendency that is shared with the emotion of awe. Furthermore, this causes an immediate belief in Thomas’ God and a desire to be baptised. Regarding action tendencies, chapter three contains a discussion on several lexical tools on Old English that point out the metonymical usage of two action tendencies in order to refer to the emotion of wonder, these being hlosnian and swīgian, describing ‘listening with wonder’ and ‘being silent with wonder,’ respectively. One of the aims of this study was to determine whether in this corpus and, therefore, in the Ælfrican emotional community, the emotion of wonder was commonly alluded to using these action tendencies. This would ultimately reveal important information as to the accepted modes of expression of this emotion in this particular community. My analysis of the textual corpus has established that Ælfric does not employ OE swīgian to refer to the silence that results from wonder-​experiences. Nevertheless, there is one instance of OE hlosnian in an aesthetic emotion context: Eode þa to mæssan mid oðrum mannum, and hlosnode georne be ðære liflican onsægednysse. þa mid ðam þe Basilius tobræc þæt husel, þa þuhte þam Iudeiscan swylce he todælde an cyld; eode swa þeah mid oðrum mannum earhlice to husle, and him wearð geseald an snæd flæsces, and he sæp of ðæm calice eac swylce blod (ÆLS (Basil) 156) “Then he went to Mass with other people and eagerly watched for the living sacrifice. Then as Basil was breaking the host it seemed to the Jewish man as if he were dividing up a child. Nevertheless he went fearfully with the other people to receive the host, and he was given a piece of flesh and likewise he sipped blood from the chalice” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 87).

In this passage from the life of Saint Basil, there is a Jewish man who wants to find out more about the mysteries of Mass and of the Eucharist. He goes to the church while Basil is holding Mass, and he gets to see him breaking the host. In this passage, this process is not described through terms for visual contemplation (for example, OE geseōn) or verbs that denote a more unambiguous visual aesthetic contemplation (like OE wafian or wundrian). Instead, the author resorts to a term that refers to intent listening, which in this case refers to how the Jewish man both intently looks at and listens to the Eucharist in an instance

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of active aesthetic contemplation. Furthermore, the application of OE hlosnian to a visual phenomenon evidences how one of the metaphors pointed out by Díaz-​Vera (2016: 41) as regards the lexical and etymological connection between the Old English visual and aural perception verbs, seeing is hearing, also operates here at a textual and cognitive level. More than anything else, what OE hlosnian conveys in this excerpt is the attentive attitude of somebody who actively seeks an aesthetic experience that does not involve movement or intervention on the part of those who experience it, and here OE hlosnian involves the sense of hearing, which is typically involved in more passive aesthetic experiences, in order to convey the specific characteristics of this emotional experience. When Basil breaks the host, the Jewish man thinks or imagines that Basil is not really dividing the host but what it really represents, Jesus, in this case in the form of a child. This causes him to take communion in a particular emotional state, which is rendered by OE earglīce, defined in the DOE as “in a cowardly manner, in fear” (DOE, s.v. earglīce, adv., 1.) and in BWT as “fearfully, timidly” (BWT, s.v. earhlīce, adv., I.). In this case, it clearly defines the emotional state of somebody who is amazed at something that they do not fully understand, and that therefore they are hesitant to partake in. The only somatic profile that can be identified in the corpus and that can be connected to the experience of wonder is found in the text on Ash Wednesday. This text develops on the importance of Ash Wednesday in the Christian’s life, how it is a reminder of the fact that all Christians will eventually die, and that they should not focus on earthly life but on the eternal one. This text also narrates several episodes in which people who do not observe the Ash rite, or the customs of Lent are punished by means of divine intervention. This texts also recounts the story of a man who unjustly accuses his wife of adultery, and both of them are tortured as a result. The man admits to having committed adultery as well so that they are both executed and can put an end to their suffering. Nevertheless, the woman, who has not committed adultery, refuses to admit that she has, because she does not wish to carry that fault onto the next life, and so she claims “I also wish to die, but yet am not guilty, and I will carry my innocence with me to the next life, because he does not die at all who is killed in order to live” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 17). Those who hear these words are said to experience wonder, as is the case of the judge: þa wundrode se dema þæs wifes anrædnysse, þæt heo nolde andettan on swa earfoþum witum, þæt se cniht sæde sona for yrhðe, and demde þæt hi man sceolde ofslean buta (ÆLS (Ash Wed) 202)

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“Then the judge marveled at the woman’s resolution, that among such painful tortures she refused to confess what the young man had said immediately out of cowardice, and he judged that they should both be killed” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 17).

The judge is amazed at this woman’s courage and determination, and, rather than continuing to torture her, he decides that both of them should be killed straightaway. This text also introduces an idea that will be discussed in the next section, how, in these texts and in the Medieval context, there is an aesthetic dimension to martyrdoms and executions. Consider the following excerpt, where their execution is discussed: þa arn þæt folc to ardlice for wafunge (ÆLS (Ash Wed) 206) “Then the people ran there quickly for the spectacle” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 17).

The execution of this couple is described not as an execution or as a process, but as a public spectacle. According to BWT, this term has two different senses: “I. glossing spectaculum” and “II. amazement, wonder, astonishment” (BWT, s.v. wafung, n., I. and II.). In this case, the first sense makes more sense in the context of the attestation: the man and the woman are publicly executed so that they can be made an example of, and, in doing so, they also create a morbid form of public entertainment that entails a degree of aesthetic contemplation. Nevertheless, the connection between martyrdoms and the experience of wonder and other aesthetic emotions is clear in the usage of OE wafung, which refers to both. As this public spectacle progresses, there is an executioner that is tasked with killing the woman, beheading her with a sword. However, he is not able to do so, because the emotions that he is experiencing physically prevent him from doing so, and this is evidenced in the reference to the somatic profile mentioned above: þa ætstod þæt swurd and þone swuran ne hrepode, ac þam cwellere ætfeoll færlice his gold, þaþa he swa hetelice his handa cwehte (ÆLS (Ash Wed) 215) “Then the sword came to a halt and did not touch the neck, but his gold suddenly fell from the executioner’s grasp, when he was shaking his hands so violently” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 17).

This excerpt does not directly specify that the emotion that the executioner is feeling is that of wonder or any of the emotions in the family of amazement, but considering the usage of OE wafung in the preceding excerpt, and how the words of the woman had affected the judge, it would be safe to assume that the executioner here is undergoing a similar emotion episode. In fact, this emotion is so intense that it materialises in a pair of hands that shake so violently that the executioner involuntarily drops his sword.

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Outside action tendencies and somatic profiles, Ælfric systematically employs the terms in the lexical domain of wonder to describe the emotions that the characters in these lives experience, and in some cases, they co-​occur with different emotions and appraisals of morality. Consider the following excerpts: Hi bundon ðone þryddan and mid bysmore his tungan forð ræcan. And he hraðe swa dyde and his handa him ræhte and mid anrædnysse cwæð, ðas lima ic hæfde þurh ðone heofonlican cynincg, ac ic hi nu forseo for his gesetnysse, forþan þe ic hopie to him, þæt ic hi eft underfo æt him. And se cynincg wundrode, and þa þe mid him wæron, ðæs cnihtes anrædnysse, þæt he ða cwylmincge forseah (ÆLS (Maccabees) 134)38 þa wundrode heora modor þæt hi swa wel ongunnon, and heo mid bliþum mode hyre bearn æfre tihte (ÆLS (Maccabees) 161) “Then their mother marveled that they had acted so fittingly, and with a happy heart she continually encouraged her sons, each one individually” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 291).

They are taken from the life on The Martyrdom of the Maccabees, a text that narrates how these seven brothers are martyred while their mother watches it. The first passage narrates how the third brother withstands torture and refuses to give up his faith. This resolution merits wonder on the part of those who torture him, a wonder that is described and emphasised through OE wundrian, but this emotional response is very similar to that of the Maccabees’ mother. The emotional state of their mother, Solomonia, after they are martyred is described in the second passage. It is interesting in what it reveals about the appropriateness of emotions in hagiographical contexts. The mother experiences two different emotions. She is said to be OE blīþe ‘happy,’ and she is also said to wonder at the brothers’ courage, how they are martyred without giving into what that their persecutor offers them if they give up their faith. In a real-​life context, regardless of the time and place, mothers generally mourn and experience overwhelming sadness after the death of their sons, but in hagiographical contexts this emotion is not fitting, in the sense that it would imply that said character would not believe in God or that they do not think that these brothers have moved on to eternal life. Instead, the emotions of wonder (a wonder that comes close to admiration and

38 “They bound the third brother and with scorn commanded that he stick out his tongue. And he quickly did this, and reached out his hands to them and with resolve said: ‘I have these limbs from the heavenly king, but I now despise them for the sake of his commandments, because I have hope in him that I will receive them from him again.’ And the king and those who were with him were amazed at the young man’s resolve as he scorned these torments” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 291).

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reverence) and gladness are seen as perfectly appropriate emotional responses to these stimuli. Other instances that involve wonder terminology and the emotion of happiness can be found in the life of Saint Martin: He wæs ure munuc and eac ure abbod, we willað hine habban forþanþe we hine alændon ær, ge brucon his spræce and his lare notedon, ge wæron on his gereordum, and mid his gebletsungum gestrangode, and mid mænigfealdum wundrum wæron gegladode (ÆLS (Martin) 1445) “He was our monk and also our abbot; we wish to have him because we had lent him to you. You have enjoyed his words and used his teaching; you were at meals with him and were strengthened by his blessings and were gladdened by his many miracles” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 179).

In this passage, the people of Poitiers are discussing why they deserve to keep Martin’s remains over the people of Tours. They enumerate a list of reasons why this is so, and they describe the emotional response that Martin’s miracles had caused on them. In this case, they claim that these miracles (OE wundrum) caused the people of Tours to be gladdened (OE gegladian ‘make glad’): this is further proof of how in these texts the emotions that miraculous phenomena trigger are presented in such a way that an audience would construe them as appropriate or otherwise. Ultimately, this implies that, for proper Christians, the suitable response to miracles is not fear or awe but wonder and happiness. In this corpus, there are two additional excerpts that can potentially shed more light on the connection between wonder and the experience of other resulting or co-​occurring emotions. For example: Swa micele forhæfednysse he hæfde on his bigleofan, swilce he munuc wære swiðor þonne cempa; and for his æðelum þeawum his efencempan ealle þa hine arwurðodon mid wundorlicre lufe (ÆLS (Martin) 47) “He showed such restraint in his food as if he were a monk rather than a soldier, and because of his noble behavior all his fellow soldiers honored him with marvelous love” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 89). Tetradius ða sona þa he þæt geseah, gelyfde on urne Drihten, and let hine cristnian, and æfter lytlum fyrste he wearð gefullod, and Martinum wurðode mid wundorlicre lufe, forþanðe he wæs ealdor witodlice his hæle (ÆLS (Martin) 522) “As soon as Tetradius saw that, he believed in our Lord and allowed himself to be made a catechumen, and a short time afterward he was baptized, and honored Martin with extraordinary love because he was truly the source of his salvation” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 119).

The excerpts shown above concern Saint Martin, whose life is one of the longest in this corpus. At this point in the text, the narrator is explaining how Saint Martin, despite wanting to join a monastery, was taken to war because his father

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reported him after an imperial edict that stated that the sons of men who had been discharged from the military service due to their age were to fill in for them. The text describes how Martin fares in the military service, and claims that, during this time, he remained undefiled, by which it is implied that he maintained his virginity. Other than that, the behaviour that Martin exhibits is so humble, and he has such a restraint with food that this causes other soldiers to experience a “wonderful love” for him. Collins and Mullins (2019c: 89) translate this instance as “marvelous love,” but in the context of the excerpt it becomes clear that this term for wonder does not describe an emotion of amazement as such. Instead, it makes reference to the excellent and pure quality of the feelings and emotions that his fellow soldiers feel for Martin. In fact, this phrase recurs in the second excerpt, where it is said that Martin is loved by Tetradius because he is the source of his salvation: this love stems from the fact that Tetradius had become a Christian after seeing Martin heal one of his slaves, who had been possessed by a demon. In both these instances, OE wundorlīc evaluates the quality and intensity of an emotion, love in this case, that is fitting in a particular context. It is clear that these two passages do not showcase instances where the emotion of wonder triggers affection or love, or vice versa, and neither are they examples in which these two emotions co-​occur simultaneously as a result of different emotion episodes. Instead, terms for wonder are used with the sense of ‘excellent’ or ‘extraordinary,’ as it is the case in other places of the corpus. In short, the main purpose of this section was to analyse the subcomponents of the experiences of wonder in Ælfric’s lives as they have been described in chapter one. This section has pointed out several instances where there is a conceptualisation of these emotions as a force that overpowers the subject, and, in the case of some emotions, this is portrayed as a stabbing force. Furthermore, this analysis has highlighted how there are marked action tendencies that result from the emotion of wonder in these texts, which point to the existence of accepted modes of expression in the framework of this community. These include crying, screaming, wishing to convert to Christianity, as well as actively paying attention to the phenomena that trigger it. These action tendencies are inconsistent and vary from text to text, which further stresses the fact that these texts have been composed using different sources. Other action tendencies that are part of the lexical domain of wonder in the Old English language, like a silence that results from astonishment, are not present in this corpus, as if the religious sort of wonder that is presented here invites and requires expression. Regarding somatic profiles, there is only one that can be identified in the corpus, and that is shaking hands as a result of amazement. These experiences of amazement sometimes act as emotional inputs to additional emotion episodes, and, in this

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sense, the emotion of wonder is close linked to the experience of love and fear, and it often triggers happiness. What this confirms, at least as far as this emotion is concerned, is that these texts are oriented towards shaping responses to and modes of expression of these emotions that are appropriate in light of the Christian doctrine. In other words, these texts, through wonder-​terms and instances of amazement, shape what a proper emotional response should be for proper Christians, who are expected to take these saints and characters and their lives as (emotional) role models.

5.3. Ælfric’s approach to the miraculous The preceding section has examined instances of emotional experience in Ælfric’s lives, whether they were directly related to the miraculous or not. Following on this discussion, the purpose of this section is to look into Ælfric’s usage of the lexical domain of wonder in connection to the miracles that take place in these lives. This section is aimed at examining Ælfric’s notion of miracle and what are the ideas and vocabularies that are associated with it. Additional aims include studying some of the miracles that are narrated in these texts in order to identify or come up with recurring patterns that could serve to identify trends in terms of form and content. As it has been mentioned before in different parts of this study, the term OE wundor is used in these lives, as well as in other texts in the Old English literary corpus, as a descriptor of the Christian miracle. The existing etymological dictionaries on Old English and its Germanic relatives do not provide great insight as to the evolution that this term undergoes as a result of Christianisation, but, judging by its usage, it would be safe to assume that this term evolves from a prototypical meaning of wonder, describing the emotion, and it became used figuratively to describe and refer to the phenomena that trigger it, portraying them as portents or wonders. Because, essentially, miracles are portents and wonders, this term came to be used as the main term that describes the Christian miracle, intrinsically referring to the emotion that it causes, the aesthetic experience of wonder. The notion of ‘miracle’ and the emotion of wonder are, therefore, linked at a conceptual level, and it is not possible to separate them, above all because, at least in this corpus, miracles are presented as something that should and does trigger wonder. Frequently, these lives include passages and excerpts in which OE wundor is used alongside the verb OE (ge)wyrcan in order to describe the action of performing a miracle. Consider the following excerpt:

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Eac þær leornode on þære ylcan scole se æðela Gregorius se ðe eft wearð biscop and fæla wundra worhta, swa swa wyrdwryteres secga (ÆLS (Basil) 19) “In the same school there also studied the noble Gregory, who afterward became a bishop and performed many miracles, as the historian tells” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 77–​79).

In this passage from the life of Saint Basil, the author tells us that Gregory, after becoming a bishop, performed many miracles as they were recorded by historians, but this passage is not specific of what these miracles are or how they affect the people who behold them. This is also the case of other usages of OE wundor across different lives, like those on Saint Eugenia, Saint Basil, Saint Maur or Saint Mark. In this case, the verb OE (ge)wyrcan refers to the action of performing the miracle, and, in the case of this extremely polysemic verb, it can be taken to mean several things: “to work, make, build, form, dispose, do, perform, celebrate, commit” (BWT, s.v. gewyrcan, vb., I.). What OE gewyrcan emphasises in these fragments is that, at a conceptual level, miracles are something that are performed thorough body movements that imitate the action of manual labour. In other instances, the verb OE gewyrcan is used in a passive construction to indicate that, through the merits of the saint, and after their death, miracles are performed either on their own or through the saint from the afterlife: þær beoð wundra geworhte ðurh þone halgan wer ðam ælmihtigan to lofe, seðe lyfað a on ecnysse (ÆLS (Maur) 355) “Miracles are performed there through the holy man to the praise of the Almighty, who lives forever into eternity” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 213). þær beoþ fela wundra geworhte gelome þurh þa halgan martyras mannum to frofre, þær underfoð þa blindan, þurh heora bena, gesihðe, and þa deafan heorcnunge, and þa healtan færeld, and þa wodan þær beoð gewittige þurh hi, and ungerime wundra þær wurðað foroft (ÆLS (Denis) 334) “Many miracles are frequently performed there through the holy martyrs to comfort people: there the blind receive sight through their prayers, and the deaf hearing, and the lame the ability to move, and the insane are restored to their wits through them, and countless miracles are performed there very often” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 81).

Through the construction þær beoð (fela) wundra geworhte these two excerpts describe in almost identical phrasing how miracles come to happen through the saints after they have passed away. The first excerpt makes emphasis on what has been discussed at the beginning of these chapters, how, despite the fact that it is these saints who perform these miracles, they are, ultimately, a reflection and result of God’s power. Indeed, some of these lives develop on the agency of miracles and who can and cannot perform them. For example:

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þas ylcan mihte he forgeaf his mæran apostolum, þæt hi mihton gehælan on ðæs hælendes naman ealle untrumnyssa, and eac ða deadan aræran, and aclænsian ða hreoflian swa swa Crist sylf dyde (ÆLS (Memory of Saints) 142) “He gave that same power to his great apostles, so that they could heal, in the savior’s name, all sicknesses, and also raise up the dead and cleanse the lepers, as Christ himself did” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 99).

This excerpt from the sermon on the memory of the saints clarifies that the miracles that are performed by the apostles (described here through a term from the lexical domain of the sublime, OE mære) are the result of God’s own power (OE meaht ‘power, ability, virtue’), which he confers to the apostles and to Jesus before them. In other lives, this is also explicitly discussed, for example in ÆLS (Martin) 1135, where the sailors who are surprised by a threatening storm at sea call upon the God of Saint Martin to save them. In other lives, Ælfric discusses the miracles that have been performed in England by English saints, for instance in this passage from the life of Saint Edmund: Nis Angelcynn bedæled Drihtnes halgena, þonne on Englalanda licgaþ swilce halgan swylce þæs halga cyning is, and Cuþberht se eadiga, and sancte æþeldryð on Elig, and eac hire swustor, ansunde on lichaman, geleafan to trymminge. Synd eac fela oðre on Angelcynne halgan þe fela wundra wyrcað, swa swa hit wide is cuð þam ælmihtigan to lofe, þe hi on gelyfdon. Crist geswutelaþ mannum þurh his mæran halgan þæt he is ælmihtig God þe macað swilce wundra þeah þe þa earman Iudei hine eallunge wiðsocen, forþanþe hi synd awyrgede swa swa hi wiscton him sylfum. Ne beoð nane wundra geworhte æt heora byrgenum, forðanþe hi ne gelyfað on þone lifigendan Crist, ac Crist geswutelað mannum hwær se soða geleafa is, þonne he swylce wundra wyrcð þurh his halgan wide geond þas eorðan (ÆLS (Edmund) 259)39

Ælfric comments on what saints there are in England and how many miracles they have performed in the name of God. Ælfric also stresses the fact that these

39 “The English people are not deprived of the Lord’s saints, when in England such saints as this holy king and the blessed Cuthbert and Ethelthryth in Ely and also her sister lie uncorrupted in body for the confirmation of the faith. There are also many other saints among the English people who perform many miracles, as is widely known, to the praise of the Almighty, in whom they believed. Through his illustrious saints Christ reveals to people that he is almighty God who creates such miracles, though the wretched Jews denied him altogether, for which they are accursed, as they wished upon themselves. There are no miracles performed at their tombs because they do not believe in the living Christ, but Christ reveals to people where the true faith is when he performs such miracles through his saints, widely throughout the earth” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 203–​205).

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miracles are further proof of God’s existence, and they are portrayed as rewards for those who believe in the true God and praise him rightly, establishing, in this case, a difference between Jews and Christians. Ælfric claims that at the graves of Jewish people miracles do not take place, as is the case of the graves of Christian saints, because they do not believe in Jesus (lifigendan Crist). In another life, that of saint Chrysanthus, the author makes several assertions as regards the need to praise saints or not in connection to the nature of miracles: We wurþiað Godes halgan, ac wite ge swaþeah þæt þam halgum nis nan neod ure herunge on þam life, ac us sylfum fremað þæt þæt we secgað be him; ærest to gebysnunge, þæt we þe beteran beon, and eft to þingrædene þonne us þearf bið. Mycel ehtnys wæs þa ða hi wæron gemartyrode, ac git cymð earfoþre ehtnys on Anticristes tocyme, forþanþe þa martyras worhton manega wundra þurh God, and on Anticristes timan ateoriað þa wundra, and se deofol wyrcð þonne wundra þurh his scincræft, mid leasum gedwimorum to dweligenne þa geleaffullan. Mycel angsumnys bið þam arwurðum halgum, þæt se feondlica ehtere fela tacna wyrce, and hi sylfe ne moton swa þa martyras dydon, wundra æteowigende on þam wyrstan timan. Hi beoð swaþeah gehealdenne þurh þæs hælendes mihte gif hi heora geleafan gehealdað oð ende, on þam earfoðum ehtnyssum þæs arleasan deofles (ÆLS (Chrysanthus) 341)40

Even though the saints are venerated throughout this collection, and this might have also been the case of some of these saints when they were alive, Ælfric states that there is no need to praise them while they are alive. Nevertheless, he also observes that there are two benefits to talking about the saints and discussing their merits in life and their miracles: on the one hand, because that would make people better Christians; on the other hand, because knowing about these saints makes it possible for people to pray to them. Ælfric continues this discussion

40 “We venerate God’s saints, but nevertheless you should know that the saints have no need of our praise while we are living, but what we report about them benefits us: first as an example to make us better people, and second for their intercession when we are in need. There was a great persecution at the time that they were martyred, but there will be a harsher persecution at the coming of the Antichrist, because the martyrs performed many miracles through God, and at the time of the Antichrist those miracles will cease and then the devil will perform miracles through his trickery with false delusions to deceive the faithful. It will be a terrible torment for the worthy saints that the diabolical persecutor will create so many signs, and they themselves will not be able to do as the martyrs did, revealing miracles in the worst times. Nevertheless, they will be preserved through the power of the savior if their faith endures until the end, during the distressing persecutions of the wicked devil” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 259–​261).

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focusing on the persecution of Christians that led to their martyrdom, but he stresses the fact that, with the coming of the Antichrist, there will be an even worse persecution. The miracles that have been taking place so far in the history of Christianity will not occur anymore, and, in their place, other portents will take place. What is interesting from this excerpt is that, when Ælfric mentions the supernatural phenomena that the devil will be responsible for, he does not employ OE wundor, but a similar term that will be discussed shortly, OE tācn, denoting ‘a sign’ a ‘portent,’ but not necessarily a miracle that is effected through divine power. One more example describes the relevance of the saints, their martyrdom, and their miracles, as related to one of the ideas discussed above: ac swa man ma ofsloh þara martira þa, swa þær ma gelyfdon þyrh þa mycclan wundra þe þa halgan geworhtan, þurh þæs helendes mihte; for þam þe soða geleafa þæs soðfestan Godes ne byð næfre adwæsced, þurh þa deofollican ehtnysse, ac byð swiðor geeacnod swa swa us segað ure bec (ÆLS (Vincent) 11) “On the contrary, the more martyrs were killed, the more people believed through the great miracles that the saints performed through the savior’s power, because the true faith of the righteous God will never be extinguished through diabolic persecution, but will instead be increased, as books tell us” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 297–​299).

In Ælfric’s view, the great significance of martyrs was that, when they were killed and martyred for their faith in God, this served as further proof of God’s existence for Christians on earth. Therefore, the assumption in this text is that, because more martyrs were killed and because their miracles became more evident, more people became Christians and the faith of those who were already believers was strengthened as a result. Similarly, it does not matter how many Christians the devil tempts on earth, because these temptations will only cause Christian’s belief to increase. With regards to the prototypical use of OE wundor as a term that alludes to the Christian miracle, some of the examples pointed out above are relatively brief in what they reveal about the conceptualisation of miracles and the affective phenomena that they should trigger. Nevertheless, other excerpts are more detailed, and not only do they include wonder-​terminology, but they also provide examples that could help audiences envision what the most common miracles in the history of Christianity are. For instance: þa wearð se halga Thomas gewissod eft þurh God þæt he sceolde faran to þære fyrran Indian, and gewende þyder, and wundra gefremode. He gehælde þær þurh God healte and blinde and ealle untrumnyssa, and þa egeslican hreoflian, and deofla adræfde and þa deadan arærde. þæt landfolc þa ne mihte his lare wiðcweþan, þonne he swilce wundra geworhte him ætforan (ÆLS (Thomas) 255)

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“Then the holy Thomas was again directed by God to travel to the remotest parts of India, and he went there and performed miracles. Through the power of God, he healed the lame there and the blind and all afflictions and terrifying lepers, and expelled devils, and raised the dead. The ordinary people could not deny his teaching when he performed such miracles before their eye” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 281–​283). Ne mage we awritan ne mid wordum asecgan ealle þa wundra þe se halga wer Swiðun, þurh God gefremode on ðæs folces gesihþe, ge on gehæftum mannum, ge on unhalum mannum, mannum to swutelunge þæt hi sylfe magon Godes rice geearnian mid godum weorcum, swa swa Swiþun dyde, þe nu scinð þurh wundra. (ÆLS (Swithun) 424) “We cannot write down, nor say in words, all the miracles that this holy man Swithun performed through the power of God in this people’s sight, both on imprisoned people and on sick people, in order to reveal to people that they themselves can earn God’s kingdom with good works, just like Swithun did, who now shines through his miracle” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 235).

These passages from the lives of Saint Thomas and Saint Swithun employ the usual terminology in referring to miracles, like the combination of OE wundor with gewyrcan, and, additionally, OE gefremman ‘to make, do, perform,’ but they also include different figurative expressions like the phrase [Swiþun] nu scinð þurh wundra ‘Swithun now shines through his miracles,’ which is remarkable in that it links the notion of light with that of divinity, and it reinforces the impression that these people achieve their saintly status by means of these exercises of divine power. Furthermore, both these passages exemplify some of the most common miracles that can be observed in these saint stories: the healing of blind people and those who cannot walk or are afflicted by other illnesses, expelling devils, or bringing people back from the dead. The recurrence of these and other miracles will be explored later on in this section. In the preceding pages, it has been discussed how Ælfric employs the term OE tācn in order to describe the supernatural phenomena for which the devil will be responsible after the coming of the Antichrist. This implies that the idea that this term represent is neutral in valence, as it can also be used to describe the miracles that these saints perform, as is the case of the following two excerpts: Eft ða ða cwelleras comon to heora hlaforde, and hi sædon þa syllican tacna ðe Albanus worhte, and hu se wearð ablend þe hine beheafdode, ða het he geswican þære ehtnysse and arwurðlice spræc be ðam halgum martyrum, þe he ne mihte gebigan fram Godes geleafan þurh ða gramlican witu (ÆLS (Alban) 127) “Afterward when the killers came to their lord and they spoke of the wonderful miracles that Alban had worked and how the man who had beheaded him had been blinded, then he commanded that the persecution cease and spoke reverently about the holy martyrs whom he could not turn from belief in God by his terrible tortures” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 183).

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and se Taurus gesamnode ða ceastergewaran him to, and axode þone halgan þurh hwæs mihte he gefremode þa wundorlican tacna, þæt swa micel werod him folgode (ÆLS (Apollinaris) 165) “And this Taurus gathered the citizens to him and asked the saint through whose power he had performed those wondrous signs, so that such a large crowd followed him” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 255–​257).

In the first excerpt, OE tācn is found alongside another aesthetic emotion marker from the lexical domain of excellence, OE sēllīc. The phrase syllican tacna is employed in this passage to allude to the many miracles that Saint Alban performs while he is alive, miracles that are enough to cause Alban’s killers to speak of him with reverence. Some of these miracles include causing a spring to flow towards his feet and causing another river to dry up. Both these miracles take place in a narrative framework in which they are proof of Alban’s powers, and, therefore, of God’s existence. In the second example, Taurus is discussing a miracle that is performed by Apollinaris. He had healed a lepper, and, in this text, the emphasis is not on the healing itself but on what it represents: þa blissodon þa Cristenan, and cwædon mid geleafan, þæt se ana is soð God þe swylce wundra wyrcð (ÆLS (Apollinaris) 163) “Then the Christians rejoiced and said with faith that he alone is the true God who works such miracles” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 255).

In both these cases, the author employs the term OE tācn to directly allude to these miracles, not to any specific signs, and this and other examples in this corpus evidence that it was indeed possible to designate miracles employing this term, but the emphasis is not in the miracle in itself but in its larger transcendence. There are many attestations of this term in Ælfric’s lives, in some cases with other terms for wonder, in other cases on its own, and, in certain passages, the token is referred to through other terms with the same intention. The idea behind OE tācn has been discussed before in this study: it implies the materialisation of an otherwise abstract idea. For some of the Christians in these lives, the promises and mysteries of Christianity are envisioned within an unapproachable future. Eternal life is an inapprehensible reality, and the existence of God implies a leap of faith they may or may not have been able to take. And this would have also been the reality for some of the people who would have read this collection of lives. Therefore, the tokens that populate these stories act, in the framework of the narrative, as physical proof of the saint’s power, the existence of God, and the materialisation of the promise of Paradise, and, for those who

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come across these stories, these tokens are supposed to be second-​hand proof of the aforementioned. Some of the tokens that are described in the Old English corpus through OE wundor are more iconic than others, for example the pillar of light that guides the Israelites (discussed from an aesthetic emotion perspective in Minaya, 2022) is considered as one of the most representative examples of what a token is in the Christian framework, and it is also featured in this collection: þu gelæddest Moysen of ðam ylcan lande eft mid Israhele folce þurh fela tacna, and him weg gerymdest on þære readan sæ (ÆLS (Forty Soldiers) 182) “You led Moses back from that same land with the people of Israel by many signs, and you cleared a passage for them in the Red Sea” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 315).

This passage, nevertheless, is not aimed at triggering aesthetic emotion, nor does it contain any mentions of how the people of Israel react to this token. While the rest of the examples that can be found in Ælfric’s hagiography do not compare to such a well-​known episode of Christian history, in some cases they are more representative of the idea behind this term. Consider the following excerpt from the life of Saint Basil: Hwæt ða Basilius hine to eorþan astræhte, and mid wope gewylnode sum gewis tacen æt Gode, his geleafan to trymminge, and alede his ræf on þæra ea ofre 7 eode in nacod. þa genealæhte seo biscop and mid bletsunge hine gefullode. Efne þa færlice com fyr of heofonum, and an scinende culfre scæt of þam fyre into ðære ea, and astyrede ðæt wæter, fleah siþþan upp forðrihte to heofonum. And Basilius eode of þæm fantbaðe sona, and seo biscop hine bewæfde, wundriende þæs tacnes. He gefullode eac siððan þonne foresædan Eubolum, and hi begen gesmyrode mid gehalgudum ele, and eac gehuslode mid þæs Hælendes gerynum (ÆLS (Basil) 67)41

After Basil has spent several months travelling through Egypt and learning about God, he is ready for baptism, which the bishop Maximinus grants him. Before he is baptised, he humbles himself and lies face down crying, asking God to give

41 “Well then Basil prostrated himself on to the ground and with tears asked for a sure sign from God to strengthen his faith, and he took off his clothing on the bank of the river and went in naked. Then the bishop approached and baptized him with a blessing. Truly a fire then came suddenly from the heavens, and a shining dove shot out of the fire into the river and stirred up the water. Afterward it flew straightaway up to the heavens and Basil immediately emerged out of the cleansing of baptism and the bishop clothed him, marveling at the sign. He also then baptized Eubolus, whom we have already mentioned, and anointed them both with consecrated oil, and he also gave them the Eucharist with the mysteries of the savior” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 81).

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him a sign that would serve as further confirmation of his faith. He gets ready for his baptism and goes down to the river, where he is finally baptised. After this, the narrator recounts the supernatural occurrence that will serve as a token for Basil: there is a fire that surges from heaven and a dove that comes out of it, representing the holy spirit. This token, indeed, serves as a sign of belief for Basil, and the passage does also detail how this affects him: he is said experience wonder after beholding this sign (OE wundrian and tācn). The following excerpt from the life of Saint Denis is similarly remarkable in the lexical treatment of wonder terminology. In it, both OE tācn and wundor are employed in order to refer to the miracles with which Denis causes the pagan people in Francia to convert to Christianity: He funde him þa geferan, and he ferde gebyld þurh þone halgan gast, þam hæðenum bodigende cristendom and fulluht, oð þæt he com to anre byrig, Parisius gehaten, þam hæðenum tomiddes on þæra Francena rice, and him fylste se Hælend mid tacnum and wundrum, swa þæt he gewylde þa hæþenan, and to geleafan gebigde þa burhware forhraðe (ÆLS (Denis) 143) “Dionysius provided himself with companions and went, emboldened by the Holy Spirit, preaching to the heathens about Christianity and baptism, until he came to a city in the midst of the heathens in Francia called Paris, and the savior assisted him with signs and miracles, so that he subdued the heathens and converted the citizens to faith very quickly” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 69).

This passage makes a difference in terms of miracles and signs, through the two terms pointed out above. This suggests that, while are tokens are, to a certain extent, miracles, not all miracles are tokens. Miracles imply a larger transcendence or transformation in the body of the receiver or in the physical properties of an object. Additionally, as it will be explained further on in this section, miraculous events also entail some sort of divine intervention that alters the course of events, and that usually goes to the advantage of the saint and to the detriment of those who persecute them. In the examples mentioned above, the tokens discussed do not have a larger significance other than being a supernatural sign that confirms God’s existence, as it is made manifest to the saint and those around them. Furthermore, those who behold these signs and portents sometimes might choose to believe that they do not come from God, as in the following passage: Numerianus þa, se manfulla casere, tealde þæt to drycræfte, na to Drihtnes tacnum, and het lædan buta þa halgan togædere to anum sandpytte (ÆLS (Chrysanthus) 322) “Then Numerian, the wicked emperor, attributed it to magic, not to the Lord’s signs” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 257).

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After his soldiers tell Numerian how God had tried to save Daria by sending a lion that protects her from defilement in the brothel, and after they describe to him how the beautiful fragrance had filled the loathsome prison in which Chrysanthus was imprisoned, an episode that has already been analysed in the preceding chapter, emperor Numerian chooses not to believe these to be signs from God and he construes them as portents that these saints cause through magic. Other tokens that can be found in Ælfric’s lives are not referred to through this terminology, even if, essentially, they are similar signs from God that are ultimately proof of his existence. Consider Saint Helena’s discovery of the True Cross: Ac seo eadige Helena hi eft þær afunde þurh Cristes onwrigennesse, swa swa he mid wundrum geswutelode (ÆLS (Exalt of Cross) 6) “but the blessed Helena rediscovered it there through Christ’s revelation, when he brought it to light by miracles” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 25).

This excerpt describes the episode in Christian history where Saint Helena, Constantinus’ mother, is sent on a quest to find the True Cross. When she is not able to find the place where the cross is buried, she prays for God’s assistance so that he shows her where it is buried. The placement of the cross is then revealed to Helena by means of a luminous sign, a token that is extremely similar to the pilar of light that is described in Exodus. However, in this passage, it is categorised as a miracle, a supernatural occurrence that makes known, that is, manifests (OE geswutelian) where the cross is; it is also worth mentioning that, contrary to what can be found in Elene, the Old English poem that narrates this same episode, here, there are no mentions to or description of the aesthetic experience that the characters who behold this scene undergo. Instead, in this passage, the emphasis is not on aesthetic experience but on the fact that it is only through God’s miracle that Saint Helena is able to locate the true cross. In other passages, these signs from God are described through other wonder terminology as well as with the action tendencies that result from this emotion. Consider this excerpt: þa gemunde se cyning hwæt Crist him ær behet, and het him to gefeccan þone foresædan Tatheum, se wæs eac gehaten oþrum naman Iudas. And mid ðam he ineode, þa aras se cyning and feoll to his fotum ætforan his ðegnum, forðan þe he geseah sume scinende beorhtnysse on þæs Iudan andwlite þurh Godes onwrigennysse, and cwæð þæt he wære soðlice Cristes discipulus him to hæle asend, swa swa he sylf behet (ÆLS (Abdon and Sennes) 132)42

42 “Then the king recalled what Christ had previously promised him and ordered them to

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This passage belongs to the Ælfric’s rendition of The Letter of Christ to Abgar, which is found in this collection alongside the text on Saint Abdon and Saint Sennes. When Jesus was alive, king Abgar, having heard of how he had miraculously healed people, sent him a letter asking Jesus to heal him. Jesus replies and promises him that he will send one of his disciples after he has died and that he will heal him in his place. When, in time, Jesus does send Thaddeus to heal king Abgar, the fact that he is Jesus’ apostle is made known to him through one of these signs from God, in this case a luminosity that washes over Thaddeus’ face. While Ælfric does not choose to refer to this as a token, the text, nevertheless, includes or maintains the action tendency of falling to his feet, presumably, with wonder and admiration More than anything else, and in the framework of these stories, the token and the miracle, and the wonder experiences that these might trigger have in most of the cases a larger implication, not with regards to what they mean but to what effect they cause in those who behold it. It has been discussed before in this study how some of the wonder episodes that are narrated in these lives cause profound spiritual transformations on those who experience them, ultimately being responsible for their conversion to Christianity. In many of these lives, those who experience these saints’ miracles and tokens are said to either begin to believe in God or to convert to Christianity altogether: Heliseus gehælde eac ænne ealdorman fram ðam atelicum hreoflan, se hatte Naaman of Syrian lande, and he gelyfde on God þurh þæt mycele wundor ðe God on him geworhte (ÆLS (Book of Kings) 309) “Elisha also healed a commander from hideous leprosy (he was called Naaman, from Syria), and he believed in God because of the great miracle that God had performed on him” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 161).

This text tells us how Naaman comes to believe in God, because he truly understands that it was God who had performed this miracle on his body through prophet Elisha. It is worth mentioning that this is the case of many other lives, which are too numerous to analyse individually, but some of them, for instance ÆLS (Apollinaris) 179, do feature lexis for amazement alongside a character’s wish to convert to Christianity. Nevertheless, in other lives the conversion does

bring him Thaddeus of whom we spoke before, who was also called Judas by his other name. And when he entered, the king got up and fell at his feet in front of his nobles, because through God’s revelation he saw a shining radiance on the face of Judas, and he said that he was truly a disciple of Christ sent to heal him, as he himself had promised” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 273–​275).

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not result from the beholder experiencing the miracles in their own bodies, but simply from beholding these supernatural signs, as is the case of the soldier who oversees the martyrdom of the forty soldiers: þa beheold se ylca hwanon þæt leoht scean, ða geseah he bringan mid þam beorhtan leohte ufan of heofonum an leas feowertig kynehelma þam halgum martyrum þe on ðam mere stodon. þa undergeat he sona þæt se an næs geteald to þam cynehelmum Cristes þegna, forþan þe he nolde þa earfoðnyssa forberan. ða awrehte se an þa oðre weardas, and unscrydde hine sylfne and scæt into ðam mere, clypigende and cweðende, ic eom eac Cristen (ÆLS (Forty Soldiers) 203)43

In this passage, what the soldier is seeing is how through divine intervention God sends a heavenly light that melts the ice from the lake in which the forty soldiers are being tortured, a light that turns the frozen lake into a pleasant body of water. When the soldier sees this, his belief system is radically altered to the point that he decides that, not only is he a Christian as well, but that he wishes to be martyred alongside the thirty-​nine soldiers. Even though this character’s experience of amazement is not explicitly detailed here, it can be seen how this supernatural occurrence that does not directly concern the soldier or his body causes him to convert to Christianity and to be martyred. The issue of miracles, their veracity and their background is a topic that has already been discussed by other authors writing on Ælfric’s lives, for instance Godden (1985). Nevertheless, the purpose of what remains from this chapter is not to look into these miracles with the aim of trying to establish their sources or Ælfric’s omissions or inclusions in the narrative. Instead, the following pages will offer an account of the most common miracles that are narrated in these texts, emphasising what these might reveal about Ælfric’s usage of the lexical domain of wonder and the emotional responses that are associated to the terms in this domain. There is a more or less consistent thematic unity in the type of miracles that are described in these lives, and, to a great extent, these are dependent on Ælfric’s sources.

43 “The same man then saw from where that light shone; then he saw being brought, along with the bright light, one fewer than forty crowns from above out of the heavens to the holy martyrs who stood in the lake. Then straightaway he understood that the one man was not included in the number of crowns for Christ’s followers, because he was not willing to suffer the hardship. Then that one man woke up the other guards and undressed himself and shot into the lake, calling out and saying: ‘I am also a Christian.’” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 317).

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Many of these miracles involve some sort of vision that explicitly or implicitly affects its witnesses. For instance, on the text Peter’s Chair, Peter is visiting a devout man called Simon, who lives near the sea. There, he has the following vision: þa wearð him æteowed wundorlic gesihð, he geseah heofonas opene and him com to an fæt, fyðerscyte and brad, and binnan þam wæron ealle cuce nytenu creopende and gangande.Him com stemn to, þus clypiende þriwa, aris nu Petrus, and þas reðan deor ofsleh, maca þe to mete, þæt þu mege þe gereordian. þa cwæð se halga wer, ne gewurðe hit, leof Drihten, forþan ðe ic ne onbyrgde swa hwæt swa unclæne bið. þa com him eft stemn to þus clypigende of heofonum, þæt þæt God geclænsode, ne cwæð þu þæt hit ful sy. þriwa him wæs þus geclypod to, and þærrihte wearð þæt fæt upp to heofonum abroden, eft mid þam nytenum (ÆLS (Peter’s Chair) 83)44

The significance of this vision is explained further on: “The four-​cornered vessel with the foul animals signified all the heathen people who lived foully on the four-​cornered earth, but Christ cleansed them by his corning into the world. And the voice spoke for this reason, calling to Peter that he should feed himself with the fierce animals, because they had been cleansed by Christ’s passion, and he was to change them from the form of a serpent through his true teaching to reason, and from that loathsome form to the likeness of people” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 287).

This passage underpins that some of these visions that the saints experience have a greater significance: in this case, the vision serves as a message that reveals to Peter that, after Jesus’ death, Christians can eat animals that were forbidden by Old Testament law. While this vision serves a function, that is, it is of a utilitarian nature, it is nevertheless described, by means of OE wundorlīc, as a vision that also has an important, non-​utilitarian effect on Peter. There are other visions in this corpus that are narrated without any sort of aesthetic emotion lexis, and, in fact, one of these explicitly claims that the vision does not have an emotional effect in the saint that witnesses it:

44 “Then a wonderful vision was revealed to him: he saw the open heavens and a vessel came to him, four-​cornered and large, and in it there were all living animals, those who crawl and those who walk. A voice came to him then, calling out three times thus: ‘Arise now, Peter, and kill these fierce animals; make them your food, so that you may be able to eat.’ Then the holy man said: ‘That may not come to pass, beloved Lord, because I have not eaten anything that is unclean.’ Then the voice came again to him, calling like this from the heavens: ‘That which God has cleansed, do not say that it is foul.’ Three times he was called to like this, and straightaway the vessel was drawn up to the heavens, once more with the animals” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 287).

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On þære ylcan nihte he geseah on swefne þone Hælend gescrydne mid þam healfan basinge, þe he sealde þam þearfan, and het þæt he biheolde to his drihtne werd and oncneowe þæt reaf þe he sealde þam þearfan (ÆLS (Martin) 75) “In the same night, Martin saw the savior in a dream, dressed in the half cloak that he had given to the beggar, and he ordered him to look upon his Lord and recognize the clothing that he had given to the beggar” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 89–​91). Se halga wer swaþeah næs ahafen þurh þa gesihþe, ac Godes godnysse he oncneow on his weorce (ÆLS (Martin) 88) “Nevertheless, the holy man was not puffed up by this vision, but recognized the goodness of God in his deed” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 91).

In this passage, Saint Martin sees Jesus in a dream, and he is wearing the cloak that Martin himself had previously given to a beggar. Nevertheless, the narrator states that Martin is unaffected by this vision when he awakes. The lack of emotional response in this passage is rendered through a negation of OE ahebban, which means “to heave up, lift up, raise, elevate, exalt” (BWT, s.v. ahebban, vb., I.). This passage is remarkable in that, despite the fact that it does not describe an emotional response but rather the lack of it, it provides evidence that aesthetic and religious experience, in this literary context, is conceptualised through an upwards motion, which is consistent with how these emotions have been described in the literature (Valenzuela and Soriano, 2009). It is also worth mentioning that Clayton and Mullins (2019c: 91), in their translation, opt for a similar metaphor that might be more accurate in light of the hydraulic model of mental and emotional activity; in it, they conceptualise this exalted state (or lack thereof) as being swollen. As it has been discussed before, the most common miracle by far throughout this collection of saint stories is miraculous healing. These stories feature many different instances in which the saints heal people who are either blind, unable to walk or are afflicted by diverse illnesses. In some cases, these instances of miraculous healing are not described in aesthetic emotion terms, but in other cases the narrator highlights the characters’ emotional response: þa oncneowan hine ealle þe hine cuðon ær, and micclum wundrodon þæs wædlan hæle (ÆLS (Peter’s Chair) 36) “Then all who had known him before recognized him and marveled greatly at the beggar’s healing” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 283).

This passage serves as a very representative example of an emotional reaction that is portrayed as suitable to the experience of an instance of miraculous healing. In it, the emotion of wonder is unambiguously described through OE wundrian.

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Another miracle that is commonly described in these lives and that is often accompanied by wonder terminology concerns the supernatural phenomena that release or protect the saints while they are being tortured or persecuted. For example, when Saint Chrysantus’ is freed from his bonds or the water that miraculously cools the irons that are placed under Saint Thomas’ feet: þa yrsodon þa cempan ongean þone Cristenen cniht, and gesettan hine þa on ænne heardne stocc, and his sceancan gefæstnodon on þam fotcopsum bysmrigende mid wordum þone halgan wer; ac se fotcops awende wundorlice to þrexe, and eall to duste þurh Drihtnes mihte (ÆLS (Chrysanthus) 146) “Then the soldiers began to get angry with the Christian man, and they placed him on a strong stake, and fastened his legs in fetters, insulting the holy man with their words. But the fetters miraculously turned to rot and all to dust through the power of the Lord” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 247). þa het se kyning lecgan hate isena sona under his nacodum fotum, þæt he lange swa þrowode, ac þæs arn wæter up wundorlice sona and celde þa isena (ÆLS (Thomas) 389) “Then the king ordered hot irons to be placed immediately under his bare feet, so that he would suffer for a long time in this way, but immediately water rushed up there, miraculously, and cooled the iron” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 291).

In these instances, the actions and phenomena that result from divine intervention are described as wonderful and miraculous through OE wundorlīce, ultimately revealing the conceptual connection between these and the emotion of wonder. Conversely, there are numerous instances in which these miracles take place, not to protect the saints, but to punish those who torture them or want to defile their bodies or relics. A similar occurrence can be found in the life of Saint Swithun, where the person who mockingly pretends to be the saint falls down unconscious. An additional example can be found in the text on Saint Edmund: ac hi swuncon on idel, and earmlice ferdon, swa þæt se halga wer hi wundorlice geband, ælcne swa he stod strutigende mid tole, þæt heora nan ne mihte þæt morð gefremman, ne hi þanon astyrian, ac stodon swa oð mergen. Men þa þæs wundrodon hu þa weargas hangodon, sum on hlæddre, sum leat to gedelfe, and ælc on his weorce wæs fæste gebunden (ÆLS (Edmund) 202) “But they all worked in vain and fared miserably, in that the holy man miraculously paralyzed them, each as he stood struggling with his tool, so that none of them could carry out that crime, nor stir from there, but they stood like this until morning. Then people marveled to see how the criminals were suspended there, one on a ladder, another bent down digging, and each bound fast in his work” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 201).

This text describes how eight thieves break into the church that is built for Saint Edmund, which is also the place where his body rests. When the thieves intend to rob this church, the text narrates how the saint himself, from the afterlife,

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manages to miraculously paralyse them. As a result, the people who behold this are amazed (OE wundrian). Other examples do not contain wonder terminology, even if this would be the expected emotional response: ac his slaga ne moste gesundful lybban, forðam þe him burston ut butu his eagan, and to eorðan feollon mid Albanes heafde, þæt he mihte oncnawan hwæne he acwealde (ÆLS (Alban) 116) “But his killer was not permitted to live happily because his two eyes burst right out of him and fell to the earth at the same time as Alban’s head, so that he could realize whom it was that he had killed” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 183).

This passage immediately follows the excerpt that has been discussed before in this chapter, where Alban causes a spring to flow towards his feet as a token of God’s existence. After this, he is, nevertheless, executed, and, in this passage, it can be seen how, through divine intervention, Alban’s executioner is blinded for his sin. This supernatural occurrence is not explicitly said to cause an emotion of amazement in the framework of the narrative, but it is a representative example of many of the instances in Ælfric’s lives where miraculous phenomena act as some sort of punishment for those who execute or oppress the saints. Throughout these lives another miracle that commonly recurs is the resurrection of deceased people through the saints’ powers. Some of these occurrences do not feature emotion lexis, but others explicitly allude to the experience of wonder, for example in the life of Saint Martin: þa æfter sumum fyrste he gefredde on his mode þæt Godes miht wæs towerd, and he astod þa up anbidigende unforht his bena tiða. þa æfter twam tidum astyrode se deada eallum limum, and lociende wæs (ÆLS (Martin) 217) “Then after some time he sensed in his heart that God’s power was present, and then he stood up, waiting unafraid for the granting of his prayers. Then after two hours the dead man stirred in all his limbs and began to look around” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 99). And þa þe þærute stodon, instopon sona swiðe ablicgede, þæt hi gesawon þa libban þone þe hi ær forleton deadne (ÆLS (Martin) 223) “And then those who stood outside immediately entered, greatly amazed that they saw him living whom they had previously left for dead” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 99).

The fifth section of this life narrates how there is a catechumen who goes to live with Saint Martin because he wants to learn from him. He falls sick soon after this, before he is even baptised. At this, Martin is deeply anguished (OE micclum dreorig, literally ‘very sad’), but he is able to use God’s power, a power that he feels inside of him, to bring this man back from the dead. Martin’s reaction at the catechumen’s resurrection is not detailed in this passage, but the narrator does highlight the emotional reaction that this resurrection triggers on the people

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who had known of this man’s dead and that then see that he is alive. They are said to be amazed, an emotion that is described through OE āblycgan, describing an intense instance of amazement. A similar circumstance can be observed in a group of instances in which supernatural phenomena are not visible evident, but they take the form of premonitions that these saints have. Most of these are related with the saints’ passing: in several excerpts, the saints proclaim that the date of their death has been revealed to them, and, eventually, they come to die on that day. In other cases, this type of precognition concerns the saints’ final resting place or instances in which their remains cannot be located. Consider the following example from the text on the Forty Soldiers: Hwæt þa se bisceop of his bedde aras, and ferde mid his preostum to ðam flode nihtes. þa scinon ða ban swa beorhte swa steorran on þam wætere, and hi ðæs wundrodon. Ealle hi becoman to anre dypan, and næs forloren naht on þam flode, and þæt leoht geswutelode swa hwær swa hi lagon. (ÆLS (Forty Soldiers) 267) “Well then, the bishop rose from his bed and went with his priests to the river at night. Then the bones shone as brightly as stars in the water and they marveled at this. They had all arrived at a deep channel and nothing was lost in the water, and the light revealed wherever they lay” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 321).

After the Forty Soldiers are martyred, the judge, at the instigation of the devil, decided to burn up their bodies so that they would not be venerated. Their bodies are burned, but their bones remain; these they decide to scatter in a broad river. Nevertheless, it is God’s will that these bones are properly shrined and kept inside a church. As a result, a certain bishop from this same city has a dream in which God’s saints appear to him and they reveal where he should be able to find these bones. When he wakes up, he goes to the river with his priests, and they see there the bones of the forty soldiers shining in the water. The emotional reaction to this is also recorded in the excerpt, and what this usage of OE wundrian reveals, as compared, for example, to the preceding passage, is that, while OE āblycgan does not necessarily entail a degree of aesthetic contemplation, OE wundrian does. Those mentioned in the previous paragraphs are the most common miracles that permeate Ælfric’s lives. Beyond their individual significance and emotional relevance in the texts in which they occur, these miracles and the emotions that they trigger evidently connect the observance of God’s commandments and these saints’ goodness with a miraculous reward, which ranges from some type of healing or resurrection to being freed from torture and/​or imprisonment. Nevertheless, there are certain instances of wonder experiences that cannot be categorised in the preceding groups. Consider the following examples:

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þær mihte wundrian se ðe wære gehende hu þa earman bærmenn gebundene to earðan wendon hi abutan, woldon forð gan; ac ða þa hi ne mihton of þære moldan astyrian, þa asetton hi þæt lic, and beseah ælc to oþrum, swiðe wundrigende hwi him swa gelumpe (ÆLS (Martin) 376) “Anyone who was nearby might wonder how the poor pallbearers turned themselves about in a circle, bound to the earth. They wanted to go forward, but when they could not stir from the ground, they put the corpse down and looked at each other, greatly marveling as to why this had happened to them in this way” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 109–​111) Eac swylce oþre menn on Martines naman wundra gefremodon, swa swa se writere sæde, þæt sum hund burce hetelice on anne man, þa het he on Martines naman þone hund adumbian, and he sona suwode, swylce he dumb wære (ÆLS (Martin) 1130) “Likewise, other people performed miracles in Martin’s name, as the author said, that a dog was barking fiercely at a man, when he ordered the dog to be quiet in the name of Martin, and it was instantly silent, as if it were dumb” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 159).

In the first example, Saint Martin sees a group of people carrying a corpse, and he thinks that they are parading a pagan idol. Therefore, he makes the sign of the cross and the pallbearers miraculously remain fixed in their place. In this excerpt, the pallbearers experience an extremely genuine type of wonder: they are puzzled at the fact that they are unable to move, and they do not know what causes their paralysis. Furthermore, the author also makes reference to how other human beings would have experienced the same emotion (OE wundrian) if they had beheld this scene. The second example goes on a more whimsical note: OE wundor here does not describe a grand miracle, it narrates the mundane occurrence of a dog that falls silent when Saint Martin’s name is pronounced. In fact, with regards to the miracles that cannot be easily categorised, almost all of them belong to this text, one of the longest in the corpus, and they range from instances where people miraculously falling asleep to Martin’s discovering that a venerated saint was, in fact, a demon. All things considered, this section has shown how, in this corpus, there is a consistent usage of OE wundor as the main descriptor of the Christian miracle, in some cases without any other emotion implications. The terms that are used alongside this term reveal an emphasis on the manual performance of these miracles; similarly, verbal constructions reveal that sometimes these miracles appear to be performed on their own. Several occurrences in this corpus also discuss the agency of these miracles, and Ælfric’s position is clear: the saints perform these miracles through God’s power, and, because of this, they should be venerated once they have reached their saintly status, that is, after their death. The examples provided in this section also stress the fact that most of these miracles have as an immediate result the conversion to Christianity of those who behold them.

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In some cases, these miracles, which showcase a marked recurrence in terms of themes and motifs, are described with great detail, highlighting the emotional responses that they cause, but, as it has been shown, others do not contain any aesthetic emotion markers or other cues that would be indicative of emotional experience. This section has also discussed the role of the sign or token. The comparison of several of these attestations reveals how there is a difference between the notion of miracle and that of sign at a conceptual level. Ælfric employs the terms that refer to these in different ways, inferring that the token does not necessarily imply a radical transformation in the properties of an object or person, and that these are neutral in valence, since the terms that refer to them are also employed in descriptions of the supernatural phenomena that are caused by the devil. More than anything else, the token implies the materialisation of an abstract reality or circumstance that might have been more difficult to conceptualise without a sensory input. On the one hand, these miracles convey a clear and strong message for the people who read Ælfric’s rendition: that God favours those who believe in them. On the other hand, these lives act as instances of emotional education, shaping and instructing proper emotional responses to the miraculous phenomena that populate these lives as well as Christian history.

6. The lexical domain of awe and fear:  Aesthetic fear in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints The preceding two chapters have explored two different though sometimes related emotional responses that, generally, stem from the contemplation of supernatural and miraculous events. One of the common characteristics between the two emotions analysed in the two last chapters is that these emotional and aesthetic responses are fundamentally positive in valence. These experiences of wonder, the sublime and aesthetic pleasure are depicted as extremely pleasant and positive responses, even if the phenomena that trigger them are not necessarily positive outside of a Christian context. Nevertheless, the purpose of this chapter is to analyse a different aesthetic response, which is not always positive in valence. Chapter one offers an overview of the most relevant and recent research on the field of aesthetic emotions. In this chapter, the work by Keltner and Haidt (2003) on the emotion of awe has been discussed. The appraisal model that Keltner and Haidt (2003) provide for this emotion will be useful to further contextualise the attestations of the lexical domain of awe and fear and other instances of these emotions in this corpus. Summing up, Keltner and Haidt (2003) point out two compulsory (or central) features in the experience of awe, a perception of vastness, and a need for accommodation of the mental structures of the subject. Following this model, it could be assumed that the prototypical emotion of awe is a relatively positive response and that its negative characteristics arise from additional appraisals that will not always be present in all awe episodes. In the model that Keltner and Haidt (2003) propose, some of these peripheral or flavouring features include an appraisal of threat, which may “cause an experience of awe to be flavoured by feelings of fear” and the appraisal of beauty, which is responsible for “awe-​related experiences that are flavoured with aesthetic pleasure” (Keltner and Haidt, 2003: 304). With these considerations in mind, the purpose of this chapter is to analyse selected attestations of terms for awe and fear that are found in contexts where they refer either to an instance of awe or where they describe episodes of aesthetic fear across the different domains of evaluation that are found in Ælfric’s lives. These domains of evaluation will be described and inspected in the following subsections, and they range from aesthetic fear triggered by apparitions to moral evaluations or pagan people expressing a different sort of fear when beholding miracles.

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6.1. Utilitarian fear and awe as real-​life emotional responses Before moving on to discussing the more aesthetically oriented dimension of the emotion of fear and instances of awe in Ælfric’s lives, the purpose of this section is to first look into the usage of these lexical domains in order to describe more utilitarian responses in this corpus. The aim of this brief section is to examine three different domains in which terms for fear/​awe are employed in order to convey a real-​life threat to the safety of the individuals who appraise them. These emotions are consistently experienced across the following three domains: natural phenomena, the sight of demons and devils, and instances of animal fear. There are a few instances in these lives where the terms for fear and awe that will be discussed in aesthetic emotion contexts in the next subsections are used with their prototypical sense of ‘fear.’ In selected passages, these emotional responses are unequivocally utilitarian, and they describe the fear that is experienced by certain animals who behold the saints and some of the miracles that they perform. For example: þa scyddon þa mulas þe þæt cræt tugon ðurh his tocyme afyrhte, and tomengdon þa getogu, þæt hi teon ne mihton (ÆLS (Martin) 971) “Then the mules that were pulling the chariot took fright, terrified by his approach, and tangled the reins so that they could not pull” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 149).

In this passage, Saint Martin is travelling and there is a company of soldiers who do not recognise who he is. Nevertheless, the animals seem to perceive something that the soldiers do not, and this causes the mules to be afraid at Martin when he approaches. In this life, there is one more instance in which Martin interacts with animals. In section 34 of this text, around line 1043, the narrator recounts how one day Martin was travelling with his companions and how they see a cow that is unusually agitated. Martin understands straight-​away that this cow is possessed by a demon, and this is evidenced in its eyes, which are described as egeslicum eagum ‘terryifing eyes.’ Even though this instance of OE egeslīc does not directly refer to the emotions that the animal experiences, the usage of this Old English adjective also highlights a utilitarian response of fear. The last instance of animal fear that can be found in this corpus belongs to the text on Saint Chrysanthus: þa forhtode seo leo for þam fyre þearle (ÆLS (Chrysanthus) 297) “Then the lion became absolutely terrified of the fire” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 257).

This passage describes how the lion reacts when it sees the fire in which both Daria and the lion are to be burned alive. The narrator here interprets the

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emotional response on the part of the lion and categorises it as fear through OE forhtian, projecting a natural, logical human reaction based on an appraisal of danger onto the animal. A few lines after this, the narrator also records the interaction between Daria and the animal, in which she tells the lion to exit the fire safely and without anxiety, as it will not harm it. These emotions are rendered here through OE afryhtan and orsorg ‘free from anxiety, secure.’ In other instances, this emotion lexis does not refer to the human experience of these emotions. Instead, they make emphasis on the fact that these saints remain (or should remain) unafraid in the face of greatness or threat. For example: þa cwæð se Hælend to ðam halgan mædene, Eala ðu Eugenia, ne beo þu afyrht. Ic eom þin hælend, þe þu healice wurðost, and mid eallum mode and mægne lufast (ÆLS (Eugenia) 406) “Then the savior said to the holy virgin: ‘Eugenia, do not be afraid. I am your savior, whom you honor highly and love with all your heart and might.’” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 71).

