Research project

Cædmon, Cynewulf and the Continent: The Search for Anglo-Saxon Christianity in 19th-century Europe

Since the 16th century, religious concerns have motivated the study of Old English and its speakers. In the 19th century, scholars turned to the study of Old English literature in particular to find traces of pre-Christian, ‘Germanic’ religion, as discussed in Eric G. Stanley’s seminal work The Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism (1975). However, the 19th century also saw an increasing interest in intrinsically Christian literature, notably the poems attributed to Cædmon and Cynewulf. These engagements with Old English religious texts happened during “a revolutionary age” for Christianity in 19th-century Europe and the role of religion, therefore, deserves further scrutiny. What motivated European scholars to engage with Old English religious texts? How did religious concerns, alongside politics, literary interests and other motivational factors, shape their engagements with these Old English texts and vice versa?

Duration: 2024 - 2028
Contact: Lucas Gahrmann
Funding: European Research Council (ERC)

As the eighteenth century was drawing to a close, the German Romantic and mystic poet Novalis (1772-1801) let out a pertinent sigh of Sehnsucht:

Those were beautiful, shining times, when Europe was one Christian land, when one Christianity inhabited this human-shaped part of the world; one big communal interest united the most remote provinces of this wide spiritual realm.

(Die Christenheit oder Europa; 1799; my translation)

The Reformation and the Enlightenment had left their mark on the European cultural and religious landscape. Political and social seismic shifts had shaken up the old value system. Public intellectuals in the ‘long nineteenth century’ (1789-1914) increasingly directed their gaze towards the past in search of a core identity that could unite and ensure the spiritual success of Europe and its emerging nations. One such shared anchor of identity, one which Novalis would have liked to see renewed and perfected, was the Middle Ages.

In my project (part of the ERC-funded EMERGENCE project), the legacy of the English Early Middle Ages (500-1100) in the long nineteenth century takes centre stage, in particular the religious works ascribed to Cædmon and Cynewulf. Already in the 16^th century, such and other Old English texts were mined for their potential relevance to contemporary religious and political issues. And, as E.R. Stanley has made clear in his 1975 book The Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism, nineteenth-century Old English philologists were often attracted by the supposedly pagan allure of the Old English poetic record in their Romantic and nationalist portrayals of early medieval England. Rather than focusing on Germanic paganism, my research aims to chart the specifically Christian appeal—in an age when the Christian status quo was in substantial flux—that Old English religious literature held for a certain type of nineteenth-century intellectual: the Old English scholar. By exploring the lives, publications and correspondence of a number of such scholars, mainly from continental Europe, I intend to address the following queries:

In what way were these scholars driven by Christo-religious motivations when conducting their research?

In what manner did political, aesthetic and other societal concerns factor into this?

How did both the above influence the character of their academic output, and vice versa?

To what extent may a common thread be seen running through the academic practices and ethos of these scholars?

The scholars and their work, which will form the case studies of my project, need to have had sufficient enough impact in the nineteenth century to have become relatively well-known and influential in their field, whether inside or outside of the universities. In giving shape to these case studies from a cultural-historical and biographical perspective, a new light will be cast on the (Christian) religious motivations underlying nineteenth-century scholarly interest in the ‘beautiful, shining times’ of early medieval England and its literature.

Related research

Main project: Early Medieval English in 19th-Century Europe (EMERGENCE)

Subprojects: