[In the following essay, Tkacz examines Ælfric's treatment of the traditional theme of the tormentor tormented and contrasts it with the ways several other writers have handled the same subject.]

The topos of the “tormentor tormented” by the same punishments he sought to inflict on an innocent hero was popular in Judeo-Christian culture long before Hamlet, foreshadowing the fate of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, first gloated that “'tis the sport to have the engineer / Hoist with his own petar” (III.iv.210-11).² Such poetic justice derives much of its popularity from the dictum of the Mosaic Law:

Qui percusserit, et occiderit hominem, morte moriatur. …

Qui irrogaverit maculam cuilibet civium suorum: sicut fecit, sic fiet ei:

Fracturam pro fractura, oculum pro oculo, dentem pro dente, restituet:

Qualem inflixerit maculam, talem sustinere cogetur.

Leviticus 24:17, 19-20³

In the New Testament, impetus for such recompense is found in the Sermon on the Mount:

Nolite judicare, ut non judicemini. In quo enim judicio judicaveritis, judicabimini: et in qua mensura mensi fueritis, remetietur vobis.

Matthew 7:1-2⁴

In Old and New Testament alike, this divine justice was expressed through the topos of the tormentor tormented. Quite naturally, western hagiographers adopted this topos, using it in numerous passions and lives of saints and even in brief entries in martyrologies,⁵ as well as in a variety of other genres including the lai, the roman, and the religious drama. Given the widespread importance and popularity of this topos, that it has not yet been defined and examined is surprising. Briefly defining it and demonstrating its pervasiveness will show its popularity; noting Aelfric's uses of it in his Lives of Saints, especially in the passion of St. Vincent, will demonstrate how it can be used for both literary and didactic ends.

In the topos of the tormentor tormented, a tormentor (or group of tormentors) first subjects someone (or some group) to one or more torments,⁶ sometimes after or while threatening the intended victim by describing to him his impending torment. Often, however, the proposed victim is unharmed by the torment. In stark contrast, frequently the would-be tormentor himself is agonized by his inability to control the hero. As Aelfric has Saint Vincent assert of his tormentor:

thone ic beo ge-witnod …
… he sylf sceal swaerran witu throwian
& he byth ofer-swithed on minre
                    geswencednysse.(7)

Moreover, the tormentor is also often physically injured or even killed, frequently by his own method of torment or in a manner reminiscent of it. The jealous officials in Daniel 6, for instance, who connived to condemn the Hebrew saint to death in lacum leonum are themselves devoured by the lions after Daniel emerges unscathed from the pit.

The topos of the tormentor tormented as it is used in the Bible and Christian hagiography can be more precisely described. The tormentor is almost always a pagan and is usually a ruler, judge, suitor (or some combination of these), parent, or demon; his victim is a saint who usually scorns the tortures, praises God, and sometimes, like the three young men in Daniel 3, is divinely protected from injury.

The recoil of torment upon tormentor can find a variety of objects, whatever the genre in which the topos occurs. In some narratives, only the instigator of the torment is finally punished. Consider, for example, the fate of the false judges who wrongly condemn Susanna, in Daniel 13. Elsewhere, though, the punishment is generalized, afflicting the tormentor's family, as in Esther 3:1-9:14; servants, as in Daniel 3:46-50; or city, as in Aelfric's Lives of Saints XV, ll. 90-96.

Moreover, the topos of the tormentor tormented is susceptible to a range of development, in whatever genre it appears. In its simplest expression, this topos presents a crude image of justice. Thus an eighth-century Mercian martyrology narrates the fate of a judge who has ordered the beheading of a saint:

ond tha thaere ylcan niht tha swealt se dema tha hine cwellan het mid unasecgendlicum sarum, efne swa thaet he spaw his innoth ut thurh his muth.⁸

Similarly, the Acta sanctae Julianae, which served as Cynewulf's source for his Old English poem Juliana, presents Eleusius subjecting the saint to various tormenta, finally beheading her; then he himself drowns when his ship sinks (Acta Sanctorum, Februarius, vol. 2, 878, par. 22).