In this passage, when Jesus appears to Saint Eugenia, it is him who tells her not to be afraid, which might imply the existence of an initial fearful response on the part of the saint. Similar remarks are found in Saint Martin’s life, where the saint is witness to several apparitions of demons that disguise themselves as Thor, Odin and Frigg (figures that are described in Old English, but also pointing out who their Roman equivalents are, Jove, Mercury and Venus). At seeing these apparitions, Martin remains unforht ‘unafraid,’ which might denote a lack of fear, but also the fact that Martin does not experience an aesthetic emotion that would reveal some sort of reverence or admiration. With regards to the terms that are more specific to the lexical domain of awe, there is one term that is particularly interesting because it can also be found in passages where it describes unpleasant personal experience. This passage has already been discussed in the first section of chapter four, and it concerns how the jail in which Saint Julian is incarcerated alongside Celsus, Martianus’ son. The prison is said to have a terrible smell, and the author here phrases it as egeslice stuncon ‘stank terribly’ in order to describe the negative aesthetic response that this smell triggers. Nevertheless, it should be mentioned that this is the only occurrence in the corpus in which smells are evaluated through lexis for fear or awe, and, therefore, a recurrent trend cannot be established. One more natural domain where fear and awe are the result of relatively non-​religious appraisals is related to the contemplation of natural phenomena. For example, the life of Saint Agatha features an eruption of Mount Etna, in Sicily, and the emotions that it elicits:

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þa getimode hit ymbe twelfmonað æfter Agathes þrowunge, and Ethna up ableow swyðe egeslice ontendnysse, and arn be þam munte on flodes gelicnysse, and formulton þa stanas, and seo eorðe forbarn, oð þæt hit to þære byrig becom. þa urnon þa hæðenan to þære halgan byrgene, and ahofen þone oferbrædels of þære halgan byrgene togeanes þam fyre, þe hi afærde forðearle (ÆLS (Agatha) 221)45

The reaction to this volcanic eruption is detailed in the phrase egeslice ontendnysse ‘terrifying eruption,’ which makes reference to the fear that the fire causes in the people who behold it. This reaction is entirely based on the fact that the volcano poses and immediate and direct threat to the safety of those who are in its vicinity. The last sentences in the passage contain a very clear action tendency that results from these people’s experience of fear: it causes them to go to Saint Agatha’s tomb and retrieve her veil, which they raise against the fire hoping that it would stop the eruption. The emotion of fear here alters the belief system of these people, who are otherwise pagan (OE hæðenan ‘heathens’). Finally, the last phrase in the excerpt highlights again the emotion that the volcano triggers in these people: OE afǣran describes how the fire scares and frightens them; OE fōrþearle ‘very much, severely’ emphasises the intensity of this emotion. Other than this reaction to fire, another life features a similar emotional response, but, in this case, triggered by extreme cold: Hit begann þa on æfnunge egeslice freosan, þæt þæt is befencg þa foresædan martyras, swa þæt heora flæsc for ðam forste tobærst (ÆLS (Forty Soldiers) 153) “Then in the evening it began to freeze dreadfully in such a way that the ice bound those martyrs about whom we have spoken, so that their flesh broke open on account of the extreme cold” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 313).

This passage shows how another natural event is also cause of similarly named emotions; it describes the temperature in the lake when the forty soldiers are placed in it to be tortured, before this ice melts through divine intervention and it turns into a pleasant bath. The cold that bursts asunder the skin of these men is described as terrible and dreadful (OE egeslīce), an evaluation that is, more than anything else, utilitarian.

45 “In the same province in the land of Sicily there is a burning mountain, that people call Etna, ignited by sulfur, that is sulfur in English. This mountain is always burning, as many others do. Then it happened about a year after Agatha’s passion, that Etna blew out a very terrifying fire, and it flowed along the mountain like a flood and melted away the stones, and the earth was completely burned up, until it came to the city. Then the heathens ran to the saint’s tomb and lifted up the veil from the saint’s tomb against the fire, which frightened them very much” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 265).

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Finally, another area that is recurrently described with the terms from this lexical domain in Ælfric’s lives is that of illness. Descriptions of different diseases populate these texts, but there one that is commonly found in co-​occurrence with the terms from these domains. Many texts feature mentions and descriptions of the characteristic of leprosy before the arrival of the saints who heal those who are afflicted by it. While the emotions that are triggered by these instances of miraculous healing are described through wonder terminology, the responses that the illness on its own triggered are different: Hwæt ða se deofol anes deges ealle his æhta acwealde, and his seofon suna and ðreo dohtra, and hine sylfne eac siððan mid egeslicre untrumnysse geswencte (ÆLS (Memory of Saints) 2.10) “Well then, the devil one day killed all that he possessed, together with his seven sons and three daughters, and afterwards afflicted him with a horrible illness” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 93).

This text, which is subtitled as a sermon that can be delivered on any occasion, contains a discussion on different figures in Christian history. This passage talks about Job, whose goodness is highlighted several lines before this passage. The devil, nevertheless, asks God whether he would be willing to test his goodness to see if, in difficult times, he would turn away from him. Therefore, the devil kills his family and smites him with an illness that is described as OE egeslīce. Because there is no further detail in this life, it is not clear whether this term evaluates how horrible this illness is from Job’s point of view, or whether it refers to the visible symptoms of the disease. According to Walvoord and Zuck (1983: 721), this disease is characterized by having “painful sores over all his body,” which implies that OE egeslīce could refer to both. This illness would have been comparable to that of leprosy, which is described similarly in this collection, for example, as atelice hreoflig ‘horrible leprosy’ in ÆLS (Apollinaris) 144 or egeslican hreoflian ‘horrible leppers’ in ÆLS (Thomas) 255. In both these examples, the terms OE atol and egeslīc refer, not to the symptoms that this disease causes in those who suffer it, but to how people perceive them from outside, partially motivated by the moral connotations that were associated to leprosy. Outside the natural domain, this corpus features a large number of attestations in which terms for fear and awe are employed in descriptions and narrations of demonic appearances. The preceding text, the sermon on the Memory of the Saints, also contains an attestation of OE atol referring to a negative aesthetic evaluation: Seo eahteoðe leahter is superbia gehaten, þæt is on ænglisc modignyss gecweden, seo is ord and ende ælcere synne. Seo geworhte englas to atelicum deoflum, and ðone man macað

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eac gif he modigað to swyðe þæs deofles geferan ðe feol ær ðurh hi (ÆLS (Memory of Saints) 2.306) “The eighth vice is named pride, which is called pride in English. It is the beginning and end of every sin. It changed angels into horrible devils and will also make man, if he is too proud, into the companion of the devil, who formerly fell because of it” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 109).

This excerpt can be found in the framework of a larger discussion of the eight capital sins. The episode that it narrates is the fall of angels and how their appearance changes from angels into devils, whose appearance triggers emotions of aversion, disgust and terror (OE atol ‘horrible, hideous, loathsome’). Another instance where a more specific instance of fear that is triggered by the sight of demons can be found in the life of Saint Basil: ða cwæð se dædbeta, þa deoflu cumað to me, and me swiðe geegsiað, and eac swylce torfiað, and habbað him on hande min agen handgewryt, cweðað þæt ic come to him and na hi to me (ÆLS (Basil) 423). “Then the penitent said: “The devils are coming to me and are terrifying me greatly and stoning me too and they have in their hands the agreement signed by my own hand: they are saying that: I came to them and not they to me” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 105).

This life narrates how a man makes a deal with the devil so that he can be with the woman he is attracted to. When he starts to wish to withdraw from his deal, devils torment him. His emotional reaction to these devils is described through OE geegsian, which highlights how the devils actively intend to trigger these emotions on the penitent, an emotion whose intensity is stressed by the adverb OE swīðe. Clearly, more than an aesthetic response, this emotion is concerned with the danger that the man in this life experiences. After Basil blesses him, these demonic apparitions start to decrease in intensity: Se cniht cwæð to ðam halgan were, ic gehyra þa deoflu feorran, and hyra egslican þiwracan, ac ic hi ne geseo (ÆLS (Basil) 431) “I hear the devils and their terrifying threats far off, but I do not see them” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 105).

The emotion that is described in this passage is different from the emotion from the preceding passage, even if it is rendered by the same lexeme:  on the one hand, this emotion is only triggered via an aural stimulus input, not by a visual one; on the other hand, the emotional response is less strong, insofar as it is not intensified by any other terms, as is the case of the preceding passage. The corpus features another instance in which the sound that devils make is cause for fear in those who hear it. Consider the following passage, which narrates what takes

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place after Saint Maur vanishes the devil and the demons that surround them as they try to drive him away from church: Hwæt ða se sceocca sona fordwan of his gesihðe mid swiðlicum reame, swa þæt ða munecas micclum afyrhte wurdon awrehte ðurh his wodlican stemne, and eodon to uhtsange, ær timan swa þeah (ÆLS (Maur) 315) “Well then, the devil immediately vanished from his sight with an enormous outcry, so that the monks, greatly frightened, were awoken by his furious noise and went to nocturns, although before the proper time” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 211).

This passage contains two different terms that describe, firstly, the emotion that is perceived in the cry of these demons, and secondly, the emotions that it causes on the monks who hear it. The emotion in their cries is said to be angry (OE wōdlic ‘mad’ but also ‘furious, frantic’), and, in turn, this outcry elicits a fearful response on the part of the monks. This corpus also features another instance in which some of the characters experience first-​hand the horrors of Hell. In this passage from the life of Saint Julian and Saint Basilissa, a man who is brought back from the dead narrates what he sees in the afterlife: þa cwæþ se geeadcucoda, me coman to silhearwan atelices hiwes swa heage swa entes, mid byrnendum eagum and egeslicum toðum. Heora earmes wæron swylce ormæte beames, heora clawa scearpe, and hi sylfa unmildheorta. þas þyllice me tugon to þære sweartan helle. ða mid þam þe Iulianus his drihten gebæd þæt he me eft arærde, þa unrotsodon helware and of godes þrymsetle wearð þus geclypod, Beo se man ongean gelæd for minum leofan Iuliane, nelle ic hine geunrotian on ænigum þincge. þa coman twegen englas and me of ðam deoflum genamon and me gebrohtan to life, þæt ic nu on God gelyfe, æfter minum deaðe, þone þe ic ær wiðsoc (ÆLS (Julian and Basilissa) 285)46

46 “Then the man brought back to life said: ‘Ethiopians came to me, of horrible appearance, as tall as giants, with burning eyes and terrifying teeth. Their arms were like enormous beams, their claws sharp, and they themselves merciless. Beings of this sort were dragging me to the dark hell. Then when Julian entreated his Lord to raise me up again, the inhabitants of hell grieved, and from God’s throne it was announced thus: ‘Let that man be brought back for the sake of my beloved Julian. I do not wish to grieve him in any way.’ Then two angels came and took me from the devils and brought me to life, so that I now believe in God after my death, whom I had denied earlier.’” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 143–​145).

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In Hell, this man sees what he describes as Ethiopians with a horrible appearance.47 The expression atelices hiwes makes it clear that the appraisal here is carried out exclusively on a sensory basis (OE hīw being a term that refers to shape, but also to beauty or lack thereof). Their height is presented as part of what makes them monstrous. Furthermore, discussing their specific visual characteristics, the dead man here refers to the teeth in these creatures, which are described through OE egeslīc. In this case, there is a double evaluation: on the one hand, these teeth are appraised with regards to the overall aesthetic impression that these cause and in the context of the overall ugliness and monstrosity of these creatures; on the other hand, they imply an appraisal of threat and danger in the pain that these would cause were they to bite into this man. The man continues his description of what he sees and experiences in Hell, the claws, and arms of these beings and how unpitying they are, as well as how different beings drag him through Hell. Nevertheless, the man also narrates how he hears Julian asking God to resurrect him, and how this hellish experience causes a spiritual transformation in him after which he is reborn as a believer. Furthermore, this text also narrates how Martianus, who is not a believer either, reacts to this narration: þa wearð Martianus mycclum gedrefed (ÆLS (Julian and Basilissa) 299) ‘Then Martianus became greatly disturbed.’ The term OE gedrēfed is remarkable because, prototypically, it refers to physical movement: “1.a.i. indicating movement throughout” (DOE, s.v. gedrēfed, vb., 1.a.i.). In this passage, however it refers to emotional experience:  “1.b. of mental states:  troubled, vexed, disquieted” (DOE, s.v. gedrēfed, vb., 1.b.). Ultimately, this evidences a conceptualisation of emotional experience as movement (a metaphor that is also present in Latin commotus, motus indicating motion), or, as pointed out in other instances, as a force. All in all, this brief section has examined the prototypical utilitarian response that is linked to the terms in the lexical domain of fear. The emotional experiences that have been analysed in this section result, essentially, from an appraisal of threat or danger to the moral or physical well-​being of the subject. As the examples on animal fear have emphasised, most of these responses are oriented towards the utilitarian end of the emotion spectrum, and most of them as well do not have any degree of aesthetic evaluation. Essentially, this evidences the fact fear is a suitable response in certain contexts, particularly as far

47 According to Clayton and Mullins (2019a: 373), “[t]he association of Ethiopians and devils is widespread from the church fathers onward.” For more on this, see Strickland (2005).

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as natural disasters and demonic appearances are concerned. Other passages, which highlight the fact that certain saints do not experience fear at the sight of God or other supernatural occurrences, imply that proper Christians with a clean conscience should not be afraid at the sight of God, thereby providing further evidence of inherent emotional education in these texts. In other cases, the examples analysed in this section do have a significant aesthetic dimension, but it is an eminently negative one. In this sense, there is a poor attestation of terms for fear and awe rendering entirely aesthetic responses. For instance, in the case of demonic appearances, the appraisal of threat is the predominant one, and it overrides the complete emotion episode, causing the resulting emotion to be a mixture of fear and other negative aesthetic emotions like aesthetic horror, the experience of ugliness or disgust, in which the stimulus might be of a visual, olfactory, or aural nature.

6.2. Awe and the God-​fearing Christian As it has been mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, the emotion of awe, as it is described in aesthetic emotion literature, is portrayed as a prototypically positive emotion. As such, it would be expected that a large number of attestations of terms for awe in Ælfric’s hagiography would be used in contexts where the saints and other Christians would express their reverence and amazement at the contemplation of God, other divine and heavenly figures, and at the phenomena for which they are responsible. And, indeed, while this is certainly the case, the number of attestations of terms for awe in positive contexts is relatively small in comparison with the number of times in which these terms are used with a more negative sense. In some of these attestations, terms for awe are found in co-​ocurrence with God’s name, emphasising how a proper Christian should hold a certain degree of reverence or fear for God. Considering the following two instances: Hi sædon þæt Cornelius hi asende to him. He is hundredes ealdor, and hæfð Godes ege, swyðe rihtwys wer, þæt wat eall þeos scyr. (ÆLS (Peter’s Chair) 118) “They said that Cornelius had sent them to him: ‘He is a centurion and is God-​fearing, a very just man; all this province knows that’” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 289). Heo þeah ða on Godes ege and God hi eft gehælde, swa þæt heo sylf mihte manega oðre gehælen, þurh halige gebedu on ðæs Hælendes naman (ÆLS (Peter’s Chair) 242) “Then she advanced spiritually in the fear of God, and God healed her again, so that she herself could heal many others by means of holy prayers in the name of the savior” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 297).

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In the text on Peter’s Chair, the author uses the phrase Godes ege twice to describe two different people who are righteous and morally pure Christians. In the first example, the three men that are sent by Cornelius to find Peter are describing Cornelius’ personality, and in order to further define his character, they make emphasis on the fact that he is not only just, but he is also a God-​fearing Christian. Similar claims can be found in this text with regards to Petronila, Peter’s daughter. Petronila is unable to walk and lies paralysed in bed. When Peter heals her, this causes a spiritual transformation in her, and after this she becomes a proper God-​fearing Christian as well. Because at those stages in the narrative these two people are already believers, there is no appraisal of threat in their experience of the deity; instead, what they feel for him is an awe that is triggered by an inability to comprehend what God is at a deeper level, which implies a perception of something larger than the self. In other passages, it is the characters themselves who express their reverence and awe towards God. For example, in the following passage from the life of Saint Agnes: ac het þa ontendan for þam micclum teonan swyðe micel fyr, and hi tomiddes besceofan. Hit wearð þa swa gedon, swa se wælhreowa het, ac se lig hine todælde on twegen dælas sona, and forswælde þa ðe þa ceaste macedon. And Agnes seo eadige stod on ælemiddan gesund, astræhtum handum þus hi gebiddende, Eala ðu ælmihtiga God, ana to gebiddene, ondrædendlic scyppend, soþlice to wurðigenne, mines drihtnes fæder, ðe ic bletsige, forðan þe Ic ætwand þurh þinne wynsuman sunu, þæra arleasra þeowracan, and eac þæs deofles fylðe (ÆLS (Agnes) 216)48

Before this passage, the judge Symphronius had given Saint Agnes two choices, either to worship the goddess Vesta or to be sexually defiled. Agnes refuses to do so, and urges Symphronius to refrain from saying these things, and she claims that his power is so great that he will not let anything adverse happen to her. Then, the judge orders her to be taken to a brothel, where two miracles take place: her body is covered by long strands of hair and the angel descends from

48 “he then ordered that a very large fire be kindled and that she be shoved into the middle. Then what the cruel man had ordered was done, but the flame divided itself immediately into two parts and swallowed up those who caused the dissension. And the blessed Agnes stood unharmed right in the middle, with her hands outstretched, praying thus: “You almighty God, you alone are: to be adored, awe-​inspiring creator, you alone are to be truly worshiped, Father of my Lord, I call you holy, because by means of your sweet Son I escaped the threats of the impious ones and also the devil’s filth” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 233–​235).

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heaven to intervene, two scenes that have already been analysed in this study. Later on, following Symphronius’ son death, Symphronius decides to execute Saint Agnes and orders her to be burned alive. Miraculously, the fire splits into two and burns alive those who had been in favour of Agnes’ execution. When she exits the fire and realises that she is unharmed, she makes a series of exclamations that evidence the intense aesthetic emotions that Saint Agnes feels. In this passage, the notion of fear/​awe is included through the usage of OE ondrǣdenlīc, which according to BWT is an adjective that denotes something that is “to be feared” (BWT, s.v. ondrǣdenlīc, adj., I.). The DOE also corroborates this reading, defining OE drǣdan as either “to dread, fear” or, more specifically, “to fear the Lord” (DOE, s.v. drǣdan, vb., 1. and 1.a.). Nevertheless, the excerpt above highlights that there is an aesthetic quality to this fear: on the one hand, because the term OE ondrǣdenlīc occurs in a context in which it expresses Agnes’ emotional reaction at the power of the God that saves her from the fire; on the other hand, because it co-​occurs alongside fundamentally positive terms, like OE wurþigean, indexing adoration, another aesthetic emotion according to Fingerhut and Prinz (2020). A similar emotion episode can be found in the life of the Forty Soldiers, also discussed in the preceding two chapters attending to different aspects. In this text, Agricola, the cruel judge of the city of Sebastea, commands all soldiers to worship pagan gods. The aforementioned forty soldiers, who were Christians, refuse to do so, and are incarcerated as a result. In prison, Agricola offers them their freedom again, provided they accept to pay tribute to these pagan Gods. They pray so that God takes away the temptations to worship the pagan idols, and, then, Jesus appears in the prison, uttering the following words: þa æteowde se Hælend hine sylfne his halgum, and hi þus getrymde to þam toweardan gewinne, God is eower anginn and eower inngehyd ac se bið gehealden seþe oð ende þurhwunað (ÆLS (Forty Soldiers) 45) “Then the savior appeared to his saints and strengthened them for the coming conflict thus: ‘Your beginning and your purpose are good, but he who perseveres until the end shall be saved.’” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 305–​307)

These words of encouragement and Jesus’ apparition have a very particular emotional effect on the soldiers: Ealle hi gehyrdon þæs Hælendes word and wurdon afyrhte, and forði þurhwunodon buton slæpe oð dæg, heora Drihten mærsigende (ÆLS (Forty Soldiers) 49) “They all heard the savior’s words and were afraid, and therefore they persevered without sleep until daylight, glorifying their Lord” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 307).

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The words that are uttered by Jesus do not contain anything that would entail an appraisal of threat on the part of the soldiers. This occurrence of OE afyrhtan could be understood as as a reference to the fear that is triggered in the soldiers when Jesus tells them that there will be an upcoming conflict that they are expected to withstand. Nevertheless, this term could also be taken to refer to an aesthetic sort of fear that is simply triggered by the sight of Jesus, and the vastness and need for accommodation that this vision would have entailed. This is further supported by the DOE, which defines the frequently attested noun OE fryhtu as “fear, dread” but also “awe” (DOE, s.v., fryhty, n., 1.). As a result, this emotion episode can be categorised as one of the very few instances in which the emotion of awe is positive in valence in this textual corpus. The discovery of the True Cross and the posterior retrieval of its pieces have already been discussed throughout this monograph. There is one further instance that concerns Heraclius and the scene in which he goes back to Jerusalem to place the piece of the cross where it was intended to be, after he manages to seize it from Chosroe’s son: Hi comon þa æt nextan caflice ridende to þære foresædan byrig, and sæt se casere on kynelicum horse, swa him gecwemast wæs; ac þa þa he inn wolde, þa wearþ þæt geat belocen, swa þæt þa stanas feollon færlice togædere, and wearþ geworht to anum wealle swa. Hi wurdon þa afyrhte, for þam færlican tacne, and beheoldon sarige sona to heofonum, and gesawon Drihtnes rode deorwurðlice þær scinan, and Godes engel hi bær bufan þam geate and cwæð, þa þa se heofonlica cyning Crist sylf inferde þurh þis ylce get to his agenre þrowunge, næs he mid purpuran gescryd, ne mid cynehelme geglenged, ne he on steda ne rad, þurh þis stænene geat, ac on assan hricge he rad eadmodlice mannum to bysne, þæt hi modignysse onscunion; and æfter ðysum wordum gewende se engel up (ÆLS (Exalt of Cross) 84)49

49 “Riding quickly, they came at last to the city of which we spoke before, and the emperor sat on a regal horse, as was most pleasing to him. But when he wished to enter the city, the gate was locked, and suddenly the stones collapsed together and in this way were forged into a single wall. They were then afraid because of this sudden sign, and they sorrowfully looked immediately up to heaven and saw the Lord’s cross shining exquisitely there, and an angel of God carried it over the gate and said: ‘When the heavenly king, Christ himself, entered through this same gate to his own passion, he was not clothed in purple, nor adorned with a royal crown, nor did he ride on a horse through this stone gate, but he rode meekly on the back of a donkey as an example to people that they should shun pride.’ And after these words, the angel ascended to heaven” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 31).

