SOURCE: Miller, James I., Jr. “Lydgate the Hagiographer as Literary Artist.” In The Learned and the Lewed: Studies in Chaucer and Medieval Literature, edited by Larry D. Benson, pp. 270-90. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974.

[In the following essay, Miller maintains that previous critics have overlooked Lydgate's conscious literary artistry and notes in particular the design and control the poet shows in Lives of St. Edmund and St. Fremund.]

John Lydgate is notorious as a poet in want of design and control, but the allegation, however time-honored and well established as a “fact” of literary history, is by no means unassailable. Indeed, it may not stand up at all under more searching examination of his poems than has usually been accorded them. In discussing the epic legend St. Edmund and St. Fremund,¹ W. F. Schirmer says of the miracles which occupy the second half of the third book (848ff.), but “really constitute a separate” one: “They have been selected from the great compilation of St. Edmund without regard for chronological order, for the sake of their paraenetic and edifying purpose.” He then speaks of “the irrational way in which they have been added.”² While these statements do have apparent validity and fairly represent much that has been said about Lydgate's poetry in general, they are not, in fact, an adequate accounting of the evidence in this text.³ Certainly the poet selects these pious tales from quite separate points in the source,⁴ but his arrangement and articulation of them, far from being irrational, or even merely didactic and ecclesiastical, reveal a notable interest in artistic balance.

(1) The first (848-1106) and last (i.e., seventh, 1314-1407) miracles involve harassment from the Danes and feature Ayllewyn, whose devotion to the martyr's remains seems to keep him constantly en route—at both points through Essex—and results in successful opposition to tyrant (first) as well as bishop (seventh).⁵ (2) The second (1107-69) and sixth (1240-1313) miracles each involve a Leoffstan⁶—sheriff and abbot, respectively—and have a common theme:

To heere off hym froward by dysdeyn
Off his myracles …
To heere hem rad the tyme spent in veyn

(1115-17)⁷

… lyk a wood man ferde
The myracles off Edmund whan he herde
Despysed his myracles whan he herde hem reede.

(1245-46, 1249)

(3) The third (1170-83), fourth (1184-97), and fifth (1198-1239) miracles, all treating of thieves, begin, respectively, in first lines at two-stanza intervals:

Knyhtes fyue …

(1170)⁸

Eek oon off Flaundres …

(1184)

Theuys eyhte. …

(1198)

This overall structure is reinforced with patterns of common rhyme which give it additional continuity and balance. Thus, rhymes on -ence, which are prominent throughout, contribute, on the one hand, to the effect that the several miracles are but variations on a single theme, and, on the other, to verbal clusters which recur with a symmetry corresponding to that seen above.

(1) Successive a-rhymes in the introduction of the first miracle

… was no resistence
… oppressid by mortal violence

(876, 878)

… was … no reuerence
… oppressid by sclandrous violence

(883, 885)

have their counterpart in a b-rhyme concluding the seventh miracle

… no resistence
… withoute violence
… with … reuerence.

(1367, 1369-70)

(2) Rhyme phrases in consecutive stanzas of the second miracle

… doyng no reuerence
… beyng in presence

(1127, 1132)

reappear almost unchanged in the stanza introducing the sixth miracle

… do reuerence
… beyng in presence.

(1241, 1243)⁹

Related to the patterns of this larger symmetry are others from one miracle to the next. The second and third, for example, are linked by another development of the same common rhyme

… violence
… make resistence

(1126, 1129)

… make resistence
… violence.

(1175-76)

More striking is the effect of continuity between them created by the verbal recurrence in lines such as the following, which open or close their respective stanzas:

To seynt Edmund hadde no deuocioun

(1114)

Vnto the seynt doyng no reuerence

(1127)

No reuerence doon to the seyntuarye

(1149)

Hadde to the martir gret deuocioun.

(1183)

Individually, the longer miracles, with which the entire unit begins and ends—the first and second and the sixth and seventh—exhibit internal patterns of some interest. The sixth culminates in an appeal to the saint elaborated in a parallel between successive final couplets:

Prayyng … off his benygnyte
On … Osgothus forto han pite

(1294-95)

… knelyng on … kne
To saue Osgothus off his Infirmyte.

(1301-02)¹⁰

The rhyme and in part the phrasing have been anticipated by an earlier pair of lines:

Off his … and … dignyte
Off his … and … bounte.