In other texts, the just reversal of torment upon tormentor is more apt in its details. In a sermon using the imagery of spiritual blindness, for instance, Aelfric relates that the torturer beating St. Julian lost his own eye when the rebounding rod struck it:

Hwaet tha martianus. het his manfullan
          cwelleras.
thone
thone halgan beatan mid heardum saglum
Tha baerst sum sagol into anes beateres eagan
swa thaet his eage wand ut mid tham slaege.(9)

Again, in another of Aelfric's sermons, the Natale Sanctorum Quadraginta Militum, we see the just result when an enraged prefect commands the stoning of the faithful saints:

ac tha stanas wendon with thaera ehtera
swa thaet tha cwelleras hi sylfe cnucodon.(10)

When the prefect himself hurls a huge flint, it turns back “and his heafod tobraec.”¹¹

When used with sophistication, this topos is expressed with word echo, sometimes in the form of paronomasia. Word repetition is found in the quotations from Leviticus and Matthew above. Paronomasia occurs in, for example, Daniel 13: the false elders who wrongly accuse Susanna are revealed by their own lies when Daniel questions them; he then puns on their lies to name the means of their deaths. For instance, the first elder claims that Susanna committed adultery

Sub schino. Dixit autem Daniel: Recte mentitus es in caput tuum; ecce enim angelus Dei, accepta sententia ab eo, scindet te medium.¹²

Word echo underscores the use of this topos in vernacular works as well. In the ninth-century poem Juliana by Cynewulf, for instance, the poet develops a five-word vocabulary of torment which he repeats strategically in order to show that the blessed who steadfastly trust God (e.g., Saint Juliana) enjoy equanimity even if physical torments afflict them, while the damned (e.g., her tormentors, Heliseus and the deofol) are ceaselessly racked by torments they themselves create.¹³ Again, in at least one of the twelfth-century Miracles de Notre Dame, the poetic justice of the topos of the tormentor tormented is enlivened by word echo. A pagan emperor has Saint Valentine beaten “Des les rains aval jusqu'au col” and threatens the saint angrily: “par mes diex, en l'eure mourras!” The first of the two who finds himself “à mort,” however, is the emperor: he dies dining, a bone stuck in his throat. The jailor, unaware of the emperor's death, tauntingly refers to the saint's throat, about to be cut. These references remind the audience that the saint's tormentor has already met his end, and how.¹⁴ In each of these passages, the irony and poetic justice of the topos of the tormentor tormented are subtly enhanced by word echo.

The recurrence of this topos in both Old and New Testaments and in Latin and vernacular hagiographical works of verse, prose, and drama shows its striking popularity. Furthermore, notable instances of it are found in secular literature in several genres, including the lai and roman. The cycles of beast fables featuring Reynard, the fabliaux—both Old French and Middle English—and the first farce, Maistre Pierre Pathelin, all show le trompeur trompé, or the trickster tricked. Often, of course, the trick is so crudely played that, in effect, a tormentor is tormented. Consider, for example, the Old French fabliau, “Le meunier et les deux clers,” and Chaucer's cognate piece, The Reeve's Tale. The former offers a unique variant of the tormentor tormented: the miller molu ‘milled’—i.e., ‘beaten’—by the two clerks who were to have been his victims. When they learn of his theft:

Tant l'ont folé et debatu

Par po qu'il ne l'ont tot molu.¹⁵

In Chaucer's version, two tormentors are tormented: as in the Old French analogues, the miller in the tale is a tormentor tormented. Symond's fate within the tale is, moreover, paralleled by the lot of the teller, for when Oswald delivers a tale intended to skewer the miller, he only exposes his own failings. (Olson 1-17; Heffernan, 41-42). In her lais, Marie de France shows us the would-be killers killed by their own intended means in Equitan and, in Fresne, the slanderer acknowledging herself hurt by her own words: “Sur mei en est turnez li pis.”¹⁶ In Le chevalier au lion (Yvain), Chrétien de Troyes uses this topos while asserting the justice of such reversals. When Yvain rescues Lunete,

Et cil furent ars an la ré
qui por li ardoir fu esprise;
que ce est reisons de justise
que cil qui autrui juge à tort
doit de celui meismes mort
morir que il li a jugiee.(17)

The use of the topos of the tormentor tormented in vernacular writings is by no means confined to Old English, Middle English, and Old French. In Medieval Italian, one is scarcely surprised to see tormentors tormented in Dante's Inferno. In the ninth bolgia, Bertran de Born is aptly punished for having opportunistically stimulated rivalry between Henry II and his two elder sons, Henry and Richard:

          Perch' io parti' così giunte persone,
partito porto il mio cerebro, lassol,
dal suo principio ch'e in questo troncone.
          Così s'osserva in me lo contrapasso.(18)