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This passage describes how Heraclius is riding on top of his horse in a kingly manner. Miraculously, the door that leads to Jerusalem is locked and its stones close the entryway. This supernatural occurrence is described with two terms that are commonly found in episodes of wonder, OE tācn, whose semantics and symbolism have been discussed in the preceding chapter, and OE fǣrlīce. This last term is found in many different attestations of terms for wonder and awe, emphasising the surprisingly immediate character of these miraculous phenomena, a suddenness that contributes to the intensity of the emotions that are triggered. In this example, the fact that the stones suddenly collapse is not seen as a miracle or as a wonder, but rather as a sign for Heraclius, a sign that causes him to experience fear as well as sorrow (OE sārig). Indeed, the significance of this token is further on explained by the angel that appears in the scene: Heraclius should follow Jesus’ example and be humbler as he enters Jerusalem with the relic of his cross. In this scene, Heraclius is aware of the fact that he has acted improperly and, therefore, there is an appraisal of threat (stemming from a fear of divine punishment) that causes the emotions that are described here to have a more negative dimension. The contrast between this example and the preceding one evidences how the background of the person who experiences these emotions can be responsible for a change in valence. In fact, after this, Heraclius realises that he has to remove his regal purple and his riches and, when he humbles himself, the door opens, and the text narrates an instance of positive aesthetic experience. The life of Saint Thomas also contains several instances of attestations of terms for fear that are notably ambiguous as to what emotion they represent and what their valence is. After Migdonia beholds Thomas performing miracles she starts to believe ever more fervently in God and does not want to sleep in the same bed as her husband any longer. Because of this, Migdonia’s husband convinces the king to imprison Thomas. The following scene narrates how Migdonia reacts when she finds out about this: Migdonia þa com to þam cwearterne dreorig, and feoll to his fotum mid fyrhte cweðende, Ic bidde þe, leof, þæs lifigendan Godes apostol, þæt þu for me ne underfo swa fullicne teonan, and Godes yrre becume for þam intingan ofer me (ÆLS (Thomas) 277) “Then Migdonia came to the prison full of sorrow and fell at his feet, saying fearfully: ‘I beg you, master, apostle of the living God, that you do not submit to such a disgraceful injury for my sake, and God’s anger fall upon me on that account.’” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 283).

When she realises that Thomas might be tortured and killed because of her, she has an intense emotional reaction that is narrated in this passage with three

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different emotives. The narrator mentions two different emotion terms, OE drēorig, which indexes many different emotional responses, ranging from ‘anguish’ or ‘suffering’ to ‘agitation,’ and OE fryhtu, which, as it has been mentioned above, could be taken to refer to both ‘fear’ and ‘awe.’ This episode also features an action tendency that is common in the experience of wonder, and also in awe episodes, people falling to their knees in front of somebody else. In this passage, it can be seen how Migdonia is truly afraid at the perspective of Thomas being martyred because of her, but there is also an implicit appraisal of virtue. To this, Thomas replies that he truly is suffering of his own volition (highlighting further the presence of an appraisal of virtue) and tells Migdonia to go back home. That night, it is Thomas who visits Migdonia, and he tells her that he will, indeed, be martyred and that he will come to her afterwards. Migdonia’s emotional reaction to these words is also recorded in the text as heo andwyrde mid fryhte (ÆLS (Thomas) 292) ‘she replied with fear.’ Midgonia is a firm believer, and Thomas is also secure in his religious convictions: all of this cancels any potential appraisal of threat, as is the case in many of the excerpts in the preceding chapter that narrate situations that are dangerous or threatening to the safety and well-​being of these saints. Furthermore, the fact that Thomas is willing to be martyred should cause Migdonia to perceive him as far more virtuous. What this clarifies is that, even if the excerpts under scrutiny employ terms from the lexical domain of fear, there is an important degree of aesthetic and moral evaluation in these instances, and so the emotion of fear that is mentioned here cannot be considered as entirely utilitarian. More commonly, the emotion of awe can be identified in Ælfric’s lives in contexts where it is the result of an apparition. In this corpus, the responses to the apparition of divine figures and the sight of tokens and miracles vary wildly in valence. Consider the following excerpt from the life of Saint Basil: þa wearð se bisceop mycclum ablicged, and genam þæt husel þe se hælend gebletsode, tobræc on þreo and onbyrgede anes dæles. þone oðerne dæl he dyde gehealden mid him to bebyrgenne æfter his forðsiðe. þone ðryddan dæl he dyde onsundor, and het him smiðian on smætum golde anre culfran anlicnysse, and þa upaheng bufan þam altare and þær on gedyde þone ðryddan dæl þæs deorwurðan husles; and seo culfra siþþan simle hi astyrede æt Basilies messan þriwa mid þam husle. Eubolus se uðwyta and þa yldostan preostas stoden æt þæra dura, stariende on þæt leoht, and beheolden þa apostolas þe mid þam hælende coman mid wuldre gefrætewode, and hi wurdon afyrhte. Hi gehyrdon þa stemne þæs halgan sanges, and Basilium gesawon binnan æt þæm weofode, and feollan to his

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fotum mid fyrhte fornumene, þa ða he uteode, and him eall sædon hwæt hi þær gesawon. Se bisceop þæs ðancode mid blyðum mode, and þam folce sæde siððan larspell (ÆLS (Basil) 120)50

After he becomes bishop, Basil has a strong desire to carry out the Eucharist according to what is described as a true rite (OE soðfaste þenunge), that is, he wishes to learn how to offer the Holy Communion from Jesus himself. The text narrates how one night Jesus appears to him, stands at the altar, and teaches him how to consecrate the host. The passage above describes different emotional responses to the miraculous events that take place around this apparition. To begin with, after Basil witnesses this apparition and hears the words of Jesus, his emotional state is described through OE āblycgan, a term that renders a sort of amazement that describes a need for adaptation of the subject’s mental structures. Ebolus and the rest of the priests also behold this apparition, and we learn that it was not just Jesus that appeared, but the rest of the apostles as well in an aesthetic experience that not only involved the sense of sight (that of Jesus, the apostles and the light that surrounds them), but also an aural stimulus input (a holy song that accompanies them). In the last lines of this passage, it can be seen how the emotional reaction of these priests is different from that of Basil. While Basil is said to be amazed (OE āblycgan), the priests experience a more intense emotion that is described through fear terminology (OE afryhtan and fryhtu). This passage also features the same action tendency resulting from amazement that has been pointed out before, people falling to somebody’s feet. The phrase and feollan to his fotum mid fyrhte fornumene is remarkable in one more sense: the verb OE forniman ‘to seize, take hold of ’ evidences a conceptualization of awe as a force, a metaphor that has been observed before in this corpus. The emotion that these priests experience is so strong that it is conceptualised as a force that literally

50 “Then the bishop was greatly amazed and took the host that the savior had blessed, broke it in three.and partook of one part. He had the second part kept to be buried with him after his death. He set the third part aside and ordered an image of a dove to be fashioned for him from pure gold, and then he hung it up above the altar, and he placed in it the third part of the precious host. And afterward the dove always stirred herself three times at the Eucharist when Basil celebrated Mass. Eubolus the philosopher and the most senior priests stood at the door, staring at the light, and saw the apostles who had come with the savior adorned with glory, and they were afraid. They heard the sound of the holy song and saw Basil inside at the altar and, seized by fear, they fell at his feet when he came out, and they told him all that they had seen there. The bishop gave thanks for that with a joyful heart and afterward preached a sermon to the people” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 85).

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brings these men to their knees. Additionally, this excerpt features another action tendency that is common to other aesthetic emotions: aesthetic experience in general frequently results in its expression, an idea that was pointed out by Bosanquet (1894:  158), who claimed that “beauty reduces itself to expressiveness.” In this sense, one of the traits of these instances of amazement is that they are emotions that are characterised by how frequently the people who feel them choose to express and discuss them. The life of Saint Basil features an additional instance in which visions trigger instances of aesthetic fear, which is rendered as well by OE afryhtan: þa com Mercurius to ðære mæran cwene mid his gewæpnunge, and wearð sona asend fram Cristes meder to þæs caseres slæge. ða wearð Basilius þearle afyrht, and eode mid Eubole eft to ðære byrig, and siþþan to ðan sancte þe on ðæra cyrcean læg, Mercurius se martyr, mid mycclum wurðmynte, and sohte his wæpnu, ac he ne geseah hi na hwær (ÆLS (Basil) 250) “Then Mercurius came to the glorious queen with his arms, and he was immediately sent by Christ’s mother to kill the emperor. Then Basil became sorely afraid and went back to the city with Eubolus and then to the saint who lay in the church with great honor, Mercurius the martyr, and looked for his weapons, but he saw them nowhere” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 93).

In this passage, Basil is praying at temple that is devoted to Saint Mary. He, already a bishop, alongside other priests, are praying so that they are shown a way to deal with emperor Julian, who has just threatened with destroying their city. While they are praying, Basil has a vision in which Saint Mary comes from heaven with a host of angels and saints, and she tells Basil to call on Mercurius to kill said emperor. Basil’s reaction is notably different to how he reacts to the sight of Jesus in the excerpts that have been discussed in preceding pages. In this case, the vision, and its contents, which he evaluates as a whole, trigger a more negative response on his part, which borders between awe and fear, a fear that is triggered by the danger that is implicit in the task that Mercurius is charged with. One more instance clarifies the relationship between wonder and awe as emotions that are experienced by religious people, priests, and monks. The following passage from the text on Saint Oswald contains attestations of both terms for wonder and for fear: His broðor dohtor eft siððan on Myrcan wearð cwen, and geaxode his ban and gebrohte hi to Lindesige to Bardanige mynstre, þe heo micclum lufode. Ac þa mynstermenn noldon for menniscum gedwylde þone sanct underfon, ac man sloh an geteld ofer þa halgan ban binnan þære licreste. Hwæt þa God geswutelode þæt he halig sanct wæs, swa þæt heofonlic leoht ofer þæt geteld astreht stod up to heofonum swilce healic sunnbeam ofer ealle ða niht, and þa leoda beheoldon geond ealle þa scire swiðe wundrigende. þa wurdon þa

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mynstermen micclum afyrhte, and bædon þæs on mergen þæt hi moston þone sanct mid arwurðnysse underfon, þone þe hi ær forsocon. þa ðwoh man þa halgan ban and bær into þære cyrcan arwurðlice on scrine, and gelogodon hi upp; and þær wurdon gehælede þurh his halgan geearnunge fela mettrume menn fram mislicum coþum (ÆLS (Oswald)176)51

This passage describes how Saint Oswald’s descendants, more specifically, Oswig’s daughter, takes interest in his remains. After she becomes queen, she tracks down Oswald’s bones and brings them to Bardney Abbey. Nevertheless, the monks in this abbey refuse to accept these bones because Oswald had once conquered them, and they are locked outside in a tent. After this, a miracle takes place, and a heavenly light extends over the land, symbolising the fact that Oswald was indeed a true saint and that he was worthy of higher honours in this abbey. The excerpt above narrates two different emotional responses to this miracle. On the one hand, the people who live nearby and who are not fully aware of the symbolism and significance of this miracle, are said to experience an episode of intense wonder (OE swiðe wundrigende). This term unequivocally refers to the emotion of wonder, an emotion that is rooted in the subject’s inability to process the phenomena that they behold. On the other hand, the monks experience a different (but related emotion) that is described through OE afrythe. This excerpt offers a possibility of comparison between the emotions that the laypeople and the monks in this passage experience in terms of appraisals. The former do not evaluate the miracle with an appraisal of threat, simply as a miraculous and harmless phenomenon; the latter do appraise it as potentially threatening because, at beholding the light, they realise that they have acted wrongly. Nevertheless, this miracle suffices for them to get over their initial reticence to accept Oswald’s bones, and they change their behaviour accordingly, no longer showing contempt or opposition to the saint (rendered through OE forsacan ‘declare an opposition, refuse’).

51 “His brother’s daughter afterward became queen in Mercia and learned about his bones and brought them to Lindsey to Bardney Minster, which she greatly loved. But, on account of human folly, the monks had no desire to receive the saint but a tent was pitched over the holy bones within the coffin. Well then, God revealed that he was a holy saint when a heavenly light, extended over the tent, shone up to heaven like a heavenly sunbeam throughout the night, and the people throughout the district looked upon it with great wonder. Then the monks became greatly afraid, and requested that they might receive with honor in the morning he saint whom they had previously shunned. Then the holy bones were washed and brought reverently to a shrine in the church, and they placed them up high, and many infirm people were healed from various illnesses through his holy merit” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 15).

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More frequently, the terms in this domain are found in contexts where they do not describe the emotions of the saints or the monks and priests that follow them, but the emotions of common people that experience visions or supernatural sights, for example, the man who wishes to follow Jesus in ÆLS (Memory of Saints) 165. When Jesus asks him to follow him on his journey, he replies with fear, asking Jesus to let him bury his father first. This emotional reaction is described as follows: and he afyrht andwyrde ‘and he replied, afraid.’ In this passage, as in some of the excerpts analysed in preceding pages, this fear does not originate from a threat to the well-​being of the individual. Instead, the emotion that OE afryht describes is one that comes closer to an experience of awe that is tinted with reverence. A similar episode can be found in the life of Saint Swithun. This text begins to narrate how in the days of King Edgar, when Christianity was becoming more prevalent in England, Saint Swithun’s former merits and miracles became more widely known through God’s revelation, who had deemed that the time was right for the English to learn about this saint. This life also narrates how Saint Swithun himself appears to a smith. In this vision, Saint Swithun tells the smith to find a priest named Eadsige and to tell him in his name that he should open his grave and bring his bones inside the church. Swithun also tells the smith that this priest will not initially believe him, but that he should be able to prove his words through the following miracle: when he pulls the ring that is on the lid of the coffin, the coffin will open at once. When this vision ends, Swithun’s fear/​lack of courage are described as follows: Se halga Swyðun þa ferde fram þam smið up, and se smiðe ne dorste secgan þas gesihðe ænigum menn, nolde beon gesewen unsoðsagul boda (ÆLS (Swithun) 56) “The holy Swithun then departed upward from the smith, and the smith did not dare to tell this vision to anyone: he did not want to be seen as a lying messenger” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 211).

Indeed, it is evident how, in this passage, Swithun’s emotional reaction falls within the utilitarian spectrum. The prhase ne dorste here implies lack of courage or fear at carrying out an action. Though he initially refuses to accomplish this task, Saint Swithun confronts him several more times, and the smith then goes to Swithun’s grave and pulls from the ring to see whether his visions are true or not. The following excerpt narrates the two different emotional responses to this episode: He teah ða þæt isen up swa eaðelice up of ðam stane swilce hit on sande stode, and he swyðe þæs wundrode. He ða hit eft sette on þæt ylce þyrl, and þyde mid his fet, and hit swa fæste eft stod þæt nan man ne mihte hit þanon ateon. þa eode se smið geegsod þanon (ÆLS (Swithun) 69)

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“He then pulled the iron up out of the stone as easily as if it stood in sand, and he marveled greatly at that. He then put it back into the same hole and pressed it with his foot and it stood once more so firmly fixed that no one could pull it out of there. Then the smith went away from there terrified” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 211).

This episode narrates how the smith pulls from the ring in Swithun’s grave twice. The first time, the lid opens with relative ease, but he does not pull it all the way back, and the coffin does not fully open; instead, he closes the coffin and tries to pull again from the ring, only to realise that, that time, the coffin is firmly closed. When the smith opens the lid for the first time, the emotion that he experiences is that of wonder (OE wundrian). In this case this is a less intense emotional experience because the coffin’s miraculous opening can be easily explained away. Nevertheless, when he pulls from the ring a second time and he is unable to open the coffin again, he realises that he is experiencing a miracle in real life and that his visions were genuine, that no explanation can cancel out the supernatural causality of his experience. His emotional response to this is much more intense, and it is described through OE geegsian, a term that refers to fear. Nevertheless, the aesthetic dimension of this term is evident, first in its co-​ocurrence with OE wundrian, and second in the semantics of the some of its related terms, like OE egesian, defined in the DOE as “to terrify, inspire with fear/​awe” (DOE, s.v. egesian, vb.). Indeed, this section has emphasised through different examples the thin line that separates experiences of utilitarian fear from instances of awe. It has been shown how, in certain cases, fear terminology is employed in a positive sense to express the saints’ awe at God and at the miracles that these lives narrate. Therefore, it is not always possible to determine whether the term or instance under scrutiny describes an instance of utilitarian or aesthetic fear (awe), as it was the case of many of the occurrence of OE afryhtan. It is not entirely clear if these terms refer to a sort of aesthetic fear that results from the subject’s reverence towards the phenomena or entity (generally God, but, in some instances, certain saints) that they are beholding, or if they describe a utilitarian fear that indexes a real-​life threat to the well-​being of these individuals. In terms of lexis, this author employs set expressions recurrently, like Godes ege ‘fear of God’ or ‘awe towards God,’ and, in some cases, awe/​fear terminology is found in co-​occurrence with terms for wonder, as well as alongside some of the action tendencies that characterise wonder and, more generally, the emotion family of amazement. Finally, and with regards to appraisals, this section has also shown how the appraisal of threat/​danger is an important part behind the author’s lexical choices of terms for awe/​fear over terms for wonder. The

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former convey the idea that the people who are subject to this emotion are aware, at some level, of the fact that they have not acted properly, and these miraculous phenomena trigger negative emotional responses that cause them to change their behaviour. In these case-​scenarios, the more negative dimension of awe stems from the peripheral feature of ‘threat’ (Keltner and Haidt, 2003). This is also evident in instances in which the fear with which miraculous phenomena are appraised is cancelled by a better understanding or explanation these events from the perspective of more virtuous or knowledgeable Christians. Ultimately, this makes it clear that the valence and exact character of these moral emotions depends largely on the subject who experiences them, and, above all, in their system of beliefs.

6.3. fear and awe as pagan responses to the miraculous The preceding two sections have explored fear and awe as aesthetic and utilitarian responses that stem, on the one hand, from the contemplation of impressive natural phenomena, and, on the other hand, from the saints’ and other Christians’ appraisal of miraculous events and other religious experiences. Nevertheless, Ælfric’s lives feature one more usage of the terms in these domains that has only been mentioned in passing in the preceding chapters, and that is the depiction of the emotions of awe and (aesthetic) fear as predominantly negative responses on the part of pagan people who encounter God, these saints, and their miracles. Therefore, the aim of this section is to look into the attestations of the terms in these lexical domains that fall within this category to try to determine the ways in which these emotional experiences differ from more positively oriented experiences of awe and from the emotion of wonder. In the narrative framework of these lives, miraculous phenomena often take place to free the saints from their captivity, but they also occur to punish those who persecute them. Similarly, and as it has been mentioned here before, these miracles might trigger emotional responses in non-​believers that either cause them to convert to Christianity because of a new-​found belief in God or to turn away from the miracle that they are beholding because of the intensity of these emotions and the strangeness of the phenomena that they witness. Consider, for example, Nicostratus’ emotional reaction in the life of Saint Sebastian when he beholds how Sebastian heals his wife, Zoe, who had been mute before: Hwæt ða Nicostratus wearð swiðe afyrht, þa ða he þæt wundor geseah on his wife gedon, and feol adune sona to Sebastianes fotum, biddende forgifennysse þæt he þa broðra heold, and unband heora handa and bæd þæt hi awæg eoden, ac hi þurhwunodon swa þeah on þam gewinne oð deað (ÆLS (Sebastian) 112)

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“Well then, Nicostratus became very afraid when he saw the miracle performed on his wife, and he immediately fell down at Sebastian’s feet, begging for forgiveness for having kept the brothers in prison, and he untied their hands and asked them to go away; but they persevered nevertheless in the struggle until death” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 165).

After Nicostratus beholds this instance of miraculous healing and he hears his wife speak, he is said to experience an intense instance of fear (OE afryht). The above excerpt makes the cause of his fear extremely clear, not only through OE wundor, but also through a perception verb, OE geseōn, a co-​occurrence that is not commonly found in this corpus. Moreover, this passage also features two of the most common action tendencies of amazement, people falling in admiration at somebody’s feet, and, later on, Nicostratus’ conversion to Christianity. A similar emotional reaction is narrated in the life of Saint Agnes, with similar terminology and resulting action tendency: Ic him fyligde ða, and fela englas coman on manna gelicnyssum, mærlice gewæpnode, gehyrton me mid wordum, and heton me gan forð oðþæt we becoman þær se cyning wæs. He feoll ða afyrht to minum fotum astreht (ÆLS (Agnes) 358). “I followed him, and many angels came in the likeness of men, splendidly armed, encouraged me with their words and ordered me to go forward until we came to where the king was. Frightened, he fell prostrate at my feet” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 243).

