Folklore and Learned Lore in Letaldus's Whale Poem

FOLKLORE AND LEARNED LORE IN LETALDUS'S . WHALE POEM by Jan Ziolkowski In the late tenth century Letaldus,a Frenchmonk who wasassociatedwith the abbeys of Le Mans and Micy and who is otherwise known only for prose hagiographical works, wrote a poem entitled De quodampiscatore quemba//enaabsorbuit.The poem hasreceivedmanycompliments for its gracefulnessand has beenedited three times from the two manuscripts(onelate eleventh-or eatly twelfth-century, the other late twelfth-century) in which it survived;1but it hasyet to earnthe full recognition that it deserves.In two hundred eight dactylic hexameters,the piecerelatesone extraordinary crisis in the otherwise uneventfullife of a humble English fishermannamed Within. One morning Within setssail from his home in Rochester,only to havehis routine shatteredby a whale. After he and his boat are swallowedby the whale, he engagesin a struggle to freehimself which lastsfour daysand five nights. By setting fire to his coracleand cutting with his trusty sword he kills the whale, which by chancewashesashorenearRochester.When Within speaksout to his townsmenas they chopinto the carcassin which he is still trapped, theyassumeit to be possessed and take flight. Only after the local bishophasexorcisedthe whale with holy water is Within allowedto tell his story. Soonfreed,the fishermanfinds himself altered in appearance:his hair has fallen out, his eyeshavelost their sight, and his fingernails protrude wherethe surrounding skin hasbeeneatenaway.In celebrationof his novel experience,Within is receivedjubilantly by the clergy, nobility, and commonersof his town; but soonenoughhe regainshis former looks and returns to a normal life. @ 1984 by The Regentsof the University of California 0083-5897/84/010107 + 12$00.50. IThe poem, with the incipit "Si mihi Pindateaepraestatentorgana cordae," sutVived in two manuscripts, the late twelfth-century florilegium ofSaint-Gratien (Tours MS 890) which was desttoyedin 1940, and the late eleventh- or eatly twelfth-century Paris manuscript (Bibliotheque nationale lat. 5230A) which is still extant. The poem,published oncein the nineteenth century, hasbeenedited twice in this century: Andre Wilmart, "Le poemeheroiquede Utald sur Within Ie pecheur," Studi medievali n.s. 9 (1936) 188-203, and Jean-PaulBonnes,"Un lettre du Xe siecle: Introduction au poemede Utald," RevueMabillon 33 (1943)23-47. Sinceboth editions aremarred by misprints, I recommend consulting them side by side. I follow the line numbering of Wi 1mart's edition. 108 JAN ZIOLKOWSKI Studded with quotations ofVergil and reminiscences of other Latin epic poets, the De quodampiscatorehas deservedly won admiration for its wit and elegance of style. As a result of the attention which has been paid to the style, no one would now deny that the poem contains many artful allusions. To mention only lines and phrases drawn from the Aeneid, Within's departure from Rochester is described in the words Vergil used of the day when Dido learned of Aeneas'sdeparture (cf. De quodampiscatore 21-22 with Aeneid4.585); his resignation at not escaping the whale brings to mind the occasion on which Turnus left his battle position to storm the gates of Aeneas's camp (cf. 44withAen. 9.694); his devouring of whale meat echoesthe scene in which the Trojans prepare the venison that Aeneas brought to them (cf. 95 with Aen. 1.212); and his talking from inside the whale occasions the same speechlessnessas Aeneas felt upon seeing the ghost ofCreusa (cf. 118 with Aen. 2.774).2 The many borrowings and allusions demonstrate that, although Letaldus wrote his poem about a common man, he aimed it at an audience knowledgeable about learned Latin poetry. By applying the lofty.language of classical epic poetry to the story of a lowly fisherman, he creates a disjunction which is amusing while at the same time he ennobles his protagonist with the literary trappings of heroism. Yet the De quodampiscatoreis not merely a patchwork of words and phrases torn from classical Latin poetry. Rather, the poem has severaldimensions in addition to the stylistic one. On account of its style and supposed fancifulness, the poem haselic~ ited tribute asa "fantasy" and as a playful mock epic;3 but it has not been examined carefully for its content-for the importance of the story it records. It has not been studied as a major monument to the complex interplay between oral tradition and learned lore in the Middle Ages.4 Oral traditional literature, as is well known, left a permanent imprint on poetry composed and performed in the medieval vernacular languages; but the wide-ranging nature of its influence on Latin verse in the Middle Ages is often overlooked. On the one hand, verse techniques in the native tongues of medieval Latin writers sometimes shaped their Latin styles, as is the casewith Aldhelm's highly alliterative poetry;5 and, on the other hand, tales transmitted through speechor song now and then suggested the subject matter that Latin authors of the Middle Ages chose to versify, asappears evident in masterpieces such as the Waltharius, Unibos,and Ruodlieb.6 2These allusions are discussed by Cora E. Lutz, "Letaldus, a Wit of the Tenth Century," Viator 1 (1970) 97-107 (here 104). 