Dante underscores this punitive separation by the hyperbaton of separating “partito” from its normal place in word order, giving that place to the poignant “lasso!” The word “partito” is further accented by parechesis, chiasmus, and paronomasia.¹⁹ With quite a different tone, Boccaccio, in his Il Decameron, has Pampinea conclude the first day's tales with the humorous anecdote of the tormenting of a would-be tormentor. The young and beautiful Malgherida de' Ghisolieri, knowing the elderly maestro Alberto to be fond of her, seeks to embarrass him for sport, but his quick reply discomfits her instead: “Così la donna … credendo vincer fu vinta.”²⁰ For a final vernacular instance of the tormentor tormented, consider the Medieval Spanish exempla which feature an “extraordinary wind [which] blows arrows shot against Christians back against [the] enemy” (Keller 108).

The preceding paragraphs have only hinted at the range of genres, languages, and periods in which the topos of the tormentor tormented has been popular, and at the range of sophistication with which it has been used. Therefore, a more detailed consideration of how it has been used in one genre by one author is in order, to demonstrate the important role this ubiquitous topos can play in a work. Since this topos derives substantially from the Bible, the saint's life is an appropriate genre for this consideration.²¹ Because Aelfric (ca. 955-1020) has bequeathed us a well-known and unified collection of saints' lives, that collection is appropriate for this study.

Of his thirty-four Lives of Saints (Sermones Catholici, third series),²² Aelfric uses the topos of the tormentor tormented in twenty-one. This number is quite high, particularly in view of the fact that most of the sermons without this topos do not concern martyrs and therefore would not be expected to use it.²³ Other types of just reversals, such as the hunter hunted and the condemning slanderer condemned, also occur.²⁴ A fine instance of the use by the Abbot of Eynsham of the topos of the tormentor tormented is in his Passio sancti Vincentii martyris. This sermon shows how the topos can be used to unify a narrative and also to add subtlety of meaning for readers who can appreciate it, while yet providing a narrative straightforward enough for simpler readers to grasp.²⁵ That is, in his Lives of Saints, Aelfric employs the topos of the tormentor tormented for both literary and pastoral ends.²⁶

Before turning to Aelfric's sermon on Saint Vincent, briefly sketching his other uses of the tormentor tormented in the Lives of Saints will show the variety with which Aelfric employs this topos. Sometimes the tormentor simply dies, as Nero does after martyring Peter and Paul.²⁷ In other lives, battle is the context for the tormentor's death or, as for Cadwalla, torment by defeat.²⁸ In Absalom and Alcimus, Aelfric shows us would-be tormentors thwarted by death and unrepentant to the end.²⁹ In contrast, other would-be tormentors are converted by the show of God's might, which afflicts them; often such afflictions, like the madness of Nebuchadnezzar, cease when they have succeeded in teaching the afflicted that God is sovereign.³⁰ Not only is madness often a form of torment in Aelfric's Lives of Saints, but madness and torment are shown there to be of the very nature of sin, as has been amply demonstrated to be a medieval belief by Penelope Billings Reed Dood and Catharine A. Regan.³¹ Sin was seen to cause its own punishment—disease, madness, degradation to bestiality. Moreover, this relationship was seen as just:

The punishment fits the crime and [original sin's] destruction of the due order between God and man caused—and continues to cause with every sin—psychological, moral, and physiological disorder

(Doob 8).

Mad willfulness is the source of all the torments of the emperor Datian, whom Aelfric presents in his Passio Sancti Vincentii martyris as a tormentor tormented with just and detailed thoroughness. Mad at the start of the narrative (l. 33), Datian desires the power to kill Christians (ll. 24, 28, 32). Aelfric explicitly tells us that Datian

Wolde aerest tha heafod-men thaes halgan
                    geleafan
mid witum ofer-swithan thaet he syththan
                    mihte
tha laessan ofer-cuman & fram heora geleafan
                    gebigan.(32)

This passage is noteworthy in that it combines three themes vital to this sermon: power, torment, and battle. Moreover, this passage also presents the program for Datian's self-torment: he is to be totally, dramatically thwarted in his desires; he is to be exposed as powerless, tormented, and defeated.