This excerpt refers to how Gallicanus is able to win a battle over king Bardan and his sons. This passage narrates how Bardan processes the sight of the angels, who wear sublime weapons. At seeing that this is Gallicanus’ army, this king falls to Gallicanus’ feet in fear and surrenders. Other excerpts more explicitly discuss the role of miraculous phenomena in the conversion of pagan people to Christianity. In the life of Saint Martin, the saint is trying to destroy yet another pagan temple, but he is not able to do so on his own. Therefore, he retreats from the temple and fasts for several days, praying to God so that he destroys with his power what he cannot take down with his own hands. After this, the text narrates how some angels appear suddenly (again, through OE fǣrlīce) and how they are heavily armed and ready to expel the pagans from their temple. The following excerpt narrates what takes place after this: Martinus þa ferde to þære foresædan deofolgilde, and mid þæra engla fultume, mannum onlocigendum, þæt tempel eall towearp and þa weofode to duste, ealle þa anlicnyssa heora arwurðra goda. þa ne mihton þa hæðenan Martine wiðcweðan, ac þurh þa godcundan mihte micclum wurdon afyrhte, and gelyfdon on God, mid geleafan clypigende þæt se

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God wære to wurþigenne þe se halga wer bodode, and heora godas to forlætenne þe him fremion ne mihton (ÆLS (Martin) 455)52

This passage narrates how Martin approaches the temple with the angels, and how the people inside the temple it behold this scene. The emphasis on visual perception can be found in the usage of the term OE onlōciend, which highlights the aesthetic dimension of this episode. The exercise of divine power that is exercised by Martin and the angels causes the pagan people to become greatly afraid (OE micclum wurdon afyrhte) and this, immediately, causes them to believe in God and to express their new belief. The life of Saint Martin features one additional instance in which fear results from a pagan’s encounter with the miraculous: Se bisceop him togeanes bræd of his ceppan, and aþenode his swuran þam sleandum hæþenum; and se hæþena ða, þa þa he hine slean wolde, þa feoll he underbæc mid fyrhte fornumen, and bæd him forgifennysse æt þam halgan bisceope (ÆLS (Martin) 469) “Approaching him, the bishop took off his cloak and stretched out his neck to the murderous heathen, and the heathen, when he tried to kill him, then fell backward, seized with terror, and begged forgiveness from the holy bishop” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 115).

This episode immediately follows the one analysed above, and it concerns how, on another occasion, when Martin has just destroyed another pagan temple, the pagan worshipers crowd around him violently. When one of these heathen people tries to kill him, he falls backwards. The succession of events in this excerpt is not entirely clear, but what cannot be denied is that this pagan person is, somehow, prevented from killing Martin; whether he falls back as a result the fear that the miracle triggers in him is unclear. Nevertheless, what remains clear is that, in this passage, the emotion that this person experiences is conceptualised again through the figurative expression emotion is a force, evidenced by the usage of OE forniman. This metaphor can also be found in an excerpt from the life of Saint Agatha, which is comparable as far as the pagan dimension of fear is concerned:

52 “Martin then approached the pagan temple we spoke of before, and with the help of the angels, with people looking on, reduced all the temple and the altars to dust, and all the images of their venerated gods. Then the heathens could no longer resist Martin, but were very frightened by this divine power and believed in God, calling out with faith that the God of whom the holy man preached was to be worshiped, and their gods, who could be of no benefit to them, were to be abandoned” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 115).

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þær scean ða mycel leoht on þam sweartum cwearterne, swa þæt ða weardas flugon mid fyrhte fornumene (ÆLS (Agatha) 147) “Then a great light shone in the dark prison, so that the guards fled, gripped by fear” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 261).

After Agatha has had her breasts removed, she is taken to the prison again, where her wounds are miraculously healed. Thereafter, a heavenly light shines in the prison, which, as it has been mentioned in chapter four, operates as symbolic indicator of the saint’s divinity. When the guards behold this supernatural occurrence, they flee from the prison, an action tendency whereby those who appraise an event as incongruent with their goals or beliefs (following the appraisal of goal relevance, proposed by Menninghaus et al., 2019: 179) might choose to turn away from said event. The conceptualisation of this emotion of amazement being conceptualised as a force is again evidenced in the usage of the verb OE forniman. In other passages, there is a similar action tendency that is expressed through a different body part. In the preceding passages, the characters are said to fall at the feet of, generally, the saints who perform the miraculous phenomena that frighten them, but in other passages the phrase does not refer to the saints’ feet but to their knees, with a virtually identical meaning: þa feoll Tiburtius forht to hire cneowum, and clypode hlude, and cwæð mid geleafan, Ne þincð me þæt þu spræce mid menniscre spræce, ac swilce Godes engel sylf spræce þurh þe (ÆLS (Cecilia) 171) “Then Tiburtius fell at her knees, afraid, and called out loudly and said with faith: “It does not seem to me as if you speak with a human voice, but it is as if God’s angel himself were speaking through you” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 221). þa feol eall þæt folc forht on gebedum, and clypode mid geleafan to ðam lyfigendan Gode, Drihten sylf is God, Drihten sylf is God (ÆLS (Book of Kings) 135) “Then all that people, frightened, knelt in prayers and cried out with faith to the living God” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 149).

In the first passage, Saint Cecilia is explaining to Tiburtius the nature of the Holy Trinity, because he had asked her how it can be possible for three “gods” to be one. This explanation triggers an intense emotional reaction on Tiburtius that originates from an appraisal of vastness (the perception of something that is larger than the self) and that implies a need for accommodation of his mental structures in face of the challenge to his long-​established truths. This emotion does not necessarily imply an appraisal of threat, and it is a very clear example of prototypical awe. Nevertheless, it is so strong in intensity, partly due to the fact that Tiburtius is not a Christian yet, that it causes him to fall to his knees

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in admiration of Saint Cecilia and her God. The second passage describes, in slightly different phrasing, the emotional response of the pagan people who behold a token from God. Elijah had been arguing with the pagans who were worshiping the god Baal, and they arrive to the agreement that they should both place an ox to each of their gods and then surround it with wood so that the true God might send a fire from heaven as a sign that would confirm whom they should worship. After this, a fire shoots from heaven and burns up the ox and the wood and the twelve stones that had been place around Elijah’s ox, thereby manifesting God’s existence. This token causes pagan people to experience an example of aesthetic fear that results from their encounter with this supernatural sign but that implies a spiritual and conceptual alteration of these peoples’ mental structures, and that, in extreme, causes them to convert to Christianity as well. The next excerpt features the same action tendency, and, in this case, it is directly linked to the emotion of fear. After having tortured him severely, Claudius orders his soldiers to beat Saint Chrysanthus because he had spoken ill of his pagan gods: Claudius þa het hine hetelice swingan mid greatum gyrdum for his goda teonan. þa wurdon þa gyrda wundorlice gehnexode færlice on heora handum swilce hit fæðera wæron. þa hi man heold hi wæron hearde and hostige; þonne man sloh, sona hi hnexodon. Claudius þa het þone halgan forlæton, and hine siððan scrydan, and he sylf clypode, Nis þeos miht of mannum, ac is Godes mærð þe ealle þas wita gewylde swa eaðelice. Hwæt wille we leng don buton licgan ealle æt his arwurðum cneowum, and eadmodlice biddan þæt he us geþingie to þyllicum Gode, þe his biggengan macaþ swa mihtige on gewinne? Hi feollon þa ealle mid fyrhte to his cneowum, and Claudius him cwæð to, Ic oncneow to soþan þæt þin God is soð God, and ic sylf nu bidde þæt þu me geþingie hu ic wurðe his biggenga (ÆLS (Chrysanthus) 188)53

53 “Claudius then ordered him to be severely beaten with huge rods because of the insult to his gods. Then suddenly the rods were miraculously softened in their hands as if they were feathers. When anyone held them they were hard and rough; but as soon as he struck, they immediately softened. Claudius then ordered the saint to be released and clothed again, and he himself cried out: ‘This is not human power, but it is the glory of God, which has overcome all these tortures so easily. What will we do any longer, but all fall down at his worthy knees and humbly pray that he may intercede for us to the same God who makes his worshippers so powerful in combat?’ Then they all fell at his knees in fear, and Claudius said to him: “I recognize truly that your God is the true God, and now I beseech you myself that you arrange for me to become his worshiper” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 249–​251).

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When they proceed to torture him, the rods with which they beat him miraculously (OE wundorlīc) and suddenly (OE fǣrlīce) turn soft like feathers. Claudius, at seeing this, realises that this is an exercise of God’s power and immediately orders his soldiers to stop torturing him. He also falls to his feet in front of Chrysanthus’ knees and asks of him to arrange his conversion to Christianity. Furthermore, this life features two more instances of terms for fear being applied to pagan people’s reaction to miracles. The episode where God sends a lion to prevent Daria from being raped and tortured has already been discussed in this study: after the description of the pleasant smells that surrounds the lion’s apparition, the lion throws down a man who intends to defile Daria. Considering that the lion in itself is a supernatural occurrence, because it appears in Daria’s prison out of nowhere, the emotional reaction of this man can be considered to be both utilitarian, in the sense that a dangerous animal poses an immediate threat to this individual, and aesthetic, because the man has to alter his mental structures to process where the lion is coming from and its supernatural origin is appraised as a sort of vastness. This emotional reaction is described in this text (ÆLS (Chrysanthus) 269) with two terms for fear in the words of the narrator: through OE ofdrǣd ‘terrified,’ and through OE fryhtu ‘fear,’ in the collocation sæde mid fryhte ‘said with fear.’ In this particular instance, the action tendency also reveals a spiritual transformation, as the man leaves the room praising God and the virgin, but before this, the man also begs of Daria to let him go. These two action tendencies emphasise the dual utilitarian and aesthetic nature of these experiences of fear and awe. Terms for fear and awe also occur in more specific narrative contexts where these pagan people are not only witness to supernatural phenomena, but they are also punished because of how they treat the saints or other Christians in general. For example, the fire that destroys those who persecute the Israelites is described as egeslicum fyre ‘awe-​inspiring fear’ in ÆLS (Pr Moses) 213, or in the following passage, which makes an observation as to how God punishes those who disdain his name: Ne mæg nan mann awritan ne mid wordum areccan hu oft se ælmihtiga god egeslice gewræc his foresewennysse on scyldigum mannum, oððe hu oft he gemyltsode mancynne gehu, þa ðe mid andetnysse heora yfeles geswicon (ÆLS (Pr Moses) 281) “No one can state in writing or express in words how often the almighty God has terrifyingly avenged on guilty people their contempt of him or how often he has had mercy on mankind in some way, on those who ceased from their evil with confession” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 45)

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In this passage, God’s revenge on those who act against him and his laws is described as something terrible to experience or behold through OE egeslīc, indexing an entirely negative appraisal. More specific instances include the events that take place after Mark has been killed: þa woldon þa hæðenan his lic forbernan and worhten mycel ad, ac hit wearð adwæsced, swa þæt God asende swyðe mycel ren ofer ealne þone dæg mid egeslicum ðunore, swa þæt manega hus hetelice feollon, and eac manega menn mid ðam þunore swulton, and þa oðre flugon mid fyrhte fornumen (ÆLS (Mark) 90) “Then the heathens wished to burn up his body and built a large pyre, but it was extinguished, in that God sent very heavy rainfall throughout the whole day with terrifying thunder, so that many houses fell violently and many people also died as a result of the thunder and the others fled, gripped by fear” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 75).

When the pagan people of Alexandria kill Mark, they want to incinerate his body so that no remains or relics are left. Nevertheless, through divine intervention, the rain extinguishes the funeral pyre, and God sends such a big storm that it causes these people to be terrified by the thunder. In this case, OE egeslīc seems to imply that there is a degree of aesthetic appraisal, which would suggest that these pagan people do understand that God had sent the storm their way. Furthermore, the action tendency that is expressed in the last line, which describes how some of these people flee in fear, corroborates this. It is also worth pointing out the usage of OE forniman in this clause, highlighting again the metaphor fear is a force. Finally, there is one more usage of terms for fear and awe in this context that is interesting from a lexical point of view. In the text on the Maccabees, Judas Maccabeus asks God to do the following to the people against whom he is going to war: tobryt nu ðas hæðenan on þines folces handum, and mid fyrhte geegsa (ÆLS (Maccabees) 368) “Destroy these heathens now by the hands of your people and terrify them with fright” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 305).

The co-​occurrence of terms for fear and awe in the same phrase is unattested in this corpus. It has been established here before that the term OE fryht might be found in contexts where it refers to aesthetic responses, more specifically, to the experience of awe. On the other hand, the term OE geegsian has been found either in passages where it reinforces the intensity of the emotional experience, or in contexts where it refers to how somebody actively and deliberately tries to trigger these emotions on somebody else. In this case, the expression mid fyrthe geegsa seems redundant in the sense that the verb OE geegsa already indexes emotional experience. It would make more sense in the context of this passage

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to translate it as ‘terrify them with awe,’ alluding to both of these emotional responses which are, at times, different in the nature of the appraisals that they involve. In this case, the fear and awe that this passage alludes to stems from the fear that Maccabeus’ army might trigger in the soldiers of the enemy army, but it can also refer to how God’s power, if it is made evident to them, would cause an intense episode of awe. In any case, what this passage evidences, is that, when pagan people are punished as a result of their faith or their actions, the emotional reaction that they consistently experience is that of a fear that may or may not have an additional aesthetic dimension. One more excerpt contains a similar co-​occurrence of terms for fear and awe: þa wearð mycel eorðstyrung on ðære ylcan stowe, and feol se stænene wah uppan þæs stuntan rædboran, þæt he ælltocwysde and sum oþer cniht samod, swyðe rihtlice swa forðan þe hi rædboran wæran þæs arleasan deman to his yfelum dædum. Eac swylce seo burh eall byuigende stod for ðære eorðstyrunge, and arn seo burhwaru endemes to þam arleasan, axiende mid gehlyde hwi he þæt Godes mæden swa gramlice tintregode. þa fleah Quintianus, afyrht for ðam gehlyde, and eac seo eorðstyrung hine geegsode þearle; het swa þeah hi gebringan binnan ðam cwearterne (ÆLS (Agatha) 170)54

This passage describes the events that take place when Quintianus continues to threaten Saint Agatha. In the middle of this torture, God reveals that she is a true saint of God by means of an earthquake (a motif that is observed in other texts as well) that, on the one hand, causes the counselors who advised Quintianus to execute Agatha to be crushed, and that, on the other hand, causes the inhabitants of this city to crowd around Quintianus. The closing lines to that excerpt employ OE afyrht to refer to the mutiny against Quintianus, which would have been appraised with unaesthetic fear, and OE geegsian to describe the sort of reverential fear that the supernatural occurrence implicit in the earthquake triggers in him. In this case, these two terms do refer to different emotion episodes, unlike the preceding case. Finally, and perhaps more interestingly, this corpus features different episodes in which the emotions that pagan people experience in the face of the

54 “Then there was a great earthquake in that same place, and the stone wall fell upon the stupid man’s counselor, with the result that it completely crushed him and another man along with him, very justly so, because they were counselors of the impious judge in his evil deeds. Moreover the city was all shaking because of the earthquake, and the citizens all ran together to the impious man, asking with an uproar why he had tortured God’s virgin so harshly. Then Quintianus fled, frightened by the uproar, and the earthquake had also greatly terrified him” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019a: 263).

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miraculous are not entirely negative but mix terms that denote positive and negative responses. An example of this can be found in the text on the martyrdom of the Maccabees: Heliodorus ða gemynte þa maðmas to genimenne, ac þær wearð gesewen swutol Godes wundor, swa þæt his geferan feollon geunmihte, and mid fyrhte fornumene færlice þurh God. And ðær com ridende sum egeful ridda, and him mid siðedon twægen scinende englas, mid wundorlicre wlite swa he sylf wæs geglenged (ÆLS (Maccabees) 769) “Heliodorus intended to take the treasures then, but a visible miracle from God was seen there, so that his companions fell down deprived of their strength and were suddenly overcome with fear through the power of God. And a terrifying rider came ridling there, and two shining angels of wonderful beauty traveled with him, as he himself was adorned” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019b: 331–​333).

This text narrates the expulsion of Heliodorus from the temple, when he intends to steal the treasure that is the livelihood of orphans and widows. God prevents him from doing so by depriving his companions of their strength, which causes them to fall down and be overcome with fear. The emotional response to their feeling of powerlessness is described through terminology and figurative recourses that have been analysed elsewhere in this chapter, and that is commonly found in instances of intense fear and awe: OE fyrhte, referring to an emotion which is clearly negative here; OE fǣrlīce, denoting the sudden character of this event, which amplifies the intensity with which the emotion is felt; and, finally, OE forniman, which in this case renders, again, the metaphor fear is a force. Furthermore, this passage features two more emotional experiences: an instance of awe that is triggered by the rider that appears in the scene, described through OE egeful, and an instance of aesthetic pleasure, implicit in the evaluation of the angels as creatures who have a wonderful appearance. If it were entirely clear that the narrator associates these two emotions, aesthetic pleasure and awe, to Heliodorus’ companions, it could be affirmed that this passage does feature an instance of mixed emotions. Other texts are more explicit on the relationship between the emotions of different valence that are depicted in them. Consider the following two excerpts from the life of Saint Vincent: Mid þam ðe þa weardmen wurdon on slæpe, þa com þær heofonlic leoht into þam halgan were on þam blindan cweartearne swilce an beorht sunbeam, and him wearð gebeddod mid hnescre beddinge, swiðe ænlice, and he sylf þa sang his sealmes bliðe his drihten heriende mid incundre heortan. þa ða weardmen awocan, þa wundrode þa weardmen þæs wynsuman leohtes, swiðe afyrhte for þam færlican tacne (ÆLS (Vincent) 189)55

55 “While the guards were asleep, then a heavenly light descended upon the holy man,

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þa cwæþ se halga wer: Of þam heofonlican leohte ne beo ge afyrhte. Ic heom nu gefrefrod mid engellicre þenunge. Gað in and sceawiað hu me is. Ge gebrohton me on þrystrum, and ic blissige nu on leohte; mine bendas sund tolysede, and ic blissige mid sange. Ic eom nu gestrangod and hnesce understreowod. Wundriað þises, þæt se þe wurðaþ God mid soþre andetnesse, þæt he sigefæst byþ æfre (ÆLS (Vincent) 197)56

When the tortures that are inflicted upon Saint Vincent are not effective, Datanius orders the executioners to lock him in a dark and unpleasant cell with broken tiles on the floor as torture. After this, when the guards are sleeping, a supernatural light that resembles that of the sun illuminates the prison and more comfortable sleeping arrangements are brought to Saint Vincent. When the guards see this, the way in which their emotional reaction is described could be taken to be contradictory. Firstly, there is a term for wonder (OE wundrian) indicating how these soldiers cannot understand where this light and these beddings are coming from; secondly, a term for pleasant personal experience (OE wynsum) describes how they appraise this light; thirdly and lastly, the soldiers are said to be afraid or to experience awe (OE afryht) at the sudden token (OE fǣrlīc and tācn). This passage encapsulates and is an accurate representation of the different emotional experiences that have been discussed in the three chapters that make up the bulk of this study. It contains a positive aesthetic experience that is triggered by the appraisal of excellence (OE ǣnlīc, applied to the beddings) and intrinsic pleasantness (OE wynsum), an aesthetic experience of wonder that is triggered by supernatural phenomena, and a mixed emotional reaction that results from it. Furthermore, these emotions are contextualised in the framework of Christian salvation. Saint Vincent tells his executioners not to be afraid and that they should feel wonder instead, because those who obey God’s commandments will access eternal life. This further reinforces the important role of hagiography as literary texts with clear didactic purposes: they teach Christians the emotional responses in the framework of the Christian doctrine

as bright as a ray of the sun in the dark prison, and a bed was made for him with soft bedding, and he himself sang his psalms with delight, praising his Lord from the depths of his heart. Then the guards marveled at this beautiful light and were greatly afraid of the sudden sign” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 309). 56 “Then the holy man said: “Do not be afraid of this heavenly light. I am now comforted with angelic service. Come in and see. You brought me into darkness, and now I am rejoicing in the light, my bonds are loosened, and I rejoice with song. I am now strengthened and am softly bedded. Marvel at this: that he who worships God with a true confession will always be victorious” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 309–​311).

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and, as such, fear at divine apparitions is not depicted as a proper emotion, but wonder is. The combination of wonder and awe/​fear terminology is not entirely uncommon in this corpus. For example, in the life of Saint Thomas: Mid þam þe he wolde hi to wæfersyne tucian, þa gewat se Gad of worulde to helle. Man heold þa þæt lic on þa hæðenan wisan, and se broðor wolde wurðlice hine bestandan, and kynelice macian mid mærðum his byrgene. þa on þone feorðan dæg færlice on mergen aras se ylce Gad aræred þurh God, and þa licmen wurdon wundorlice afyrhte for þam niwan wundre þæt he wearð geedcucod (ÆLS (Thomas) 123)57

This text narrates how Thomas is travelling freely and preaching through India until he runs into King Gundoforus, who has him imprisoned and condemns him to be executed. Nevertheless, Thomas’ execution is delayed because the king’s brother, Gad, falls sick and dies. Then, God sees to it that Gad is resurrected and that he intercedes in favour of Thomas in front of his brother. When the people who are carrying Gad’s corpse see how his body is suddenly (OE fǣrlīc) brought back to life, these men experience an instance of fear/​awe that is categorised as OE wundorlīc. In this case, the meaning of this adjective is not quite clear: it can either mean ‘extraordinary,’ alluding to the fact that this emotion is triggered by an unusual circumstance, or, alternatively, it can imply that the cause of the emotion is the appraisal of a supernatural and miraculous circumstance. In any case, the emotion that they experience is also coloured with a negative meaning. Nevertheless, there is one more excerpt, in this case from the life of Saint Denis, where the relation between wonder and awe as pagan and Christian responses is detailed in much more evident terms: þær com þa micel leoht to þæra martyra lice, and þæs bisceopes lic mid þam leohte aras, and nam his agen heafod þe ofaheawen wæs uppan ðære dune, and eode him forð þanon ofer twa mila, þam mannum onlocigendum, his Drihten herigende mid halgum lofsangum; and engla werod eac þær wynsumlice sungon, oð þæt þæt lic becom þær ðær he licgan wolde, mid heafde mid ealle, and þa halgan englas singallice sungon, swa swa us secgað bec. Hwæt ða hæþenan, þa þe gehyrdon þone sang and þæt wundor gesawon, awurpon heora gedwyld, and gelyfdon on Crist, and eac þa cwelleras sume; and þær nan

57 “When he intended to torture them as a spectacle, Gad departed from this world to hell. The body was kept in the heathen fashion, and his brother wanted to perform his funeral rites honorably and to construct his tomb royally with glorious things. Then, suddenly, on the morning of the fourth day, the same Gad arose, raised up by God, and the corpse bearers were greatly afraid of the new miracle, that he was brought back to life” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 273).