3The poem is called a "fantasy" and regarded ascomic by: Bonnes (n. 1 above) 34; Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desirefor God, trans. Catharine Misrahi, ed. 2 rev. (New York 1974), 160 and 173; and Lutz 97-107. 40n the problem of oral and learned tradition, seeBruce A. Rosenberg, "Oral Literarure in the Mid- dle Ages," in Oral Traditional Literature: A Festschriftfor Albert Bates Lord, ed. John Miles Foley (Columbus 1981) 440-450. 5SeeMichael Lapidge, "Aldhelm's Latin Poetry and Old English Verse," Comparative Literature 31 (1979) 209-231. 6See Peter and Ursula Dronke, Barbara et antiquissima carmina (Barcelona 1977); Jiirgen Beyer, Schwank und Moral: Untersuchungenzur altfranziisischen Fabliau und verwandten Formen, Studia romanica LETALDUS'S WHALE POEM 109 The De quodampiscatoreis in its style quite remote from oral poetry, unless letaldus's use of leonine rhymes reflects a desire to imitate vernacular verse: the rhyming is particularly prominent in the epic scenesin which Within is swallowed (lines 37, 42,45, 48, 51, 52) and fights free (84,87,89-94,96), as well as in the opening passage(1, 3-4, 6, 9,11-12,16,18, 20).7 But the leonine hexameters could just as plausibly be a rhetorical flourish owed to school learning. 8 Whatever the reasonsare for the rhymes, the poem begins with Letaldus's intimation that he learned the story of Within by word of mouth (7~8). The origins of the oral story could have been British: Letaldus not only situates the action of the poem in an English city, but evenbestows upon the hero of the story an unusual name corresponding closely to the Old English adverb and preposition wipinnan (which would be an apt nomparlant for a man whose adventure takes place within a whale).9 Stories on the model of the De quodampiscatorewould have appealed to the inhabitants of the British Isles, in whose lives and literatures the whale occupied a prominent place. In the very first section of the Historia ecc/esiastica gentisAnglorum Bede notes that whales are caught in the waters of England. Presumably in part out of interest in whales, King Alfred felt moved in the ninth century to include in his translation of Or osius the account that the Norwegian nobleman Ohthere gave of his voyage into remote regions where whales and walruses were hunted and caught in astonishing numbers. 10The importance of the whal~ in everyday English life emerges a century later in Aelfric's Colloquy (which was written at roughly the same time asthe De quodampiscatore),where a timid fisherman confessesthat he prefers catching fish to stalking dangerous whales. II That seacreatures washed ashore and were valuable troves we know from at least two sources. The verses inscribed on the Franks Casket recount the demise of the whale from whose bone the coffer was made, while the Canonsof Adamnan begin with a sentence about the edibility of "marina animalia ad litora delata."12Since the whale 16 (Heidelberg 1969)73-79; and Helena M. Gamer, "The Ruod1ieband Tradirion," Arv: Tidskrift fiir NordiskFolkminnesforskning 11 (1955)65-103. 7Another tenrh-cenrury poemin which leoninerhymesmay signify folkloric associarionsof the srory is HrotsvithaofGandersheim's fab1iau-1ikesaint'slife, Gongolfus:seeHrotsvithaeOpera,ed. H. Homeyer (Munich 1970)90-122. BOn the origins of leonine rhymesand the term versusleoninus,see-PaulKlopsch, Einfiihrungin die mittellateinische Verslehre (Darmstadt 1972)45-48 (with referenceto Erdmann's article on the subject). 9FortheOld English preposition, consultJosephBosworthand T. NorthcoteToller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary(Oxford 1898)s.v. As furthet evidencethat Within isa nomparlant and not a common Christian name, it is not found in Ernst Forstemann,Altdeutsches Namenbuch, ed. 3 Hermann Jellinghaus (Bonn 1913), or in William George Searle,Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum (Cambridge 1897). IOSee TheOld EnglishOrosius,ed. J. Bately, EETSS.s.6 (London 1980) 14-15. llSee TheColloquyof Ae/fric,ed. G. N. Garmonsway(London 1939)29-30. 12Foran interpretation of the runic verseinscription, seeR. I. Page,An Introductionto EnglishRunes (London 1973)174-182. For the Canons,seeLudwig Bieler, ed., TheIrish Penitentials, Scriptoreslatini Hiberniae 5 (Dublin 1975) 176-177. On the acquisition and useof whalesasfood, seeJ. Lestocquoy, "Baleine et ravitaillement au Moyen Age," RevueduNord 30 (1948) 39-43. 