(1276, 1279)

The transition to the seventh miracle begins and ends with rhyme on blyue/lyue (1310, 1312; 1336-37), the phrases al his lyue and al hir lyue referring to figures in the previous and present miracles, respectively. The action then proceeds to its climax in a series of four stanzas (1338-65) with interlocking patterns. Elaborate parallel between the first two, especially in respective fourth lines, defines the contest for possession of the remains, with some effect of wit or irony resulting from a difference in application of the same words or similar constructions:

Thre yeer …
Took … the Bysshope vpon a day …
To leede kyng Edmund ageyn to Bury toun
But …
The bysshop …
… in-to Powlys cherche

(1338ff.)

Vpon a day took … clerkis thre
… cherche …
To karye the martir fro thenys preuyly
But … the bysshop …
… to Poulis. …

(1345ff.)

The second and third stanzas conclude with sustained alliterative and other emphasis on the miracle which prevents the bishop from stealing the casket:

Yt stood as fyx as a gret hill off ston

(1351)

For lik a mount it stood ylyche stable.

(1358)¹¹

These final lines are followed, in the third and fourth stanzas, by common a-rhyme contrasting the wrongful trauayle with the fact that it is of noon auayle (1352, 1354); in the latter stanza there is further parallel: the bysshop gan meruaylle¹² when the effort gan to faylle (1359, 1361).

In the second miracle, the third lines of the first five stanzas all begin with the same preposition, and four of them¹³ constitute a sequence, at once alternating and progressive, of variation on the theme of the abbey as sacred precinct and inviolable sanctuary:

Off seynt Edmund to breke the franchise

(1109)

Off blyssyd Edmund entred is the place

(1123)

Off hooly chirch diffendyng the ffranchise

(1130)

Off the cherche entred is the boundis.

(1137)

The four verbs or verbals have different subjects, in an overall arrangement—tirant¹⁴ in the abstract, the woman gilty seeking refuge, the clerkis offering it, Sheriff Leoffstan in particular—heightening the confrontation. Similarly, the parties to the dispute are introduced with formal parallel in the opening words of three successive stanzas:

A woman gilty …

(1121)

The clerkis present …

(1128)

The offycerys rauynous. …

(1135)

This pattern is then linked with another in the last two of these stanzas and the one that follows:

The clerkis present in deuyn seruyse

(1128)

The clerkis prostrat lay in ther praier

(1138)

The clerkis knelyng in ther orysoun.

(1144)

The latter two stanzas, in turn, together with the next, present the crucial action in a form which is dramatic and yet rigorously structured. The final lines in the first and third of these stanzas show obvious recurrence and apparent wordplay (ded/Dempt):

The woman crieth …
Help blissid Edmund …
… I shal … be ded

(1139-41)

The woman crieth …
Help hooly martir shal I be …
Dempt. …

(1153-55)

Enclosed by this parallel is another in the appeal to the saint, first by the woman:

Keep … thy Jurediccioun

(1142),

then by the clerks:

Keep thy ffredam. …

(1145)¹⁵

Finally, the entire succession of patterns is concluded with emphasis on the theme of this miracle in a form which gives further variation to these last formulas and at the same time makes use of the preposition, a thematically significant rhyme word, and other elements which recur in the first pattern cited:¹⁶

Dempt in the boundis this day off thy franchise.

(1155)

As the longest of the miracles, the first has the most extended internal patterns of recurrence. It is introduced and elaborately concluded with rhyme involving or deriving from the name of the saint's antagonist. Thus Sweyn/certeyn in the introductory stanza (844-845) recurs at the end in successive a-rhymes (1086, 1088; 1093, 1095), immediately followed by a third stanza which ends the entire unit with other rhyme on -eyn (1105-06). Initially, the antagonist is characterized by disdeyn (888, 998), but nearby first lines also suggest that any opposition to the saint will be in veyn (939, 967); the latter's control of the final movement, restoring proper order, is indicated both by a first line (1023) returning the faithful Ayllewyn and by the final one (1106) sending the lifeless body of the invader hoom ageyn.

In the first part of the miracle, stanzas ending this lond (833, 861)¹⁷ and later rhymes on his hond (899, 1028) give immediacy and concrete imagery to the struggle. The effect of a detailed account succinctly rendered is produced by repetition of a syntactical pattern previously noted at the beginning of successive stanzas,¹⁸ but here compressed into consecutive lines of a single stanza:

Men slayn …
Wyues oppressid …
Widwes rauesshid …
Maidnes diffouled …
Preesthod despised. …

(884-888)

Parallel sixth lines tell of appeal to the patron saint by the faithful:

Besechyng hym his seruantis to socoure

(923)

Besouhte the martir ther fredam to renewe.

(937)

The latter introduces a further development, with notable use of alliteration, in successive final couplets

… ther fredam to renewe
… on ther wo to rewe

(937-938)

… ther trouble to termyne
… ther hertis tenlumyne.