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ne belaf þe gelyfan nolde, ac gewendon him aweg, for þam wundrum afyrhte. þæt wæs syllic wundor þæt se soðfæsta martyr heafodleas mihte gan, God ælmihtigne herigende, and eac swylce yrnan mid engla heapum; ac God wolde geswutelian þurh þæt syllice tacn þæt his sawl leofode þeah þe se lichama wære ofslagen, and wolde mannum æteowian hu micelne geleafan se halga wer hæfde to þam Hælende on life (ÆLS (Denis) 291)58

This passage concerns Saint Denis, the most well-​known cephalophore Christian saint; it narrates how the saint arose after having been beheaded, picked his head up, and went on preaching for several miles until he reached the place where he desired to lie. His resurrection is marked by the presence of a supernatural light that rises him up (a visual stimulus input), and this resurrection is accompanied by the angel’s song, which is described with a term for aesthetic pleasure (OE wynsum, denoting an aural stimulus input). On the one hand, this event causes the pagan people who see and hear this to experience wonder. The collocation of gehyrdon alongside sang, and wundor along gesawon, implies that the experience of aesthetic pleasure is triggered by the aural stimulus, and that wonder results from the visual appreciation of this miraculous event. Additionally, this passage explains how different the emotional response of those who believe in God is from those who do not. We are told that those who refuse to believe in God show the action tendency of running away from the miracle, because they are afraid (OE afryhte). This, ultimately, evidences how pagan people appraise miracles with a varying degree of threat that orients their aesthetic experience towards the negative end of the emotion spectrum. Then the narrator recapitulates this miracle and what it means in more general terms. Firstly, the miracle is described through a term for positive aesthetic experience, OE sēllīc, in this

58 “A great light descended upon the bodies of the martyrs there, and the body of the bishop rose with the light, and he took his own head, which had been cut off upon the hill, and went forth from there over a distance of two miles, with the people looking on, praising his Lord with holy hymns. And a troop of angels also sang beautifully there, until the body came to the place where he intended to lie with the head and all, and the holy angels sang continuously, as books tell us. Well, those heathens who had heard the song and had seen the miracle cast aside their false belief and believed in Christ, as did some of the executioners also. And no one remained there who refused to believe, but they went away, frightened by the miracles. That was an extraordinary miracle: that the righteous martyr could walk headless, praising God almighty, and likewise move among troops of angels. But through this extraordinary sign God wished to reveal that his soul lived, though his body was slain, and he wished to demonstrate to people what great faith the holy man had in the savior during his life” (Clayton and Mullins, 2019c: 77–​79).

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case denoting the extraordinary and unusual quality of this occurrence. After this, the narrator stresses the fact that this miracle is, in essence, a token through which God wished to reveal how the soul outlives the body, and how Saint Denis could perform that excellent and extraordinary feat because he was a very devout Christian while he was alive. In brief, this section has provided an overview of how, in Ælfric’s lives, miraculous and supernatural phenomena are appraised by those who do not believe in God. Moreover, this section has also looked into how certain natural phenomena are also responsible for fearful and negative responses when they are caused by a supernatural agent. Essentially, the examples analysed in this section differ from the examples in preceding sections and chapters in that there is an evident appraisal of threat that flavours the resulting aesthetic experience and orients it towards the negative and utilitarian end of the emotion spectrum. This causes the terms in the lexical domains of fear and awe to be employed in contexts where they refer to experiences of awe that are negatively flavoured, and full-​ blown experiences of fear. Some of the characteristics of these emotions have been discussed in the preceding paragraphs, where the terms that are employed in the selected examples highlight, at times, the sudden and eminently visual nature of these events. In conceptual terms, this group of attestations has evidenced a higher recurrence of the metaphor fear/​awe is a force, which is not as common in the preceding groups. The action tendencies that this group of attestations showcase are consistent with what seem to be common action tendencies across the family of amazement, that is, falling to somebody’s feet or knees, turning away from the miracle, or asking for baptism. Undeniably, the action tendency of turning away from the miracle or fleeing the scene where it takes place is linked to the experience of more negative emotions that can be confidently categorised as experiences of fear with an important utilitarian dimension. This same response is triggered by the experience of the supernatural punishment of those who persecute the saints or systematically refuse to believe in God. The action tendencies of asking for baptism or falling to somebody’s knees indicate a more predominant aesthetic dimension to these responses, that is, the experience of awe, which ultimately is responsible for the admiration of the figures that trigger it and a desire to be part of their religion. Furthermore, what a selected group of instances exemplify is that, in the context of these stories, there is a relation between aesthetic pleasure, wonder and awe as Christian emotions, and the fear and the more negatively oriented experiences of awe as pagan emotions, all of which are deliberately staged to convey particular doctrinal messages.

Concluding Remarks The six chapters that compose this study have analysed different aspects that are connected to the emotions of amazement that are represented in the Lives of Saints of this early Medieval English author, while at the same time outlining research questions that have been partially answered in these preceding chapters. These chapters have also analysed the three main emotional responses that are the focus of this study, while also inspecting the narrative framework in which they occur. The purpose of this brief section is to recapitulate, synthesise, and come up with some concluding remarks that can encapsulate the essence of this study. The first conclusion that stands out from this study is that, in these texts, the author seems to depart from the assumption that, for his audience, God is (and should remain, to a certain extent) a complex and abstract theological reality. As an intangible and unapproachable reality, the Christian deity is not the most effective trigger of aesthetic experience. Instead, the saints whose lives are narrated in these texts are pictured as a far more approachable reality, figures that are more effective in the intensity of the emotions whose lives might trigger. Through the saints and their stories, and through the emotions that they cause, the author domesticates and downsizes the divine to the point that it becomes accessible to its audience. To a certain extent, this ties in with how it is possible to recreate experiences that this audience might have experienced, but how it is never possible to get this same audience to experience and envision phenomena with which they are not familiar and that they cannot easily conceptualise, like the more abstract theological discussions on the nature of the soul and God’s own nature that are featured in these texts. This partially highlights the fact that the experience of textuality, the knowledge that one is reading or listening to a work of fiction, may not have occurred in these contexts, because the author frames these narratives as faithful history. In the first chapter of this study, I pointed out the words of William Thornton (1940), who claimed that, in aesthetic emotion research, the object of study cannot be broken down into smaller constituents because that causes the object of study to disappear. This study offers an example of how this is not necessarily true. In fact, by breaking down the emotional experiences analysed here into smaller units, the emotion dynamic that underlies in these texts becomes much clearer. In terms of affect, mood, feelings, and emotion, and taking into consideration all of the different steps in the aesthetic emotion episode that have

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been summarised in chapter one, the textual corpus (and the emotional experiences that it contains) does not necessarily reflect all of these different constituents. These lives only feature the experience of fairly intense emotions, which evidences that, in Old English, and in this particular literary context, there is a moderately extensive vocabulary for emotional experience, but not for other affective phenomena. Therefore, we cannot talk about emotion thresholds or varying degrees of intensity because most of the emotions that are represented here are taken to the extreme in order to emphasise the beauty, perfection and virtue of these saints, and these emotions are, above all, characterised by their verbal and non-​verbal expression. In light of this study, one of the most useful subcomponents of the emotion episode has proved to be the appraisal. Following Roseman and Smith’s (2001) appraisal theory, and more detailed studies that analyse the appraisals involved in aesthetic experience like Keltner and Haidt (2003), Scherer (2005), or Menninghaus et al. (2019), this study has looked into how the evaluation that takes place before an emotion is triggered is key in determining its precise characteristics, intensity, and duration. Moors et al. (2013: 120) claim that the intensity of an emotion is directly proportional to the number of appraisals that is involved in the evaluation that precedes it, and this is something that can be observed in the variety of instances that range from being moved to experiencing fear or more specific aesthetic responses like awe or wonder. Regarding specific appraisals, and beginning with Scherer’s (2005) appraisal of intrinsic pleasantness, these lives do feature a number of emotion episodes that are triggered by an appraisal of intrinsic pleasantness. In other words, in some of the emotion episodes that are depicted in these lives, the emotions are triggered because those who experience them simply deem something beautiful, sublime, wonderful or awe-​inspiring in its own right. Nevertheless, the most prevalent category of appraisals are transactional appraisals, that is, instances where people evaluate an object, person, or situation, not based on how it makes them feel, but with regards to how they may or may not be conducive for their salient needs, desires, or goals. This refers to the appraisals of goal conduciveness and goal relevance pointed out by Menninghaus et al. (2019). When the object, person or situation that is being narrated or described in these texts is appraised as consistent with the goals and belief systems of the appraiser, there is a higher likelihood that it will trigger aesthetic experience, and this is intrinsically related to the idea that will be discussed in the following paragraphs, that is, how goal relevance and conduciveness relates to the goals, values, and beliefs of individual emotional communities. Ultimately, what this stresses is that the appraisals that can be identified in these texts as

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preceding and eliciting these emotions of amazement rely on the assessment of the significance of the environment for the subject’s well-​being, in the words of Moors et al. (2013: 120). Finally, and with regards to the coping potential appraisal (Menninghaus et al., 2019), it has been discussed how the appraisal of threat is, in extreme, responsible for the specific character of the emotion that is triggered; therefore, it can be concluded that the appraisal of coping potential is especially present in those emotions that are oriented towards the positive end of the valence spectrum. All of this makes it clear that it is not always possible to understand aesthetic emotions based exclusively on the appraisal of intrinsic pleasantness (Scherer, 2005), because a large percentage of the instances of amazement discussed here do not feature appraisals of intrinsic pleasantness or unpleasantness. Furthermore, and with regards to the type of stimuli that are the object of these appraisal processes, it can be concluded that, in this literary context, the sensory and the cognitive cannot always be separated. Miracles and other supernatural phenomena engage the subject through the senses, but an important part of the appraisal process is carried out in cognitive terms. Sometimes, in these lives, cognition and emotion are not two separate phenomena: if a miracle triggers an instance of wonder, it may be, on the one hand, because the miraculous event is wonderful or sublime in itself, but, on the other hand, there is an important cognitive dimension to this appraisal. Additionally, the preceding chapters have also emphasised how the stimulus input can be of an emotional nature, not only cognitive or sensory: this textual corpus features several instances where the experience of the sublime triggers wonder, or cases where wonder-​experiences result in awe/​fear. These lives offer us very clear examples of how, in the words of Antonina Harbus (2012: 165), the “biological embodied brain and its emotional life interacts with its culturally contingent set of circumstances.” An analysis of the relationship between emotion and culture in this particular context is quite challenging in the sense that what we are discussing here is not an overarching and hegemonic culture, but the opposite, a minuscule sector of a predominant culture that is not exempt from problematic categorisation and denomination. There is an evident cultural dimension that marks and conditions the experience of these emotions, because these emotional experiences are heavily impregnated with and filtered by cultural meanings. Indeed, following the assumption that aesthetic emotions, and, particularly, emotions of amazement feature a larger degree of cultural variation, as Wierzbicka (1999) and Brewer (2016) suggest, this study has shown how there are great insights to be gained from the study of aesthetic emotions like wonder or awe, which widely vary from historical period to historical period, and culture to culture. These lives do not feature culture-​specific emotions.

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Instead, all emotional experience is homogenised, particularly the experience of non-​utilitarian emotions: in other words, it does not matter whether it is an English saint or a Roman soldier the one who is experiencing amazement, because their emotional experienced is filtered and edited by a member of a particular community. Yet, what this study has emphasised is how these emotions of amazement, on the one hand, cannot be representative of everyday early Medieval English aesthetic experience, and how, on the other hand, their accepted modes of expression and prototypical elicitors will differ at a sub-​cultural level. It is here, at the sub-​cultural level, where the theory of emotional communities proposed by Rosenwein (2007) has greatly illuminated this analysis of Ælfric’s lives. Indeed, these hagiographical narratives, just as any other literary texts, become places where people can “practice their emotional connections with other people” (Vermeule, 2010:  104). Palmer (2018) also delves into the collective character of hagiographical texts, and in the context of the emotional community one can see how these texts configure what an appropriate response to a given stimulus input is, and what is not. In fact, the appraisal theory also discusses how “the appraisal process makes it likely that the emotions will be appropriate responses to the situations in which they occur” (Roseman and Smith, 2001: 6). What these texts offer are instances where the phenomena that are narrated in these lives are correctly appraised, and these instances of appraising become illustrative of what constitutes an appropriate emotion in the framework of Ælfric’s emotional community. As it has been discussed above, the appraisal pattern that is behind these emotion episodes revolves around the appraisals of goal conduciveness and goal relevance, and these appraisals become mechanisms of emotional regulation. This supports the idea that there is “a stable relation between appraisals and emotion” (Moors et al., 2013: 121) in this literary context, and that the emotional education that these texts are supposed to provide relies on how well their audience are able to understand and interiorise these appraisal patterns. Moreover, the observation by Moors et al. (2013) with regards to how, while there is a stable connection between appraisal and emotion, there is no such connection between stimuli and emotion is also evident in how the same event might, in these stories, cause two emotional reactions of different valences. Boquet and Nagy (2018: 9) claim that one of the functions of hagiography is to “reinforce the faith of mankind by promoting a healthy fear of God.” Certainly, the instances of amazement that can be found in this corpus, particularly those that contain descriptions or occurrences from the lexical domain of awe, seem to be oriented towards potentially triggering an aesthetic type of fear that might cause them to act more fittingly. What is more, these instances of amazement are presented as instances of theophany, that is, episodes where these emotions

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are closely related to the subject’s realisation of God’s existence, which fuses with the emotion itself. Above all, these lives feature an exaltation of certain emotions over others, and the configuration of appropriate appraisals, responses, triggers, and accepted modes of expression, and, surprisingly, this analysis of Ælfric’s lives reveals very limited information about the overarching community that would have been early Medieval England. One of the research questions that was outlined in chapter two was what values, goals, feeling rules, and accepted modes of expression are favoured in these texts, and whether any of these might have been censored. This would, in theory, reveal the ideologies, teachings, and presuppositions behind these texts. More briefly, and reformulating Palmer’s (2018: 5) question, what was Ælfric trying to achieve when he wrote these stories? On the one hand, and generally speaking, it can be seen how certain domains of positive aesthetic experience and of amazement that are fairly common in other Old English literary genres, like the aesthetic emotions that are triggered by appraisals of intrinsic pleasantness in evaluations of beauty or skill or the awe-​experiences that might result from the contemplation of monsters are anecdotally attested in these lives, which might suggest that the experience of amazement outside exclusively religious contexts could have been censored by this emotional community. These lives establish particular ways and contexts in which these emotions should be experienced by proper Christians, always entailing, to a greater or lesser extent, an appraisal of morality that is not necessarily present in all experiences of amazement. On the other hand, the context in which the terms from the lexical domain of amazement occur reveal beliefs and assumptions on the part of the emotional community that composed this text, for example that wonder is the suitable response to the miracle on the part of proper Christians, not awe or fear. These texts speak about the appropriateness of emotion, how the fact that one’s son might be tortured and martyred should be cause for happiness inside a hagiographical context. Perhaps more intersting is the case of pagan deities. In these lives, there are no mentions of amazement in instances where pagan deities or idols speak or perform supernatural actions. Mentions of demons disguising themselves as Germanic gods are described with an astonishing absence of terms for amazement. This makes it clear that, in the context of this emotional community, and for Christians everywhere else, these events should not trigger wonder, awe or fear, because these emotions are reserved for God, the saints and the miracles that they perform. These texts construe pre-​Christian deities as demons, and, even though they are curious or behave in extraordinary ways, they never trigger aesthetic emotions in these texts.

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Trying to establish how effective these emotion-​regulation strategies would have been and how these texts would have affected those who had come into contact with them is practically impossible and a matter of utter speculation. What can be abstracted from this discussion on emotional communities with relative certainty is that those who would have experienced the emotions in the same ways that the characters and the people in these stories do would have felt a sense of belonging to this emotional community. Further still, it can be assumed that the directionality of this emotional education would have been top down: from the monastic elite that is responsible for their composition, to the wealthy patrons who commissioned these translations, and, eventually, downwards in the social pyramid. Chapters one, two, and three have outlined more specific research questions to be answered in the light of the discussion that is presented in chapters four, five, and six. The first question was whether there might be a degree of continuity between the emotions that these texts would have triggered in early Medieval audiences and how we experience these texts in the 21st century. While there is an obvious temporal and cultural divide, and while it is clear that emotions are not translatable from historical period to historical period, the emotions that are described in these texts might be relatively intelligible at a cross-​cultural level for those familiar with the history of Christianity. Even if we cannot know how early Medieval audiences would have reacted to these texts, at least those who are familiar with the stories that are narrated in these texts can understand why the characters in them feel the way they do. Another research question was whether changes in appraisals influenced the changes in how these emotions are named and described. There are several examples in these lives where there are changes in appraisal that result in the character experiencing more intense and more negative emotions, like that of the character who pulls from Saint Swithun’s coffin two times, only to realise, in his second attempt, that he is experiencing a supernatural occurrence, which causes his emotional experience to change from wonder to aesthetic fear. In terms of the additional appraisals that are involved in the emotion episodes described in this collection, it should be mentioned that the flavouring feature of virtue is observed in most of these, and that the appraisal of threat, as it has been discussed at length in previous chapters, is sometimes the responsible for changes in the valence of these emotions. A great percentage of the episodes also feature an appraisal of morality, though it is not always present in all emotion episodes, as there is an important secular dimension to the emotions here described. This dimension is evident in aesthetic experiences that are triggered

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by the complexities of the human body, its faculties, human creative skill, architecture, pluming, or things that are surprising in general. With regards to the five phenomena that are pointed out by Brewer (2016: 5) as typically elicitors of wonder, that is, objects, people or circumstances that are novel, exciting, unexplainable, that originate a desire to understand, and whose intensity is dulled with experience, it can be seen how, in this literary context, the phenomena that are presented as eliciting wonder are typically novel and cause some degree of excitement (which might be tinted with threat). These phenomena are not always unexplained, as the people in these lives generally attribute them to divine action, and, similarly, they do not cause a desire to understand because they are easily explainable inside the Christian framework. It is not entirely clear whether these phenomena become less effective in triggering emotions of amazement after several episodes, but the existence of several instances where people experience several miracles and each of them triggers an intense aesthetic experience suggests that this is not the case. Some of the most interesting excerpts analysed in this study are those that do not observe the general trends found everywhere else in this collection. On the hand, this study has shown how there are narrative motifs that are identified consistently across texts, but it has also been pointed out how several texts contradict each other to a certain extent. This does not necessary illuminate this analysis in the sense that these narrative motifs are surely dependent on the source that is being used by the author. Therefore, we find different responses to the perception of the saints’ uncorrupted bodies, and this evidences that, despite the fact that this collection was composed by a particular author and in the framework of his emotional community, it relies on different textual sources, the adaptation of which is not always absolute. Other rarities in this collection include an overall feeling of perplexity and an inability to understand the inner workings of material objects and natural phenomena like illnesses, or at human faculties like intelligence or intellectual ability. More interestingly perhaps, this collection features several instances where the emotions of amazement are triggered in contexts that partially go against the values and belief system of this emotional community, like the emotion episodes that are triggered in pagan places of worships. This reveals a more human layer in the experience of these emotions as responses that are triggered, fundamentally, by what is not common, by what is novel or by what is, plainly speaking, surprising and amazing. Another research question that was formulated in chapter two was whether there might be any differences between the emotions that are felt by men and women in these texts, that is to say, does gender affect the characteristics of the emotions that are triggered in the face of the wonderful and the miraculous?