110 JANZIOLKOWSKI wasimportant in a variety of waysto thosewho lived in Ireland and England, it is no wonder that the whale was chosenby the Old English Physiologus poet to represent the creaturesof the sea.13That the whale lore of Ireland and England could have reachedthe Continent-and Letaldus-seems very plausible, in light of the multifarious cultural contactswhich took placebetweenthe British Islesand Franceduring the tenth century.14Still, a corpus of whale storiescould havebeenindigenous to northwesternFrance,sincewhaleswere asvisible there asin England: not evena hundred years after Letaldus, the French poet Rodulfus Tortarius (also known as Raoul of La Tourte)portrays in Latin versethe hunting of whalesat Bayeux.15 More important than to conjecturewhere the story of Within aroseis to understand that it stemmed from oral literature-from folklore-and to apply this understanding in explicating the poem. Storiesin which animals first devourand later regurgitate men are prevalent in folklore;16and to find an adaptation in medieval Latin poetry would not in itself be noteworthy. What is striking is that the precise pattern of eventsin Letaldus'sstory of a fishermanand a whale recurs in talesfound throughout the world aswell as throughout time: heroesare ingested by seamonsters, slay the monstrosities only by burning or mangling them from within, and emergealive, but hairless.17 This intriguing sequencehasbeenexplainedvariouslyasa nature myth or a myth of a sungod (the sunis swallowedby the seaas it sets,but cuts and burns its way free with its raysin the morning), a myth referring to a rite of initiation (anovicepretends to descendinto an underworld of death, but emergesfrom the temple to be reborn), and a sexualmyth to be explicated in Freudianterms (the making of fire symbolizes the act of sex).18 Although representedlessabundantly in Europeanliterature than in other parts of the globe, the story canbe documentedin ancientGreecein fragmentsof the myth I'See TheExeterBook,ed. George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3 (New York 1936) 171-174. 14See Pierre Riche, "La 'Renaissance'intellectuelle du Xe siecleen Occident,:' Cahiersd'histoire21 (Lyon 1976)27-42 (here 28-29), and Jean Vezin, "Leofnoth: Un scribeanglais a Saint-Benolt-surLoire," Codices manuscripti3 (1977) 109-120. The issue of cultural exchangewill receiveample treatment in David Dumville, Englandand theCelticWorld in theNinth and TenthCenturies (forthcoming). 15Epistula9, in Rodu/fiTortarii Carmina, ed. Marbury B. Ogle and Dorothy M. Schullian (Rome 1933)328-329. 16SeeStith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature,rev. ed. enl., 5 vols. (Bloomington 19551957), typeF911.4-F921. 17See Leo Frobenius, Das ZeitalterdesSonnengottes 1 (Berlin 1904)59-220 and 421; L. Radermacher, "Walfischmythen," Archiv fur Religionswissenschaft 9 (1906) 248-252; and Hans Schmidt, Jona: Eine Untersuchung zur vergleichenden Religionsgeschichte, Forschungenzur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments9 (Gottingen 1907). 180nthe nature myth and sun god, seeEdward Burnett Taylor, Primitive Culture,ed. 7, 1 (New York 1924)339; and Frobeniusand Schmidt (n. 17above). On the rite of initiation, seeWilliam Simpson, TheJonahLegend:A Suggestion of Interpretation(London 1899; reproDetroit 1971)11-12. On the Freudian interpretation, seeJoseph Campbell, TheHero with a ThousandFaces,Bollingen Series 17, ed. 2 (Princeton 1968)247-248 (but compare 90-95 and 207-209). III LETALDUS'S WHALE POEM of Hesione (recorded in the fifth and third centuries B.C.). According to these fragments, Heracles enters the mouth of the sea monster sent to consume Hesione and kills it by hacking its sides. He comes out unharmed, except that he has lost his hair becauseof the intense heat. 19In the TrueHistory (written in the second century A.D.), Lucian mocks through ludicrous exaggeration such tales of improbable swallowings and escapes.20He claims to have been engulfed, together with no fewer than fifty companions, by a huge whale. For a time they are content to remain inside the creature, which is sufficiently spacious to be inhabited and to contain an island and a forest. When finally they wish to leave, they dig a shaft miles deep into the side of the whale, but to no avail. Then they set fire to the forest, which burns for a full twelve days before the whale succumbs and dies. With the exception of the Within poem (which has eluded the notice of folklorists), the story of swallowing that concerns us is not attested again securely in European literature until the late thirteenth century, when it occurs in the GestaRomanorum. In the Gesta Romanorum, the leading character is a princess who is overwhelmed by a whale, but destroys it by lighting a fire and stabbing it. She wins her freedom when the animal is washed ashore and cut open by people who hear her crying for help.21 As in Lucian's True History, this version of the swallowing story lacks the baldness and nakedness often found at the end. The next story of swallowing in European literature which replicates the pattern of the De quodampiscatoreis an episode in the Irish Fionn cycle in which a man kills a sea beast from within by cutting it, frees its other captives, and emerges bald and bereft of clothing. 