Consistently Datian is shown as weak. His temporal power, radically limited because it gives him no control over the saint, only emphasizes his essential weakness. Datian wishes to defeat a bishop; instead, the bishop's deacon, clearly one of tha laessan, defeats him (cf. ll. 68-93). He wanted (wolde) to torture Vincent (l. 55), but fails. He wants to ease his disturbed mood by torturing Vincent (ll. 124-25), but his failure to bend the saint's will causes Datian himself to cry out (l. 175). Recognizing and infuriated by his inability to control the saint, Datian despairs at his weakness (l. 214). To compensate for that failure, the ineffectual emperor continues the battle even after the saint's death, by trying to desecrate the corpse. He reasons pathetically: “gif ic oferswithan ne mihte / hine aer cucene. ic hine witnige deadne.³³ Failing in this, too, he complains, “ne maeg ic hine oferswithan forthon swa deadne(?)”³⁴ Even the emperor's negative wish—“nelle ic hine wyrcan wuldor-fulran gyt”—is frustrated, for the pagan's attempts to “overcome” the corpse only reveal how dearly God values His saint and how great that saint's glory is.³⁵ Datian is forced to acknowledge this, to his chagrin (ll. 253-54).

To highlight the contrast between Christian power and pagan impotence, Aelfric uses both narrative events and word echo. Twice we see the saint sublimely passive and successful while the pagans toil in vain. Datian beats his torturers to spur their beating of the saint, but the result is that the exhausted cwelleras can no longer afflict the passive Vincent (ll. 113-28). Later, when Datian tries for a second time to desecrate the saint's corpse, he has his men laboriously row the body, sewn with heavy stones into a sack, out to sea and cast it overboard. Nevertheless, before the men can row back to shore, the saint's body has been serenely delivered there to a spot where later it will be found and venerated (ll. 253-81). Aelfric also clarifies that Vincent is indeed in harmony with God's will and does actively desire what he experiences (cf. ll. 69-71 to 88-93). By repeating magan and willan, Aelfric contrasts the inability of Datian to accomplish his will and the power of Vincent to achieve his.³⁶

Vincent has the power of self-control as well, which Datian notably lacks. In addition—or, in further diminution—Datian lacks the power to afflict Vincent with tortures effectively. Thus are the themes of power and torment connected in this sermon. Although Datian afflicts Vincent repeatedly with witum, they often do not affect him physically (ll. 57-60, 176-201), and they always confirm rather than shake his steadfastness.³⁷ Datian, however, we see suffering: he is wod (ll. 30, 33, 78), geangsumod (ll. 94, 212, 251), and he pales at his failures (ll. 129, 213). After multiplying Vincent's tortures—“wita mid witum ge-eacnodon” (l. 164)—so that he is wounded in every part of his body (l. 167-68), the cry “Wala wa” resounds in the turture chamber—but it breaks from Datian, not Vincent (l. 175).³⁸

It is important that here the tormentor torments himself. Juxtaposed to the saint's passive equanimity, Datian's goading himself into ever more acute anxiety and suffering demonstrates both that sin does indeed contain in itself its own punishment and that the self-distortion of sin is ridiculous. A ludicrous example that Aelfric provides is of Datian's beating his own men so that they will beat Vincent more severely. As mentioned above, the beating accomplishes the opposite of Datian's desire, for it wearies the torturers, who then stop tormenting Vincent. Thus the beating is an emblem of all of Datian's actions, for they are all self-defeating. The beating, of course, also functions as a just tormenting of the torturers, which Vincent notes:

                    Nu thu ge-wrecst on him
tha witu the ic throwige for thinre
          waelhreownysse.
swilce thu sylf wille ge-wrecen me on him.(39)

What Vincent predicted initially has happened. Then the saint asserted:

thone ic beo ge-witnod …
… he sylf sceal swaerran witu throwian
& he bith ofer-swithed on minre
                    geswencednysse.(40)

Vincent reiterates this during torture, with alliteration stressing Datian's role as tormented: “& thonne thu me witnast. thu bist sylf ge-witnod.”⁴¹