(944-945)

The saint's initial response is a speech to Ayllewyn in which similar imperatives, beginning successive stanzas, are addressed, respectively, to the devotee himself and then through him to Sweyn:

Go forth in haste spille no tyme in veyn

(967)

Vexe nat my peeple suffre hem lyue in pees.

(974)

The corresponding fourth and fifth lines call upon Sweyn, in the third person and then in the first:

That off my peeple he axe no truage
Ther ffranchise is to stonde in auantage

(970-971)

To axe hem trybut yt longith nat to the
Ther ffredam stablysshed off antiquyte.

(977-978)

With similar progression the second lines of this latter and of a third stanza warn him:

Trouble nat the kalm off ther tranquyllite

(975);

it is not his

… to trouble me and my franchise.

(982)¹⁹

Subsequent lines in each stanza give the warning virtually identical form:

Be war therfore …
… thow … nat …

(979-980)

Be war therfore …
… thow nat. …

(984-985)

In the latter part of this miracle, rhymes on tribut (1039, 1072, 1099)²⁰ emphasize what is at issue and are twice accompanied by lines which, in relation to each other, seem at once parallel and contrastive, paradoxical and congruent:

Geyn goddis wil may be no reffut

(1037)

Thanked god off his gracious refut.

(1098)²¹

Tribut itself is given ironic redefinition—guerdoun couenable geyn fals tyrannye (1040)—in a series of lines, each the sixth in its stanza

… a sharp spere in his hond

(1028)

He with a spere sharp and keene grounde

(1035)

His victorye with spere swerd or sheeld.

(1049)

Concomitantly, in addition to celebration, there is circumstantial insistence on the factuality of this event in second lines sharing common rhyme:

At Geynesborugh the silue same nyht

(1024)

That Sweyn was slayn in his chaumbre a-nyht

(1045)

That Sweyn was slayn in his bed a-nyht.

(1059)

Fourth lines attribute the miracle to his myht/(i.e.) goddis myht (1047, 1061), and fifth lines associate its operation with cleer … lyht/cleer lyht (1027, 1048). The beneficial effect of the saint's having paid Sweyn this kind of tribut is reiterated, with an approximation to common rhyme, in respective second and fourth lines

… sette the Rewm in pes
… neuer put them-sylff in pres

(1073, 1075)

… sette this lond … in surnesse
… this lond is brouht in … gladnesse.

(1087, 1089)

Within the individual miracle, then, as between one and another, the evidence is unequivocal: Lydgate clearly planned this unit of his poem in remarkable detail, taking special pains to combine parallels in word and position with modifications in content or context which would advance the presentation. Whatever his disregard for the chronology of history or his interest in the pious lessons of hagiography, the poet is undeniably and literally concerned about literary form, about patterns of balance in the arrangement of phrase and word, even of syllable and letter. What he achieves is something like the harmony of a musical refrain, which cannot but be considered in some degree poetic. It is not my aim at present to evaluate the poetry, though respect for it may well be apparent throughout this paper. Rather, I would simply argue that the miracles in the third book of the St. Edmund and St. Fremund testify, not to Lydgate's incompetence or irrationality in organization, but to his use, as a conscious literary artist, of considerable skill in design and control. Whether this particular skill is evident in other poems must surely become a concern of Lydgate studies, for which I hope the present essay will provide suggestions as well as stimulus.

Notes

1. It was at Professor B. J. Whiting's suggestion that I became interested in this poem, and my first efforts to produce an edition were sustained by his advice and encouragement. A result was “John Lydgate's Saint Edmund and Saint Fremund: an Annotated Edition,” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1967, now under revision for the Early English Text Society. Citations in the present essay are by line only (as all are to be found in Book Three), with punctuation deleted, from the edition by Carl Horstmann in his Altenglische Legenden, n.s. (1881; rpt. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1969).

2. W. F. Schirmer, John Lydgate: A Study in the Culture of the XVth Century, trans. A. E. Keep (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961), p. 165; cf. Hildburg Quistorp, “Studien zu John Lydgates Heiligenlegenden,” Ph.D. diss., University of Bonn, 1951, pp. 150, 164, and, equally, her damning conclusion: “Man kann diesen Mirakeln in ihrer Gesamtheit keine künstlerische Funktion im Rahmen der ganzen Legende, noch im Einzelnen eine poetische Gestaltung zuschreiben” (p. 166). The “great compilation” referred to by Schirmer is the Latin vita and miracles in MS Bodley 240, printed in Carl Horstmann, ed., Nova Legenda Anglie … (Oxford, 1901), II, 575ff.; abbrev. NLA.