22Becauseof the problems connected with the dating of the Fionn cycle (this particular section has been dated on linguistic grounds to the sixteenth century),23 it is not feasible to establish exactly how this episode relates to the Gesta Romanorumstory; but it is possible to state with certainty that the Irish telling of the 19The story must be pieced together with reference to the following: a fragment from the works of Hellanicus ofLesbos (fifth century B.C.), edited by FelixJacoby, Die Fragmente dergriechischenHistoriker 1, ed. 2 (Leiden 1957) 114 (= 26B); lines 33-37 of the poem Alexandra by Lycophron (third century B.C.), edited by Lorenzo Mascialino, Lycophronis Alexandra, Bibliotheca scriptorum graecorum et ro- manorum teubneriana (Leipzig 1964); glosses on the lines in Lycophron, edited by Eduard Scheer, LycophronisAlexandra 2 (Berlin 1908) 28-29 (note that the time involved is three days!); and a remark in the Adversus mathematicosof Sextus Empiricus (ca. A.D. 200?), ed. Hermann Mutschmann, and K. Janacek, Bibliotheca teubneriana 3 (Leipzig rev. J. Mau 1954) 63 (= 1.255). For discussion, see Schmidt (n. 17 above) 3-12, and Carl Robert, Die griechischeHeldensage 1 (= GriechischeMythologie 2, ed. L. Preller, 00. 4 rev. Carl Robert) (Berlin 1920) 549-554. 2oEd. and trans. A. M. Harmon, Loeb Classical Library 1 (New York 1913)284-305 (= 1.30-2.2). 21Hermann Oesterley, ed., Gesta Romanorum(Berlin 1872) 655-657 (= 251, app. 55). 22SeeGerard Murphy, ed. and trans., Duanaire Finn: The Book of the Lays ofFionn pt. 2, Irish Texts Sociery 28 (London 1933) 234-239, and Nicholas O'Kearney, ed., The Festivities at the House of Conan ofCeann-Sleibhe, in the Countyof Clare (Dublin 1855) 65-70. Other stories similar to that of Within are found in early Irish: see Tom Peete Cross, Motif-Index of Early Irish Literature, Indiana Universiry Publications Folklore Series 7 (Bloomington 1952), F910: "Extraordinary Swallowings." 23Seethe table of dates in Murphy (n. 22 above) pt. 3, Irish Texts Society 43 (Dublin CXVII. 1953) cxvi- 112 JAN ZIOLKOWSKI storyaroseindependentlyof Letaldus'spoetic version,which nevercirculatedwidely. Whateversimilarities the two versionshavemust be attributed either to coincidence or to oral tradition. letaldus's poemmerits recognitionfor filling the gap betweenthe secondcentury and the thirteenth centuryA.D. in Europeanversionsof the whaleswallowing story. It hasstill greatersignificance,however,asa model for the waysin which suchfolklore interacted with learnedlore in the Middle Ages;24for if one inspiration for the tale of Within wasa widely disseminatedfolk story, anothermusthavebeenthe most famouswhale story of all time, namelythe Book of Jonah. Letaldus takespains to remind us of the Old Testamentprophet (asif anyoneneededreminding!) by mentioning him explicitly toward the end of his poem(185: "Ionasuelut alter"). Indeed, letaldus seemsalmost to bracketthe story betweenthe initial allusionsto oral tradition (7-8) and to vernacularpoetry in Old English (14-15) and this closingnod to learnedChristianity. Throughout the story of the English fisherman,the tenth-century poet interjects remembrancesof how the biblical whale story wasexplicatedby Christian exegetes;but he neversubordinatesonewhale story to the other. Although most texts of the Bible refer vaguelyto the monsterwhich swallowed Jonahasapiscisgrandis(Ion. 2.1), commentatorswereunanimousin following Jesus in assumingthat the "great fish" was in truth a whale and in magnifying its role in the story ofJonah.25On the strength ofJonah'sownwords(Ion. 2.2), the whaleand Leviathan, which were identified with eachother, were both felt to representthe Devil or Hell.26 By extension, the mouth of the whale signified the entranceto Hell.27The whale'sreputation, unsavoryalreadyin antiquity, wasonly worsenedby the vogue of the accountsof its treacheryin the Physiologus and bestiary.28On the 24Tracesof such interaction ate unfortunately Jonah (The Hague 1971). 25Mt. 12.40: seeJerome, ad loc., PL 25.1131. not assessed in Robert Hood Bowers, The Legend of On the Christian emphasis on the whale, seeFernand Cabrol and Henri Leclercq, Dictionnaire d'archeologiechretienneet de liturgie 7 (Patis 1927) 2572-2631, esp. 2572-2573. 