Joined to the themes of power and torment, the theme of battle enriches this use of the topos of the tormentor tormented. Battle imagery is an apt embellishment for the passio of the saint whose name means “he who is conquering.” Furthermore, the progressive aspect of this name (as opposed to the static “Victor”) is borne out in the sermon's narrative, for Vincent is victorious throughout his passio, continuing to conquer even after he has been killed.⁴² As with the themes of power and torment, Aelfric repeats a constellation of terms to express the theme of battle. The words ofer-swithan, ofer-cuman, winnan, sige (vs. sceam), and hrem all contribute to the presentation of this passio as a battle in which the tormented martyr is victorious. Initially Datian wishes to ofer-swithan and ofer-cuman the Christians, bishops first (ll. 36-38). God wills the opposite, however: the emperor is to be ofer-swithed by a mere deacon (ll. 69-75). Another battle term, highlighted by alliteration, is introduced by Vincent: “Winne he with me on thisum ge-winne nu.”⁴³ The military connotations of the verbs (ofer-swithan, ofer-cuman, and winnan) invite us to see this as a battle with Vincent as the foot soldier triumphing over the mounted general and his troops. Surely Dattian is tormented by shame appropriate to such a military defeat, as his intention to ofer-swithan Vincent becomes grief that his torturers “ne magon thusne mann ofer-swithan” (l. 138). Vincent's will is again fulfilled when he bids Datian torture him all the more “thaet thu on eallum thingum the ofer-swithedene on-cnawe,”⁴⁴ and precisely that happens. After further tormenting Vincent: “Wala wa cwaeth datianus we synd ofer-swithede.”⁴⁵

Thus Vincent is sigefaest (l. 203). The saint's victory is contrasted, by juxtaposition and alliteration, to the ofer-swithdum deofle (l. 227) and to Datian's shame at this defeat (of-sceamod, l. 232, and sceamige, l. 257). This shame prompts the pagan to attempt to destroy the corpse. Even dead, however, Vincent wins. Left in a field for beasts to devour, his body, divinely protected, is guarded by an sweart hrem. Fittingly, one of the three Anglo-Saxon beasts of battle accompanies the saint into this penultimate foray with Datian. True to pattern, the raven is indeed a harbinger of victory, for Datian, ge-angsumod, owns that even now he cannot ofer-swithan Vincent (l. 251-52).⁴⁶ Vincent, he who is conquering, is still winning. In this sermon Aelfric has used the topos of the tormentor tormented to express three interrelated themes concerning power, torment, and battle. True power, Aelfric would teach us, is in conformity to the will of God. Conversely, true torment results from sin, not from physical torture. Thus it is the tormentor who is tormented and the dead martyr who triumphs over the pagan emperor in a battle of wills. By means of the themes and of the word echoes that express these themes, Aelfric has unified his sermon. Furthermore, by enhancing the simple narrative of a saint's passion with the topos of the tormentor tormented, Aelfric has succeeded at a difficult pastoral task: creating a sermon simple enough for all readers to understand, yet with more complex meanings for those who can apprehend them.

Now that the topos of the tormentor tormented has been defined and its role in Aelfric's Lives of Saints initially examined, it is to be hoped that the uses of this topos in myriad other works in various genres by authors of differing periods will be studied. The theological implications of the topos and the non-biblical influences on it likewise deserve attention. Clearly such attention will be amply rewarded by greater understanding of the texts.

Notes

1. This article is based on research for a chapter in my dissertation, “The Topos of the Tormentor Tormented in Selected Works of Old English Hagiography,” University of Notre Dame, in progress. I am grateful to the University of Notre Dame for a Zahm Research Travel Grant that greatly facilitated research for this work.

2. Hamlet, of course, sees himself as an innocent hero and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as thwarted tormentors. For a quite different, accurate view, see Geoffrey Hughes, “The Tragedy of a Revenger's Loss of Conscience: A Study of Hamlet,” English Studies 57 (1976): 395-409. For other instances of the topos of the tormentor tormented in Hamlet, see IV. vii. 138-46 and V.ii.284-305, especially Laertes's dying words, first to Osric, then to Hamlet (290-91, 302-03).

3. “Whoever will have struck and killed a man, let him die by death. Whoever shall have inflicted a wound on anyone of his fellows, just as he did, so will it be done to him: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, he will pay back: whatever sort of wound he will have inflicted, just the same sort let him be compelled to sustain.” All translations in this paper are the author's. As far as possible, they preserve the word echo and, at times, the word order of the original where these enhance the topos of the tormentor tormented.

4. “Do not judge, that you be not judged.” For with what judgment you will have judged, you will be judged: and in what measure you will have measured, it will be measured back to you.”

5. See the treatment of St. Alban in Bede's prose martyrology: Edition pratique des martyrologies de Bede, de l'Anonyme lyonnais et de Florus, ed. Dom Jacques Dubois and Geneviève Renaud (Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1976), p. 112. For an illustration of Alban's tormentor being tormented, see figure 2 of Florence McCulloch's recent article, “Saints Alban and Amphibalus in the Works of Matthew Paris: Dublin, Trinity College MS 177,” Speculum 56 (1981): 783.

6. Hereafter the singular alone will be used for simplicity's sake. Nevertheless, please assume the option of the plural. Please note that, while the topos of the tormentor tormented is also a folklore motif and tale-type, as well as an Old English theme, it is more than these. Therefore, the broader term topos is used here as it is by Willard R. Trask in his translation of Ernst Robert Curtius's European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, Bollingen Series 36 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), esp. 79-105; because of the potential ambiguity of the term topic, which Trask uses more often than topos, the Greek term is used in this study. For the classic definitions of tale-type and motif, see Stith Thompson, The Folktale (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), pp. 415-16. For widely used definitions of Old English theme and type-scene, see Donald Klein Fry, “Themes and Type-Scenes in Elene 1-113,” Speculum 44 (1969): 35-36; but cf. Carol Edwards's discussion of “Definitions of the Compositional Theme” in her dissertation, “The Oral Formulaic Theory as a Poetics of Process: The Reversal of Good Fortune and Beor-Drinker in the Hall Themes in Anglo-Saxon Poetry,” Indiana University, 1980, pp. 117-27.

7. “When I am tormented / … he himself will suffer more grievous tortures / and he will be overcome in my affliction”; Aelfric's Lives of Saints, ed. Walter William Skeat. EETS, o.s., nos. 76, 82 (vol. 1); 114, 94 (vol. 2) (London: N. Trübner & Co., 1881: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd., 1900); vol. 2, p. 432, ll. 91-93. All citations from Aelfric's Lives of Saints are from this edition. In this article, the Old English characters ash, eth, and thorn are represented by the digraphs ae and th.

8. “And that same night the judge, who had ordered [the saint] killed with exceptional pain, died, in such a way that he spewed his innards out through his mouth”; An Old English Martyrology, ed. George Herzfeld, EETS, o.s., no. 116 (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd., 1900), p. 46.

9. “Lo, then Martianus commanded his wicked torturers / to beat the saint with hard rods. / Then a rod burst into one beater's eye / o that his eye flew out with a blow”; IV, p. 98, ll. 141-43.

10. “But the stones turned against the persecutors / so that they knocked the torturers themselves”; Lives of Saints, XI, p. 244. ll. 100-01.

11. L. 104. George Herbert provides a seventeenth-century example of the same pattern: “who by aspersions throw a stone / At th' head of others, hit their own.” See “charms and Knots,” in George Herbert, ed. W. H. Auden (Baltimore: Penguin Books Inc., 1973), p. 80, vv. 9-10.

12. “‘Under a mastic tree.’ Daniel, however, said, ‘Rightly you have lied against your own head; for behold, an angel of God, [your] sentence having been received from Him, will cleave you through the middle’” Daniel 13:54-55; italics mine. I am grateful to Rev. Paul E. Beichner, C.S.C., for calling my attention to this instance of word play. For comments on the effective punning in the names “Susanna” and “Daniel,” see Bruce M. Metzger's headnotes to this narration, in The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, RSV, ed. Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977); The Apocrypha, p. [213].

13. For a discussion of this topos in Juliana, see my paper, “The Tormentor Tormented: Examination of a Medieval Motif with special reference to Cynewulf's Juliana,” read at the Fifteenth International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 1980. A more detailed study is in preparation as a dissertation chapter. N.B.: the Latin vita which probably served as Cynewulf's source employed word repetition of only one word, tormenta.

14. “From his thighs all the way to his neck” (p. 94, v. 1135); “By my gods, within the hour you will die!” (p. 97, v. 1233); Nigel Wilkins, ed., Two Miracles: La Nonne qui laissa son ahbaie. Saint Valentin, (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1972); “Un os s'est avalé et mis / En ma gorge … / [je] suis à mort!” (A bone has gone down and lodged in my throat … I am dead!). Cf. also pp. 100-01, vv. 1317-42.

15. “They had crushed and thrashed him so much / That they had very nearly milled him entirely”; Anatole de Montaiglon and Gaston Raynaud, eds., Recueil général et complet des fabliaux des XIII^e et XIV^e siècles, 6 vols. (Paris: Librairie des Bibliophiles, 1883), vol. 5, p. 93, vv. 317-18. This quotation is from the A-text of this Old French fabliau; cf. the B-text, edited by Walter Morris Hart in Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, ed. William Frank Bryan and Germaine Dempster (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1941), p. 147, vv. 288-90.