3. Nor is the characterization of them merely as “some miracles of St. Edmund, such as any monastic life of its patron-saint would tend to accumulate to itself”; see D. A. Pearsall, John Lydgate, Poets of the Later Middle Ages, John Norton-Smith and Roger Fowler, gen. eds. (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1970), p. 282.

4. Cf. the sequence in Lydgate's poem and the pages (given in parentheses) on which the corresponding material appears in Horstmann's print (NLA) of the source: 1 (600-603), 2 (593), 3 (665), 4 (661-662), 5 (594-595), 6 (608-610), 7 (596-600). For an analysis of this relationship in the light of chronology, see Quistorp, pp. 150-151.

5. Evidently to heighten pathos, Lydgate himself supplies the details, in the first miracle, that Ayllewyn had to spend the night in a churchyard (1000ff.), and in the seventh, that it was almost eue (1331) when he arrived in London (Quistorp, pp. 152, 162n., 165). Rhyme common to both includes late/gate (1000-01; 1331, 1333) and contributes to the similarity between the two situations in which the traveler finds himself “destitut … off herbergage” (1002) and then later is once again “denyed herbergage” (1317). On Essex, see 1081, 1316, 1401; the latter two, which immediately precede and follow the seventh miracle, have no express counterpart in the source (NLA, II, 600). For a recurrence between the first (1042) and second (1161-62) miracles which is not in the Latin, see Quistorp, p. 153n. Lydgate's lack of “regard for chronological order” between the first and seventh miracles may also reflect adherence to sources earlier than MS Bodley 240 which “relate, and evidently conceive of, the Sweyn series of events, as anterior to that connected with the translation to London”; see Thomas Arnold, ed., Memorials of St. Edmund's Abbey, Rolls Ser. 96 (London, 1890-1896), I, xxv.

6. Lydgate suppresses other proper names in the second miracle (Quistorp, p. 155).

7. Lines 1115, 1117 also illustrate Lydgate's use of verbal balance (To heere …) within the stanza to reinforce the structure of rhyme.

8. Their number is not given in the source, which does contain the inconvenient date 1267—“tempore discordie inter regem Henricum et barones Anglie”—and other particulars omitted by Lydgate; see NLA, II, 665, and Quistorp, pp. 156-157. Further, in the Latin prose these thieves are apprehended after their return to Ely, but in the English poem they experience another kind of seizure “or they passyd the boundis off the gate” (1178), the divine punishment of them thus conforming to that of the thieves in miracles four and five.

9. While the fifth miracle shows similar, if also distinctive, recurrence in its last two stanzas—“… the gret offence” (1228), “… that gret offence” (1238)—another structure unites the third and fourth miracles: the first and last (fourth) stanzas include rhymes on vengable (1174, 1196); the second stanza begins and the third ends with rhyme on stood (1177, 1190), enclosing common rhyme on -oun.

10. For the use of common rhyme and other parallel in successive final couplets, cf. “… joie / … I myghte hire sen ayein come into Troie” and “… joie / I may sen hire eft in Troie” (Troilus and Criseyde, V. 608-609, 615-616); see F. N. Robinson, ed., The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), p. 466.

11. The similes are not in the source (Quistorp, p. 162).

12. For more evidence of the context for this parallel in construction, cf. “The bysshop … gan werche” (1343), “… the bysshop gan dysdeyne” (1355), “… the bysshop gan meruaylle” (1359).

13. In the second of these five stanzas, the first line belongs to the series cited previously (1114, 1127, 1149, 1183) and, together with the third line, shows a relation to the present series: “To seynt Edmund hadde no deuocioun / … Off his myracles ful smal affeccioun” (1114, 1116). Cf., in turn, the third and final lines of the stanza which follows: “Off blyssyd Edmund entred is the place / … Vnto the seynt doyng no reuerence” (1123, 1127).

14. The word occurs three times in second lines (1108, 1143, 1150).

15. Only the clerks speak in the source (Quistorp, p. 155, and cf. p. 165).

16. See 1109, 1123, 1130, 1137, above.

17. This is also the rhyme word, e.g., at 897, a first line.

18. Cf. 1121, 1128, 1135, above; also 1170, 1184, 1198.

19. Cf. this rhyme word in second miracle, as noted above.

20. Line 1072 begins and 1099 concludes respective stanzas, both lines ending “fro tribut.”

21. Cf. “breke the franchise,” “diffendyng the ffranchise” (1109, 1130) and “hadde no deuocioun,” “Hadde … gret deuocioun” (1114, 1183) in groups cited above.