260n the Devil, 11.448C-449A; see Gregory the Great, PL 75.644 and 824. On Hell, Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 12.6.7-8; see Zeno of Verona, PL and Patience,ed. J. J. Anderson (Manchester 1969), lines 252 and 306. Many more examples are found in commentaries on Jonah listed in n. 31 below. 27For illustrations, see Schmidt (n. 17 above) 180-182, and Uwe Steffen, Das Mysterium von Todund Auferstehung: Formenund Wandlungen desJona-MotivJ (Gottingen 280n the whale in antiquity, 1963), Tafel 16. seeHugo Rahner, Symboleder Kirche: Die EkkleJiologie (Salzburg 1964) 291 and n. 133. On the genesis and propagation of the PhYJiologUJaccount, seeCornelia Catlin Coulter, "The 'Great Fish. in Ancient and Medieval Story," TranJactionJof theAmerican Philological AJJociation 57 (1926) 32-50; Florence McCulloch, Mediaeval Latin and French BeJtiarieJ, University of North Carolina Studies in Romance Languages and Literatures 33 (Chapel Hill de I'Ile-poisson," Alexander Scheiber, "Motivgeschichte (1971) 229-238. Walfisch-Literatur," 1960) 91-92; J. Runeberg, "Le conte MemoireJ de la Societeneo-philologiquea HelIingforJ 3 (Helsingfors 1902) 345-395; des Gedichts von Ady An den grossen Walfisch," For a systematic categorization of whale lore, see RudolfSchenda, "Walfisch-Lore und in IV: International CongreJJfor Folk-Narrative ReJearchin AthenJ (1.9-6.9 ed. Georgios A.. Megas, Laographia 22 (Athens 1965) 431-448. and Fabula 12 1964), LETALDUS'S WHALE POEM 113 authority of these sources, the whale (called Aspidoceleon) extremely sly method for bringing It would surface in the middle Sailors, mistaking the beast for an island, would of the ocean and float motionlessly. moor and debark, only to be drowned started a fire for cooking. With similar grances to lure tiny fish into his mouth, Letaldus, since he attempts was believed to have an men to destruction. when the whale suddenly dived after they craft the whale would which he would emit delightful to place the language of his poem in the tradition the classical Latin epic,29 avoids evoking through which engulfs Within is evil, even diabolic. suitably ominous allusions to Scylla (38), Charybdis Eumenides (75, 146). Thus we should not be perplexed the poem Within of either the unclassical Leviathan or Physiolo- gus whale; and yet he manages nonetheless to convey an unmistakable the whale fra- then close. impression He achieves this that result (38), Etna (73), and the that, when near the close of speaks from inside the beached whale, the townspeople of Roch- ester and their bishop at once assume the whale to be a demon (130) and apestis iniqua (129). In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a stranded whale was regarded as a sign either of God's power or of the Oevil's tireless troublemaking;3O tenth-century poem, the whale carries undertones If the whale was associated with already in the of the second sense. satanic forces, its opponent Jonah and, through the Old Testament figure, Christ. brought to mind From the New Testament on- ward (Mt. 12.40), Jonah's confrontation with the whale was considered-in well as in literature-a prefiguration of Christ's Crucifixion and Resurrection. art as 31Cor- respondingly, in Job 40.20: Jesus was seen as the fisherman who answered the demand "Canst thou draw out Leviathan athan hamo"). Christ was the fisherman with an hook?" ("an extrahere poteris Levi(piscator) who made himself the bait (esca) and crucified himself on the hook (hamus) in order to catch the whale (cetus). Once eaten, he was able to force the whale to release the souls it held in bondage. 32Letaldus paints Within in similar colors. Like Christ, Within is a fisherman who becomes 29Toappreciarethe number of classicalallusions in the poem, seeWilmart (n. 1 above)200, and Bonnes(n. 1. above)37-45. 3O SeeWerner Timm, "Der gestrandeteWal, einemotivkundliche Studie," StaatlicheMuseen zu Berlin, Forschungen und Berichte3/4 (1961) 76-93, esp. 82. For an early eleventh-centuryhistorian who regardedastrandedwhale asa portent of war, seeRaoul Glaber,Us cinq livresdeseshistoires,ed. Maurice Prou(Paris 1886) 27-30, and L. Musset, "Raoul Glabet et la baleine: Lessourcesd'un racontardu Xle siecle," RevueduMoyenAge latin 4 (1948) 167-172. 31See the commentarieslnjonamprophetamby Jerome, PL 25.1117B-1152B; Haimo of Auxerre (d. 855), PL 117.127C-142D; and Rupert, abbotofDeutz (1070?-1124?), PL 168.399C-440B. For medieval manuscriptsand incunabula in which the swallowing and regurgitation ofJonah are juxtaposed to the Deposition and Resurrection, seeSteffen(n. 27 above)129(Abb. 18 and 19), and LeonardHarrison Matthews, ed., TheWhale(New York 1968)265. 320n Christ as bait, seeGregory the Great, Homil. 2 deEvang. 