16. “Upon myself the worst of this has turned”; Marie de France, Les lais de Marie de France, ed. Jean Rychner, Les Classiques Français du Moyen Age, vol. 93 (Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honoré Champion, 1978), pp. 41-42, esp. vv. 299-300; and p. 47, v. 86; cf. p. 58, vv. 469-70.

17. “And those were burned in the fire / which had been kindled to burn her; / for it is a matter of justice / that whoever judges another wrongly / ought to die by the same death / that he had judged for the other”; Chrétien de Troyes, Les romans de Chrétien de Troyes, IV: Le chevalier au lion (Yvain), ed. Mario Roques, Les Classiques Français du Moyen Age, vol. 89 (Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honoré Champion, 1975), p. 139, vv. 4564-69.

18. “Because I parted persons so joined, / Separated bear I my head—alas!— / From its first place which is on this trunk. / Thus is seen in me retaliation”; Inferno XXVIII, vv. 139-42, in Dante Alighieri, La Divina Commedia, ed. C. H. Grandgent, rev. Charles S. Singleton (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), p. 251. Note that “so joined” means “joined in the relationship of father and son”; cf. vv. 136-38. For other examples of the tormentor tormented in Inferno, see XXVII, vv. 7-10; and the appalling figure of Archbishop Ruggieri in XXXII, v. 124-XXXIII, v. 90.

19. Parechesis is in both v. 139 and v. 140. “Perch to parti'” and “Partito porto” are five-syllable groups, each group containing a pair of words alliterating on p with the first syllables of alliterating words ending in a rolled r. In v. 139, the i of “io” produces a second, accented syllable for “perch',” echoed in the accented -ti of “parti'.” In v. 140, again each of a pair of words alliterates on p and ends the first syllable on a rolled r. Moreover, the final syllable of “partito” is copied in the last of “porto.” Thus, in vv. 139-140, the conjunction asserting causality (perch') and the finite verbs expressing the cause (parti') and the effect (porto) are linked by parechesis. In that a form of “partire” occurs second in the clause that fills v. 139 but first in the clause starting in v. 140, we have chiasmus. Finally, the variation, parti' / partito, is paronomasia.

20. “Thus the lady … expecting to conquer was conquered”; see Giovanni Boccaccio, Il Decameron. ed. Carlo Salinari, Universale Laterza, vol. 26 (Rome: Editori Laterza, 1973), pp. 69-72. Cf. Pampinea's tale on the eighth day as well.

21. For another reason hagiography is appropriate for initial work on this topos: for at least some variants of this topos, e.g., folklore tale-type 480 (also motif Q2), “The Kind and the Unkind,” hagiography is known to be the route through which the topos entered Western tradition; see Stith Thompson, The Folktale, p. 117. For a thorough discussion of this tale-type, see Warren Everett Roberts, The Tale of the Kind and the Unkind Girls: Aa-Th 480 and Related Tales (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1958).

22. Although Skeat's edition includes thirty-eight lives (I-XXIII and XXIIIB-XXXVII), Peter A. M. Clemoes has more recently concluded that four of these, “differing from the rest in intention, style and linguistic usage, must be eliminated at the outset as not by Aelfric (Skeat XXIII, XXIIIB, XXX and XXXIII); see “The Chronology of Aelfric's Works,” The Anglo-Saxons (London: Bowes & Bowes, 1959), p. 219. Perhaps significantly, none of the four sermons eliminated use the topos of the tormentor tormented.

23. Cf. I, X, XII, XIII, XVI, XVII, XX, and XXI.

24. For the hunter hunted, see life XXX, p. 192, ll. 41-50; for the slanderer condemned, see XXXI, pp. 236 and 238, ll. 271-85. For slanderers whose torment is madness, see VI, p. 158, ll. 186-97; cf. XXXII, p. 330, ll. 231-38. Brevity precludes more than a listing of the lives that feature the tormentor tormented: II-IV, VI-IX, XI, XIV-XV, XVIII, XIX, XXII, XXV, XXVII-XXIX, XXXI-XXXII, XXXV, XXXVII.

25. As Clemoes observes, the Lives of Saints “are all narrative pieces intended not for reading as part of the liturgy, but for pious reading at any time,” p. 220.

26. For a discussion of Aelfric's style as a pastoral concern, see the introduction of John Algeo's 1960s dissertation, “Aelfric's ‘The Forty Soldiers’ (an edition),” University of Florida.