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Is there a difference in class and rank? There seem to be no differences in this regard, based on Clayton and Mullins’ (2019a) division of the saints in this collection into royal soldier saints, male lay saints, virgin saints, or bishop saints. Almost all of their emotional experiences are homogenised in terms of elicitors, characteristics, and modes of expression. There is only one exception to this, and that is how female saints are more often depicted here as triggering the sublime and the experience of beauty. Similarly, in line with the observations put forth by Boquet and Nagy (2018:  29) with regards to how, in religious contexts, emotions are originally neutral and that their valence is determined by what they lead to, it can be concluded that this is not seen in Ælfric’s lives. The emotions that are depicted in these texts are presented as positive or negative, not depending on what they lead to, but on what triggers them and who experiences them. Furthermore, there is no intrinsic introspection associated to these character’s experiences of amazement. Instead, these texts associate the experience of these emotions with radical and profound spiritual changes. Spiritual transformation is, therefore, the main result of these emotional experiences, and, as such, most of the emotions here have a positive dimension. Nevertheless, and in line with what has been discussed before as regards the real-​life reception of these literary texts, it is not entirely possible to predict if these lives would have caused similar spiritual transformation in the belief systems of early Medieval English people. It is safe to assume, though, that those who would have interpreted these miracle stories as faithful history might have experience similar, though less intense emotions that would have strengthened their faith and reinforced their belief in Christianity, something that, according to Clayton and Mullins (2019a: 3), might have been Ælfric’s intention in producing these translations. The preceding three chapters have provided answers to some of the questions that were derived from Rosenwein’s (2007) methodological discussion, particularly with regards to the gestures and sounds that indicate amazement in the absence of lexical aesthetic emotion markers. Similarly, these chapters have also detailed the most common triggers of amazement and who experiences it and when, revealing an implicit emotion theory that connects these experiences with appraisals of virtue. An observation from her study that is also applicable to this discussion of amazement is that there are no pure or unmediated emotions in this collection. These experiences are, in most of the cases, subject to an appraisal of morality, and they are, in essence, prescribed and artificial emotions, rather than instances of real-​life experiences. The usage of the terms in the lexical domain of amazement and the custom of employing these experiences as

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narrative motifs are quasi-​formulaic. These emotions are evident pedagogical and doctrinal tools of this literary genre. It is in light of this discussion where Walker’s (1997) explanation of the miracle as a staging of wonder falls into place in the context of this study. The miraculous phenomena that are narrated in these texts are realised as some sort of emotion-​regulation scripts that operate inside the texts, but, potentially, outside the texts as well. Considering the provinciality and rurality that marks the early Medieval English period, the explanations that are offered in this study and that involve miracles would have, on the one hand, filled in the gaps as regards the nature of the universe. On the other hand, the effectiveness of the stagings of wonder that are implicit in these miracles ultimately depends on whether those who experience them would have believed in these miracles or not. Nevertheless, for those who would have believed in these miracles, there is an important degree of exemplarity. The saints who perform these miracles are presented as ideal characters who are beautiful inside and out, figures that should trigger reverence and admiration, figures that, to a certain extent, should be imitated. Moving on to specific emotions, the vocabularies that are used to describe them, and the characteristics of these individual emotions, section two of chapter three has offered a list of the potential aesthetic emotion markers that might have been employed in these texts. The lexical domain of the sublime, the terms of which have already been listed in chapter three, is the less frequently attested domain in this collection with a grand total of 62 occurrences. In this domain, the term OE mǣre stands out with 33 of these attestations. The remaining 29 attestations are more or less equally distributed among the rest of the constituents of this domain, that is to say, some of the terms that prototypically refer to height and luminosity. Terms for beauty and aesthetic pleasure are attested a total of 59 times, 19 of which are exclusively terms for pleasure. This analysis has highlighted that, in this textual context, this emotional response is triggered by the recognition of something that is larger than the self, and that is, in many cases, linked to intense beauty experiences. There are some instances of figurative language in this domain as well, particularly as far as the usage of the lexical domains of height and light as source domains that provide a clear sensory basis for the conceptualisation of the more abstract ideas that are associated with this experience, because the sublime is often triggered in cases where there is an important cognitive appraisal of behaviour, morality, virginity, or intellectual activity. It should also be mentioned how this emotion is sometimes referred to through the somatic profiles and action tendencies of crying, shaking, and screaming. All in all, sublime experiences speak about an inability to apprehend something that is extremely good and impressive, both in sensory and cognitive

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terms. Sublimity is also used as a narrative motif that conveys the positive experiences that the saints, their companions, and the people around them undergo when they experience the divine and, in a less frequently, the miraculous. the sublime also serves as a way to regulate the emotions that these texts might have triggered:  by adding an extremely positive dimension to otherwise unpleasant experiences, the author directs the experience towards the valence that they wish to associate it with in the framework of their emotional community. Therefore, negative events like torture or imprisonment artificially gain a positive dimension. This discussion on the sublime, particularly the link between sublime experiences and THE EXPERIENE OF BEAUTY has also emphasised how the senses play an important role in the spiritual life of the Christian. The passages that have been analysed here show the fundamental role of sight not only in aesthetic experience, but in other mental processes. For example, we learn from the words of Ælfric that sight does not only refer to the faculty of physical seeing but also to the ability of imagining things. This also stresses the fact that in these texts there is a marked hybridity between the conceptual and the sensory. There is an important connection between seeing and being spiritual and morally pure: this is particularly evident in the passages that establish a connection between blindness and lack of morality or belief. As a result, sight is depicted in these texts as the sense that will help the Christian to access the deity, and as the sense that will allow them to discern what is God’s work from the devil’s work. In this sense, there are no differences between moral and physical beauty. The terms OE wynsum, fæger and wlitig are equally applied to sensory and cognitive evaluations, but, incidentally, these two are often combined into one. The beauty of the pagan temples is described with the same terms that describe how beautiful the saints become in their martyrdom. What this emphasises is that, judging by his word choices, for Ælfric, beauty and morality are not necessarily inseparable, something that is not always so in the Old English corpus. It should also be mentioned that these intense and sublime experiences are generally triggered by visual stimuli, and, in selected instances, via olfactory or aural stimuli. Touch-​ derived aesthetic experiences are marginally attested. The sensory is also used as a basis for the experience of more abstract emotions, like the love that these saints feel towards God: one of the most remarkable depictions of aesthetic experience in this corpus is the evocation of the bodily feelings that are associated with pleasure in real life, like savoury or sweet foods or the possession of material things in order to help believers imagine how the saints conceptualise and experience God’s love.

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The analysis of the lexical domain of awe has proved to be equally challenging as that of the sublime. This analysis has shown that there are no native terms in Old English that unequivocally render the emotion of awe as it is understood in contemporary emotion theories. The emotions that the lexical domain of awe/​ fear describe refer to two different emotional responses, one the one hand the utilitarian response of fear, and, on the other, to the aesthetic emotion of awe. It is only after an analysis of these attestations in context that the true nature of the emotion episode can be determined. There are a total of 66 attestations of the terms in this lexical domain, with a predominance of OE fryhtu and derived terms (32) and OE ege and its derivates (23). In certain contexts, these emotions resemble emotions that are more oriented towards the negative end of the spectrum, like aesthetic horror, rendered by OE atol. In this context, I postulate the existence of an entirely different emotion, not necessarily the experience of awe or fear, but aesthetic fear as an emotion that combines the aesthetic dimension of the first and the utilitarian sense of threat that is implicit in the second, because, even though there are instances of awe that are consistent with how this emotion is prototypically described in the literature (entailing an appraisal of vastness and a need for accommodation), in the rest of the passages the emotion that this lexical domain describes is better categorised as an aesthetic sort of fear. This is due to the fact that the author configures two opposed responses to miraculous phenomena, a non-​threatening wonder on the part of believers, and a fear with an aesthetic quality that is experienced by those who are not Christians or who know themselves to be sinners and that entails an appraisal of physical or moral threat. The emotion of fear without an aesthetic dimension is typically triggered in this corpus by natural phenomena, apparitions, extreme temperatures, and illness. aesthetic fear is presented in this corpus as an emotion that has very specific action tendencies, which are similar to the action tendencies that will be discussed in the next paragraphs for the emotion of wonder:  from fleeing the scene (avoidance tendency), falling to somebody’s knees or feet (admiration), or converting to Christianity to more specific responses like raising a saint’s relics against the natural phenomena that they appraise as threatening. Conversely, wonder stands out as an emotion that is central, not only to this textual genre, but to the ends of the emotional community that wrote these texts. This is partly seen in the large number of attestations of the terms in this lexical domain in these lives. The grand total of 241 occurrences have allowed for a more in-​depth inspection of the individual constituents of this domain, making it possible to establish differences in their usage. The verb OE āblycgan, which is attested in this collection a total of 6 times, is particularly interesting in that

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it describes a specific sort of aesthetic response that, though initially categorised in the lexical domain of wonder, is best reconsidered as a general indicator of amazement, at least in these lives. OE āblycgan does not entail a degree of active aesthetic and positive experience, but it simply describes something that is shocking, amazing, or impressive for those who behold it. That is to say, OE āblycgan refers to a need for adaptation in the mental structures of the beholder. Conversely, this discussion has also stressed how Ælfric employs the noun OE wundrung (10 occurrences) as a term that refers unequivocally to the emotion of wonder as a positive aesthetic response that is triggered by supernatural experiences. This distinction proved to be useful in contexts where the polysemic nature of the term OE wundor (82 occ.) did not clarify whether there was a description of the emotion being felt or simply a reference to the cause of this emotion, that is, the miracle. The usage of other terms in this lexical domain is not as ambiguous, for example, the adjectival and adverbial derivates of OE wundor, wundorlīc and wundorlīce (52 attestations in total), were used by Ælfric to describe, either from the perspective of the narrator or from the point of view of the characters, objects, people and circumstances that triggered this emotion, but the emotional response that they depict is not as intense as that which is implicit in the verb mentioned above, OE āblycgan, or in the related verbal form OE wundrian (10 occurrences). This last verb refers to the active aesthetic contemplation of one who, for example, intently beholds a miracle, but also to more intense experiences of wonder. Other terms in this lexical domain refer to ideas and theological realities that have been explored in the preceding chapters, like OE tācn, which, despite not prototypically referring to wonder, does play an important role in aesthetic experience, or OE wæfersīn, which glosses Latin spectaculum and highlights the aesthetic dimension of some of the martyrdoms described in these texts. The comparatively larger number of attestations of the terms in this domain suggests that the wonder that is represented in these texts is not a silent emotion, but one that invites expression. Outside this lexical domain, this emotion is indicated and hinted at in these lives through open mouths, screams, shouts, crying and marked action tendencies like running to Church or asking for baptism, which are more or less consistent with the somatic profiles and action tendencies of the rest of the emotions in this family, but to a certain extent inconsistent with how this emotion is described in contemporary emotion theories. This type of wonder can be framed inside two of the different categories that are proposed by Walker (1997), as religious discourse but also as literature of entertainment, as hagiography does relate to both as well. Similarly, considering the peculiarities of this textual genre, Walker’s (1997: 6) remarks that finding wonder-​words is not

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difficult, but that finding experiences of wonder is, it can be seen how this is not the case of this particular collection of lives. With regards to wonder, these texts feature descriptions of what the author and the narrator think that the characters in these lives are experiencing, rather than descriptions that might be aimed at triggering such responses in potential audiences. Furthermore, the emotional responses that are represented here are not organic reactions to real-​life phenomena but deliberately and minutely curated responses that results from the application of emotion rules that are particular to this genre and that rely on specific material anchors that would be, in this case, imagined. In fact, it is in these saint stories where the collective character of wonder as a Christian emotion can be fully observed. The application of Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory and other recent studies in metaphor and figurative language to some of the passages from this corpus yields interesting results. There are several metaphors that operate across these texts and that are aimed at making abstract concepts more accessible. For example:

· believing is seeing · lack of faith is blindness · religious wisdom is light · divinity is light

Other metaphors illustrate a particular understanding of the cognitive processes that are discussed in these texts:

· the mind is a body · seeing is hearing · memories are objects inside the mind · imagining is giving shape to an object in the mind · thinking is movement inside the mind · spiritual and intellecutal growth is flourising · knowledge is a liquid, learning is drinking

Finally, other metaphors, particularly those that relate to the emotional experiences that have been described here might evidence patterns of conceptualisation for these emotions, like the following: · emotion is a force · emotion is inner movement · emotion (fear) is being pierced (in the heart)

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Other metaphors simply add an aesthetic dimension to an otherwise non-​ figurative expression, like the metaphor performing miracles is illuminating. Most of these metaphors illustrate the fact that Ælfric uses figurative language alongside the terms described above with purposes of embellishment, but also in order to depict complex psychological and emotional phenomena in plain and more accessible terms. Finally, and in order to conclude these final remarks, the differences and similarities between these three emotions should be briefly outlined. Some of these differences and similarities have already been discussed before in this study and in this section, but, to begin with, one of the main conclusions that can be derived from this analysis is that the valence of these emotions of amazement is largely determined by the literary genre in which they are found. This literary genre prescribes how wonder is a positive Christian emotion, and that aesthetic fear is a legitimate response to God’s power or to the terrors of Hell. While aesthetic fear is a generally negative emotion, wonder is exclusively positive, and so is the sublime. In this literary context, these emotions are for the most part represented as extremely plain and unidimensional emotional experiences, which heavily clashes with how they are described in aesthetic emotion literature. Without taking into consideration their valence, some of the remarks pointed out by Fingerhut and Prinz (2020: 234) with regards to some significant differences between awe and wonder can also be appreciated in the emotion episodes under scrutiny here, that “wonder has a wider intensity span,” and that it implies “a degree of perplexity, which indicates a cognitive processing not in the same way present in awe.” As regards their similarities, these emotions are primarily triggered by an intellectual engagement that results in a feeling of surprise or stupefaction. Often, these experiences are marked by their suddenness, which directly impacts the intensity with which they are felt. Above all, what these three emotional responses seem to have in common is that they speak about an innate human inability to cope with the supernatural. The characters and the saints that populate these lives are faced with phenomena that challenge their assumptions and systems of beliefs, events and portents that surprise and amaze them, not necessarily because these are intrinsically striking or wonderful, but because they betoken the existence of something larger than the self, something that transcends the boundaries of the earthly and confirms the existence of the God whom these saints represent on Earth. All in all, the main conclusion to be derived from the above discussion and from the analysis that has been offered in the preceding chapters is that these three emotional responses do not represent organic or real-​life responses and

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that, instead, these responses are configured attending to the context in which they occur, to the phenomena that triggers them and to who experiences them and why. As such, these lives have a strong didactic purpose as far as emotional education is concerned, an emotional education in which these emotions of amazement and the terms through which they are described and alluded to play a key role, to the point that the emotions of amazement stand out as an emotion family that is one of the most important (if not the most) in the hagiographical genre. This analysis of how this early Medieval English author chooses to describe, talk about and frame these emotions evidences the important potential of these lives as texts that, inside and outside a given emotional community, can provide affective education in and throughout the life of the Christian, categorising and characterising these emotions and pointing out how, when and why they ought to be felt.

 

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Index of Names Abdon, Saint 71, 74, 113, 166, 167 Abgar, Saint 71, 74, 113, 167 Æthelthryth, Saint 71, 74, 110–​111, 144–​146 Agatha, Saint 71, 73, 110, 114–​115, 122, 179–​180, 198–​199, 203 Agnes, Saint 71, 73, 91–​94, 118–​119, 121, 147, 186–​187, 197 Alban, Saint 74, 96, 100, 162–​163, 172 Apollinaris, Saint 72, 74, 96, 163, 167, 181 Basil, Saint 72–​73, 99–​100, 111–​112, 136–​137, 149, 151–​152, 158, 164–​ 165, 182, 190–​192 Basilissa, Saint 71, 73, 94–​96, 102–​ 105, 112, 120, 183–​184, Cecilia, Saint 71, 74, 90–​91, 99, 199–​200 Chrysanthus, Saint 71, 74, 99, 101–​ 102, 105, 160, 165–​166, 171, 178, 200–​201 Constantia, Saint 73 Daria, Saint 71, 74, 101–​102, 104, 166, 178–​179,  201 Dionysius, Saint 72, 74, 134, 165 Edmund, Saint 74, 142–​144, 165, 171 Eugenia, Saint 71, 73, 111–​113, 117, 120–​121, 140, 158, 179 Gallicanus, Saint 71, 73, 197 George, Saint 71, 73, 94

Julian, Saint 71, 73, 94–​96, 99–​ 100, 102–​105, 112, 120, 179, 183–​184,  192 Lucy, Saint 71, 73, 122 Macarius, Saint 74 Maccabees (the), Saint 74, 94, 110, 154, 202, 204 Mark, Saint 73, 96, 113, 138, 158, 202 Martin, Saint 72, 74, 97–​98, 108, 112, 114, 131–​133, 146–​148, 155–​156, 159, 170, 172, 174, 178–​179, 197–​198 Maur, Saint 73, 112, 115, 129, 133–​ 134, 141–​142, 158, 183 Maurice, Saint 71, 74, 100, 135 Moses, Saint 73, 164, 201 Oswald, Saint 74, 144, 192–​193 Peter, Saint 73, 135, 169, 186 Sebastian, Saint 71, 73, 94, 96–​97, 111, 114–​115, 129–​130, 137, 196–​197 Sennes, Saint 71, 74, 113, 166–​167 Swithun, Saint 72, 74, 96, 112, 115–​ 116, 162, 171, 194–​195, 214 Thomas, Saint 74, 97, 100–​101, 110, 150–​151, 161–​162, 171, 181, 189–​190,  206 Vincent, Saint 74, 161, 204–​205

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44

Michael Bilynsky (ed.): Studies in Middle English. Words, Forms, Senses and Texts. 2014.

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45

Bożena Duda: The Synonyms of Fallen Woman in the History of the English Language. 2014.

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46

Magdalena Bator: Culinary verbs in Middle English. 2014.

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47

Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre / Javier Calle-Martín (eds.): Approaches to Middle English. Variation, Contact and Change. 2015.

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48

Sawles Warde and the Wooing Group. Parallel Texts with Notes and Wordlists. Edited by Harumi Tanabe and John Scahill with Shoko Ono, Keiko Ikegami, Satoko Shimazaki and Koichi Kano. 2015.

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Jacek Fisiak / Magdalena Bator / Marta Sylwanowicz (eds.): Essays and Studies in Middle English. 9th International Conference on Middle English, Philological School of Higher Education in Wrocław, 2015. 2017.

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50

Ewa Ciszek-Kiliszewska: Middle English Prepositions and Adverbs with the Prefix be- in Prose Texts. A Study in Their Semantics, Dialectology and Frequency. 2017.

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51

Anna Wojtyś: The Non-Surviving Preterite-Present Verbs in English. The Demise of *dugan, munan, *-nugan, *þurfan, and unnan. 2017.

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52

Harumi Tanabe / Koichi Kano / John Scahill (eds.): Linguistic Variation in the Ancrene Wisse, Katherine Group and Wooing Group. Essays Celebrating the Completion of the Parallel Text Edition. 2018. Second Edition 2019.

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53

Marta Sylwanowicz: Middle English Names of Medical Preparations. Towards a Standard Medical Terminology. 2018.

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54

Michiko Ogura: Periphrases in Medieval English. 2018.

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55

Michiko Ogura / Hans Sauer (eds.): Aspects of Medieval English Language and Literature. Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference of the Society of Historical English Language and Linguistics. 2018. Edited by Magdalena Bator

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56

Merja Stenroos / Martti Mäkinen / Kjetil V. Thengs / Oliver M. Traxel (eds.): Current Explorations in Middle English.

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57

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59

Rodrigo Pérez Lorido / Carlos Prado-Alonso / Paula Rodríguez-Puente (eds.): Of ye Olde Englisch Langage and Textes: New Perspectives on Old and Middle English Language and Literature. 2020. Dominika Ruszkiewicz: Love and Virtue in Middle English and Middle Scots Poetry. 2021. Letizia Vezzosi (ed.): Current Issues in Medieval England. 2021.

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60

Francisco Javier Minaya Gómez: The Lexical Domain of Beauty and its Metaphors in the Anglo-Saxon Formulaic Style. 2021.

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61

M. J. Toswell / Taro Ishiguro (eds.): Medieval English Syntax. Studies in Honor of Michiko Ogura. 2022.

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62

Francisco Javier Minaya Gómez: Emotions of Amazement in Old English Hagiography. Ælfric’s approach to Wonder, Awe and the Sublime. 2022.

www.peterlang.com

This monograph examines three aesthetic emotions in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints. Drawing on recent research on emotional communities, this research combines methods from Cognitive Sciences and other studies on early Medieval English language and literature in order to explore Ælfric’s usage of the terms in the lexical domain of amazement. The main aim of this study is to identify preferred modes of expression that would reveal a series of emotional rules in the context of Ælfric’s emotional community. Looking into Ælfric’s usage of this lexical domain and how he depicts emotion dynamics in these texts, this monograph shows how the emotion family of amazement is central to the hagiographical genre, and it highlights important emotion-regulation scripts that operate in these texts.

Francisco Javier Minaya Gómez is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Letters (Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha), and a teacher of early Medieval English literature. His research focuses on the conceptualization and expression of emotions in Old and Middle English language and literature.

Francisco Javier Minaya Gómez) · Emotions of Amazement in Old English Hagiography

62

STUDIES IN ENGLISH MEDIEVAL LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE Edited by Magdalena Bator

62 Francisco Javier Minaya Gómez

Emotions of Amazement in Old English Hagiography Ælfric’s approach to Wonder, Awe and the Sublime

ISBN 978-3-631-87217-8

www.peterlang.com

SEMLL_062_287217_Minaya-Gomez_ME_HCA5 152x214 globalL.indd Alle Seiten

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