25.7 and Moralia 33.14. Further referencesareprovided byJohannesZeIlinger, "Der gekOderteLeviathanim Hortus deliciarum der Hercadvon Landsperg," Historischesjahrbuch 45 (1925) 161-177, and Werner von Koppenfels, Escaet Hamus: Beitragzu einerhistorischen Liebesmetaphorik, BayerischeAkademie der Wissenschaften,philosophisch-historische Klasse,Sitzungsberichte 1973, pt. 3.39-43. 114 JANZIOLKOWSKI bait, but in the end destroysthe whale which devourshim: "Datque cibus mortem, rabidum uorat escauorantem, / Predaquepredonemuersauice sternit enormem" (91-92). By drawing our attention to how well his rendition of the swallowing storymeshes with learnedreadingsof the Book of Jonah, letaldus causesus to overlookthe many conspicuousdiscrepanciesbetweenthe tales of Jonahand Within, As evena summary comparisondemonstrates,the texts of the two storieshavesurprisingly little in common. Jonahis not a fisherman,is swallowednot by a devilish whale but by a helpful fish acting at the behestof God, is freed in responseto prayer rather than to physical effort, and is unchangedin body by his ordeal, If the storiesof Jonahand Within shareanycommonground, it is in the simple fact that in both a mansurvives being swallowedby a large seacreature. Within's survival forms the core of Letaldus'spoemand is no doubt the feature which hasprompted readersof the Dequodam piscatore to judge it a "fantasy," All the same,there aretwo reasonswhy Within's victorious encounterwith the whaleprobably seemedless"fantastic" to letaldus and his audienceof monks than it doesto people today, In the first place, there is the differencebetweenmedievaland modern views on what a miracle signifies. Thanks to Augustine and his followers, earlymedieval thinkers held that miraclesand commonplacehappeningstake place on the sameplane, for both the ostensibly supernaturaland the natural are due to Providence:to God, both typesof occurrencearenatural. 33Theologiansreasonedthat miraclesare contrary not to nature, but rather to the order of nature known to man in his limited knowledge.34 The secondreasonfor which Letaldus'swhale story would not haveseemed"fantastic" to his monasticconfreresis that they werequite likely to haveknown a noncanonicalversion of the Jonah story similar to it, especiallyin the vivid final detail of baldness,Christian scholarsof the Bible were adamantthat Jonahwas not altered physically by his stay within the cetacean,sinceany suchchangewould haveundermined construing the episodeasa prefiguration of the Resurrection.Jeromeis representativeof orthodoxopinion onthis matter: "SuperJonaautem,itaintelligi potest: quod qui in ventre ceti juxta naturam corporum corrumpidebuerat, et in cibos bestiae proficere,ac per venasartusque diffundi, sospeset integer manserit,"35But in spite of the quandary that a physically metamorphosedJonah constituted for doctrine, in artistic illustrations of the episodeJonah lost all of his hair. 36In fact, Jonah ~~Johannes Wendland, Miraclesand Christianity; trans. H. R. Mackintosh (New York 1911)52-66, and A. Michel, "Miracle," in Dictionnairedetheologiecatholique,ed. A. Vacantand E. Mangenot, 10, 2 (Paris 1927) 1803. ~4Ernstand Marie-Luise Keller, Miraclesin Dispute:A ContinuingDebate(Philadelphia 1969)20-28, and Benedicta Ward, Miraclesand theMedievalMind: Theory,Record and Event(London 1982)3-4, ~5Jerome,Commentaria injonam: PL 25.1136C. 36A memorable depiction of Jonahbald after his adventureis a sculpture in the Bamberg cathedral (from around the year 1230): seethe photograph in Steffen(n. 27 above),Tafel8. LETALDUS'S WHALE POEM 115 lost more than his hair; he lost all of his clothes as well, surely a reminiscence of the mythical heat within the seabeast. 37 A parallel tradition of a hairless (and naked) Jonah is to be found in various medievalJewish commentaries on the Bible. Thus the standard Midrash Tanhuma(par. Toledot, section 12) states: And Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshishfrom before the Lord and he went down to Joppa. Finally, He causedhim to endure all the hardshipsand the fish swallowed him and he called to the Lord from the entrails of the fish, and finally the hair of his headwasplucked along with his beard from the heat that he receivedin the entrails of the fish; and afterward he went off [on a mission} that was still not to his advantage. Similarly, the midrashic anthology Ya/qut Shim'oni reports in a gloss on Jonah 4: Said the Holy One, BlessedBe He, to him Uonah}: "Just as you havespared my glory and fled from Me to the sea,so have I sparedyour glory and savedyou from the belly of the underworld and from the great heat that was in the fish'sentrails." His clotheshad beenburned and his coatand his hair, and flies and insectsand ants and fleashad spreadover him and tortured him till he askedhis soul to die, as it is said, '~nd he askedhis soul to die" (Jonah 4.8).38 Moreover, at least one Christian poet went against the Christian