27. XXIX, p. 176, ll. 115-20; cf. XXIII, p. 506, ll. 319-27, and p. 508, ll. 347-48; and XXVIII, p. 158, ll. 5-7, p. 162, ll. 54-57, and p. 164, ll. 117-18.

28. XXVI, p. 126, ll. 7-29; cf. also III, pp. 62-66, ll. 205-76; XXV, p. 66, ll. 6-7, and p. 102, ll. 544-47.

29. XXV, p. 114, ll. 722-27.

30. For examples of such conversions or the ending of persecution, see VII, pp. 178-82, ll. 163-206; XIX, pp. 420-22, ll. 98-102 and 127-32; XXVII, pp. 154-58, esp. ll. 209-14; and XXXI, pp. 244-46, ll. 388-426. Cf. III, p. 68, ll. 292-317. Repentance of would-be tormentors is common in hagiography; cf. Elissa Henken, “Motif Index of Welsh Hagiography,” M.A. thesis, University of Wales College, Aberystwyth, 1981, p. 8 of motif index.

31. For instances of madness as torment, see VI, p. 158, ll. 186-97; XXII, p. 480, ll. 128-132; and XXXII, p. ll. 231-38, 330. For indications that sin is madness and torment, see V, p. 126, ll. 161-62; XXII, p. 480, ll. 128-32; and XXXVII, p. 426, 1. ll, and p. 428, ll. 30 and esp. 31-33. For an excellent study of the patristic psychology of sin, including St. Augustine's teaching that sin causes its own punishment, see Catharine A. Regan, “Wisdom and Sin: Patristic Psychology in Old English Poetry,” Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, 1966. For a helpful discussion of madness in a similar context, see Penelope Billings Reed Doob, Nebuchadnezzar's Children: Conventions of Madness in Middle English Literature (New Haven: Yale, 1974).

32. “He wanted first to conquer with tortures the headmen of this holy belief, so that afterwards he might overcome the lesser ones and turn (them) from their belief”: ll. 36-38, italics mine.

33. “[Even] if I could not overcome him earlier when he was alive, I may torment him dead”; ll. 232-33.

34. “May I not overcome him even now that he is dead?”; l. 252.

35. “I will not make him still more glorious”; l. 217.

36. Most occurrences of magan and willan have been cited in previous paragraphs; for other instances, see ll. 119, 138, 151.

37. The word witu occurs more than twenty-four times in this sermon, far more frequently than tintrego or susle.

38. Here Datian exhibits the “standard symptoms” of medieval madness discussed by Doob; see “The Symptoms of Madness” in Nebuchadnezzar's Children, pp. 31-33.

39. “Now you accomplish against them the tortures which I suffer on account of your slaughter-greediness, as if you yourself would avenge me on them”; ll. 117-19.

40. “When I will be tortured … / … he himself will suffer heavier torments / and he will be overcome in my oppression”; ll. 91-93.

41. “And when you torment me you are yourself tormented”; l. 112.

42. For a discussion of Aelfric's awareness of aspect and his use of it in other homilies and sermons, see Keith Tandy, “Aelfric and Aspect,” The Old English Homily and Its Backgrounds, ed. Paul E. Szarmach and Bernard F. Huppe (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1978). The name “Victor” does occur elsewhere in Aelfric's Lives of Saints; cf. Passio sancti Mauricii et sociorum eius. LS XXVIII, p. 164, ll. 90-116. In this narration, the theme of battle is developed with great irony: on the eve of a battle, the emperor has an entire legion of his own men slain because they are Christians; the 6,666 armed soldiers accept their martyrdom passively; the “Victor” is an old man who hears of the legion's martyrdom, prays to receive martyrdom with the legion, and does; and finally, Victor's ecan myrthre ‘eternal joy’ is juxtaposed to the death in battle of the unsaeliga casere ‘unhappy emperor’ (ll. 113-18).

43. “Let him fight against me in this fight now”; l. 88.

44. “That you may know yourself overcome completely (lit., in all things)”: l. 146.

45. “‘Walaway!’ cried Datian, ‘We are overcome!’”; l. 175; cf. l. 214.

46. For the beasts of battle as tokens of victory, see Anthony Joseph Ugolnik, Jr., “The Royal Icon: A Structural and Thematic Study of Cynewulf's ‘Elene,’” Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 1975, p. 112.

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