exegetic custom and let slip his acquaintance with the legendary bald Jonah: the twelfth-century Archpoet tells of the whale which "vomet vatem decalvatum."39 If the holy man Jonah could take on contours of the hairless hero of the folktale, then there is no reason why the folktale hero could not assume features of Jonah and other holy men. Thus we should not be perturbed to find evidence that Letaldus felt the De quodampiscatoreto belong in the same class as his hagiographical prose writ37See Schmidt (n. 17 above)94-95; Steffen(n. 27 above) 127, Abb. 16and 17; Matthews (n. 31 above)17. Many more illustrations of the bald Jonahand the naked Jonah are to be found under the heading"Jonah: CastUp" in the Inde,cof Christian Art at Princeton University. 38Ya/qutShim'oni(Salonika 1527), p. 128 b. Compare the brief "Midrash Jonah" (Dei Rossi MS 563), printed in Ch. N. Horovitz, AguJat ha-Aggadot(Berlin 1881)34: And becauseof the great heatthat Jonah had in the entrails of the fish, his clotheswereburned and all the hair of his body and his head,along with his beard,and /lies and insectsand ants and /leaswerespreadupon him and tortured him on all sidesuntil heasked his soul to die, asit is said, "And he askedhis soul to die." Hence the sagessaid: anyonewho hasit within his power to seekmercy on his fellowand doesnot so seek,or to bring him to repent anddoes not so bring him, will eventually come into great suffering. I am grateful to my colleague, ProfessorJamesL. Kugel, who found and translated thesepassagesfor me. He further suggeststhat the motif of the heatinside the fish'sbelly maycome from Jonah 2.6 ("The waterssurrounded me unto death. .."). The Jonathan targum rendersthis phraseinto Aramaic as 'aqpunimaya', 'ad mota',"surrounded" thus being renderedhere by a verb generallyused to mean "to causeto congeal(by heat)." 39See Die GedichtedesArchiPoeta, ed. Heinrich Watenphul and Heinrich Krefeld (Heidelberg 1958) 55 (2.56). 116 JAN ZIOLKOWSKI ings: to him, both his poem of Within and his lives of saints wete historical records attesting to the actuality of miracles. There are two categories of indications that Letaldus regarded the story of Within as the equivalent of an incident in the life of a saint. To begin with, he unfolded the story according to the procedure followed in his h-igiographical works.4OAs in the saints' lives, he established a historical and geographical context by emphasizing the setting of the story in post-conversion England (9-16). Gradually narrowing the focus, he soon turned our gaze from the militarily and spiritually laudable inhabitants of England to an outstanding individual of Rochester, Within (17-20).41 As in his hagiographical works, he stressed the veraciry of the source who had supplied him his information (7-'"8).42In a final suggestion that the Within affair should be considered a historical matter, Letaldus posted near the beginning of the poem a quotation from Bede's Historia ecc/esiastica gentisAng/orum.43His ostentatious connecting of the poem with a work in which English history is presented asa revelation of Christianiry was noticed later; for the scribe of one of the two manuscripts placed the poem directly after the Historia and before a metrical epitaph for a historically attested personage of the English Church, Lanfranc of Canterbury. 44 Letaldus receives a high rating today as a historian for the accuracy of his saints' lives;45 but he shows himself as predisposed to accept miraculous occurrences in the saints'lives ashe is in the account of Within. As a result, the second means of proving the hagiographical qualiry of the De quodampiscatoreis to find similarities to it in Letaldus's handling of bona fide miracles. Although the story of Within seems"fantastic" to modern eyes, Letaldus lived in an age when the biographies of saints were just asimplausible by today's standards. Saint Brendan, whose legendary travels were growing in importance in the tenth century, was the first of severalsaints reputed to have had confrontations with whales which masqueraded as islands.46 Since the events of the Navigatio sancti Brendani were received with enthusiastic creduliry, there are no grounds for supposing that Letaldus could not have accepted the incident of Within and the whale as true. In fact, Letaldus evinces in his saints' lives a ready belief in miracles which were just as unusual asthe swallowing of a man by a whale. Where Within kills a whale which is described as having serpentine characteris4OLetaidus'shagiographic works are Vita sanai J u/iani, PL 137. 781B- 796A; Liber miracu/orum sanai Maximini, 795 B-824B; and De/atio corporisS. J uniani, 823C-826B. 41Compare the beginnings of both the Vita sanaiJu/iani and the Liber miracu/orum. 42Compare the story that Letaldus relates of Abbot Heriricus, who requests and receives three fresh pears in the dead of winter. In defense of this anecdote, Letaldus remarks: "Quod ego veridica seniorum relatione cognoscens nequaquam silentio passus sum abscondi" (PL 137 .804A: my italics). 43Lines 9-13 paraphrase in verse the prose of Bede's Historia ecc/esiastica1.1. 44B.N. MS lat. 5230A is a copy of the original, at the closest: see Wilmarr (n. 1 above) 191. On the position of Letaldus's poem in the manuscript, 45SeeBarthelemy see Bonnes (n. 1 above) 34. Haureau, Histoire /ittiraire du Maine, 10 vols. (Paris 1870-1877) 7.188-200 (here: 191 and 196), and Bonnes 29-30. 460n the motif, see the studies cited in n. 38 above and, in addition, Navigatio sancti Brendani, ed. Ioannes Orlandi, 1, Testi e documenti per 10 studio dell'antichita 38 (Milan 1968) 43-56. LETALDUS'S WHALE POEM 117 tics (39), the saints in Letaldus's Vitaju/iani and Miracu/a Maximini destroy snakes (792AB) and dragons (791CO, 7990, 818B).47 Where Within comes forth startlingly hale and hearty from his imprisonment (186), the saints raise men who have died (Vita ju/iani, passim)-even men who have been buried in an avalanche (817BC). Severalof the wonders which Letaldus recounts take place at seaor in rivers (810C-811B, 811D-813A), for Letaldus accepted the patristic scheme in which the ocean typified the wotld of danger through which God guides man (793C, 798A, 810BC).48 What is more, the marvels that the saints perform arouse the same awe that Within occasionsas he issues from the whale. Letaldus often used identical language in his saints' lives and in the De quodampiscatoreto describe the aftermath of a miracle: the astonishment (compare De quodampiscatore 186 and 202 with PL 137.785C), the crowds which gather (cf. 122-124, 137-138, and 175-178 with 7870, 788C, and 792B), the joy of parents and relatives (cf. 202-204 with 7890 and 8000), and the quick return to normal life (cf. 205-208 with 801A). In view of the equation that Letaldus makes between the episode in Within's life and a miracle in a saint's life or aftetlife, the De quodampiscatoreappears ever less a simple "fantasy." On one level, the poem reveals a great boldness in not absorbing a story from oral literature directly into hagiography, as happened so often in the lives of the saints, but rather in maintaining within an ornate Latin poem the unpretentious actors and stage of an oral story. On a different level, the poem is stunning in verifying the possibility that miracles, although they occur seldom, can still take place in real life. Letaldus embraces this doctrine in his Liber miracu/orumsancti Maximini: "Quia etsi sunt rari nunc miracula facientes, multi tamen in sancta sunt Ecclesia, qui vitae merito operatoribus miraculorum dispares non sunt" (PL 137.804A). Thus through the tale of Within the tenth-century poet disproves once again the mocking objection of pagans that the miracle in the Book of Jonah is inconceivable, that a man cannot live through three days in the belly of a whale.49 By sweeping away disbelief of Jonah, Letaldus simultaneously confirms the validity of the Resurrection, for Jonah's encounter with the great fish was almost universally interpreted asreferring to Christ's three days of death and subsequent liberation. One part of Letaldus's ingenuity lies, then, not in inventing a story or fashioning a mock epic from a fairy tale, but in amplifying an age-old folktale with a threefold learned solemnity: the language of classical Latin epic, the typological framework of biblical commentaries on Jonah, and the faith in miracles of hagiography. Another part of Letaldus's talent consists in retaining intact the aspects of the folktale which an inferior poet would have suppressed or modified. To cite only two examples, Within toils within the whale for four days and five nights rather than the three days expected from the Book of Jonah, and saveshimself through his own craft rather than 47References are to column in Pi 137. 480n the patristic scheme,seeRahner(n. 28 above)239-564. 49See Augustine, in Pi 33.382. The effort to prove the reality of the miracle continues to our own day: seeMartin Ralph De Haan,jonah, Fact orFiction?(Grand Rapids, Mich. 1957). 118 JAN ZIOLKOWSKI through invocation of God or saints. 5(}Letaldus, for all his air of light headed and uncomplicated wittiness, had a serious streak that enabled him to make the most of both folklore and learned lore. Letaldus had, as his contemporary Abbo of Fleury rightly claimed, a "singularis scientia."51 Departmentof Classics Harvard University Cambridge,Massachusetts 02138, U.S.A 5OForan instance in which fishermenfrom Flanderssuccessfullyinvoke a saint to bring a raging whale under control, seeHariulf, Vita Arnu/fi SueJsionensis, ed. MGH Scripr. 15.2 (Hannover 1888) 901. 51Abbo, EpiJt. 11, in PL 139.438A.